The Insider: Ros Ramsay

Mslexia, Summer 2009
If Ros Ramsay had preferred haircuts to a good read, a host of writers would have been robbed of certain income. Ramsay is one of the best-known literary scouts in London, matchmaking overseas publishers and UK film producers with books that will work in their markets.
The child of English teachers, publishing was as much a calling for Ramsey as a choice. Having dropped out of her uni modern languages course, she needed a job – fast. ‘I was offered three, and one was at the head office of Vidal Sassoon, so I would have got free haircuts, which was very tempting,’ she recalls, laughing. But books won over hair, thanks to an offer from illustrated publisher Conran Octopus. ‘I just thought, “Books are good. I’ll do that then.”’ read more

30/09/2009 | No Comments | How To Get Published, Published Articles, Publishing People

Dear Lily Allen

This is really going to divide all of you: it’s a response to the copyright debate so helpfully aided by Ms Lily Allen. It raises the question of how on earth do you make people realise that copyright theft is theft, without looking like you are in thrall to The Man? Or, perish the thought, throw copyright out of the window….Thanks to Suzanne Moore for the heads up on this btw. Let me know what you think

28/09/2009 | No Comments | General Discussion

Dear Danuta: the Mslexia Authors’ Advice column

Mslexia, Summer 2009
Dear Danuta,
My book agent tells me that my book has been rejected by the large publishers as ‘too literary’ and ‘not commercial.’ I don’t understand: what is the difference between literary and commercial? Surely being literary is a plus?
Diane, King’s Lyn read more

25/09/2009 | 2 Comments | How To Get Published, Published Articles, Publishing commentator

Rape abortion incest: is this what CHILDREN should read.

Daily Mail 9th July 2009
At a publishing event in Berlin recently, one well-known children’s author was chatting to another. They were comparing notes on their next novels when one started laughing.
‘Guess what?’ he said, as a wolfish grin spread across his face.
‘I am in a competition with another children’s author to see which of us will be the first to shatter the taboo about anal sex in children’s fiction.’
His shocked companion later told me: ‘I couldn’t believe it. That’s not literary endeavour, it is puerile boasting from a moron. It’s cynical beyond belief.’
I have to agree. read more

23/09/2009 | No Comments | Published Articles, Publishing commentator

The Insider: Maria Rejt

Mslexia: Summer 2008
If you want Maria Rejt, Macmillan and Picador publishing director and one of the most respected editors in London, to notice your manuscript it is simple: create a unique outsider’s voice and characters that move her. Not as easy as it sounds, but that formula is what makes a script shine out like a ‘little golden nugget in the Yukon River’ from the mountain of scripts that clutter up her impossibly untidy office near King’s Cross. read more

22/09/2009 | No Comments | Uncategorized

Why Dan Brown’s latest novel is guaranteed to be a success

Independent on Sunday, 20th September 2009
A campaign for global domination is afoot, following months of planning, and executed with almost military precision. And by this weekend it will almost certainly have achieved its aim: to claim the top spot in every English-language book chart in the world. The campaign? The launch, at midnight last Tuesday, of The Lost Symbol, Dan Brown’s much-anticipated follow-up to the global megasmash The Da Vinci Code.
It is a perfect example of “event publishing”, in which the usually fusty world of books swaps its cheap-white-wine approach to launches for the kind of splashy glamour and media clamour usually associated with Hollywood blockbusters. read more

21/09/2009 | No Comments | Published Articles, Publishing commentator, What Authors Need To Know

Supermarkets: no more Mr Bad Guys?

The Author: Summer 2009
How do you frighten a publisher? Ask it about supermarkets. That is the impression I gained while researching this article about the pantomime baddies of the book trade. One large publisher after another shut down when asked how the sector operates. “The information is contentious,” said the corporate relations director of one big name. Another pointed me to Nielsen BookScan with the comment that my questions were “too commercially sensitive”.
To understand the roots of this fear one need only look at supermarkets’ share of the book market – a share that eclipses that of chain booksellers in certain categories. Put simply, supermarkets shift a lot of books: according to Book Marketing Ltd, by the end of March this year supermarkets accounted for 14.3% of the total book market by volume, 9.4% by value. In comparison chain booksellers accounted for 33.5% by volume (38.7% by value) and internet retailers 13.9% by volume (16.7% by value) (source: BML/TNS Books & The Consumer 2009). read more

14/09/2009 | 2 Comments | Investigative Journalism, Published Articles, Publishing commentator, What Authors Need To Know

Battle of the heart: Was war poet Rupert Brooke a closet heterosexual?

The Independent on Sunday 25th January 2009
Over the past three years, Jill Dawson has been involved with another man. The Fens-based author candidly admits her feelings were so intense that she once signed her name “Rupert” instead of “Ruby”, the nickname used by her family. Rupert is Rupert Brooke, one of two narrators in Dawson’s latest novel, The Great Lover, an exquisitely rendered fictional account of the poet’s last years. Brooke’s fellow narrator is Nell Golightly, a housemaid from the Orchard Tea Rooms in Grantchester where Brooke was a tenant. She is dark and diminutive, with glittering eyes and a fierce intelligence. It is a description not unsuited to Dawson, who sits opposite me, a knot of intense enthusiasm. read more

09/09/2009 | No Comments | Celebrity Interviews, Published Articles, Publishing People

I’m back and this season I won’t be reading an eReader

I’m back: proof positive that updating your blog software is a good idea if you want to keep posting. I will be updating the site with my latest articles when I get time.

In the meantime it seems I’m not alone in wanting to keep up to date at the moment. There appears to be a rush of Old Book Brigade eager to show that beneath their dusty jackets lurk technophiles bang on trend.

