Eyes on the Prize - in discussion with Lynn Michell

Every author and publisher appreciates that they have to raise the visibility of their books. There are strategies aplenty…apparently…and often the best publicity lies in the story behind the story. This might be a link between a current news item or a wider ongoing discussion with a theme in the book or headline-grabbing stories about the authors. But how many of us want a rake through our private lives?

Sometimes though we simply need to speak out, even if taking a stance divides opinion. Lynn Michell, both an author and a publisher, found herself in such a position when considering entering one of her Linen Press books for the Women’s Fiction Prize. She raised awareness about a situation that is, frankly, surprising (and not in a good way).

You can read the full article here.

Lynn and I each work in different genres, but we share a love of the written word and a passion for the sustainability of British publishing. Given our different experiences, we’ve been enjoying something of a cultural exchange programme by email. It’s my pleasure to share some of her thoughts here.

Please read article in the link above. It’s a real eye-opener. We’d appreciate your views in the comments section below. Don’t be shy now! Any links on this post have been added by me.

Q1 Gave you been contacted by other publishers, editors or authors, since your article came out?

When an editor at The Bookseller asked if other small presses felt the same as me and could they talk to a couple more NOW, I gave them contacts for the directors of Patrician Press and Inspired Quill, publisher of my next novel, The Red Beach Hut and both sent supportive replies, Patricia Borlenghi (Patrician) more forthright than Sara-Jayne Slack of IQ who had a lot to say. They are quoted in the editorial article. No other publishers have been in contact though.

Q2 How do you compartmentalise your time and focus between being a publisher and being an author?

It varies. At times completely compartmentalised, other times overlapping. When I'm engrossed in my own writing and the characters are talking to me while I walk the dog, I'm inside the narrative more than I'm in the real world and everything gets neglected. You know those times when you live on digestive biscuits? When stories write themselves and suddenly it's dark outside? It took five years to write each of my previous novels with intense periods interspersed with calmer ones. When my energy for my writing plateaued and it felt safe to let it float along for a while, then I turned back to Linen Press. The Red Beach Hut was different. It came suddenly and vividly and I wrote manically for three months. It was good timing because there was no Linen Press queue. Usually I can juggle the two, and if necessary put one on the back burner to accommodate the demands of the other. At the moment, with The Red Beach Hut finished, I'm editing Ali Bacon's historical novel In the Blink of an Eye about the Scottish painter D.O.Hill and when a revised chapter comes in, I drop everything and give it my full attention. I can be almost as immersed in a novel as an editor as I am as an author and I only take on novels that I can see from the same perspective as the author. My next project is very different, a commissioned biography of an extraordinary painter, Rosa Branson. Unlike fiction, there are constraints - like the truth. I don't know yet whether it will tear me away from everything and burn as brightly in my imagination as the novels did.

Q3 How do we make the Arts and the book business in particular more democratic? (Has it ever been that?)

We can't. Not while monopolies dictate what we read by throwing massive publicity and advertising budgets at the few chosen crowd-pleasers and award winners that we see on the shelves of all the stores. Will Amazon listen to a plea for sales programmes that are a bit more generous and manageable for small presses and which offer them terms they can meet rather than demanding the same trading terms they ask of the Big Five like taking a whopping 55% of the RRP for their Amazon Advantage programme? You bet they won't. If a small press can't pay to have books pushed up the publicity ladder, hard luck.

The three big prizes, the Booker, Costa and Women's Prize for Fiction could have a fairer sliding scale of entry fees so that a one-woman press with no paid staff doesn't pay the same to enter as Penguin Random House which holds 23% of the book market. £10,000 plus 70+ copies of the book is prohibitive for many independent presses.

Q4 What was your greatest challenge in writing The Red Beach Hut?

