A week is a long time in publishing. Here’s the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

By JJ Marsh

Good - Indie author hits NYT Bestseller List; Society of Author Awards has a ‘happy night’ and via Bookcrossing we discover how books released into the wild can thrive.

Bad - Iain Banks dies. I’m not the only one to shed tears at this final interview. Then Andrew Franklin’s generalisations at TLC’s Writing in a Digital Age make me sigh.

Ugly - Far too many online spats and vitriolic entrenchment regarding the trad v. indie debate. Not pretty and neither side comes out unscathed.

Naturally, the media loves mud-slinging and muck-raking, and will stir that cauldron with a large wooden spoon. Understandable. Good news about positive initiatives and mutual support are nowhere near as attractive as a damn good row and a couple of insults.

What puzzles me is the disconnect between these ‘stories’ and reality. For years, I’ve worked as a journalist for Words with JAM, and The Woolf, and done a fair bit of pontificating on my own blog. I’ve interviewed publishers, agents, authors of every persuasion, publicists, translators, fantasists, artists, architects, politicians and anarchists.

Not one of these individuals was looking for a fight. Each was looking for the best way to bring two things together: the reader and the story. Each has her/his own agenda and might measure success differently, but the ultimate aim is the same. Story + Reader = Success.

Look at Andrew Lownie’s Thistle Publishing initiative, serving authors and readers, and demonstrating how much a really astute agent can add to an author’s career.

Notting Hill Press, an author collective much like our own Triskele Books, uses both traditional publishing and indie to suit their needs. Not to mention the advantages of teamwork.

As for maintaining creative control, Polly Courtney’s decision to ditch her publishers and go independent was driven by her determination not to delude her audience.

Dan Holloway is determined to push the boundaries of what indie really means and trusts his readers. This week, 79ratpress launched seven beautiful books: check out NOTHING TO SAY.

And here’s a brief quote from Jessica Ruston, theTriskele Books Bookclub choice for July.

You’ve followed the traditional route into publishing, via an agent, but what is your opinion on the current move in the market towards acceptance of quality, independent published books entering the mainstream?

“I think we’re living and working in really interesting times in publishing. Technology is changing the way we consume books, and the way they can be made available, and the industry is having to change in response to that. It’s maybe harder to make a living as a writer now than ever before, but it’s also a very exciting time to be doing so. There are people doing fantastically well out of self-published books, and I have huge admiration for anyone who does so - it’s not an easy route to take.”

Publishing is in a revolution. There will be profiteers, casualties and propaganda. But those who respect others’ choices and understand the value of teamwork will thrive. But we would say that, wouldn’t we?

JJ Marsh is the author of The Beatrice Stubbs series, reader, Triskelite, journalist, Nuancer, reviewer and blogger. Likes: pugs, Werner Herzog and anchovies. Dislikes: meat, chocolate and institutionalised sexism.

The Death of a Giant

I saw a giant die today.

Giants have a unique way of their own. They come into the world with a bang. Everyone notices their arrival. People look up to them in awe. When they flex their muscles, others run for cover. They forge their own path. More often than not, they trample over others who stand in their way. Occasionally it is on purpose, as the giant sees the others as a minor obstacle which needs to be brushed aside like a fly. Most often they don’t even notice the ones trampled, for they are not in their line of sight. The hapless ones were merrily going their own way, till they realized too late that the giant had also chosen to take the path they were on. As the giant marches on, it collects accolades and occasionally brickbats. Many a time they can get drunk on their own success, and not even notice that another bigger, stronger giant is on their path.

And then, after a while … they die.

They get crushed by a bigger, newer giant on the block. Their death is often more spectacular and feted than their birth. It is always like a supernova. A brilliant flash of light, thundering explosions that can be heard and felt light years away. And as they die, they take many others with them.

As they fall to the ground, they don’t pass away quickly. They lie there and whimper, struggle and prolong their agony. They attract vultures and onlookers by the truckload. The vultures peck away at the parts they find the juiciest and the tastiest. As the vultures come and go, they leave behind a giant, which is little smaller, uglier, disfigured, more hapless. The vultures go and pass on the message about the waiting feast to others of their clan. Till the time only a skeleton remains, with some rotting body parts that no one, not even the vultures wish to partake of. Then it’s over. People talk sympathetically about the giant for a while, then it is forgotten, relegated to myths and memories.

I saw a giant die today.

It wasn’t a person. It was a name many people would have heard of – ‘Borders’. They are, or rather were, one of the biggest names in the book selling business, at least in the English-speaking part of the world.

And the way I discovered it was as much of a shock as the news of them going away. Walking down Broadway in NY, from Battery Park up to Manhattan downtown, we spotted the familiar black and white sign of Borders from a distance. The pace of the kids quickened, fuelled by the possibility of laying their hands on some more of their favorite books. As we inched closer, it seemed strange there was no activity around the huge doors. On reaching the front doors, we were greeted by a dusty porch, peeled carpets and paint and huge signs proclaiming ‘Prime retail space for lease’. We, being tourists in NY with a million things to see and do, raised our eyebrows and carried on.

