Welcome to SPUNC, home of Australia's small press and
independent publishing community.
What is Splog?
Splog is the Small Press Log (that was probably simple enough to work out on your own). Here guest writers and small press luminaries contribute lots of lively opinions and ideas, discussions and speeches, about the small press sector and the industry at large.
I was recently asked how I feel about literary journals having readers or
sub-committees. The person asking thought it wasn’t necessarily a good thing. It took me a while to realise what I think... and by a while, I mean days.
You see, one of my very first rejection letters came from Meanjin, and while it contained their standard ‘thanks but no thanks’ blurb, it also included an encouraging handwritten comment by then editor Ian Britain. My feeling at the time was if it got as far as him reading and rejecting it, then it did okay. In other words, it didn’t get turfed by the first reader in their line of however many they had. Having never been part of the Meanjin team, I stress that this is what I imagine happened, and is based only on the fact that there is a general feeling within the writing community that this is how it works.
Even if it isn’t, I don’t care...because it felt good. Sure, it was still a rejection, but I was just starting out and to have nearly made it was a good feeling, so I sent the piece out again. While I couldn’t say with certainty whether it was the same story, I received my first acceptance soon afterwards.
About a year later I went through a period where I received many rejections, with most of them suggesting, like this first one did, that I had come close. So I set out on my path without that dark feeling many others talk of after receiving a rejection. Perhaps because of the way it began, or maybe for other reasons, I’ve never been the type of writer to feel a personal rejection when my writing doesn’t make it.
I’m not saying it’s not disappointing or it doesn’t feel frustrating at times, but I don’t take it to heart. Sometimes I even find it amusing. When my short story collection was going through the editing process, there were two stories I tried desperately to have published before the actual book came out. Since the collection was released two years ago, these are the two stories that are most frequently commented upon as being the standout ones. Yet, between them they received more than thirty rejections, another reminder that there’s much subjectivity involved in the process of selection.
Now that I’m on the other side, as editor of page seventeen, I feel it even more. I remember the first time I found a piece we’d rejected in another journal. I was browsing in Readings, and as I scanned the contents of Island, there it was: a poem we’d almost accepted and may have if we hadn’t already accepted another by the same poet. I’m not sure what I thought in that first moment, but I remember laughing and thinking we must be doing okay if poets were sending us the quality of pieces that could be published in quality journals like Island.
These days we use an editorial committee at page seventeen. Perhaps ours differs to some of the others, as our initial readers become part of the selection committee for longer than just that first yay or nay: they attend the selection meeting and their opinion counts just as much as anyone else.
Each year when I consider who might be invited to join our editorial committee, I can’t help but think about publications that use readers in the way I imagine Meanjin did. They don’t just pick anyone. I imagine they ‘test’ them first so the editors are confident their readers are on the right track, insofar as not just recognising good writing, but having an understanding of the style of work that fits the publication.
I’m ready now to answer my friend. I think it’s a good thing literary journals have readers or sub-committees. How else can we expect the next generation of editors to gain experience? Or allow writers to see how it works on the other side?
Tiggy Johnson is a founding editor of page seventeen, which is produced annually and boasts work from several new writers in each issue. Her own writing has been published in several Australian journals and she maintains a personal blog at www.tiggyjohnson.blogspot.com.
My old boss used to often tell me that in bookselling, you don't need to read every book. Some books simply sell themselves.
Why (or indeed how) these books sell themselves is another matter altogether, and involves a combination of cover design, author endorsement, shelf placement and demographically-aligned advertising. For those publishers on a smaller budget, the selling of their product involves awareness, a consumer friendly format, and, dare I say it, a quality aesthetic...assuming the publisher has found an adequate distributor to ensure booksellers stock them in the first place.
Independent publishers face an uphill battle in an increasingly streamlined bookselling environment. In my last bookselling post, new releases had two months on the front table before being shelved with the rest of the backlist, or worse, being sent to the returns shelves. Throw in Stieg Larsson's Millenium trilogy, monthly new releases and film-tie ins (and increased discount on said new releases for bulk purchases), and you have a very small sales space for smaller publishers to work with.
Larger publishers realise that titles need a presence in the bookstore: they offer reading copies, posters, free giveaways and window displays. This is not to say that all these methods work, but they do eliminate the "who?" factor that sometimes accompanies independent releases.
Social networking sites, blogs and online previews can increase an independent title's visibility, but in truth what is needed is one-on-one engagement with buyers. Again, this a huge topic, but in handing over distribution to larger representatives such as United Book Distributors, Macmillan and Australian Book Group, independent publishers again risk being lost in a deluge of titles from each particular distributor.
