Our autumn title BUGLE BOY by Len Chester is published. This wonderful short book tells Len`s own story of how he joined the Royal Marines at the age of 14 in 1939 and was sent first to Scapa Flow and then, the only boy among several hundred men, to Russia on one of the Arctic convoys. HRH the Duke of Edinburgh liked the book so much that he has generously written a Foreword to it. It has photographs from those years and is History brought to life. One class of history A level students in the Isle of Man are using the book in their study of WW2 and Len will be paying them a visit to talk about his experiences. He will also be doing a lot of publicity on and around this year`s Remembrance Day including an appearance on Channel 5 TV News.
BUGLE BOY is available in all good bookshops and from Amazon. It costs just 9.99 and for anyone who was in or is interested in, WW2 it makes the absolutely perfect Christmas present.
Is this week so everyone in London publishing is out of town. There will be a lot of talk, meetings, handshakes, eating and drinking, a load of money spent on hotel bills and air fares. And to what purpose ? Whenever I have had a book being presented there by a publisher or agent, I have been told about ‘excitement’ and ‘interest’ but so often when people have returned to their offices and normal life, nothing has come of half of it, or I have been told that ‘the actual deals don`t get done at Frankfurt.’ So what does get done there ? Seems an awful lot of expense and trouble for nothing. And everyone moans and groans about it in advance but they all still go on going.
Amazing how much gossip the book trade generates. The on-going saga of the literary agency PFD and its new boss Caroline Michel, has hit the mainstream press and even the gossip columns. It is an interesting and somewhat convoluted saga which is still really of serious interest only to book trade insiders who will know the names and understand the subtleties involved. Caroline gets headlines mainly because she is glamorous, beautiful and lovely. And keeps making surprising moves.
But a much bigger surprise came today with news that Richard Charkin is leaving Macmillan after 10 years, to become CEO of Bloomsbury in its post-Potter era - or ‘when the money dries up-time’. A terrific challenge and no one is more up to it and to make waves and have huge fun while doing it than Richard. He has always had fun. I have known him for about 30 years and he`s one of the shrewdest, warmest of men and of book men - but I wouldn`t like to be his enemy. He has posted for the last time on his unfailingly interesting, entertaining and controversial blog for Macmillan, charkbklog. We`ll really really miss it.
News of his arrival with Bloomsbury came on the day I got the cover for my new children`s book THE BATTLE FOR GULLYWITH, which they are publishing next May. It is absolutely terrific and when I have discovered how to put up images on this blog I will show it to you. If you really can`t wait, go to my author blog at www.susan-hill.com - I know how to put up pretty pictures there.
More great news. Our Long Barn author CHRIS EWAN who wrote the great first novel which won our competition last year, THE GOOD THIEF`S GUIDE TO AMSTERDAM, has just sent in his next caper-crime story about Charlie Howard, TE GOOD THIEF`S GUIDE TO PARIS. His agent tells me it is even better - I get my copy tomorrow in the post - a treat for the weekend. And Chris has had at least one really fabulous review in America, where AMSTERDAM has just come out from the pretigious St Martin`s Press. I`m sure there`ll be more but this is so enthusiastic it bodes really well for his future there.
Last but not least huge congratulations to my favourite independent bookshop JAFFE AND NEALE in Chipping Norton, my regular port of call for new books and great coffee. Patrick and Polly last week won the Best Independent Bookseller award - I`m off over there tomorrow morning to admire the trophy.
Thrilled for Chris Ewan with this wonderful review in American uber-booktrade journal PUBLISHER`S WEEKLY.
“This impressive debut, a comic whodunit from British entertainment lawyer
Ewan, owes much of its charm and success to its compelling antihero, Charles
Howard. An established author of mysteries featuring a burglar-detective,
Howard himself is a successful burglar. While finishing his latest novel in
Amsterdam, Howard receives a cryptic invitation via his Web site and follows his
curiosity to a meeting with a mysterious American who somehow knows of the
author’s secret profession. Howard initially declines the commission to steal two
small plaster monkeys, but when he succeeds in his assignment, he finds his
client has been brutally bludgeoned. After becoming a suspect, Howard
scrambles to understand the link between the monkeys and a diamond heist
over a decade earlier. The ease with which Ewan creates a memorable
protagonist and pits him against a plausible and tricky killer will be the envy of
many more established authors. The detection is first-rate, and Howard is a
fresh, irreverent creation who will make readers eager for his next exploit.
(Nov.)”
Best
I love working with illustrators. I am in awe of their talents, probably because I can`t draw an egg. We are launching three new children`s book series next year - books for the 5-8 year olds, storybooks rather than Picture Books, but ones which do need both great full-colour covers and also plenty of good line drawings inside. I have been looking at lots and lots of illustrator`s websites and agents’ showcases - it`s huge fun, not like work at all. We have signed up Gaby Grant, who has already done the cover and inside drawings for the first of the JACK AND MILLIE series of stories by Tutu Tavener. Jack and Millie are a brother and sister and the stories are lovely, domestic ones focusing on them and also on learning to cook and enjoy good food.
