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Literary Review
Writer banoge?
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The London Book Fair is fast emerging as Europe's most happening publishing event. And this year the accent was on new talent, says HASAN SUROOR.
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One of the stalls at the London Book Fair.
ONCE derided as the poor man's Frankfurt — a hangout for local publishers with nothing better to do at the weekend — the London Book Fair (LBF) is now regarded as Europe's most happening publishing event and mentioned almost in the same breath as the Frankfurt fair which, of course, remains the ultimate thing in book biz. Over the years, LBF has evolved into a fairly reliable index of prevailing trends, and this year there were two interesting pointers which should please prospective authors, both in some ways indicating that, in the end, publishing is about writers — good, bad or indifferent.
Before Mohammed Azharuddin was picked to lead the Indian cricket team, Raj Dungarpur famously asked him: miyan captain banoge? A lot of publishers these days seem to be asking a similar question: miyan writer banoge? And, believe it or not, for a change they are looking for new names — not for any altruistic reasons but because of market pressures which make it safer for them to gamble with an unknown commodity than risk repeating a known writer whose last book bombed.
A new book ordering system — Electronic Purchase Ordering System (EPOS) — has become the scourge of writers who have already published. For with a touch of a button, the marketing boys at Penguin can "punch up your sales record and shake their heads", as a Times columnist pointed out. New writers have no record, and are therefore safe: "Only brand new names, clean sheets, are exempt from this peril".
At LBF (March 17-19), the buzz was about new talent with a thirty-something American Kathleen Tessaro — as unknown as they can possibly come — reportedly grabbing a £400,000 advance from HarperCollins for her debut novel Elegance. But let me clarify that it is not an open house where any unknown face can walk in with a manuscript and walk out with a bulging advance. They prefer someone young, glamorous and media savvy — someone who would look good on the dust jacket, and publicity posters. An ability to deliver clever sound bites on the 10 o'clock show is an added qualification.
Those lacking in these departments can try self-publishing. Until very recently it was rather a covert and hush-hush business, and neither writers nor those who took money to publish them liked to talk about it.
A certain stigma attached to it because it was assumed, and rightly, that no mainstream publisher was willing to handle manuscripts that finally landed up in what was euphemistically called "collaborative" ventures where the author shared the cost of publishing. Here were people who had been rejected by high-minded publishers and were now paying to see their work in print. Snooty critics sneered at them, bookshops said "thanks but no thanks, we don't have sufficient shelf-space", and a vast majority of readers never got to know about them.
But judging from what one noticed at LBF, self-publishing is coming out of the purdah, and it is now acknowledged that there are other ways of getting a book out in the market without being ashamed of it. Not only were there more exhibitors this year offering a range of over-the-counter facilities — copy-editing, proof-reading, designing, printing and marketing — but the sales pitch was aggressive and confident. Nigel Ferguson, chief executive of "Publish on Demand Ltd", said most of his writers were academics but he had also "published" one children's novel and hoped to get more fiction writers on his list. He said online marketing had broken down barriers, and potential buyers were now persuaded by the subject rather than who had published it. "You look at a title, and you look at the ISBN code bar and that's how you order a book whether it is published by someone like us or the OUP," he said.
The fact that several self-published writers have sold well and gone on to sign up with big publishers has helped. A case in point is Preethi Nair, who published her first novel privately two years ago after it had been turned down by mainstream publishers. The book had a reasonably good reception and now she has been signed by HarperCollins. Old attitudes to publishing are giving way to a more relaxed approach. A rejection slip from Bloomsbury is no longer regarded as a death warrant. "We are starting to recognise that there is an alternative to mainstream publishing and that it is not an inferior alternative," one exhibitor said.
Men would, of course, continue to be separated from boys but as the trend catches up there is likely to be less prejudice against those who are not smart enough to make it to Bloomsbury the first time around.
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