London Book Fair 2013: Day Two

For my photos from London Book Fair, check out this Facebook album!

DAY TWO
(Read all about my first day at London Book Fair here!)
On the whole, day two seemed a little less frantic, a little more conversational, and a lot more writer-focused. Two seminars from Literary Agents revealed an underlying truth- that authors are no longer a resource for agents to draw on, but tools they have to utilise. Tools they have to chase after, learn to work with and keep in happy working order.

Publishers, editors, agents.. no-one institution is as removed from the author as they once were, but instead are hip or neck deep in promotion, personality and social networking. Day two gave me this increasing feeling that some of the networks I've built are grossly beneficial valuable commodities. I've just been using them in utterly the wrong way.

the early author gets the front row..

In an early seminar, publisher Scott Pack (above) raised the interesting question of how digital publishing changes concepts of value, and how a well-made, quality paperback has a different sense of “value” than a well written, well edited e-book. In digital publishing the text speaks for the consumer worth, and the relationship between cost and content is entirely based around how not-bad the book is.

There was a suggestion that Dickens would have loved e-books, and they'd have made an ideal platform for Dombey & Son and his other epic serialisations. This idea that publishers might start releasing episodic digital literature is an exciting one, but it also smells a little too much like the current issues faced by gamers regarding micro-transactions and DLC.

Speaking of gaming, a seminar on the gaming industry's links with literature and the possibilities presented fell a little short of the mark for me. Watching people from the world of books talk about games can sometimes be a little like watching someone from Activision wave a book above their head yelling “IT'S MADE OF PAPER AND THERE ARE WORDS IN IT! THAT'S ALL WE KNOW!”

On the whole it felt like yet another expression of the need by some publishers have to cash in on all markets.. chickens like corn, right? Well stick corn to your book and you can tap this lucrative chicken market! Sales!

At the time I wrote the note “Is any of this really news? Or is it just news to publishers?” but suppose that at any trade or industry show you are going to have areas of lack. A talk on bikes at the Chelsea Flower Show is going to be just as light as a gardening exhibit at a Harley Davidson show, and you can't fault publishers and the events staff for their enthusiasm for new markets, regardless of their motivation.

A point of interest the seminar raised was on how players, users (and particularly children) write their own stories. They know Princess Peach has been kidnapped, but we don't know why she's a Princess, and let some mental process fill in the blanks. If we play Cut The Rope long enough, that hungry frog starts developing motivation and a backstory. We know the goal is to feed him, but over time we need to establish why we're feeding him.

I don't know if that's interesting, insightful, or just obvious, but I appreciated it.

It was around this time I really started chatting with other visitors, and found it inevitably rewarding. There were new writers, established writers, editors from the Guardian I would never have chatted to in any other forum, and a lady struggling to mass publish a treatise on the history of science in the form of an epic poem.

I started to realise I'd been mistreating the Crap Looking Books brand a little. Rather than sharing cards and info just with those I spoke to, I should've brought a sack of literature and flyers and drowned the exhibition centre in them at the start of each day.

While Crap Looking Books may still be very much a fledgling, it's an eye-catching brand that gets people asking questions and talking... it's just a little hard to introduce into a conversation where everyone is proud of what they do and resist to anything defamatory. Rightly so!

books, of course

 It was while sat in “Should Novelists Write Screenplays?” that I felt the seminars could do with longer, less misleading titles. Had the seminar been titled “Should Novelists Write Screenplays based on their own novels?” I wouldn't have attended, since I went to something very similar on the first day. I still think the “How to reach your readers” talk from GoodReads should have been titled “How to reach your readers using only GoodReads”

Still. Nobody was forcing me to be anywhere and it was often in some of the less engaging moments when I had more flashes of brilliance about projects I'm working on or ideas for synergy and networking and other buzzwords, fostered by the creative learning atmosphere... and maybe the lack of air conditioning or available oxygen.

The afternoon picked up pace a little when a seminar on author branding from Author Profle opened with the claim “If you've come here for a nap, sorry!” Authors and agents in the crowd were encouraged to think about the attitudes and attributes that make up them and their work, but to share this 'brand' openly with each other and the wider group.

Putting aside the speaker's somewhat worrying obsession with the high class safe sexualisations of Jilly Cooper novels, this was a bloody useful seminar. As a writer of genre fiction who can't and won't just pick a genre, it pays to think about my “brand” and any recurrent themes or content between what I write. Considering I'd left Day One's genre seminar worrying about this, it was just what I needed.

It's that old Babylon(5)ian thought game- Who are you? What do you want? Why are you the way you are? Answer them, then keep answering them.

The last Author Lounge seminar of the day was an excellent talk from agents Hellie Ogden and Andrew Lownie about the state of the industry and the place of authors and agents within it. Of startling interest before this though was just how busy and popular the Author Lounge had become at this point. So much so, that extra security had been laid on to help with crowd control and safety.

At the time we suggested (and ran away with the suggestion) that these security were bodyguards Mark Lefebvre from Kobo had presumptuously brought with him to protect him from stray kindles, but this was of course nonsense and would've been ridiculously out of character for Mark, an author himself, known for being friendly and approachable.