Later, after spending an afternoon at the iconic Central Park, we headed into the Lincoln Center. Everyone was cheered by another sight of the Borders sign. As we climbed the escalator and reached the first floor, I was shocked to see huge, ugly, black and yellow signs – ‘Going out of business. Everything 20 – 40% off’.

To see these signs pasted all over the glass walls, which otherwise would be adorned with the posters of books, was like being hit by a heatwave, when you are expecting a gentle, soothing spring breeze. I looked at my wife; we both stared back at each other puzzled. We gingerly stepped inside to witness signs of chaos. Books piled up in unruly stacks, hundreds of people jostling to get their hands on a bargain. Huge red signs proclaiming the death of a giant. Instead of the nice soothing piped music, the sound system was continually blaring announcements about warning people to not to sit on the ground and read, as it was a fire and safety hazard.

Where one would normally find friendly helpful staff who would go out of their way to suggest books and help you discover new books, there was no one in sight. Every info counter was a deserted mess with strewn papers, packaging and computer screens displaying a blank white screen or a message about no network available. Much like small ghost towns. With great difficulty I was able to track down a staff member to inquire about the whereabouts of a specific kids’ book. I was greeted by a steely eyed, grim faced girl, who pointed to a far corner and asked me to go search myself. The far corner, the erstwhile kids’ section was a deserted place. The bright and colourful covers of kids’ books seemed glaringly out of place among the carnage that surrounded them.

Catching another rare staff member later for her help in searching in the catalog, the explanation emerged. She explained that Borders was now owned by a liquidator. They had no access to the catalog and it was just a matter of time before all this would be gone. There was genuine remorse and tiredness in that face. Whether that feeling came from having repeated that answer to a hundred customers, pain of losing her job or a sense of loss due to passing away of a place where books were respected, I’ll never know. What was clear to see were the remains of the giant. Its skeleton in the form of empty shelves, the discarded bits in the form of unwanted books, crushed mints and sweets packages near the checkout counter and bargain shoppers rummaging in the piles for a succulent morsel.

While this does reflect on me being not completely in touch with going-ons in the world, but I could sense a wormhole open up in the fabric of space-time. As we walked around the bookshop trying to look for books, I couldn’t help but wonder – Am I nothing more than a vulture, scavenging on juicy bits of a dying giant. Are the discounted books piling up in my basket, small bits of the giant? Did I at some point in time, inadvertently play a part in its demise? Or the giant that I could see dying in front of me, was not Borders, but the printed book. Will all physical bookshops soon meet the same fate, and did Borders fail to reinvent itself in a world of publishing and book retailing that is or has changed radically?
Lots of questions, and very few answers. What’s even more ironic is that this piece is being typed on a tablet. One of the reasons for buying it was to being able to occasionally read magazines and books on it. So maybe that was my part in its downfall. But does that mean that one should stop evolving and not foster progress and new approaches?

As one would expect, there are no right or wrong answers here. And an issue like these can be argued equally passionately both ways. All I know is that I watched a giant die, and it certainly wasn’t pretty.

By Brijesh Luthra
http://www.brijeshluthra.com/

Shakespeare: staging the world

A few weeks ago, I was privileged to interview two of the curators behind the British Museum’s new exhibition, Shakespeare: staging the world. Ever since, I have been on tenterhooks to see the finished exhibition, and yesterday, at the press launch, I had my opportunity. Did it live up to my expectations?  No question.

The concept behind the exhibition is that of using Shakespeare’s imagined places as a spine for a journey that takes you around the world from within the ‘Wooden O’ of the theatre. The design, by Alan Farlie of RFK Architects and Tom Piper of the RSC, takes full advantage of the circular form of the Round Reading Room.  The curved walls of the different exhibition spaces scroll round one another, while the colour scheme and lighting changes subtly as you move from one ‘world’ to another. 

All through the exhibition, the objects on display are given context through Shakespeare’s words.  At the same time Shakespeare’s words are brought to life through specially recorded performances by actors from the RSC, including Antony Sher as Shylock, Ian McKellan as Prospero and (my personal favourite) an achingly beautiful performance by Harriet Walter of Cleopatra’s speech, ‘Death, like a lover’s pinch...’

You begin the journey in ‘London’, where the wood panelling most explicitly evokes the ‘Wooden O’ of the theatre. The rest of the world was opening up to Elizabethan England. Sir Francis Drake first circumnavigated the globe in 1580. As objects on display show, trade was reaching out to China, India, Turkey, Africa and the Americas. A portrait of the Moroccan ambassador, at court with his retinue when Shakespeare’s company performed there, shows a possible model for the figure of Othello.

Not only were the Elizabethans moving out into the world around them; the world was coming to England.  In Shakespeare’s time, 900 black Africans lived in London, concentrated in areas around the court and the playhouses.  There is no doubt that Shakespeare was aware of the pressures this created.  The one surviving fragment of his handwriting, on display here, is a scene from the banned play Sir Thomas More.  In it, a young Thomas More confronts a crowd rioting over the presence of foreigners in London (an actual event from the year 1517) and exhorts them to imagine what it must be like for:

The wretched strangers
Their babies at their back
With their poor luggage
Plodding to the ports and coasts
For transportation.