The Red Beach Hut gave me an easy ride compared to White Lies and Run, Alice, Run. Alice in particular started as one novel and turned into another and I can still see the seams and stitches. The Red Beach Hut arrived like a short film, very visual and with dialogue, almost ready made. I'm a sailor who's crossed the Atlantic so in the scenes on the beach and in the boat I'm on familiar territory. One challenge was the office scene in which a computer is hacked. I'm no technology wizard so I had to do some homework. I was also concerned about getting the facts absolutely right about children on the ‘at risk’ register. Serendipity intervened in the form of a much-delayed Ryanair flight. I exchanged moans with a fellow passenger who turned out to be a senior policewoman. Over a glass of wine or three, she told me exactly what happens if someone reports a worrying incident that involves a child on the ‘at risk’ register. I took notes. Thanks, Lolly! You know who you are. The other challenge was to not over-egg my tabloid-reading baddie and turn him into a caricature. He had his lines changed quite a few times. The overarching challenge is for everything that happens to ring true. What I want is for the novel to have structural and emotional integrity.

Work, Work, Busy, Busy

Whenever I tell anyone what I do for a living I'm often met by oohs and aahs, swiftly followed by a

'I would love to be a writer.'

Interestingly, this wasn't a frequent response when I was a lawyer...

At first I thought that this expression of a fervent desire to write was simply because the majority of folk secretly did want to do it.

After all, hadn't I jumped at the chance?

And indeed, for those of you out there who do want to make a career of writing. I mean really want it. Then my advice is simple. Keep doing what you are already doing, plugging away, chip, chip, chip. Your time for success could be just around the corner. I know it doesn't always feel that way, but take heart from what happened to me, because I'm just an ordinary woman, certainly no genius, and without any inside knowledge or contacts to help me along.

Actually, it makes me furious when I hear this oft bandied piece of rubbish: that you have to be famous or have the right contacts to get an agent or a publishing contract.

Sure, it helps if you happen to be a Hollywood actress, but let's be very clear about this, most of us authors are cheerful nobodies. And we like it that way.

So, if you're using this particular excuse to avoid subbing your work, fine. Just be clear that it is an excuse.

Anyway, back to my point that everyone wants to be a writer.

Well, actually, I have, over time, come to the conclusion that it just aint so. Yes, there are reams of people out there who harbour the dream of walking into Waterstones and seeing their name on the spine of a bestseller.

They can imagine themselves receiving news of their shortlisting for the Booker, maybe they're in their funkily untidy study at the time, replying to fan mail.

This however, is no more a real desire than me wanting to be a size zero. The mind can imagine the little red dress, but is the mouth gonna stop chewing? Don't be daft.

There are unpalatable truths to anything and writing is no different.

First, you're probably going to have to write and do the day job.

The dreamer sees empty months and years before him, allowing his muse to strike. The reality is that no-one gives up proper paying employment until a decent advance comes in.

I wrote my first book while working as a lawyer. I snatched lunchbreaks and evenings when the kids were in bed.

I was lucky to sell that book. Most don't and will have to keep on keeping on for another two, perhaps three unsold books.

Second, you probably won't ever make enough money to give up the day job. Most writers don't. And those of us that do, well that leads me to...

Point three, we have to write a hell of a lot and we have to write to dealines. Not for nothing does a good friend call me 'the word factory'. I write and fully edit a book a year, whilst promoting the previous one. It is graft.

Now, I'm not complaining. I love my life.

But, as the saying goes, it is what it is. Now if you're still along for the ride...get working.

Don't You Wish You Had Written That?

Standing at the Post Office counter, watching the Big Brown Envelope wave goodbye, I often wonder what goes through the agent's (or reader's mind) when he or she opens my submission – do they think it's a big pile of George Dubya Bush, or might it cross their mind that it's the best thing invented since the telly?
Picture this:

'Hello, is that Doris Lessing?'
'Yes,' I say to the agent.
'I've had a chance to read your first three chapters and I must say I am very impressed,' adds the agent.
'Thank you,' I say, pre-empting the next request.
'Can you send me the full MS?'
'Certainly,' I say. 'I'll get that off to you today.'
'Thanks, Doris.'
We hang up.