The extra security was thanks to London Book Fair themselves, which is fantastic in a way because it shows they can't ignore the increased popularity of Author Lounge, and the rising prominence of authors within the wider event. Still though... who wouldn't be exciting to see a kindle / kobo West Side Story style throwdown? One day maybe...

bags are thankfully not my book

I finished up the day taking photos of stands, (either for Crap Looking Books or just because they had some damn fine artwork- hey, there were Superman comics distributors there!) and chatting enthusiastically with people. This is not hard at all because everybody there is enthusiastic about everything they do.

There was not a single person there who did not love books in one way or another, even if they just loved buying and selling them. I don't know anywhere else in the world you could get that kind of crowd and atmosphere, and it was a fantastic place to be.

I'm going to close on this sound bite from literary agent Andrew Lownie- “Don't chase a trend, just write a good book. Good books always get through.”

Sound advice.

London Book Fair, see you next year!

Nick

xx

London Book Fair 2013: Day One

For my photos from London Book Fair, check out this Facebook album!

DAY ONE
Getting up at 3am and to London at 7am, I somehow found myself inside Earl's Court before it was officially "open" and had plenty of time to check out the plush spaces and marvel at the fact that this was the very same Earl's Court where a teenage me threw up druing a Radiohead show 10 years ago.

Feeling a little like the only man there not in a suit, I obviously wasn't there to buy publishing rights, and settled in to the Authoright's excellent Author Lounge program of seminars, and ran back and forth between that the fantastic Love Learning Programme.

With the focus clearly set on the future of authors and publishers, London Book Fair quickly set about dampening my loathing of digital literature and e-book platforms. While many from No, I Do NOT Have Too Many Books! might cry that I've fallen to the dark side, I'm starting to see the inevitable benefits of supplementing printed fiction with digital marketing- rather than letting one win out over the other. 

But still, you can erase me from a Kindle. You can't erase me from a bookshelf quite so easily.

Rightly acclaimed authors remarked how digital publishing had properly launched a career that they'd been working on sometimes for decades until then. The idea that "making it" in digital publishing is often accompanied by an exponential burst of popularity and success was repeated throughout the day, and is both exciting and daunting. Nothing good ever came without hard work.

It turns out that a lot of self-publishers and self-promoters do or did the legwork that I am currently doing. The only difference is they actually have a finished book or seven to actually promote to audiences.

I feel a little bit like my creative footprint is an empty measuring jug that gets bigger and bigger as I learn and network more, but until I lash myself to my drafts and hammer out their details that jug will never fill with water.

Great metaphor Nick, just great.

An excellent seminar on genre snobbery chaired by Matt Haig with industry legends Chris Preistley and Brenda Gardener made me realise that my recent deconstruction of Things We Knew Were True "Women's Literature" cover and context was a little harsh and off-kilter, and didn't ackonwledge the pressure that market forces and retailers put on jacket design. Another uncharacteristic retraction may be in order.

Suggestions of the suffering of genre fiction and the frictions between different genres has made me worry for my own diverse portfolio of "novels" but I keep telling myself that getting the damn things actually finished is more important than finding the right market for them.

I've mentioned before that book covers can often lead to novels flying under the radar, or onto the wrong radar, and I'm glad (or indeed sad) to see that this concerns the whole industry. Publishers are not as blind or ignorant as I may have suggested before, and regard cover art as one of the most important things when it comes to marketing a book.

I'm inclined to think that Crap Looking Books has been a little too vicious at times, too quick with reactions and too slow to ask why those reactions happen. it may be time for a considered reshuffle of the mission statement, and going a little easier on publishers and authors.

As my first day at London Book Fair rolled on I found myself learning to identify the difference between someone sharing wisdom or advice, and somebody trying to sell something. Yes, the guy from GoodReads was enthusasitic, warm and informative, but he was enthusiastic, warm and informative about GoodReads and could easily have been pitching it as a buisness pan to prosective investors.

Differences between various talk and seminar panels can be interesting- one may know very little about the craft while knowing a great deal about social marketing strategy, while some are drowning in rich advice on the craft, and utterly (and unashamedly) clueless to social marketing strategies. 

Forgiving each panel their shortcomings feels just as important as benefiting from their knowledge, and forming a lattice of information from various sources is always much mroe efficent than expecting all the answers to be in one place.

Busy? What y'all know about busy?

With the afternoon Authorlounge inevitably over-crowded for the  "How to Get an Agent" event I gave up and headed for a seminar on selling books and narratives to film and TV, a subject I know a great deal about already, and expected to be hear little new about. Of course I was wrong, and not only gained insight into the optioning process, but also found invaluable nuggets of information that will help guide where my screenplays and shorts are headed.

Screenplays, shorts, novels... ever feel like you're running too many projects at once?
 
Anyway, I found myself repeatedly and randomly struck with ideas and changes for those existing projects, often totally irrelevant to the seminar I was sat in when they struck. Some of them were so blindingly obvious they're almost embarrassing- guest blogging, audience collaboration, and streamlining my Twitter so it's less about tying to be Rob Delaney or Charlie Brooker and more about building a strong network. 