From London, you travel back into Shakespeare’s origins in rural Warwickshire.  The ‘Forest of Arden’ is portrayed with mottled panels suspended from the ceiling, the words of Jaques’ ‘melancholy’ speech projected onto them. Objects on display here range from rich tapestries to a homely drainage spade and a ceramic watering pot.

Shakespeare used the past – England’s own medieval past and the classical worlds of Rome and Egypt – to explore political themes too dangerous to examine in a contemporary setting.  Here he examined the nature of kingship, loyalty and the building of a nation.  He often had to skirt carefully.  An earlier play about Cleopatra by Fulke Greville, for example, was destroyed because of the dangerous parallels with Elizabeth’s relationship with her general the Earl of Essex.  Shakespeare’s play wasn't written until the reign of James I.  Pride of place in this part of the exhibition are the ‘funeral achievements’ – helmet, sword, shield and saddle – of Henry V, which have never before left Westminster Cathedral.  On the back of the shield, you can see the worn red velvet arm pad and a fragment of the blue Chinese silk that once lined it.

Venice is a world where Shakespeare examines themes of virtue and sexuality, but also the ‘otherness’ of figures like Shylock and Othello.  Looking up here, at the heart of the exhibition, the sumptious domed ceiling of the Reading Room is fully visible.  The colour scheme of red and purple sets off stunning glass and silverware – but also erotic items like the ‘chopines’, the platform shoes worn by Venetian courtesans. 

The next space is an exploration of treason and rebellion.  Here the walls are black, with blood red recesses for the exhibits.  Guy Fawkes lantern sits alongside a disturbing reliquary containing the eye of a Jesuit priest, publicly executed in the aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot.  The voices of Macbeth’s three witches whisper to you from the walls.

The exhibition ends in the fantasy world of The Tempest.  The lighting is brighter and the walls stark white.  Exhibits include the polished obsidian ‘scrying mirror’ from South American belonging to Doctor Dee (the Elizabethan magus who may have been a model for Prospero) and a narwhal tusk once held to be proof that unicorns existed.

The final exhibit is the’ Robben Island Bible.’  This is a copy of The Complete Works of Shakespeare that belonged to Sonny Venkatrathnam, who was a prisoner on Robben Island for twelve years.  The only other books allowed on Robben Island were religious texts, and in order to persuade the guards to let him lend it to other prisoners, Sonny pasted Divali cards over the cover and convinced them it was a ‘Hindu Bible’.  The book was passed among the prisoners and 32 of them annotated the text, marking passages that had particular meaning for them.

Here, the book is open at the passage from marked Julius Caesar by Nelson Mandela:

“Cowards die many times before their deaths,
The valiant never taste of death but once.”

It is in part this inscription that persuaded Gregory Doran to see Julius Caesar as Shakespeare’s ‘Africa play’.  His production, with Paterson Joseph as Brutus, is currently playing at Stratford and will transfer to the Noël Coward Theatre in London in August before beginning a nationwide tour.

It is particularly appropriate, then, that the exhibition opened on Mandela Day, and that Sonny Venkatrathnam was there to see it. It is, as museum director Neil MacGregor said in his welcome, “an extraordinary demonstration of why Shakespeare matters.”

Shakespeare:  staging the world opens today (July 19^th 2012) in the Reading Room at the British Museum and runs until 25^th November.  Tickets can be booked online at http://www.britishmuseumshoponline.org/invt/mexshake#book-now.

Catriona Troth’s interview with curators Dora Thornton and Rebecca Allen will appear in the August edition of Words with Jam.

An Alliance of the Real Innovators

“Hello. We’re here. We’re at the London Book Fair and we’re here to stay!”

Thus, in a room overlooking one of the great bastions of the traditional publishing industry, Orna Ross launched ALLIA - the Alliance of Independent Authors.

ALLIA has already kicked off meet-up groups in Florida, San Francisco, Japan and Dublin, and hopes to get one going in London following this launch. A key part of the Alliance is the sharing of information and they intend to have live on-line groups too, initially twice a month, as well as “real people on the end of a help line.” And everyone, please note: the online version of the ALLIA launch will take place on the 19th May at 13:00 EST!

The morning was structured round two panels. The first, chaired by Joanna Penn of The Creative Penn, was a selection of those providing the self-publishing tools: Tom Kephart from CreateSpace, Teresa Pereira from Blurb UK and Michael Tamblyn from Kobo. Amazon’s role in the self-publishing world is well known. They offer services such as CreateSpace for print books, Kindle Direct Publishing for Kindle ebooks and Amazon Author Central for book promotion.

