Authors Electric

This year I decided to stay home and follow the London Book Fair on Twitter. I can’t remember when I first attended the show. It could be as long as thirty years ago. Then it seemed impossibly daunting. So many thousands of books being promoted, none of them by me; so many people who all seemed to know each other well enough to air-kiss or hold intense meetings. I wandered the aisles downstairs among the publishers for hours and then bluffed my way past the guards upstairs to wander among the agents as they haggled over foreign rights, overwhelmed by the enormity of it all. Authors were not expected to attend in those days, so at least I had rarity on my side, but no one really wanted to talk to me either, fearful that I might pitch an idea or ask what had happened to my outstanding royalties. Once I became more established and had relationships with half a dozen agents and half a dozen publishers, the experience became less overwhelming. I actually had meet...

Some of you might remember that my April blog was about my visit to the London Book Fair with author Karen King. We weren't sure if anything would come of the conversations we had with various publishers but I thought I'd just report back to say that we've both got work from it. It's not mega-bucks and it's writing to their guidelines, but every little helps, as they say! Karen has a commission for some picture books and I'll be writing some non-fiction to do with local customs and cultures.  This subject is something I've done before - and it brought back an an amusing little tale which I thought I'd share with you. Years ago, when I was just starting out in this writing business I was approached by a publisher to write a little book on British customs for the Polish market. So I included things like Valentines Day, Shrove Tuesday, Bonfire Night and that sort of thing, describing what we Brits get up to, and what each occasion was all abo...

Did anyone go to the London Book Fair this week? I'd never been before and was curious to know what it was like and whether it was mainly for agents and publishers or whether it was useful for authors too. So, teaming up with author Karen King, we set off last Wednesday for a day out in London at the famous book fair. Like me, Karen hadn't been before either, so we'd made up our minds that even if we felt like outsiders, we'd enjoy our day out in London regardless. It turned out however to be an excellent day, perfect for networking and seeing what opportunities there are for writers. Obviously a lot of authors aren't interested in working with publishers, but I'm always on the look out for writing opportunities and will gladly write what needs to be written if it will help pay my bills. The first thing we noticed was that there was a real buzz as you walked up the steps to Earls Court, with everyone keen to get in and start exploring. At ...

          It is a huge honour to be speaking later this month at the inaugural London Author Fair , held on February 28th at the Hospital Club in Covent Garden.I will be running a workshop on how writers of all persuasions can learn from two of the areas in which poets lead the way - performing their work, and collaborating with people from other branches of the arts. (I will be talking about collaboration with artists and musicians. Expect more of the wonderful photography of my long-term collaborator Veronika von Volkova )           I was a novelist several years before I was a poet. And a headstrong and opinionated self-publishing novelist (at a time when it was very unfashionable to self-publish) to boot. I had also spent years drifting around the music and art worlds, where those strong opinions on what made a successful relationship with an audience fermented and distilled and pe...

When you enter any trade fair you're handed all sorts of leaflets, cards and magazines. The London Book Fair has a daily news sheet  The Bookseller Daily . On the first day, this was the front page headline: Self-Publishing, Agency Under Debate "The future of self-publishing, the new agency model and the Penguin Random House merger will be the hottest talking points at the London Book Fair, industry figures predict. Self-published authors will have a greater voice at LBF than ever before, with agents and authors coming together for the LitFactor Pitch curated by AuthorRight, while the Alliance of Independent Authors celebrates its first birthday at the fair. Agent Luigi Bonomi said: "I think we're really moving into a very different world. To date it has been a reticence, a diffidence towards publishers by self-published authors, and vice versa, and maybe this year the Cold War between these two communities will be broken by the two sides meeting face to face, a...

If you're thinking of going to the London Book Fair next year I'd give the pokey little Author's Lounge stand a wide berth (Lounge... LOUNGE?!! with those toadstool benches and hard-sell salesmen?). Instead pause for rest, refreshment and author interviews at the splendid English PEN Literary Cafe and plan your day around the numerous seminars that take place in the conference rooms scattered throughout the building.  It was good to see more author-centric seminars this year, like this one, "Has Anyone Spoken To The Author?" chaired by Unbound's John Mitchinson. All sorts of interesting new possibilities in this "era of broken models" were discussed.  Bundling - get an ebook free when you buy a hardback. Building on the all-important "word of mouth" phenomenon by having credit buttons in ebooks so that readers can send recommended titles to friends. Readers, basically, becoming part of the sales force. The amount of control that self...