UK Independent Publishers - a 'Do they add value?' check

I meet regularly with other novelists to critique our works in progress, drink tea, and discuss the various merits of the biscuits. Recently at one of my novelists group meetings we were discussing independent publishers who might publish a full length novel. I argued that there were not that many, but one of the other group members recently emailed me to say that the Independent Publishers Guild UK (www.ipg.uk.com) have a staggering 580 members!  

So why do I say there are not that many ?

The answer is, because in my opinion very few add value for a novelist, and some add so little value that they are in fact proxy self-publishing. 

There are of course loads of independent publishers that publish everything from memoirs to military to experimental.(eg local-to-me Cicerone Press that publishes mountaineering guides) And a lot of other so-called 'independent' publishers that are actually assisted self-publishing companies e.g. the well-respected Troubadour, Silverwood. (But these self-publishing services will cost you - and rightly so, for the various services they offer.)

But in fact there are very few independents that publish full length novels, don't charge the author anything at all, and do add value.

These days most publishers of  fiction offer e-books as a matter of course, (and some only e-books) so lets assume that as a given, that they will at least upload your book to Amazon. Publishing is easy these days, so publishers have to do more than just upload an ebook and offer a badly-designed POD paperback to win my vote.

So what exactly do I mean by 'add value?'

PHYSICAL VALUE

 

a) Offer distribution of physical books to bookshops (ie I don't have to carry my books to my local bookseller myself)

b) Offer proper editing, proof-reading, interior layout and typesetting (i.e not just an edit through an online programme such as Autocrit, or reproducing your Word Document as a book)

c) Offer a print run (however limited) that is not just Print on Demand such as CreateSpace. By the time the publisher adds their cut, it makes the books too expensive in comparison with other traditional publishers, and therefore they fail to sell. Who will buy a £12.99 paperback when similar titles sell for £7.99?

d) Offer an individual marketing strategy for your book, including promoting it to bookshops and libraries, in other words not just bunging it on their website and newsletter and hoping for the best.

 

I reckon many  independent publishers fail on one or more of those counts. They rely on you to sell your books to family, friends and your network, and then take royalties for the very little effort they have put in, which usually just involves adding a cheaply-designed cover and uploading your word document as a book to kindle, POD and their website. I admit these things take time, and incur costs for the publisher. But in most cases you would be better off self-publishing than giving this type of publisher a substantial part of your royalties when they add so little value to what is in the end your product.

There are many 'independent' publishers that look convincing, but are actually not that good for the author. Eg take a look at this fairly typical independent publisher  It looks great, until you read under their submissions guidelines: 'Depending on how many we think it could sell, we offer varying levels of contract. About one in ten of the titles on the list have a subsidy from the author, directed either towards more editorial or marketing work than we can normally provide.' Non-fiction sells well, so perhaps 1 in ten is actually most of the fiction, but of course you wouldn't know that if you were the submitting author.

or this one: 'A traditional partnership agreement entails the same benefits as a mainstream agreement. However, as the writer you may be asked to cover part of the cost of publishing the book. We follow all traditional industry etiquettes with regards to the promotion and marketing of the title in addition to all other avenues involved in the process.'

From another niche Independent Publisher website: 'We believe that as an author it is your responsibility to ensure that your work is of a reasonable standard before submitting to us. We can recommend a proof editor if you wish but that would be outside of our arrangement with you and you would contract them yourself.'

If you are going to pay, why not self-publish or use openly assisted self-publishing like Silverwood Books?

PSYCHOLOGICAL VALUE

Of course I am not negating the psychological value of having your work accepted by a publisher. After receiving a lot of rejections (and we all get them!) it feels brilliant to have your book accepted by somebody. Anybody!  A friend of mine recently had her novel accepted by a small independent publisher. She was over the moon until she read on Link'd In that her commissioning editor had just left school, had never worked in publishing before, but had done  two weeks work experience for a book promotion company. So if literary validation is important to you, don't forget to Google who is reading your manuscript and whether they are actually more qualified to make a judgement on your work than your local newsagent.

However, there can certainly be psychological (and monetary) value  in accessing a like-minded community. If you have a book that suits a niche audience, then there can be value in a niche publisher and in becoming part of that network, but check the network is not just other hopeful authors like yourself.

a) See if the books from that publisher have won any prizes or been nominated for an award (or sold millions - we wish!)

b) Check whether any of the books been endorsed by writers or critics you have actually heard of, not just 'Brilliant' - Amazon Reviewer

b) For niche markets, eg horror, fantasy, experimental, check that the publisher seems to have good networking links with their community. Eg Do they blog? If so, check out their blog.