Tom Kephart of CreateSpace began by asked the audience what they wanted from the Amazon offering. “UK based services,” came back the answer. “No more waiting three weeks for print books to be delivered from the US.” And “Electronic transfer of money.” Was there a Kindle ‘pixie dust’? A key to success? If there was one, it lay in metadata. Metadata allows Google, Twitter, blogs etc to work in concert and allows readers to discover your books.

Kobo had hoped to launch their self-publishing platform at the London Book Fair, Tamblyn said. It is currently in beta and will be rolled out this quarter, with plans to expand to a dozen new countries in 2012. They are also hoping to introduce Kobo Pulse, which will allow authors to write comments in the margins of their own texts, to create a dialogue with their readers. “When authors are given control and visibility, they do amazing things that the traditional publishers out there are just not doing.”

Tamblyn pointed out that Kobo are selling 16% of self-published books in South Africa and 14% in Africa and the Middle East, and some of this is because authors are free to set prices at a level that customers in these markets can afford.

Blurb began as a print on demand service that catered for artists, with tools aimed at beginners as well as experts. They aim to produce high quality books that “represent who you are.” Developing communities, among authors and between authors and readers, is important to them. In 2011, they released their ebook platform. Currently their ebooks are simply replicas of their print books, but they are looking at developing ebooks that are “enhanced without being over-complicated.”

Blurb has printers on every continent (though as the print facilities for Europe are based in the Netherlands, this can still mean a 7-10 day delay in receiving a book ordered in the UK).

Both Kobo and Blurb are open platforms that do not impose exclusivity deals.

The author panel, chaired by Sam Missingham of FutureBook, consisted of four authors with widely different experiences of self-publishing.

Linda Gillard was a well established, award-winning, mid-list author when she was dropped by her traditional publisher for ‘disappointing sales’. Her agent tried for two years to find her a new publisher, but she was repeatedly told that her new book was ‘unmarketable.’ However, she had a loyal fanbase who, when she finally admitted that she’d been dropped, persuaded her to self-publish. At one point last summer, she was selling 100 copies a day, and this ‘unmarketable’ book has now achieved almost 30k downloads overall.

“When I finally realised I was successful as an indie author and that I was going to go indie permanently, I felt elated. There was a real sense of creative freedom.”

Her key advice to authors was to not to think about making sales but about building new relationships with readers.

John Logan is a writer from the remote Highlands of Scotland, more at home on his farm than talking to London-based editors and agents. He self-published his first novel in 2011, after receiving ‘rave rejections’ from editor after editor who loved the book but couldn’t get it past their sales departments. He had 700 downloads in the first seven days.

His role models, he said, were “writers like Tomas di Lampadusa, who never published a word in their own lifetimes.”

Words with Jam columnist, Dan Holloway “didn’t have a clue” about publishing when he first went on line in 2008. He encountered a great deal of snobbery and skepticism about self-publishing and decided it “must be worth exploring.” Having a background in the world of Art, he was disappointed that people didn’t talk about literature with the same degree of passion and controversy that they would talk about, say, Tracy Emin or Damian Hirst.

His approach to self-publishing was not about selling books or making money. He wanted to find a space where you could ask interesting questions and where there was a freedom to fail. “In the traditional publishing world today, you can’t even fail once.” He has written an interactive novel online and loved the immediacy of getting feedback “even as you write the book.”

Joni Rodgers, from The League of Extraordinary Authors, is a Texan author and fan of Amazon. “It’s like that big sandworm in Dune,” she says. “Sooner or later you realise, either it’s going to swallow you up, or you’re going to get up there and ride it!”

Rodgers straddles the worlds of traditional and self-publishing. Having published celebrity memoirs with one of the big publishing houses, “I’ve been to the puppet show and seen the strings.” But the publishing economy is tough at the moment, and they can’t afford to take risks. She sees self-publishing as “the high ground for creative risk takers and for the books that don’t fit into the pitch at the marketing meeting.”

Right now she is self-publishing a novel with Kindle Select about the relief effort in Houston that followed Hurrican Katrina – a book that had “too much sex and too much politics” to make it through that marketing meeting.

“I’m riding that sandworm, baby.”

There was some discusson of the pricing strategies used by the different authors. It was clear that there was often a ‘sweet spot’ at which a book would start to sell, but that point varied from country to country and book to book. People paid “less for an ebook than they would for a greetings card” but at the same time, the author could still be making more per sale than they would from a traditionally published book sold at full price.

All the authors agreed that it could be tough to get a review for a self-published book. But at the same time it was recognised that the mediators were changing. Book bloggers were becoming far more influencial than traditional print reviewers, and their attititude to self-publishing generally more responsive.

The strongest feeling, throughout the whole morning, was that here, among self-publishers, was where the real revolution in publishing was happening.

As Orna Ross said in her closing remarks, there have been certain pivotal moments in the story-teller’s art: from bard to scribe, from scribe to printing press. And now we are on the cusp of another massive shift.

I couldn’t help thinkingof all the Independent Booksellers I have interviewed in the past few months who, when asked about self-published books, grimaced slightly and sucked their teeth. There has to be potential, surely, for an alliance independent authors and independent booksellers – both of whom are capable of innovation that leaves vast, unwieldy corporations standing.