Other revelations I won't talk about here, I'll just implement them and let y'all everybody reap the benefits.

With all my talks and seminars done for the day, I wandered around for a while taking photos. Naturally people running booths are a bit apprehensive of having their displays photographed, but "it's for a harmless book loving social network of six thousand people" went down unsurprisingly well and I found myself chatting away merrily.

Before you judge me, I was there.

Plugging Crap Looking Books turns out to be a little difficult... getting someone to let you photograph them for something with a title like that is not the easiest thing, though some awkward chats about the subject have already given me some ideas on how to boost the brand without damaging the content. Buzzword'd.

I was already convinced in a day that I would love to come back next year with a few final drafts and stronger brands under my belt, and really the sell the hell out of myself.

Throughout all the digital platforms, multi-genre creativity, hype, pomp and circumstance... one mantra has been repeated in some form or another all day- The most fundamentally important thing is always the quality of the story itself.

Sicne I'd been on my feet for a good 12-14 hours, I took to my hotel to collapse and wait for the next day of booky goodness.

Read all about my second day at London Book Fair here!

Nick
xx

SPOILER WARNING!! This isn't a spoiler, but..

So, with season three of Game of Thrones is kicking off on HBO, the BBC is scheduling more Doctor Who in the run up to their anniversary special, and so many new books are flying in from all directions... I want to talk about spoilers. 

Specifically, I want to talk about the fact that there is no such thing a "little" spoiler, and anyone who tries to use them is courting danger and offense.

Don't get me wrong, I understand the urge. You've seen or read something someone else hasn't, and you want to talk about it. You're desperate to discuss it but don't want to ruin it, and you think you've found a way to discuss that show, film or book without actually spoiling it.

not quite what I mean..

You're wrong. There really is nothing you can say which doesn't contain or imply relevant information. Here are a few examples that I loathe.

Keep your eye on that one! or Don't worry, he gets better!
You may not have revealed anything specific about the character you're talking about, but simply implying they are of interest means that they have a story arc, that they develop as characters and narrative pieces rather than dying suddenly or being sidelined. Letting on that certain characters are more worthy of notice than others, or that they will be, still counts as revealing the narrative structure. Spoiler'd.

Do you remember the bit in the first book when...? and That'll all make sense in the second book!
Readers don't as a rule know which characters and events will have the most significance in the following volumes. Telling them totally changes how they will interpret those events, and doesn't allow each book to be presented as the author intended.

Don't read the last page first!
Apparently it's a common thing, reading the last page first. Maybe it provides a sense of continuity, a reassurance that the book will not spiral on forever and that all things including life will eventually end. Still, the suggestion that the last page is important can totally preoccupy the reader with what the final shocker is, and turn the whole experience into unnecessary mystery solving, regardless of genre.

Why do they always kill off the fit ones?
More relevant to TV than Books, this question-spoiler reveals a lot about who is going to die, narrowing it down to the more attractive cast, and, if  whoever you're spoiling things for knows you well enough, your personal tastes. It's really no better than "the black dude always dies first" or "the butler did it".
 
The Prince is in the next book loads! 
Whoever you're spoiling Book Nine for will now know that the Prince (or whoever it might be) not only survives Book Four but lives through the events of Books Five-to-Eight as well. Now we know that Avery Cates, Harry Potter, and Colonel Hammer will usually live on to feature heavily in their subsequent books because each series is based around their adventures, but with an ensemble cast or a universe-spanning community all bets should be off since anyone could die, disappear or be sent away at any time, and letting on in any way robs the reader of any surprise.

You'll love the end of issue 12!
Someone actually said this to me like it wasn't a spoiler, as if I don't know what I love and therefore would be unable to predict what will happen. I haven't read issue 12 of the relevant graphic novel yet, and may never do, but I know that somebody dies well, and that there's a poignant act of self-sacrifice... because that's what I love.

You'll love it!
Really, simply being told that you're going to love something is a spoiler. It has much more weight than "you should watch it" and gears the prospective viewer up for all the things they usually like, leaving them disappointed if they don't happen, and unappreciative if they do.

I didn't like it at first, but I love the second season!
Friends know what friends like, just as friends know what friends hate. If you tell me that you don't hate a show anymore, then I know that all the things you used to hate about it aren't in any of the new seasons, and I can build expectations and spoilers based on that.

Oh, Gerrard! :'(
Someone posted this as a Facebook status last year and I instantly knew that Gerrard had died. You are never as cryptic as you think you are.

There really is no way of talking about something without actually talking about it, unless you remove all relevant phrases to the specific show or book but then you won't be talking, just speaking from an unconnected series of meaningless phrases.

There's a reason why they call them spoilers.
 

All you can ever hope to do is hold your tongue, and wait for your friends and peers to catch to you, even if that means halting your own reading and viewing, or giving them frequent persistent pushes to get on with it.
  
Nick
xx 

I would love to hear of any other failed attempts people have made at spoiling-without-spoilers! Drop them in the comments box below, or over on our Facebook page. Thanks!