CONVENIENCE VALUE

OK, so you are technologically inept, and it's much easier to hand it to a publisher and let them do it, if they accept your submission. But if it doesn't get edited or properly laid out, if it has a bad cover, if it only reaches a few other writers who go to their website, and if it is too expensive to be attractive in bookshops, the convenience soon becomes inconvenient. You haven't the control to do anything about it, the way you would have had if you had self published - and you are still paying them via your royalties.

However, for full length commercial/literary novels I can safely say the following independent print publishers do add value - not an exhaustive list, and in no particular order. They all have beautiful websites and beautiful books that you sometimes see in bookshops - a good sign.

Bloomsbury*, Alma, Myrmidon, Honno Press, Parthian Books, Myriad Editions, Allison and Busby*, Serpent's Tail, Valley Press, Canongate*, Legend, Salt, Cinnamon Press, Accent Press, Cillian Press.

Some of these require you have an agent right now to submit (those marked with asterisks), some don't, but for a bigger list of  small independent publishers check out Nottingham Writers Studio. If you want to see a list of other small presses, check out Lollipop. And here's a complete list of UK publishers competing in The People's Book Prize.

Anyone who can recommend more excellent independent publishers to add to this list - please do!

Thank you to crime noir writer Tess Makovesky for prompting this post. Find her at www.tessmakovesky.com

Page-turning fiction - can it be memorable?

I've just finished a book I've been working on for about eighteen months, and now I am catching up with my reading.

As writers we are encouraged to hook the reader by encouraging them not to pause, but to keep on turning the pages. But - one thing I have noticed is that the more tension there is in the plot, and the faster the pages are turning, the less specific detail I absorb, and the less memorable a scene actually becomes. This means that often the climax, the supposed highlight of the whole book, goes by with barely much attention from the reader.

I was recently reading The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton. I can remember with great pleasure the early scenes, the loving description of the new house where the new wife is to live and its bizarre and expensive counterpart, the miniature house. But once I am concerned about the life or death of Nella's husband I am too busy flipping the pages to sink deep into the words, and although the early part of the book was memorable for me, the latter part was much less so.

Plausibility is also an issue here, because real life is not so frenzied. The passages in my own writing where the pages are turning, are also the ones most likely to be in need of a reality check. So I recognise Ms Burton's problem. Thrillers are not renowned for being memorable because a thriller writer has this juggling act all the time - the more unlikely the plot, the more the writer must convince  the reader by supplying a slew of specifics, explanatory detail, incontrovertible data. But the same is also true of any other novel, including my own genre of historical fiction.

A good novel perhaps should allow the reader passages where the reader must slow and think, and drink in the words, but also produce enough pace to keep readers motivated to carry on. Many novels that have stayed with me are very long. This could be because the length allows depth, and a long novel can have multiple high-points, and corresponding multiple episodes of deepening, where we can take on more detail.

What do you think? And is this a balance that is easy to achieve? A book that does this perfectly, to my mind, is The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak. Page-turning, and memorable.

Finding The Real Writer's Social Network

Like many writers I am attached to my computer for large chunks of the day whilst I imagine myself into a different time and place. Not only am I inhabiting other worlds than the real one for much of my working life, but I'm also making friends in another virtual world here on my blog, on Twitter and Facebook.

That's two unreal worlds I am plugged into, let alone all the books I'm reading, which make a third.

It is easy to forget that none of these worlds are shared by the average person. When I was at my book group last week I happened to mention that authors could publish their books themselves. 'Really?' they said,  'you mean that anyone can publish a book? How?'

I explained about self-publishing and ebooks, and uploading, until they began to look slightly glazed. 'Oh,' one of them said. 'I might try that, one day, I have a little memoir that would be fun for my family to read.'

I was astonished. These are book people - readers that buy books regularly both on and offline, but they had never actually noticed that the publishing industry has changed. Then I realised. It is not that they are ill-informed, not at all. It's just that they live in the real world. A world in which where books come from -  their creation, manufacture and sales - is pretty much irrelevant. Yes, they are readers for pleasure, but books are just the icing on the cake of life.

They represent the average reader who browses books in the way cattle graze grass, picking off the bits they fancy, with no undue concern about how the grass got there in the first place. These are the readers who are not book-obsessed enough to subscribe to book blogs, or hunt down authors on the web, or to stalk authors on Twitter. These, I think, are actually our sane book buying public. If they see a book they fancy in the Oxfam shop, they'll buy it, or they might pick it up in Tesco, or they'll borrow it from the library if someone they know mentions it as a good read. These are normal people who think of a platform as a place where they will catch a train.