If anyone can make that happen, then perhaps ALLIA are the ones to do it.

Anthony Horowitz at the London Book Fair

It’s just as well Anthony Horowitz talks fast. The Literary Café is packed to bursting with his fans and when Lindsay Mackie of English PEN asks for questions from the audience, hands shoot up all over the place.

Horowitz begins by confirming that sad news that there will, indeed, be no more Alex Rider books. But there will be one more book from this universe. He is planning a novel showing the young life of the assassin Yassen Gregorovich, and taking him to the point, at the end of Stormbreaker, where he fails to pull the trigger to kill Alex.

Horowitz says that it took him, ‘about five seconds’ to decide to write the Sherlock Holmes sequel, Road of Silk, despite being well aware of other YA writers who had failed to make the transition to adult books.

He has started to question whether, now his own children are adults, he ought to still be writing for children. “Perhaps it’s time for my generation of writers to step out of the way and make room for a new wave.”

He is passionate about the stripping away of the schools library service, which he sees as an even bigger issue than the shutting of public libraries. And he speaks movingly about his work with young offenders in prison.

In response to Mackie’s skeptical query, he insists he really was given a skull for his thirteenth birthday. (“I’m not sure if it’s weirder that I asked for a skull or that my mother went out and bought one for me.”) It sits on his desk to remind him that his time is not infinite. The plan, he says, is that he will end up the same way, to make a pair of bookends.

He shows us the fountain pen and spiral-bound notebook in which he writes all his first drafts, before switching to a laptop for subsequent drafts, "and to become an instant expert in every make of German machine gun, or whatever." The sound of a pen scratching across the paper keeps him connected with writers of the past, he says, and he doesn't want "Bill Gates or anyone else coming between me and the creative process."

Intriguingly, he lets drop something that could keep the cryptographers among his fans busy for decades. His books are apparently littered with purely private jokes and puzzles – hidden names, anagrams, first letters of sentences that spell out something...

“I’m on my own working for ten hours a day – I have to have something to keep myself amused,” he says, before going off to tackle a lengthy line of autograph seekers.

Harry Bowling and the RONAs

As a working mother of two young children, I don’t get out very often. So, when I got an invite to this year’s RoNA awards, I jumped at the chance. What do you mean you’ve never heard of the RoNAs? Actually, neither had I until the invite came through.

RoNA is an acronym for the Romantic Novelist Association. Not being a romantic novelist, I’d never had much to do with this writers’ group. After attending their awards ceremony, here’s what I now know about the RoNA:

1. It’s the body representing writers, agents, editors and publishers of romantic fiction.
2. Romantic novelists, and others in the romantic fiction industry, are lovely people.
3. The RoNA throws one heck of a good party.

So, what was I, a dark crime writer, doing at such a fluffy, pink gathering? Well, earlier this year I was lucky enough to be shortlisted for the 2012 Harry Bowling Prize. This prize, for new writing, was set up in memory of the popular east London writer, Harry Bowling. The prize is sponsored by Harry’s agent (MBA) and publisher (Headline), in association with the RoNA. The winner of the prize is announced at the RoNA awards ceremony in London.

Along with the other shortlisted authors (five of us in total), I was invited to come along to MBA offices prior to the event, where we could meet the people behind the prize, including Harry’s daughter, Sally.

I arrived at MBA offices to find a party in full swing. I had a lovely time meeting members of the MBA team, people from Headline and the other shortlisted writers. I was thrilled when Laura Longrigg from MBA told me she was very familiar with the area my novel is set in, as she lives just down the road from there. I love coincidences and this one would have done me nicely for the day. However, it was quickly overtaken when I was introduced to Harry’s daughter Sally – who only turned out to be my children’s swimming teacher. It goes to show, even in a city the size of London, just how small the world can be sometimes.

After a very pleasant afternoon at MBA, we whisked ourselves across London to the salubrious venue for the awards, One Whitehall Place – a neo-gothic delight near the Thames Embankment.

We were greeted with glasses of pink champagne (the quickest way to win this girl’s heart) before getting our photos taken. After more chatter (and some more pink fizz), we all went into another room for the awards ceremony.

The awards, presented with some panache by authors Peter James and Jane Wenham-Jones, was a glitzy affair. Much of it passed me by in a haze of applause and pink fizz. I didn’t win anything but, as the afternoon progressed, that hardly mattered. It was a great excuse to dress up, meet some lovely people, and spend an afternoon celebrating some great writing.

Huge congratulations, of course, to all the winners announced at the event, most especially Natalie Lloyd-Evans, winner of the 2012 Harry Bowling Prize for her novel, A Dark Flowering.