Tutu is also writing our BRILLIANT BRIDESMAIDS books - every little girl wants to be bridesmaid and we have found an illustrator, Moira Munro - see her website www.moiramunro.com who does such great pictures of Princesses we knew she would be perfect to add bridesmaids to her arsenal !
The first two books in my own children`s series about GRANDMOTHER NUTMEG also come out next year and the illustrations for these are partly in colour, some in black and white and are being done by Lucy Barnard - though Lucy is getting married on Saturday so she has been a bit hard to pin down of late. GRANDMOTHER NUTMEG runs a bakery from Cinnamon Cottage with the help of her apprentice Ginger, and Spice the Cat among others … she has a shop in the nearby village of Ferndown and bakes the most amazing, magical Birthday Cakes. Lucy`s first drawings of her and of Ginger, with his spikey red hair were spot on straight away. I`ll be posting some early sketches for all the books up on the website before long so keep a lookout.
Meanwhile, back to this autumn and the PR and Publicity Campaign for BUGLE BOY is hotting up. Finished copies are in the warehouse and the orders are coming in very well indeed.
My assistant and Senior Editor, Jessica, has just found and bought a fantastic US novel called SWIM WITH ME. It`s original, unusual and wonderful….about a girl in the 1950s who leaves home and travels to Florida from New York by Greyhound Bus, to become a ‘Mermaid’ at a Water-Park. You will LOVE IT.
Just about everyone in the book trade seems to believe that e-books - so far much talked about, little used - are about to explode onto the scene and destroy the printed book. I wonder. Reading on a screen is still not easy on the eyes and there is still a generation/kind of person who will never take to the e-book because they are technophobes. Others among us just LOVE the actual physical printed book. But although there are no disadvantages at all to A book, there are to the often cumbersome and uncommercial printing of many books at a time…print on demand, when it improves and reaches a higher standard of presentation - gets over the problem of having to print a minimum of 1,000 copies of a book which might be expected to sell 200. I can see A role for the e-reader but I cannot see it ever replacing the printed book. However, if it does, or if the number of printed books available is cut by, say, two thirds then innumerable people will lose their jobs. The high street book chains will disappear, publishing companies will lose many of their staff and so on. But it is the many brilliant book jacket designers who will really suffer. The e-book does not need a pretty jacket. It does not need any sort of jacket. And just when there are so many wonderful (as well as plenty of hideous) book jackets around. I do not always buy a book for its cover but a good cover always makes me pick the book up and look inside and a bad cover may put me off a book I was about to buy. I love to have a lot of books around me and that is partly for the pleasure I get from jackets. Long may I be able t0 do so.
Publishers nowadays often give or sell for a modest amount, the text files of a book they have published, to others who have bought the rights in different countries but sharing the same language. This saves everyone typing and setting their own book. We have just bought two crime novels from a small American publisher who included their text files free when we bought the rights. This is unusually generous. We charged a very large American firm £400 for our text files but we have given others to small publishers.
Having bought the rights to a US novel from the author`s agent, we asked if we could buy text files from the US publisher - a large one. Yes, we could - for £1,000. This is as much as we pay in an advance for any book we buy. So of course we have declined as they will not negotiate. They therefore get nothing at all, zilch, zero, not a penny - whereas we would have paid them £500. That is £500 for doing nothing. But they prefer - er - nothing.Meanwhile, we type and set our own version of the novel, which does take time and costs, but nothing like as much. Funny old world, publishing.
People ask. Well, one thing is for sure - we almost never get offered anything by literary agents. That is because we pay a flat, universal advance of £1,000 and do not enter into auctions or competition or negotiations. Agents don`t like that, they like high advances. But Long Barn cannot afford to pay them. We put all our money into good production and marketing our books so we hope that our authors start to earn money pretty quickly. We go looking for novels published abroad which have not been picked up by major publishers. We bring back out of print titles which we think deserve a second chance and a new audience. We have ideas ourselves and commission the books on that basis, or we write them. We run competitions. Our First Novel competition has ceased but we will still run our annual Good Loo Book competition. I am thinking of running a competition for a children`s book too. It`s exciting. We have to work hard at it. But if we don`t find what we want, we don`t acquire something for the sake of filling the list.
Next year we are doubling the number of titles. Want a glimpse of what`s upcoming ? OK. Three new series for younger children. A stunning first novel, TWISTED WING, a psychological thriller set in Cambridge. Three American novels - one a bestseller in the US, called Eating Heaven - see Adele Geras`s website for a wonderful mention of it. Two American thrillers in the Lee Child/Michael Connolly mould. Three Hundred Beautiful Things, by Clare Grant and based on her Blog of the same name. And a terrific book about the people you find in pubs.
Oh and I have just commissioned a book from my fellow blogger Dove Grey Reader - Writing from a Reading Life.
Lots to look forward to and more besides.
The six on offer were snapped up in half an hour. If you receive a book eventually you were one of the six.. if not, I`m afraid, not ! Thank y0u for everyone who responded.
Our special autumn book will be available next month and we are giving away just SIX free copies. First come first served. Please e-mail editorial@longbarnbooks.com to bag one.