A lot of them have kindles, but are not avidly following the daily deals. They wait until they have finished what they are reading, then cast about randomly for their next read. It is often luck which particular title comes into their path. So how does a writer reach them as potential readers? Not by Twitter, or Facebook or Blogging. These are the people who have lives, for heaven's sake!

I love my real networks, my book group, the people I meet at Tai Chi, the people in my local garden centre. I talk to them about books (not necessarily my books, but books in general) and I usually recommend something. The best publicity is word of mouth, so I tell people when I have really enjoyed a book. I hope that other people will do that for me if they have enjoyed one of mine. Recommending someone else's book (unlike touting your own) is pain-free, embarrassment free, and a good service to both the author and the reader.

So here, for the sane book-buying public (who let's face it, are probably not reading my blog anyway, but are out at Pilates or Art Class or holding down a complicated and/or stressful job) are my recommendations for this week: BURIAL RITES by Hannah Kent and THE ONE I WAS by Eliza Graham

Historical literary fiction that is both gripping and engaging, although in this interview Hannah Kent claims to hate the term 'historical novel'! Bookbag review of The One I Was, a multi-generational roller-coaster of a novel that you won't want to put down.

No Quick Fix - The Inherent Complexity of a Novel

Recently I have noticed that there has been a tsunami of 'How to' writing guides published, and that these are selling extremely well. In fact it is probably more profitable, and perhaps easier, to write a book about writing a novel than it is to write a successful novel.

In fact that must be so - because so many people are turning to these books for help.

The titles are designed to make it sound easy:  Fix your Plot in Five Seconds Flat! Be a Billionaire Bestseller in 30 Days! Secrets of Fail-safe Story Structures!

These books are designed to make it sound easy because that's what every novelist wants - an easy way to do this thing called writing a novel.

But the reality is that good novels are complex, intricate, difficult things, and just like life, a formula is not necessarily what creates a great novel, particularly for historical novelists who have to juggle the reality of real historical events alongside any story structure. It is a slightly more thorny task  to suddenly 'create' a worthy antagonist if the real history does not provide one. We cannot turn real characters into easily categorized roles in our novels, so have to work hard to fit our stories easily into conventional models, turning instead to internal motivations to create opposing forces.

It is not true, however, to say that good story structure has to be thrown out of the window, and that none of these books on writing have anything to offer. On the contrary, I'm a big fan of books on writing. But reading the book is often not the same as editing something with multiple timelines, events that must take place on certain days, or characters who are known to be a certain way because of genuine evidence. Such a journey is more like negotiating a maze of corridors with light somewhere at the end of the tunnel, but not necessarily where you thought the exit was.

I would argue that good novels are complex, that they weave a number of interlocking themes, ideas and plots. When working on a novel the urge to get it finished by an easy solution can be overwhelming, but rather than looking for a 'quick fix' it is often better to sit with the complexities, let them simmer and brew, making your novel that much richer and subtler in the process. Anyone will find it easy to apply story structure to a novel after it is finished - to point out the mid-point, the hook etc etc. But the simple structures may have been a lot less easy to spot whilst the novel was in progress, and too often in desperation to see our novels finished, we want to fix them too early, before they have had a chance to breathe.

In order to sell books, it is argued, we must be more productive, to build our readership more quickly. This can induce a panic (and a vague sense of being bullied) to produce more and more books, but does not necessarily mean that the books are better. A readership is not built on bad books. I would argue that like wine, a good novel needs to be matured. A book like Shantaram or The Far Pavilions both at nearly 1000 pages long, (yes, 1000 pages!) surely cannot be produced quickly. The Pillars of the Earth, by Ken Follett, a historical novel about the time of the building of cathedrals in England, took about 10 years to write, but has stayed popular with readers ever since.

For those of you who still would like a quick fix (I can't convince you, can I?) then I heartily recommend 'How not to write a novel' by Sandra Newman and Howard Mittelmark, which not only avoids telling you what to do, but shows you what NOT to do through a series of hilarious but cleverly-constructed 'bad writing' examples. When you are feeling like you need a quick fix, pick this up instead and sift through your novel for similar cringeworthy examples. Total gold.

Robin Hood - the anti-hero for today as discovered by Lauren Johnson

Today I'm welcoming Lauren Johnson to talk about her new debut, The Arrow of Sherwood. I have always been fascinated by Robin Hood, so I asked Lauren -

Why do you think the legend of Robin Hood has been so enduring?

Lauren : I think Robin endures because he is an antihero – throughout his history, from at least the fifteenth century, he has been a symbol of misrule, of chaos, sometimes of outright violence and lawbreaking. His connection with Mayday in the past is a clear sign of that, because May was all about raucous celebration and upsetting the norm. But he is also a very modern hero. You can see that in the Robin Hood tax campaign – we still want a figure who stands up for the poor and needy, against the seemingly all-powerful wrongdoer. In all our modern TV detective shows, the main character could almost be Robin Hood – they do what they have to, to bring down the bad guy, even if it means bending the rules. He’s mischievous, but he stands for something, and that’s really appealing.