I'm sure there have been many times when we wish we had been born 'Mr J.M. Coetzee' or 'Mrs Toni Morrison' (wouldn't that look cool on a passport?) but let's ponder, with envy, some of those classics which have graced our bookshelves. Here are some books I wish I'd penned, and in that respect, long to be the brains behind those amazing first three chapters.

Darkmans by Nicola Barker
I only recently read this Man Booker shortlisted novel but I was really swept up in the story. Set in Ashford, Kent, it's an examination of the way history plays jokes on us, incorporating comedy, art and displacement. It's incredibly original and unlike any book I've read before. Do persevere with it – it's worth it.

The Secret History by Donna Tartt
This is the first novel by the Mississippi writer and it tells the story of a closely knit group of classics students at an elite Vermont college. In the opening chapter, the reader is told of the death of student 'Bunny' Corcoran, although few details are given initially. Unusually, the story explores the lasting effects of his murder on the group of students.

If This Is A Man by Primo Levi
This is a work of witness and a fascinating personal narrative by Italian author Primo Levi. It was influenced by his experiences in the concentration camp at Auschwitz during the Second World War. This is not a self-dramatising piece; instead it gives an insight into his strength of character and opens readers' eyes to the horror of the unimaginable.

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Another Booker prize shortlisted novel, it is set in a dystopian Britain and follows the life of Kathy H, a young woman who is boarding at a rather unusual school. Here, human beings are cloned to provide organs for transplant purposes, and Kathy and her classmates have been created specifically to be donors. Again, a novel of startling originality.

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
This story is narrated in the first person by the protagonist, an unnamed African American man who considers himself socially invisible, inspired by Ellison's own life. The story is told from the narrator's present, looking back into his past.

Pop Co by Scarlett Thomas
Smart and funny, almost zeitgeisty, the story follows Alice Butler, an employee in a global toy company which creates kits for children who enjoy code-breaking and espionage. Alice becomes aware of her employers' ghastly ethics while confined at a camp on Dartmoor. She is under orders to develop a great product for teenage girls - go on that journey with her!

The House at Midnight by Lucie Whitehouse
This is on my list because it's the book that any new author wishes he or she had written. With prior knowledge that Lucie is a literary agent, I nevertheless put aside this fact to concentrate on the story, and enjoyable and well-written it is too. But I couldn't simply ignore the fact this is written by an agent who knows how to construct a plot while keeping the reader engaged.

What would it feel like if you were the brains behind one of these books? These are a few I've picked myself, but I'm sure you have many personal faves which you wish you'd written. But don't be disheartened, you, yes you, could be The Next Big Thing.

Pen Money

Last week I saw the Richard Long exhibition at Tate Britain. I love his rhythmic, organic abstracts that suggest simultaneously a cornfield, blood patterns when sun shines through closed eyelids, heavy rain on a window as seen by a child driven by boredom to observe. But the photographs of his walks-as-art got me laughing aloud. Not at him, but at his audacity. How does he find the guts to live precisely as he chooses – walking then photographing his tracks, spooning up tidal mud and stroking it onto walls with his fingers - and make a robust living from doing just that? Suppose we all followed our desires without doubt, guilt or compromise, would we experience the success and joy Long has found? Or do we need that anchor in the ordinary that we think we resent?

I’ve promised my agent a draft of the WIP by August. But June and July are filled with workshops and weddings. I teach and waitress to survive. So when does the book get written? Should I, like Long, jack all but the writing?

No, because this tension feels healthy. The book would come no quicker if I had millions and minions, despite fantasies that it would. Working and writing are essential companions. Years ago I got to know the writer Magnus Mills, who frequented a bookshop where I worked. He came to fame as the bus driver who earned £100k advance for his first, Booker and Whitbread nominated, novel. (Divide that by ten and you’re nearer the mark, since writing and earning is the crux here.) He was, of course, a writer all along, who drove buses to earn a crust, but his urge to write was inextricable from his urge to work. He called full-time writing, ‘being unemployed,’ and said it left him not only with nothing to say but no means of expression. The rhythm of the working day informs the rhythm of his prose. Think of Khaled Hosseini rising at five to write literary bestsellers before his shift as a hospital doctor. Could Eliot have written the ‘unreal city’ stanza of The Wasteland if he hadn’t commuted daily? Who but Larkin the librarian could articulate so movingly that the unlived life is worth examining?