I found the in-store reality of this situation a couple of weeks ago. Bob Franklin's Under Stones, published by Affirm Press, had arrived in what was a slightly smaller format than standard lit-size. I immediately put our two ordered copies on the front display table, but found it dwarfed by larger piles from the major publishers. Countless copies of Stieg were sold. No Bob. I wanted to put in the front window, but with only the two copies, doing so would have meant only one being available for purchase, and its subsequent removal from the front table.
This is not the fault of the publisher. The book's design is exquisite, and though it is smaller than traditional trade paperbacks, is close to standard size for lit-fiction and/or short story collections. As an interesting postscript, the same book is number #3 on the Readings chart this week, so it would be interesting to see how much in-store promotion and shelf-placement have helped increase book sales. I have no doubt that Franklin's in-store launch helped make his title a release worth noticing.
SPUNC titles, in general terms, face unique challenges. Some titles are journals, some books, and some are closer to zines. In all cases, these definitions provide both restrictions and expectations from the reader.
What then must we do? Is SPUNC better to have it's own specialist shelf (as in Readings Carlton), or to blend in, with each publication reaching it's allotted definition? Should journals be classified as such, should Affirm's long story shorts battlle head to head with Peter Goldsworthy, Andrea Levy and Ian McEwan in new release fiction? In short, how best do you sell a product that's very strength is in it's difference from standard releases?
A quick comment:
Journals such as Harvest and Stop, Drop and Roll combine quality design and literature. In terms of size, they fit better in a magazine/journal display than in standard bookshelves, but doing so means bookbuyers miss their presence each and every time they bypass that section of the shop. Other SPUNC journals also have to potential to expand their audience if their products are placed more firmly in the standard bookselling environment, but is that what independent publishers want? Is there some sense of solidarity in maintaining independent publishing's status as 'other'?
Late last year, I gave an informal seminar on book reviewing to a group of fledgling young writers, all members of the editorial committee of Express Media’s Voiceworks. The seminar was held after business hours at Melbourne’s spiffy new Wheeler Centre, then yet to be officially opened. Arriving early, realising my mobile phone was out of credit, there was nothing to do but wait on the front steps until someone came out to find me. I sat cross-legged on the rain-damp cement and read over my too-copious notes, until I was joined by a polite young man in a baseball cap and parka, also holding a useless mobile phone and early to meet someone on the other side of the locked doors.
‘So, what are you doing here?’ he asked as we huddled in the doorway, leaning away from the particularly grating cold that only a fractious Melbourne summer can inflict.
‘I’m giving a talk on book reviewing. To some young writers.’
‘Oh yeah? What will you say?’
‘All kinds of things. Talk about how to write reviews, the ethics of reviewing, that kind of thing.’
‘So there are ethics in reviewing, are there?’
By now I’d realised, to my embarrassment, that I was talking to Nam Le (who I’d met a year earlier when The Boat was published).
‘Of course,’ I said, and then broke the awkwardness of having a conversation about book reviewing while pretending I didn’t realise I was talking to a major author by reintroducing myself. After we exchanged pleasantries about the holiday season, he laughed and asked again what I would be teaching these young writers about the ethics of reviewing. ‘Can I see your notes?’ he joked.
To me, that encounter said a lot about Australia’s reviewing culture and the problems and pleasures inherent in it. The book industry is a small place and you don’t have to be around it for long to be on at least chatting-on-the-steps-of-The-Wheeler-Centre acquaintance with various authors, publishers, reviewers and literary editors.
The number one job of a book critic is to critique the book they’ve been assigned – to give an honest opinion of its worth, without prejudice. When considering that ‘worth’, which is necessarily objective, they need to try to understand the book as the author (and to a lesser extent, the publisher) intended it – and assess its success or otherwise on that basis. Of course, this means considering the book within its chosen genre and with its intended audience in mind.
This all sounds simple enough, but giving that honest, unprejudiced opinion can be insanely difficult in practice, partly because of that insular nature of the book industry and the fact that there’s a high likelihood that the reviewer will know one or more of the following involved with the book: the publisher, the agent, the author, or even the author’s friends. And while every reviewer worth their salt knows that none of these things should matter, it requires constant self-vigilance to ensure that they don’t.
Many working reviewers are simultaneously nursing along a book project of their own, or hope to one day. Or they work in academia, alongside many Australian writers. Or they’re supplementing their income from writing their own books – as most published writers must somehow do, unless they’re Peter Carey or Tim Winton. And author-reviewers tend to remember that they too will be reviewed in future, or were in the past. (When I was commissioning fiction reviews at Australian Book Review, I went through a stage of trying to commission novelists, and was surprised by how often I met with a variation of ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t review. I know how awful it feels to have your work criticised and I don’t want to have to do it to someone else.’)