If you’re an aspiring writer, I’d really recommend entering this competition. It’s run by some lovely people and is a great chance to showcase your work with a top agent and publisher. And, if you make it as far as the shortlist, you’ll have a fabulous day out.

by Sheila Bugler

http://www.sheilabugler.com/

Michael Morpurgo - in conversation with Gillian Hamer

At WWJ towers, we’re uber-excited to have an exclusive interview with the multi-talented author, Michael Morpurgo, in our next issue. Not only has he written over 120 novels, he has recently seen his most famous novel, War Horse, transformed into an epic big screen hit, directed by world-famous director, Stephen Spielberg.

His honest replies about his decision to write about war and its effects, even to an audience of children - plus his reasons behind writing War Horse, very nearly had this hardened journo on the edge of tears. This is a man who comes across as not only passionate about writing – but equally passionate about life.

As well as answering a wide variety of searching questions about his recent experiences, not only with Hollywood, but also seeing War Horse transformed into a huge hit with theatre audiences across the globe, Michael took time out to answer our quick fire questions from one of his biggest fans - Harry Ellison-Oakes from Class 3, Colne Engaine School, near Colchester, Essex. Harry’s class read ‘Friend or Foe’ last year and also saw the theatre production.

What inspired you to write about horses at war?
Meeting an old man who had once been a soldier in WW1

What gave you the idea to have Joey’s best friend, Topthorn, die?
Millions of horses did die in the war.

Did you ever consider an alternative ending?
No

Why did you make Albert’s father horrible to Joey?
Not everyone can be nice and it was in his character to be a bit harsh.

The saddest bit of the book for me was when we found out that Emily had died, did you feel sad when you wrote it?
Yes, very.

We also like to be a bit political at WWJ Towers, so we thought it interesting to see what Michael Morpurgo, often out-spoken with his beliefs, thought about on-going library closures, and we weren’t disappointed with his reply:

Q You are on record as criticising library closures both in Devon where you now live and in your native Hertfordshire. But what kind of library service do you think can best serve communities these days?
A I believe that good libraries and good school libraries in particular are vital, but more importantly the librarians who work in them and enthuse about books and stories, are essential. We all know that reading can transform people and change lives, and libraries play a vital role, especially for those children who don’t have books at home.

For the full interview, look out for April’s Words with Jam, for yet another exclusive for one of today’s hottest authors.

Wanted: Short Stories and Poetry

We feature one or two short stories and poems in each issue, either in the print AND online version, or only in the print version. Due to the magazine being free, and our advertising income modest, we offer a token payment of £10 per short story and £4 per poem on previously unpublished works. We do not offer payment on previously published work. Please state on your submission if it has been previously published, when and where.

Word count for short stories should be no more than around 2200 words and poetry no more than 45 lines ish - this is purely because we are tight on space, and not because we can't be arsed reading longer submissions.

Due to the number of submissions we receive (and because it's rather messy and confusing) can you please include on the actual Word document, at the top, your full name and email address. We don't mind what font you use, or colour, or size, or alignment, so long as you don't take the piss - white is very difficult to read. This is so we can contact you back and you don't think we're ignorant when your email gets buried and all we have a file and we've no idea who it's off.

Send your submissions to submissions@wordswithjam.co.uk

February 2012 issue OUT NOW!!

And what an issue we have for you. You want big name interviews? Not a problem. We have Julie Myerson, Mark Billingham, Geraldine McCaughrean and the Guardian’s literary editor Claire Armitstead, just to get started with.

You want advice? Sorted. There’s our regular Agents’ View feature with Andrew Lownie and this issue’s guest agent, Meg Davis; Tips on submitting non-fiction from Helen Corner of Cornerstones Literary Consultancy; Synopsis Doc with Sheila Bulger and, with the kind permission of Andrew Lownie, a collection of twenty-four top editors tell us exactly what they’ll be looking out for in 2012.

All our regulars stuff is in there too, of course, including Perry and Derek’s usual madness and a plethora of quizzes, crosswords, guessing games and general daftness.

Also, beginning this issue, we’ll be featuring new content exclusively for our print subscribers, just to say thank you. We start with the first in a series of motivational centrefold posters as well as a new short story from Jo Reed.

All in all, I think you’ll agree we’re working far too hard.

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Solitude and the City - An Ibero-American Book Festival at Foyles

Foyles, as I recollect, used to be a pretty forbidding place. Books piled high and organised by publisher seemed to be arranged expressly to prevent frivolous activities like browsing. And the payment system (acquired, as events manager Andy Quinn reminds me, from Romania) entailed obtaining a ticket at one counter which you took to a cash desk to hand over your money before collecting your book.

It’s all very different now. A few years ago, when they stripped out the old shelves, they found piles of unsold books. An entire room of books was discovered, boarded up and forgotten, like a bibliophile’s tomb of Tutankhamen. The whole place is now light and airy, with chairs dotted about where you can sit and read a few pages before deciding to buy. There is a funky little café. And on the top floor is the Gallery, venue for the free early evening events that now run throughout the year.

I was there for the second night of the annual Ibero-American book festival, to hear Mexican writer Chloe Aridjis discuss her award-winning debut novel, The Book of Clouds.