It’s invigorating to recognise that our writing isn’t crippled by having to share its time with waged work. Every time I resent my waitressing uniform I remember a long shift in a tiny cooking galley last Christmas, so hot that we opened the skylight and took turns to stand under the shaft of snow falling into the kitchen, as steam rose from simmering vats of sixty lamb shanks. We drove home in the small hours, leaving the guests snowed in at an endless party. The A3 had become a thick meadow and the windscreen was white, filling our vision. We drove into oblivion. It felt like space flight. This is now the spine of a new story. Work feeds writing; writing elevates work. They’re a brilliant team if we let them nurture each other.

Guest Blog by Emma Barnes - Why It's Good To Be Rejected

We reject a lot of manuscripts. We’re bound to: we’re a small publisher with an open submissions policy, and we publish far fewer books each year than are submitted. I want to share with you why we make offers on the ones we do, why we reject the others, and why you should be glad to be rejected, some of the time.

First up: even if your book is brilliant, it may not fit with a publisher’s objectives. If you have written a novel which is destined in the future to win the Booker, chances are that we at Snowbooks will reject you. We have an editorial policy driven primarily by our own entirely subjective tastes, combined with a forecast of what we think we can sell. Since we have collectively loathed most winners of the Booker for the last decade it’s unlikely that an excellent example of modern fiction will find a home on our list – regardless of whether other people would appreciate it or how many prizes it has a chance of winning. And if you’ve written something which is breathtaking in its mould-breaking originality, we’re unlikely to go for it, despite its genius. We are interested in books which we can sell – and, without huge budgets to break a new genre into the market, this often means books which are easily defined.

As an author of fiction, you're presenting something which is very much part of your soul to corporations who are, by definition, soulless. That's not to say that people in publishing aren't nice. I'm nice. But I'm running a business whose first priority is to keep trading: we owe it to our present and future authors and to ourselves. We're no use to anyone if we go bust. The need for commerciality, which all publishers share to one degree or another, doesn't often sit happily with an author's need for artistic expression.

The books that we do make offers on tend to be brilliantly written, but they also have to tick boxes. Genre, for instance: the areas where we've historically had success are natural areas of focus for us, but our focus does evolve and authors aren't necessarily to know this. Length: we're not likely to publish anything under 70,000 words or over 180,000. Attitude of the author is also a consideration: we've turned down books in the past which fit our editorial plans perfectly but the author seemed to be the sort of person we'd rather not work with.

If we were to sign up a book which we knew to be outstanding, but it was outside of our sphere of ability or interest, we wouldn’t be doing you a favour. If we don’t have the right contacts at retailers, publications, websites and distributors, or the right touch for cover design, or editorial competence, we’re not going to be able to do your book justice. If your book is within our sphere but we don’t fall in love with it – a state which is highly subjective, impossible to explain and difficult to predict – we’re not going to have the passion to evangelise about it to the degree necessary in an industry where over 100,000 books are created every year.

Many authors think of getting a publishing contract as being the end goal, but soon discover that publishing is just a business. Not all is rosy the other side of the publishing deal and though those rejection slips may sting, sometimes they avoid a lot more disappointment.

In 2003 Emma Barnes, along with Rob Jones, founded Snowbooks. Since then they’ve won the Small Publisher of the Year Nibbie, the Innovation Nibbie and the Trade Publisher of the Year IPA award. They’ve sold nearly a million pounds worth of books, and at a party to celebrate successful business women, Emma met the Queen, at which point all her principles went out the window and she curtseyed.