In addition to all of the above potentially awkward situations, there’s the biggest hurdle posed by Australia’s small literary scene. Even if you don’t know the author you’re reviewing in any way, you know there’s a strong likelihood you’ll run into them someday, at a book launch or writers festival ... or on the steps of The Wheeler Centre.
So, what do you do? Well, here’s what I shared with the young writers from Express Media but was too embarrassed to talk about with Nam Le: my own personal code of ethics, developed over several years of reviewing for different publications. It’s a constant work in progress, informed by experience.
Here’s a fairly random selection of my rules for myself: I won’t review a book that I feel obliged to like or dislike, for any reason. If I’ve been offered a book for review that I’ve already read and disliked more than liked, I’ll always tell the editor commissioning the review so they have the option of starting with at least a chance of the reviewer liking it. If I criticise a book, I’ll back up that criticism with a considered reason, or an example from the text. I’m careful not to give away the ending or any key plot points of a book – using the publisher’s blurb as a guide for how far to go (which can sometimes leave a lot of leeway). I won’t review a book written by a friend, a direct colleague or family (not that the latter has ever come up).
Of course, grey areas often appear without warning. What is the definition of a ‘friend’? Is it someone you’d go out to dinner with? Someone whose house you’ve been to? Or does someone you chat to at parties count, too?
I think the most important ingredient in a healthy literary culture is honesty. Trying to honestly understand an author’s work; honestly telling an audience whether you’d recommend they spend their money on it; honestly assessing a book’s place among those of its kind. Being honest with your editor if you’re unsure about a potential conflict of interest and letting them make the call. If you’re really committed to honesty, those bothersome grey areas matter less. It matters less whether I’m a barely classified ‘friend’ of X than whether I’m willing to say exactly what I think of X’s work and why – regardless of whether or not we are friendly, regardless of whether X might endorse my book one day, regardless of my feelings about X’s publisher or editor. And if any of those factors interferes with my ability to be honest – which of course they sometimes might – I need to consider and recognise that before I take on the review, and say no.
I’ll leave the last word on reviewing ethics to a couple of far wiser reviewers than me, in the form of links. Adelaide-based critic Kerryn Goldsworthy’s list of entities to which a reviewer has a responsibility is just spot-on. And ditto to John Updike’s six rules of book reviewing. Both excellent bases for developing your own code of ethics.
Do you think Australia’s literary culture is honest? Do you have any rules for yourself about reviewing – or rules you think reviewers should follow? Whose responsibility is a healthy reviewing culture: media proprietors, literary editors, reviewers, all of the above? I’d love to hear others’ thoughts.
Jo Case is books editor of The Big Issue and a former deputy editor of Australian Book Review. She reviews regularly for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.
She is also associate editor of Kill Your Darlings, which features a provocative lead essay by Gideon Haigh on Australia’s reviewing culture.
I don’t know diarist William Bunn personally but I know that on February 6 he was “Reading Sunshine and Snow” and that he had “read it nearly through”. You may wonder why someone would care what Bunn had on his bookshelves at the start of February, but Bunn felt it important enough to record this literary fact of his life and, as I will argue below, there can be a set of circumstances, not particular to everyone but nevertheless to some, where it is useful to digest such innocuous short bits of information.
One environment where this can occur is Twitter which enables the public reading and writing of messages (or “Tweets”) that are no greater than 140 characters in length. Twitter, of course, is popularly recognised not for what it enables but – so its detractors frequently imply – what it disables: that is, deeper forms of thinking. Yet if you’ve ever kept a diary, it’s not uncommon to pen things like “Ran out of milk. Going to the neighbours to borrow some”.
As readers, we rarely question the presence of such commentary in a diary because interested parties don't often get to review a diary’s contents until long after the writer has passed away. The privacy aspect is a lot deeper to penetrate with hard copy than it is with digital technologies which can make things immediate and public. But we’d consider a reader poking fun at the pages of a physical diary perhaps bad taste.
I think in most cases that the basic human need to record a life applies to Twitter as a contemporary method for keeping a diary. We're perhaps not the intended audience of most tweets, just like we’re probably not the imagined audience of Bunn’s “Reading Sunshine and Snow”, but through Twitter the writer has given their consent that we might be if we so choose.
In modern parlance, we might refer to this use of Twitter as a branch of life-writing or autobiography. Certainly, it is this routine registering of a stranger’s everyday life that the detractors of Twitter seize upon as being representative of a general banality characterizing users on both sides of a Tweet. But such criticisms are crudely positioned, prematurely closing down discussions of what Twitter can and does enable.