Listening to Radio 4 yesterday, I was struck by a discussion about new Sony Readers between Peter Florence and John Sutherland. “Marvellous and so shiny and cool” was the general verdict of the newly launched kit. “I’m a convert,” they concluded.

I nearly dropped my croissant. read more

07/09/2009 | 3 Comments | Blog, Publishing

Book scheme set for overseas chapters

The Financial Times 2nd March 2009
Mick Neville had not read a book in 10 years. Now, three years after joining a workplace reading movement, he cannot get enough of books.
Last Thursday he was welcomed at 10 Downing Street as one of a handful of Reading Heroes honoured by Gordon Brown, the British prime minister. And the scheme he is involved with is soon about to spread overseas.
Backed by his employer and in his role as a union learning representative in a government-backed scheme at Fletchers Bakery in the northern English town of Sheffield, Mr Neville turned the company’s redundant smoking room into a library and learning centre where colleagues could improve numeracy and literacy skills.
Central to the initiative at Fletchers are Quick Reads – short, fast-paced books by bestselling authors such as Ian Rankin or the business angels from BBC Television’s Dragons’ Den. Six titles, including one by Kate Mosse, are being published for World Book Day next Thursday. read more

02/03/2009 | 4 Comments | Investigative Journalism, Published Articles, What Authors Need To Know

Melvyn Bragg: Why I’m still haunted by my first wife’s suicide

The Daily Mail 28th February 2009
There is a book in Melvyn Bragg’s library that he cannot bring himself to read. It isn’t badly written or one he finds distasteful. It has featured on literary prize shortlists around the world and earned its author plaudits. Yet still the book broods on a shelf, ignored, because TV’s King of Culture fears that what it might show him would be just too painful.
The book is Bad Faith by Carmen Callil, the story of French Nazi war criminal Louis Darquier. It is not Darquier’s story that repels Bragg, 69, but what it might reveal about Darquier’s daughter, Anne, who died in 1970. read more

01/03/2009 | 2 Comments | Celebrity Interviews, Published Articles

Melvyn Bragg: I just don’t want to go there

The Independent on Sunday 22nd February 2009
Behind the charm, the soft Cumbrian lilt, the flashing smile and twinkling eyes, something darker festers in Melvyn Bragg, award-winning broadcaster, acclaimed novelist and ennobled member of the Labour elite. Despite the success and celebrity, the dapper grammar school boy from working-class Wigton carries within him a mixture of guilt, rage and bewilderment that others would find hard to conceal. The thought crosses my mind as a late sun pours its weakening light into his office on the 22nd floor of LWT’s Waterloo HQ at the end of a freezing Tuesday in February.
The room is packed up for a move to the sixth floor. Boxes are strewn around. A handful of books are abandoned on a shelf; like forlorn drunks they lean against one another for support. I am here to talk about Bragg’s book Remember Me?, the latest in a series of autobiographical novels and the most searing of them all. It is an account of the doomed relationship between Bragg’s literary doppelganger Joe Richardson and a troubled French poet, Natasha, who bears a striking resemblance to the author’s first wife, the French artist Lisa Roche. Both were gifted artists, both tried to distance themselves from aristocratic roots, both had troubled childhoods and both ended their lives as their marriages fell to pieces. As with all suicides, both left a legacy of guilt, regret and profound sadness with the friends and family, including a young daughter. read more

23/02/2009 | 1 Comment | Celebrity Interviews, Published Articles

Are these taboo-breaking novels art or porn?

The Independent 23rd January 2009
Years ago, I heard a story about a group of publishers asked to recommend books for translation. The criteria were that they should be well-written, have literary merit, be commercially viable and have been recently published. One book divided the judges: a novel written from the point of view of a sex-abuse victim who enjoyed her abuse. The women thought it badly written and disgusting. The men thought it ground-breaking and provocative: its explicit content and taboo-breaking perspective were enough to give it “literary cachet”. When it comes to sex, the usual rules for judging good literature need not apply.
I recalled the story while reading German author Charlotte Roche’s much-hyped Wetlands, a novel that has been hailed by Granta as the modern equivalent of J D Salinger’s The Catcher In The Rye, J G Ballard’s Crash and Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch. Wetlands (translated by Tom Mohr; Fourth Estate, £12.99) tells the story of Helen Memel, 18, who is recovering from invasive surgery on her piles. She regales readers with intimate details about her anal sphincter (you will never look at a cauliflower in the same way again), bodily fluids, shaving and general sex life. read more

26/01/2009 | 2 Comments | Opinions, Published Articles, Publishing commentator

The thin red line

A while ago I wrote a scathing piece in the Daily Mail about what I regarded as the “pornography” of misery memoirs. I had become increasingly concerned at the way boundaries were being pushed in this genre. Each book seemed to push the border between taste and titillation further as the content became ever more graphic in their depiction of abuse – especially child sexual abuse. read more

17/11/2008 | 11 Comments | Blog, News, Publishing

It’s more than a loss for Ross

Okay, I hold my hands up: I got it wrong. Jonathon Ross’s book is sinking like a stone. But his suspension from the BBC will affect more than his own book. Talking to friends in publicity at the large publishing houses, his disappearance from our screens in the run up to Christmas is worrying for altogether other reasons.
Since the demise of Parky [the show, not the man], Ross has been the number one showcase for A List celebrities with a book to plug. As one PR said to me, there really isn’t anywhere else. An appearance on Ross sent people into stores, and as most celebs publish in autumn in order to cash in on the upsurge in sales at this time of year, not having this influential show on their side is a huge loss. read more

05/11/2008 | 3 Comments | Blog, Publishing
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