Her protagonist, Tatiana is a Mexican Jewish girl, youngest of a family of five. Having won a year in Berlin as a prize for coming top in her German course, she has stayed on, largely solitary, drifting from one odd job to another. As we meet her, she is starting a job with an eccentric elderly historian, transcribing endless tapes into which he has poured his thoughts on the ‘phenomenology of space’ – the way that the history of Berlin has seeped into the fabric of the city.

Berlin is very much a parallel protagonist in the book – mysterious, troubled, still trying to come to terms with its own divided past. There is a recurring theme too about the disorienting effects of artificial light.

It is significant that Aridjis has chosen to write, not about Mexico, but about a city where she lived for five years. She believes that illumination comes from some sort of dislocation. This is echoed in the book, where the three turning points for Tatiana are three moment of profound dislocation – one in a decaying basement once used as a bowling alley by the Stasi (or was it the Gestapo?), one by moonlight amongst the 2711 concrete slabs of the Holocaust Memorial, and one in a dense and mysterious fog that descends on the city at a critical moment.

Aridjis has a Mexican father and an American mother and grew up fluently bilingual. She admits to feeling uncomfortable, at times, being identified as a Mexican writer. After all, here she is, writing in English, setting her books in European cities. Yet she feels Mexican. For her, the strangest thing about The Book of Clouds was to find herself writing the interior monologues of a Mexican character in English.

Aridjis is currently living in London and working on a London-based book, to be called Assunder. Here she addresses a different form of disassociation. Set in the National Gallery, her protagonists are museum guards - invisible by profession, by and large impervious to their surroundings.

After that, she says, she would like to write a book set in Mexico. By then she will have achieved the necessary detachment to write about her own country. And yes, one day she would like to try writing something in Spanish. Some short stories, perhaps.

It is going to be interesting to see how this cosmopolitan writer with a coolly detached eye portrays London. Assunder is a book to look out for.

And I shall be keeping an eye, too, on Foyles’ event list, now I know what an intriguing (and welcoming) place it has become.

Yes, it's finally happened ...

If you know me personally, you'll know that actually writing pieces for the magazine is something that, well, just doesn't happen, shall we say. But, over the last couple of months, I've been asked by a few people to write Blog posts related to writing and running the magazine. And I obliged ...

You can read Editor, me? Starting and running a literary magazine here: http://howesue.wordpress.com/2011/09/23/editor-me-starting-and-running-a-literary-magazine-by-j-d-smith/

And you can read Should I Submit? here: http://joreed.co.uk/blog/?p=55

Enjoy!

JD Smith
Editor

Banned Books Week 2011

This week is Banned Books Week in the USA. Organised by the American Libraries Association, this has run annually since 1982 and is billed as a celebration of the freedom to read.

Every year in the US, several hundred books are ‘challenged’ – that is to say, or school or a library receives a formal written complaint – most often from a parent – requesting that a book be removed. The vast majority of these challenges affect books for children and – increasingly – for young adults.

Not all books that are challenged end up being taken off the shelves, but a fair few do. For example, in Texas, for every book challenged in schools during 2009/10, around one in five was give some form of restricted access and one in four was removed altogether. In some cases, a book can be taken off the school curriculum in individual schools or school districts because of the objection of one parent.

Judy Blume, in her 1999 introduction to Places I Never Meant to Be, dates the change in attitudes to the 1980 presidential election. For a decade before that, she says, she’d felt free to write pretty much what she pleased. But then “the censors crawled out of the woodwork, organised and determined.”

Outright censorship may be less of an issue in Europe than it is in the US. But don’t imagine that as non-US writer you are unaffected. Anne Rooney, a Cambridge based YA writer who had one of her own books removed from an elementary school in Texas last year, believes that writers elsewhere are being affected even before their books are published.

“Non-fiction publishers are more cautious than fiction publishers in my experience. Children’s non-fiction is illustrated, which is costly to produce. The publisher has to be sure they can sell into their targeted markets, which usually include the USA, or they can’t afford to publish the book at all.”

This can lead to publishers removing passages that might reduce sales in the US. And to writers self-censoring.

“We know what is not going to get through and why make work for ourselves at the editing stage by including material that will be challenged?” says Rooney.

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Similar to Banned Books Week, Canada holds Freedom to Read Week at the end of February. This year, Canadians were invited ‘Free a Challenged Book’ on Bookcrossing. As big fans of Bookcrossing ourselves, we think that’s a great idea.

Why not pick a banned book of your own and set it free? It doesn’t have to be from the ALA list. You can choose any book that has banned at some point in its history. (If you want some ideas, take a look at http://www.banned-books.org.uk/) Then write and tell us what book you chose, why, and where you left it. We have a copy of Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games to give away for the best entry.

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Read more about censorship and Banned Books Week in the October edition of Words with Jam. And you can join in Banned Books Week by taking part in the ALA’s Virtual Read Out on YouTube.

August 2011 Issue

Open publication - Free publishing - More words with jam

WWJ offering a FREE first page critique by an industry pro!