Search Twitter a little deeper and some collaborative, participatory communities begin to emerge. These communities, composed of individuals who share collective interests and whose contributions are not tied to any instant reward other than to augment the conversation, suggest another use for social media. One project which I manage, AustLiterature, is an attempt to join in on the conversations occurring in Twitter about Australian writing, publishing, reading and bookselling. Overlapping with my own tertiary interests in Australian literature, AustLiterature is also an experiment to co-opt social media within an educational context and deliberately resist the kind of fatuous criticisms which dog Twitter. To date, it has been a highly gratifying endeavour.
Created with the goal of “collating news and views exploring themes, concepts, political and theoretical approaches underpinning contemporary Australian writing”, AustLiterature’s first Tweet was posted at 1pm on 12 June 2009. Nearly 4,000 messages later, AustLiterature has over 1,300 followers and posts on average fifty to a hundred items per week on Australia’s literary estate. Each Tweet is archived on a fully searchable Twine which enables a quick history of the kinds of material that AustLiterature covers and which in turn provides a transparency to the management or current direction of AustLiterature. A quick overview of the Twine’s dominant tags reveals that AustLiterature is – not surprisingly – concerned with authors, books, fiction, poetry, publishing, etc, as they relate to Australia.
Operating a Twitter account that is invested in a subject area rather than a business, individual or department provides both an opportunity and a responsibility. On the one hand, Twitter creates a space for networking over a common area of interest that to me seems unparalleled in other digital environments. On a professional level, I have learnt more about – and have come to appreciate – the Australian literary field in new ways through directly interacting with writers, publishers and readers than is usually possible via conventional methods. This has led to innovative projects in collaboration with other important stakeholders in the area. For example, Tweet An Aussie Author, though in its early days, is an open-planned initiative to enable readers from all over the world to connect with the Aussie author of the day via Twitter, to chat and answer questions and field discussion on Australian writing.
On the other hand, there is an ethical component to building a Twitter identity centred around a subject area, to ensure it is not abused to further the ambitions of any particular individual (including myself). Whether I have been successful in promoting a range of themes in Australian literature rather than privileging the traditional Anglo-white male view of it is open to evaluation but this ethical component remains critical to AustLiterature’s daily postings. What AustLiterature’s future holds is uncertain but I see a future for Twitter in education. While the charge of it being a one-man news outlet occupies me in terms of how it could be further expanded in the period ahead, AustLiterature will remain committed to exploring the literature of Australia.
Thus, the tweet’s that are posted through AustLiterature are unlikely to ever imitate the ruminations made by William Bunn over his reading habits (which opened this article), though such things have a valid place in Twitter. However, this kind of dialogue with both self and unknown audience which characterizes Bunn’s writing will no doubt make an appearance in a Tweet, referencing a set of circumstances where Bunn’s comments might even contribute to a better understanding of ourselves. That is, in less than 140 characters: “The Australian Common Reader project researches reading patterns, beginning with the diary of William Bunn 1830-1901 http://bit.ly/wHbY0”.
Jason Ensor is a final-year PhD Candidate at Murdoch University, Perth, Western Australia and is currently writing up his dissertation for submission in May. His research concerns Australian publishing and the novel. He can be found at http://twitter.com/AustLiterature.
I am, amongst other clichés, a writer who works in a bookshop. Which is to say, I am a bookseller who writes. Despite having my first novel on the publication horizon (Text Publishing, 2011), I still rely on my day job to keep me supplied with Moleskines, Firefox add-ons, and other essential tools of the modern author.
My job, possibly among the best in the world, is stock buyer at Avid Reader, one of Australia’s best independent bookshops. As such, I am responsible for which books are put on the shelves. And all allusions to kids in lolly shops and idiots in charge of asylums are, of course, correct.
Despite being for the main part immensely fun, this role has opened my eyes to the actual mechanics and economics of a bookshop, and especially how this relates to independent/small press publications.
As someone who still has remnant stains of “Emerging Writer” chrysalis attached to his person, it is safe to say I have an enormous affection for the literary journals, anthologies, and small presses that have supported me and published my writing over the past ten years that I’ve considered myself “a writer”. I’ve thoroughly served my apprenticeship in self-publication, unpaid writing work and the general high-level of shit-kicking associated with growing your authorial profile, and without the opportunities offered by small presses and literary journals I would have given up long ago.
This is where my conundrum begins. Despite my deep allegiance to publications giving opportunities to new writers, and my belief in the importance of independent/small presses, my job affords me a look at the harsh reality of what a small press faces in the marketplace. After three years in the role of buyer, one thing has become abundantly clear. My job is, quite simply, to order in titles that people will buy. This, as it turns out, is a category that ignores much independent publishing.