What will surprise the reader about your version of the character of Robin Hood, and will we be meeting Maid Marian?

In The Arrow of Sherwood you will meet pretty much all the archetypes of the Robin Hood story, but probably not in the way you expect. At the start of the book Robin comes back from crusade – he was sent on it to do penance – and the first person he meets is called Marian Peverill. They are supposed to get married, in one of the usual noble arranged marriages, but they deeply dislike each other. There is no respect between them whatsoever. That scene was one of the first I had in my mind – these two famous romantic characters appearing, and they can barely tolerate being in the same courtyard.

I wanted to make Robin, like all the characters, just a bit more human than in lots of versions of his story. He has grown up as a lord’s son but he feels constrained by his family and spent lots of his youth around lowborn men – there’s a bit of a Henry V element to him in that respect. But returning from crusade he is supposed to give up his ties to the common friends he had, and properly become a lord, ruling over them, focusing on increasing his estate and keeping the law. So a lot of the book is about that struggle: between being the lord his family want him to be, and his instinct to help his old friends. Not just because he feels that some other lords are abusing their power and he ought to stop it, but also because there is that danger-seeking element to him that enjoys transgressing rules.

You work as a costumed interpreter, can you explain what this is and how this helps your understanding of history?

Costumed interpretation – sometimes called live or historical interpretation – is a combination of dramatic performance, historical presentation and one-on-one conversation, usually in heritage settings. At its simplest, it means I wear a costume and engage with the public as a character from the past. I have been very lucky to work in a wide range of time periods, portraying very different – but always interesting – characters. I’ve played everyone from medieval princesses to Victorian scullery maids.

I think my experience as a costumed interpreter has helped me massively, not only in my understanding of the past but in my story telling. As part of my research I often go beyond reading about historical events and my character to learn songs, dances, social behaviours, contemporary stories – some of which are pretty weird – and that means I get a really rounded view of the past. Then, having done my own research I have to impart that knowledge to members of the public, from toddlers who might just want to know about medieval animals or my crown, to hyper-informed professors in their 60s. You get very good at gauging what interests the public and the best way of getting your information across.

And then there is simply the fact that I’ve been in the really privileged position of running up and down castle stairs in flat leather shoes, felt how you move in a laced gown with really long beautiful sleeves that can trip you up, sat in a medieval great hall and watched recreated court cases or stories being told – I’ve even shot a trebuchet in my time and withstood a siege from the castle walls. (Not literally, I hasten to add.) When you have the physical experience of a period of history and you’re engaging with your character, you get very close to feeling like you are back in that era, and I think it helps you understand their behaviour.

How important is the real-life history to your re-telling of the story and what is the favourite source you have used?

For me, the real-life history is very important. Obviously, I’ve written a story about a man who almost certainly didn’t exist in the way his myth is now remembered. But I very much wanted to root my version of Robin Hood in a real world – a period that I had spent a number of years researching and interpreting.

I came at this story with a clear question in my mind. A lot of the popular mythology of Robin Hood has ossified over the years – we think of him being a nobleman who lives in the forest with his common friends and Maid Marian, who helps King Richard against evil Prince John and steals from the rich to help the poor. But that character doesn’t really make sense in the twelfth century, when Richard and John existed. Noblemen were usually very separate from the people on their land, and you didn’t get noblewomen hanging out in forests with paupers. So my question was: If a nobleman called Robin of Locksley had existed in that era, how might he have become the Robin Hood we recognise today? I wanted to fuse the historical fact with that myth.

In terms of research, my favourite sources are contemporary ones that bring the past to life. I love twelfth century stories – Marie de France, Chrétien de Troyes, the moral fables. And I really like visual sources. I would love to take more time to just sit and look at manuscript images, because they are extraordinary, and they reveal so much about medieval life and their sense of humour. It’s a later document than my story is set but the Luttrell Psalter of about 1320-40 is brilliant from that perspective – it’s full of scenes of medieval noble life, like the lady sending her husband off to war and handing him his armour, or feasts being served at great tables, or royal ladies on the move, with an absurdly long wagon and all their servants and animals. Those sources bring the past to life, and make your realise that they were still human beings – it bridges the gap between us and them, and that is always what I want to do in my work.

Thanks Lauren, I've loved talking to you - and all the best with The Arrow of Sherwood.

You can follow Lauren on Twitter @History_Lauren or visit her website at http://laurenjohnson1.wordpress.com