World Book Night part #2

Copies of Lee Child’s ‘Killing Floor’ now winging their way to South Africa and Australia, a warm-up maybe for next year when World Book Night could become international.

Had some reader feedback already on the copies I have given out including one from my friend complaining he couldn’t gte his son to go to bed as he was enjoying the book so much! Just think he has a whole load more Jack Reacher adventures ahead of him. Hoping as well some of the reluctant readers (you know the ones who say ’I don’t read books anymore’) will give the book a try and if they do that will be a result.

Really enjoying re-reading ‘The Spy Who Came In From The Cold’ by John Le Carre. One of my dad’s favourite writers and I must get Le Carre’s latest books to read as ‘The Perfect Gardener’ was the last boom I read by him.

Some personal suggestions for titles to be given away next year would be Christopher Fowler’s ‘Roofworld’, Terry Pratchett’s ‘Mort’ and George Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’. Mind you I could think of many more!

World Book Night tonight

Well most of my copies of Lee Child’s ‘Killing Floor’ have been given out as part of today’s World Book Night. I have a few left for Surrey Young Carers. I was chuffed as well to be given a copy of John Le Carre’s ‘The Spy Who Came In From The Cold’ whilst in Staines today. I read this back in my teenage years so I am looking forward to reading it again.

All these books floating around can be tracked on the Bookcrossing website. I first joined this back in 2004 and haven’t been on since 2006 and was surprised to see two books I ‘released’ back then have since made it to the US and Canada. Hopefully some of these Lee Child books will become well travelled and bring enjoyment to the readers.

World Book Night has been great fun and I hope they repeat it next year. Yes there have been teething problems but hey no-one has ever distributed and given away one million books in one night! Well done all and keep on reading folks…

PS Read some people’s replies to the Mad About Books questions here and the BBC has launched a Year Of Books

Stop the library closure madness

The Coalition govenment have now turned their fire onto closing libraries (view the full updated list here). They seem to think libraries are simply a place for lending books and of course the numbers lent each year falls, hence their interest on cost savings. But libraries on the whole have adapted with the times and now have free web access, free basic PC skills courses, lots of activities for younger children, author events and even tea & coffee!

Do your bit and help save YOUR library, even if you have never set foot in it go along and see what’s on offer. Once it is closed there is no going back…

More at one of my old employers ‘The Bookseller’ magazine and their campaign plus Orion (another old employer!) author Alan Gibbons is inspiring many to take up the fight on behalf of libraries.

Five Quick Q’s with…STEPHEN FOSTER, Stoke fan & author

Author and blogger Stephen Foster wrote the excellent book on being a Stoke supporter ‘She Stood There Laughing’. Plus he has written fiction and ‘Walking Ollie’about his dog called err Ollie.

1. With Stoke just two games away from possible automatic promotion do you think we will do it or fall under pressure? Has the Pottermouth poem galvanised the fans and players do you think? (I read one Vale fan comment that the Stoke players wouldn’t understand the accent!)
Even Norwich put 5 past Colchester recently, how hard can it be?
So: yes, I think we’ll do it. I’m amazed we’re in this position at all but the bad-results blip seems to have passed just in the nick of time.
I had an arts journalist from the Guardian (who I didn’t really know) email the Pottermouth link to me: this ‘call to arms’ has even achieved national recognition, which is really something for anything Stoke-related.
Never mind what Fale fans think: they’re back where they belong, in tinpot obscurity.

2. How did you first get into writing and were you pleased with the reaction to ‘She Stood Their Laughing’? What attracts you most about writing and how easy/hard was it to land your first book deal?
 

I went back to education in my early thirties, to Norwich School of Art and Design. I did a degree in Cultural Studies, which meant I spent my time in three parts: one third art history, one third visual work, and one third creative writing. I’d been accepted on an entirely visual portfolio – I thought painting was what I was going to do, but I discovered I had some talent at writing and really rather less-so re. visual work. My first book was a collection of stories set in Stoke-on-Trent, http://www.amazon.co.uk/Cracks-Like-Breaking-Skin/dp/0571195067/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1209113530&sr=1-1. I had 50 copies of the early prototype of that printed at a local firm and I stood them on a plinth for my final degree show piece. One of those copies found its way into the hands of an editor from Faber and Faber; he subsequently sent me a letter wondering if I had a few more stories to flesh it out into a publishable length. So my intro into publishing was non-standard, in that I was touted up, though I’ve had a few of rejection slips since: three or four editors turned down She Stood There Laughingbefore Simon & Schuster picked it up.
SSTL got a broad thumbs-up from Stoke fans, and it topped the Independent newspaper’s dedicated sports book chart for a few weeks. Some reviewers didn’t like it because I included terrace talk and filthy language while at the same time referring to French cultural theoretical concepts and applying them to football. They considered this pseudish, as though those two voices couldn’t be part of one person. I was more than happy with that: to be pissing off a few public schoolboy sports hacks.

3. What have been the highlights and lowlights (this maybe a few!) as a Stoke supporter?

Highlights: The League Cup, signing Alan Hudson, the second coming of Lou, the introduction of Delilah, Steino, the Millennium Cardiff, Bjarni, Hoekstra, Gerry, Boskamp’s press calls. This season could provide one, too.

Lowlights: I’ve never enjoyed the relegations; I hated leaving the Vic; post-Waddo our form in the FA Cup has been dire whoever has been in charge; there was a horror period when we kept losing to the Fale who at one point even seemed to be a division higher, but that must surely have been an hallucination bought on by a bad oyster.