Back when I was completing a Creative Writing Programme and had no money, I assumed that people with the means all regularly bought Granta and Meanjin, had subscriptions to both The New York and London Review of Books and habitually purchased Creative Writing Programme anthologies to discover the next great literary voices. This was the Great White Hope as an undergraduate writer, that as long as your work was being published somewhere, it would be read and appreciated.
As with any other book, however, titles by small presses need to have both profile (i.e. publicity) and ready availability. As much as I try to provide both at Avid Reader, the truth is this: I have to buy in stock that will sell. Titles by small presses, I’m afraid to say, in the majority don’t. Bookshops, especially independents, operate on unimaginably thin margins, and despite the sale-or-return rule, every book you buy in as a retailer (no matter the author’s status or the publisher’s marketing budget) is a gamble, and with only a finite amount of space and money to work with, you’ve got to win that gamble more often than not to stay successful. The margin with small presses is even tighter.
That is the bad news. But here is the good: some of these titles do sell, and many of them outstrip “mainstream” books in content, design and importance. My job, as a buyer with vested interests in independent publishing, is to address this balancing act. There is no way I’m going to stop stocking small press titles, but I have do to be smarter about how I do it. This starts with the actual ordering. Whereas in the first year of my job I automatically ordered in anything with the words “emerging”, “literary” or “anthology” in the title, now I have to think more carefully about what titles to pick and when. Unfortunately that means many small press titles miss out, but it does mean that the good ones will get their chance.
And there have been some very good ones. While mainstream publishers battle each other to death by copying tired readership trends (“No, this is different. It’s a vampire detective!”) small presses have been the ones publishing exciting and important voices. Sleepers Publishing, for instance, have made every post a winner in their first year as publisher, with their first book, Things We Didn’t See Coming, winning the Age Book of the Year (and its recent US release is garnering strong reviews). Arcade Press made a move with some strong nonfiction last year, and Affirm Press are set to publish their first two collections of short fiction.
Some slick anthologies made their mark in 2009, with Dion Kagan’s The Reader, an initiative of the Emerging Writers’ Festival and wonderfully comprehensive guide to writing life; and Lisa Dempster’s The Words We Found, a collection of the best writing from Voiceworks over the past ten years. Journals such as Brisbane-born The Lifted Brow and Vignette Press’s Mook series have also made homes on Avid’s shelves.
What do these success stories have in common? To put it bluntly, apart from excellent content, they look good. As sad as it is to say, most of a book’s battle to sell is getting the customer to pick it up in the first place. All these small press/independent titles I’ve mentioned have smart production values, a keen eye for design and a strong identity. There are a lot of badly designed books out there, many from small presses, but many more from established publishers. In today’s book market, having bad design just doesn’t cut it any more, no matter what your budget.
The lesson for the bookseller is to give these titles their due. If you treat these publications as inferior, this is how they will come across. Many bookshops confine their journals, zines and small-press titles to their own “special” area, usually in the hardest-to-reach place in the shop, and are then surprised when none of them sell. Categorising independent titles as you would any other book from a major publisher lends them the legitimacy they deserve, while allowing your customers to discover them of their own accord.
The other lesson is don’t order truckloads of stock. There is nothing more depressing than twenty literary journals sitting on your counter gathering dust. The people behind small presses are without exception much nicer than big publishers, and are always approachable about how to best sell their books. Order conservatively, and top up your stock when needed.
So I suppose the moral for me has been to invest strongly in well-produced local content in sensible amounts, focus less on overseas literary journals, and find a way to present small presses on a level pegging with books by the major publishers. And be nice to the people behind independent publishing, because they have not only given wonderful opportunities to me and many other writers like me, but they will one day be running the industry.
Christopher Currie is buyer at Avid Reader Bookshop in Brisbane. His first novel, Reception, will be published by Text Publishing in 2011. His writing, and writing about writing, and 365 short stories, can be found at www.furioushorses.com
"If you think it sounds complicated... that's because it is."
This week I attended CAL's information session/update on the Google Book Settlement. I was hoping to go in there and come out all the wiser, with lots of incredibly useful clarifications on What It All Means. Then I was going to disseminate that information to the SPUNC members so that they knew what in the heck was going on and how it all affected them.
As you can probably tell from the overall tone of this blog, I didn't quite get the clarity of thought I was hoping for and am going to have to default to CAL's presentation notes, which you can download at the end of this post.
However, in as much of a nutshell as I can muster, here's what you might like to consider doing if you are a small publisher or any-particular-size author.
Go to the Claim Form section, and if you haven't done so already, create an account.
Now you can search for any of your books, and find out if Google have scanned them.