Cornerstones is a leading UK literary consultancy. They have over 60 professional editors who specialise in guiding authors through self-editing. They scout for agents and have launched many first time writers.

As of October 2011, each issue Cornerstones will critique the first page of a novel submitted by one of our readers, and the first page and critique will be published in the relevant issue.

If you would like to submit your opening page for critique, email it as a Word attachment to submissions@wordswithjam.co.uk with the subject heading of Cornerstones Critique.

See www.cornerstones.co.uk for author journeys.

Apologies

Just a quick post to apologise to anyone who has submitted a short story or article proposal recently. Lots of people seem quite keen for inclusion recently (I wonder why?), but it means we're fairly behind with reading and replying. We promise to get back to you all shortly.

Thanks,
Jane

African Adventures

A long time ago, I promised that if I heard that any of the books I released into the wild with Bookcrossing had an exciting adventure, then I would let you know.

Well, it appears that the very first book I ever released did go on quite a journey.

Back in February 2010, I left a copy of Ian McEwan’s Atonement in Café Africa. Café Africa is a really cool coffee shop in Amersham that was set up as a not-for-profit venture supporting charities locally and in Africa, so it seemed like exactly the sort of place to send my first book on its way. But it was only quite recently that I found out just how right I was.

The book was picked up by Katie, who works at Café Africa when she is home from university. As it happened, Katie was spending April-September 2010 in Tanzania, working as a teacher in central Dodoma and helping with a child sponsorship program, trying to reach out to the poorest families in the village and helping to fund their children into full time education. And she decided to take my book with her.

Part way through her stay, having read the book, she was having a bit of R&R in Dar es Salaam when she met a German woman who was travelling on to Zanzibar the next day and wanted a book to read on the beach. So now we know the book went from Amersham to Dar es Salaam to Zanzibar.

Unfortunately, the woman who took the book to Zanzibar never journalled it, so we have no idea what happened to it next. But Atonement certainly had a good start on its travels!

What’s more, Katie is travelling back to Tanzania this summer and has promised to take another book with her. So watch this space.

Launching 22 Britannia Road

On a mezzanine floor above the café at Dance East in Ipswich, in a space that is more used to hosting a small reading group, it’s standing room only. Perched on a bar stool in order to be seen over the heads of the crowd, is Amanda Hodgkinson, there to promote her first novel: 22 Britannia Road.

With her shoulder length blonde hair and yellow cardigan, Amanda looks elegant as a flower. And she answers questions in a calm, warm voice as if she has been doing this all her life. No one in the audience would guess that this is her first major promotional event for her book. But then this is her home crowd. Amanda, though she now lives in France, grew up in these parts.

The very first question brings a revelation: the Britannia Road of her imagination is not the same Britannia Road of Ipswich’s geographic reality. “I always knew I would set my first book here. But moving away from East Anglia turned it into the country of my imagination. That was very freeing. I wasn’t looking over my shoulder all the time thinking, ‘but it’s not really like that.’”

She talks about how she had imagined her move to France. “I would be sitting on the terrace, sipping wine as the words flowed.” The reality was very different. “The house we bought had no floor, no kitchen. It had running water, but not always where you wanted it to run.” Instead of sipping wine on the terrace she was learning to lay floors and fit kitchens.

But she did spend a final, intense year working on 22 Britannia Road. “The last couple of two weeks, I was writing until I just had to lie down and sleep. Then I’d wake up again and write through the night.”

The result is a wonderful, lyrical novel that explores what is means for a small family to have been separated by a war, to have undergone terrible experiences and have secrets from one another – and then to have to pick up the threads of their lives again after the war. The main characters are, like many others in East Anglia, Polish. The father fought with the Polish arm of the RAF; the wife and son are refugees, traced to Red Cross camp after the War.

Amanda reads us two passages: one from the opening of the book, where Sylvana and her son Aurek board the boat that will take them to England, and one where an increasingly frustrated Janusz insists on taking their troubled, almost feral son to the doctor. She reads beautifully, expressively, in a way that is sure to charm audiences.

After the reading, the audience is free to ask questions. She is asked about the research she did, and whether she feels a responsibility to the Polish community for telling their story. She immersed herself in a lot of reading , she tells us. But then she put that aside and let her imagination take hold. “I’m not a man, nor a boy child. And I’m not Polish. But a writer has to be free to imagine these things. That’s our job.”

Has she had any feedback from the Polish community? Not really. Not yet. But then someone from the audience pipes up. A mother and daughter. The mother is Polish. Like Sylvana, she survived the War in extreme poverty. Like Sylvana, she came to Ipswich after the War and settled. They haven’t read the book yet, but from what Amanda has said tonight, yes, that is what it was like. Amanda beams with pleasure and tells them she hopes they will enjoy the book.

Unusually for a first novel, 22 Britannia Road has already been sold around the world. It is being translated into French, German, Romanian... the list goes on. It is already published in both Australia and North America. And Amanda is about to leave on a tour of Indy bookshops in the US. If tonight’s performance is anything to go by, she is going to knock 'em dead.