4.  Any recent music/books/films you would recommend?
 

Music: Tinchy Stryder: Star in the Hood (my son, Jack, manages this guy: he is the future of UK Grime.) I like Duffy, too.

Book: Currently reading Divided Soul, by David Ritz, an account of Marvin Gaye’s life. I’m partially doing it as research for a part of my next novel – I’ve always been fascinated by that period Gaye spent towards the end washed up in Ostend, it’s seems so incongrous. There are lots of nice quotes in the book, for instance, when asked how much he has spent on toot over the years, Gaye replies: ‘I don’t even want to think about it. I don’t want to know. To be truthful, I’ve been careful never to keep track. My attitude has always been, whenever good blow is around, buy it, regardless of price.’

Film: American Gangster is great. It looks superb: Ridley Scott has managed to recreate ‘seventies cops in ‘seventies America, filmed today using modern production values, and made it shine. He’s a genius film maker for the big screen – he would have won Oscars for it if only he wasn’t such a bolshy git. 

5. Message for the Stoke fans…

Do eet, just do eet.

Lord Weidenfeld comes out fighting

 Further to a piece in ‘The Bookseller’ magazine about W&N paying back some author advances it seems ‘The Observer’ newspaper added their own spin to the story. This bought out Lord Weidenfeld, co-founder of W&N, who is normally a very nice man but not one you would like to cross as the Observer has found out…

Lord Weidenfeld has rounded on the Observer, calling for a retraction of its story that Weidenfeld & Nicolson was shelving serious history books in favour of celebrity biographies and TV spin-offs, described by the newspaper as “crappy”.

The Sunday paper spun its article, published on 6th April, out of last week’s Bookseller report that Orion-owned W & N was writing off hundreds of thousands of pounds in author advances from its non-fiction list.

Weidenfeld called the Observer story “a mischievous and misleading bit of journalism”. He said: “It is a complete  misrepresentation. We particularly take pride in our distinguished list of biographies, history and current affairs titles. We have written off some of our non-fiction list, but not at the expense of serious historical authors. We are still bringing out major celebrity memoirs. What we have rid ourselves of is middle of the road journalistic popularisations whose time has gone and do not have much of a market.”

The past year’s publishing list shows W & N’s commitment to serious non-fiction, Weidenfeld insisted, with the company bringing out books by Antonia Fraser, Simon Sebag Montefiore, Andrew Graham-Dixon and Antony Beevor. Its future non-fiction publishing programme includes “higher-end” authors such as Daniel Barenboim, Robert Hughes, David Marquand and Victor Sebestyen. Weidenfeld also took issue with the notion that the overall W & N list was being cut, saying resources were being shifted to other parts of the company.

He added: “This is not a reduction in our list but a shift in the programme. The market is now much more fiction orientated, and we have hired talented new staff to acquire distinguished fiction in translation as well as home-grown fiction.” This week, W & N acquired the second book by Carlos Ruiz Zafón, a prequel to The Shadow of the Wind, which has sold nearly a million copies since publication in 2004.

Meanwhile, agents have reported that books dropped by W & N have “generated a lot of interest”. One agent said: “You don’t like to see any publisher dropping books, but it eventually worked out for my author. We were able to place the book very quickly.”

A commissioning editor added: “At least two of the books Orion and W & N dropped we were interested in first time around and were outbid. Whatever W & N’s problems are is neither here nor there for us.”

Meanwhile look out for a new Led Zeppelin biography by Mick Wall in September from Orion and the new Chris Simms (very dark but highly enjoyable crime series set in Manchester) novel is out in May.

One of my old employers gets a blasting!

I spent three happy years at Orion, home to the W&N imprint and Ian Drury was the respected W&N Military Editor. W&N were indeed reknowned for high quality, lavishly illustrated books along with very strong military titles (they owned the Cassell Military list as well).  Celebrity does sell but only certain ones – Jordan, Robbie Williams but there are far more turkeys like Leslie Ash, Charlotte Church and one of the biggest flops of them all Anthea Turner (I mean what has she even done that you would be remotely ineterested in reading about?). So good on you Ian and people stop buying these ghost written celeb biogs and buy a decent novel or interesting non-fiction book.

From The Bookseller

One of Britain’s most distinguished publishers has been condemned for turning its back on serious history books in favour of ‘crappy’ celebrity biographies and TV spin-offs, is the Observer’s take on The Bookseller’s news that Weidenfeld & Nicolson had returned some author advances as a result of cutting its lists.

The piece interviews Ian Drury, formerly publishing director of non-fiction. Drury, now a literary agent at Sheil Land Associates, says: “I find it gutting that a premium brand, known for quality history, is throwing that list away while publishing Charlotte Church, Leslie Ash and other crappy celebrity books. It seems to be bizarre to turn your back on a genre which has been providing stonking bestsellers over time.”

Drury added: ‘For the last year or so I was there, there was a move towards celebrity biography and it became progressively more difficult to publish the sort of books I’m interested in, such as serious history. ‘That side of the business was cut back and there was a definite feeling it was corporate led, reflecting a lack of belief in serious non-fiction. However, a lot of authors I had difficulty in retaining as a publisher, I’ve had no difficulty selling as an agent.’

…this as Ant & Dec get signed up by Penguin…

Penguin has confirmed that it has signed superstar TV presenting duo Ant and Dec, and is understood to have paid £2.2m for a joint memoir. The book will be published in autumn 2009-though the presenters will be in Australia recording a reality show at the time. Ant and Dec will be working with their long-term scriptwriter Andy Milligan to produce the memoir, described as “a collection of observations and reminiscences” which will offer special insights into their friendship, first formed when the two appeared together in school soap “Byker Grove”.