Be aware that only titles that were published before January 2009 were scanned, so there's no need to worry about anything published since then. Your titles may indeed appear on the Google Books Registry, but the important thing to do is determine, firstly, has that title been scanned, and secondly, is that title 'commercially available' today? If it's not commercially available, and it has been scanned, then congratulations! You can claim $60 from Google! It may not seem like much, but I reckon you should go ahead and do it. And let's face it, they don't need $60 – you probably do.
The other issue is around this whole 'opt in' or 'opt out' business. This only affects you if you have had titles scanned. If you opt in, that means you can claim your $60, if you opt out, that means, if you can be bothered and have loads of time and spare cash, you can file your own law suit. If you do nothing, and you have titles scanned by Google, then you get nothing. So it's probably a good idea to opt in. To opt out, you gotta do this soon, by January 28th. To opt in, you've got till March 2012.
In the future, Google will continue to scan books, in exchange for 63% of any revenue raised from commercial uses. That's any book, published in the US, UK, Canada or Australia.
Key dates and other important bits of jargon and elaborations are contained within the CAL notes.
As for ideological concerns and debates, intellectual contributions and commercial analyses, let's embark on that in a separate discussion. And by all means, let us please do so.
(Important Disclaimer: I'm no legal eagle, so you might want to get yourself a lawyer son, if you're wanting a slightly more reliable interpretation of these proceedings than I've just given you.)
2010 is already shaping up as another quality year for Australian independent short fiction. Affirm Press is releasing six collections as part of their Long Story Shorts series. Already confirmed are collections by Emmett Stinson, Barry Divola, and Bob Franklin.
Of the 200 submissions received by Affirm Press, around 80 percent have been from male writers. Publisher Martin Hughes is keen to see a more balanced spread between the genders, and is hoping for an influx from female writers in time for the second deadline on February 1st.
This year also sees the release of the next Sleepers almanac, a collection which often features the best women writers in the country, and yet, according to Sleepers Editorial Director Louise Swinn, the majority of their submissions are also from male writers, be they brilliant, brooding, or mildly unhinged.
In 2009, things seemed equally skewed. The 2009 Melbourne Prize for Literature, for example, was a veritable sausage-fest, with Barry Hill, Shane Maloney, Gerald Murnane and Alex Miller tackling sole female Hannie Rayson, with Gerald Murnane taking final honours.
Which begs the question: where are all the broken-hearted women today? Where are the open-soul, pen scratching into the page of the first-draft, thesaurus-scouring, story-shaping women when we need them?
If you are a female short story writer (or a male writer willing to pretend to be a woman), now is your time to shine. Pick up a pen, turn on your laptop, if you have kids then send them to the park and get writing. If you have a story to submit, head here. If you have a whole collection, head here. And if you have neither, then head to Little Cupcakes.
Barney McAll, the winner of the 1990 National Jazz Awards for his piano playing, and now resident of New York, recently wrote a testimonial for Wangaratta Jazz, the annual festival that bills itself (probably correctly) as Australia's Premier Jazz Festival: "I live in New York and it’s rough at times and to come home and play amongst all those great musicians and to feel the openness of the audience to accept whatever hare-brained scheme I may hatch is priceless. It’s a real springboard for inspiration."
If you're seeking the jazz spirit, you could find its spoor right here: "I live in New York ... great musicians at home ... the joy of an accepting audience ... hare-brained schemes ... springboard for inspiration."
Jazz is not what it used to be – as an art form it's had such a journey that the connection of what we call jazz and improvised music to the roots of the music in American blues and swing is not always obvious. World-renowned improvising trio The Necks, though hard to categorise, fit under the label of 'jazz and improvised music' but their relationship to Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Wynton Marsalis or Diana Krall is not obvious.
Paul Grabowsky, one of our highest profile jazz and improvising musicians says that jazz works well as an adverb, rather than a noun; it is, he says, a syncretic process: "… there is a jazz way of doing things, jazz as a process … [taking] elements of different things and putting them together …'
New York is viewed by many musicians as the mecca of jazz - a place that must be visited and played in as part of the musician's journey. There are many musicians who don't think that of course. Yet New-York-as-destination is a jazz meme.
And there's more to jazz than its memes (thank goodness). 'Jazz' exists in Australia as a thriving, hard to define musical style that draws on an American tradition, shoves it into the backpack and heads out to our own landscapes; the red earth of our dry centre, the multi-ethnic inner suburbs of our cities... and collaborations with musicians from other places, other landscapes, other traditions.
New-York-as-destination is a writing meme as well. And of course, like jazz, there's more to writing than its memes… But writers do the same as jazz musicians, don't they – drawing on a tradition, shoving it into the backpack and heading out to other landscapes? And don't small publishers do the same? And don't we all yearn for readers open to the creative, the new, the beautiful; an accepting audience for our hare-brained schemes?
Jazz and writing
Live jazz and improvised music often provide stimulation and inspiration for my writing. You can't guarantee that when you go to a jazz gig there will be one of those clear, bright moments when something makes sense and the words to express it spring to your fingertips. But these moments (for me and others I’ve spoken to) often happen when I’m listening to live improvised music, aka jazz. I don't know why this should be so. There are many theories and I'm drawn to hypotheses about the requirement for jazz musicians to improvise in the moment, to create on the spot, in front of an audience and usually in 'conversation' with their fellow musicians. Then there’s that thing about music – it’s its own language. It cannot be misinterpreted and does not need to be edited for precision. It seems that the creative impulse can ripple outwards into the minds and hearts of its observers.
Jazz and editing
There's a distinction between the creative process for text and improvised music. The music is made on the spot and when it's out there, it's out there – warts and all. I figure the editing happens in the practising, the endless hours of scales and exercises and rehearsals that the audience doesn’t hear; a kind of pre-edit. These musicians make it look easy – until you know what’s gone into the preparation. It's tempting to think that jazz writing – about, or inspired by the music – could get away with minimal editing, tapping into the apparent freedom of the performance moment. But the truth is that jazz writing remains the same as any writing task. Jack Kerouac connected with this ‘in-the-moment’ thing; his stream of consciousness novel On The Road was written in six weeks. I read somewhere that it took 22 weeks to edit the bloody thing, but nobody mentions that!
Jazz and publishing
It's no accident that extempore is named the way it is. Of course the name is a signpost to the kind of music that inspires the journal's contents, but I also wanted to flag an approach to publishing. Too much planning can close the doors to serendipity. I wanted to be able to create each issue of the journal in the moment, in conversation with the ether... to let accidents happen and draw on the combined consciousness. So we engaged a wonderful designer and some excellent editors, developed a firm but flexible editorial policy and a vision. We cultivated an openness to possibility... Then we started to improvise. Publishing as jazz; publishing as a syncretic process. Let me tell you, it’s harder than it looks!
Miriam Zolin is a member of SPUNC and the publisher and editor of extempore, a journal of writing and art inspired by jazz and improvised music.
Of the 32,173 novels created during this year’s National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), you’d hope at least a handful will be worth publishing. Some of these are not actually finished, but the contest’s rules state a winner just needs to complete 50,000 words towards a novel, not necessarily to have written the story’s end. Of course, I am using the word ‘just’ lightly. Very lightly.
Writing 50,000 words in one month is not easy. I know, because I am a 2009 NaNoWriMo winner. I’m also one of those mentioned above, having achieved the word count but not (yet) finished writing the story. I suspect it’s impossible to obtain an exact figure for how many of the 32,173 winners have, or will, finish their novels, let alone how many should be considered for publication.
No doubt many will land in various slush piles around the world, revised or not. Editors might want to thank or curse CreateSpace for offering every NaNoWriMo winner a free proof copy of their novel (1), although many writers may not choose that option. Some will seek publication the traditional way, with an established mainstream or independent publisher.
Why wouldn’t they, when NaNoWriMo boasts more than 40 published novels over its ten year history, not including those that are subsequently self-published? Included in those forty-something books is Canadian author Sara Gruen’s ‘Water for Elephants’ which topped the New York Times bestseller list during 2007. Also included is Perth writer Simon Haynes’s [ ‘Hal Spacejock: No Free Lunch’ ], the fourth in a four book science fiction-comedy series (2,3) published by Fremantle Press.
Hayne’s novel seems to be the only novel by an Australian NaNoWriMo’er to have been published, but I doubt it will be the last.
Perhaps it’s something an independent house should consider. With more writers registering and winning the contest every year (4), it’s reasonable to expect that more NaNoWriMo novels will appear in bookstores over the coming years.
This is not to say they should pump out something like CreateSpace do, leaving the rewriting and editing completely to the writer. But why shouldn’t an independent publisher work with an author to fully develop a manuscript begun as part of NaNoWriMo?
Some American publishers call for NaNoWriMo novel pitches at the beginning of November and, of those that are finished in time, select one to develop with the author with publication in mind. One advantage of doing it this way might be the (free) promotion of the imprint during November, as well as any potential hype when the book is later released. I imagine such a book would receive ample reviews, given the mixed opinions regarding the quality of writing produced during NaNoWriMo.
One reason a publisher might not choose to commission a novel this way is the relatively small pool of Australian writers participating in NaNoWriMo, although more than 1,000 Australians were 2009 winners (5). The risk that one of these is good enough and suits the publisher’s list might be too high to make such a commitment. But there’d have to be a way around that, and wouldn’t it be worthwhile with all the talk it would generate? For instance, a publisher could nominate a specific submission period for receiving completed novels, with some way of confirming the author actually participated. Any contract would, of course, also have to include the standard ‘if we don’t receive a submission of suitable quality’ exemption clause.
What are your thoughts?
NOTES
1) The CreateSpace offer includes the option of listing the (self-published) book for sale on Amazon.
2) The first book is available as a free eBook, just follow the link.
3) A fifth book is due in 2010 and a sixth in 2011.
4) There were 21,683 2008 and 15,333 2007 winners, growing from just 6 in 1999.
5) I used the overall winner rate of 19% for NaNoWriMo participants that registered their region as Australian (6217) to estimate 1196 Australian winners.
Tiggy Johnson is a founding editor of Page Seventeen, which is produced annually and boasts work from several new writers in each issue. Her own writing has been published in several Australian journals and she maintains a personal blog at www.tiggyjohnson.blogspot.com.
When my first children’s book – The Greatest Blogger in the World – was published earlier this year by Hardie Grant Egmont, a friend said to me, ‘Well, thank GOD you didn’t have to self-publish!’ It was a funny comment – haha and strange. Self-publishing is generally scoffed at in publishing circles and I myself have done some of the scoffing, despite the fact that several of my favourite books as a child were self-published, ISBN-less books.
Sticky the Dog
I didn’t know what ‘self-published’ meant when I was a kid reading my Great Uncle Bob’s Sticky the Dog books. It was just very cool that my Great Uncle Bob had written a book. I had never met a real author before in my life. The fact that the Sticky books were self-published – and that they were moralising Christian stories – didn’t occur to me at all. All I cared about was that I liked the Sticky the Dog stories. And I liked that my Great Uncle Bob had written them.
The Naughty Stories for Good Girls and Boysbooks are a self-published series that has been a commercial success. Author Christopher Milne published the first book of the series back in 1992 after his manuscript was rejected by 16 publishers and his friends told him to show some ‘guts’ and have a go at self-publishing.
The series has proven so successful that the initial book was recognised with a YABBA (The Children's Choice Book Award in Victoria) in 1998 and was most recently picked up by an Australian publisher who will publish the books proper in 2010.
Other big successes from the world of self-publishing include Matthew Reilly (who self-published 1000 copies of Contest as a 19-year-old), Mr Purple Dinosaur (centred-text anyone?) and Naughty Bus (which follows the adventures of a mischievous London double-decker). But despite the few success stories, surely the very notion of doing a book by yourself after everyone else has said ‘no’ deserves a certain degree of derision. After all, it’s not ‘real’ publishing, is it? Children’s author Mem Fox takes the derision and scoffing one step further:
Don’t, under any circumstances, think of self-publishing, unless it’s only a few copies for your immediate family. You’ll end up with a terrifying debt and a shed full of un-sold books. Self-publishing provides no market-research, no distribution, no publicity, no marketing, no warehousing, no advertising, and very few buyers since bookshops won’t buy books that established publishers haven’t endorsed. I know of sad souls who have lost their houses as a result of self-publishing. It’s heart-breaking.
One of the more financially-dependable forms of self-publishing is the personalised children’s book, which allows you to insert your child’s name into the text of the story. My Special Christmas was my special personalised book.
It was published by A-Me Book® in 1974 without any character names and then in 1986 when my parents ordered it, me, my sister Deanne and my old cocker spaniel Joffa had our names printed – typewriter style – into the book. It was one of the most-read books of my childhood. I never really got over the fact that I was having adventures with Santa in my very own book. Even now I'm excited to read about my fictional exploits at the North Pole.
These self-published, personalised books are still popular. Your child can be a fish exploring the Great Barrier Reef or they can have an adventure with Garfield or – in a freakier development – they can now have their photo placed on the illustrated shoulders of a character. However, most of these books are ‘published’ by small businesses specialising in personalised products, including personalised mugs, clothing and jigsaws that effectively removes them from the category of self-sacrificing, self-publisher.
Which brings us to the most insightful and penetrating question of all: is a self-published children’s book the equal of a cap that has ‘Wendy’ or ‘John’ or ‘Melissa’ printed on it? I think probably not. A book – no matter how unprofessionally made – could never be as tacky as a hat with the wearer's name on it. And every book has its place. Whether it’s with a mass audience, a few kids who live next door to the author or even just with the author themselves.
So I have decided to swallow my scoffing and fly the flag of the self-published children’s book. Although I won’t fly it too high because it’s not a flag that everyone needs to see. After all, the best self-published books require a close connection to the reader – such as a local bus, a character who is a fictionalised version of the reader, or your own Great Uncle Bob.
Andrew McDonald is an author, blogger and biped from Melbourne, Australia. The Greatest Blogger in the World is his first book.
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