A real book is not one that's read, but one that reads us. W. H. Auden
‘E-publishing: a monster with two heads.’
This is a publishing industry colleague’s vision, some years ago, of the ascending digital age. What he meant was digital would provide the pleasure and convenience of creating one’s own books, but the possible sacrifice within the writing/publishing/marketing process was bound to change things in the literary field. Should digital comfort ever replace traditional sweat, he said, it might have a negative impact on literary talent, or even go as far as causing it to become extinct. We would find ourselves with unskilled writers dominating an unskilled industry.
Heavy words from my friend, but are they true?
We all have to admit that the digital publishing age is upon us, and its allure is strong: it is practical, ecological, compact, and just about every writer loves the idea. But just because you can do something - i.e. write a quick book and fit it together - doesn’t necessarily mean you should. Unless seeing yourself in print is as far as you ever wish to go, it could turn out to be an unfruitful and disheartening ride, fraught with lack of industry know-how, and headache marketing.
While all this sounds pessimistic, I’m actually in favour of the digital revolution. If managed well it can do everyone a lot of good, across the writing/publishing field, but we don’t have to sacrifice talent. Believing that golden opportunities lurk at the other end of a few clicks shouldn’t necessarily inspire complacency. There is of course plenty of help out there - for the right price – and another industry is busy blossoming: one where anyone can pay any price to enjoy that ‘I’m a published author’ feeling.
‘One of the bigger surprises this year, according to analysts, was a marked slowdown in the decline of physical book sales,’ so Robert Budden of the Financial Times said, while Richard Mollett of the Publishers Association said, ‘This is another strong year for digital which has more than offset a slight decline in physical.’
Having paddled in the shallows of the publishing industry as an in-house magazine editor, I cannot help but ask: Is the two-headed beast beginning to threaten everyone at last? Do I smell a whiff of anxiety among mainstream publishers? People in the industry are scared. Make no mistake. The digital revolution is upon us whether we like it or not, and it is about to plunge us into new ways of doing things. We will all have to go digital in the end.
Although mainstream publishing and the physical book still have the edge, there is in fact a publishing war going on. Two armies, with sticks and a lot of silent shouting are at the gates as the walls of a conventional industry threaten to come tumbling down. Digital is the threat, but as innocent as it may be it is causing us to risk losing vital elements within the writing/publishing/marketing process: good professional editing and marketing being two of them.
‘The road to ignorance is paved with good editors,’ said George Bernard Shaw. Even Socrates was known to say, ‘The misuse of language induces evil in the soul.’ Good editors are the stuff of a book’s soul. If your book, however good it may seem, hasn’t been blessed with the eye of the perceptive professional editor, it simply won’t hit the mark, and could spell the difference between an exceptional book and an embarrassingly bland one.
The mainstream publishing side of the monster (probably the biggest of the two heads) has been big business since the 1960s, more or less. It has grown phenomenally yet has changed drastically over the decades. Having begun life as something of a ‘cottage industry’ in the early twentieth century, it occupied a different world back then. Virginia Woolf, when writing for the Hogarth Press, the publishing company she created with her husband, Leonard, was able to write and market in a very different universe. It was personal rather than finance-driven. Not so now. And this is where mainstream has lost the plot. There’s no getting away from the fact that throughout the first half of the twentieth century the literary scene was bursting with talent, oomph and dare, the industry turning out writers such as Woolf, Hemingway, Huxley, Orwell, Lawrence, Tolkien, Somerset Maugham, Nesbit, Mansfield, Lewis, Salinger, Christie, Waugh, Scott Fitzgerald, du Maurier, Joyce, Conrad, Barrie, Kipling, Sayers, Forster - the list is endless. These writers are without doubt in a league, and an era, of their own.
Do I believe these writers were more talented than those who are writing today? Of course I don’t. I believe the talented are still out there - even if they are a little thin on the ground. A trend resulting from the digital age is that skills are diminished as an expectation, i.e. you can write well if you want to but don’t necessarily have to: an expectation which wouldn’t at all have suited the earlier writers. But there’s a more important question here: could earlier writers fit in to the digital age we are enjoying now? They might expect courtesy and the personal touch (as well as good editors) at the very least. Times and requirements have changed significantly in just fifty years; if talented writers are here, then they are not always on the lists of mainstream publishers with their bias towards celebrity status. Many good writers are now with independent publishers, by choice, because they appreciate the right kind of editing/selling, and particularly the personal touch.
Let’s be honest, most serious writers wouldn’t describe writing as a particularly comfortable craft, even though they can’t help doing it. Some are, unmistakably, born geniuses, but even the geniuses have to work hard to land where they do. Hemingway’s, ‘There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed,’ says it all perfectly. Where are the bleeders? - if you’ll pardon the expression. An unfathomable and over-the-top comment this may be - especially from the average self-published author’s point of view - but it aptly sums up the creative writing process. Some may try their best to write; some may get the bug after sticking at it awhile and perhaps ‘bleeding’ a little, which may eventually result in perfecting the craft. Perhaps, Orwell’s, ‘Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness,’ also applies here. Let’s get real. Let’s restore our loyalty to the craft. Let’s see writing as an intelligent art form, at the very least, because it pains me to think of talent passing us by because it is now almost totally unnoticeable, just as much as it pains me when self-published authors expect returns for work that has no sweat in it. It in fact pains me enough to have me do something about it.
Having retired from the publishing industry some years ago, but having kept a hand in, I still have that thrill and sense of urgency when I discover new writers. I realised that I would need to be armed with more than a sticking plaster if jumping back in to take up the greatest literary challenge: to make quality writing work in this digital revolution we’re in, and to take up arms in the publishing war. We need to hear those hidden voices speak.
That is why I couldn’t refuse when a colleague and I decided that the launch of a new digital publishing company (catering for those who bleed), Ravine Press, is timely; if I am adamant about anything it’s being in a position where, as ex-industry, I can help to provide a service that makes a stand for those hidden voices who might otherwise remain hidden. There are writers out there whose talents and messages are being overlooked by mainstream, as we speak.
The point is that a small publishing company can help exceptional new writers because it can afford to help them. We are of course small, and for that reason are able to preserve the personal touch. As strange as it sounds, we’ll be able to care; we will not allow the art of writing and the ability to produce professionally, face extinction.
Jason Epstein, who began as a slush-pile reader for Doubleday, believed that the successful future publishing company would be like the Random House of the 1950s - a little like Virginia Woolf was in the other universe. The company would be composed of a ‘small group of likeminded managers’. He also believed publishers should be improvisational, personal, devoted, small scale. Was he seeing Ravine Press? I believe that if you love a craft you should inevitably love supporting and promoting it. It would now be impossible for me to work alongside people who serve that other monster: the industry that doesn’t even acknowledge that a publishing war is raging outside its door.
The large will always outweigh the small, but the small’s time has come.
After the exhaustion, the bleeding and the pain, writers need a door to knock upon which understands the adventurers, the visionaries, those who challenge and dare, those who don’t mind voicing the pain. These are the writers our small publishing company, Ravine Press, will be looking for. These constitute those hidden voices that need to speak.
‘Good prose is like a windowpane,’ Orwell said, and indeed it is. Here’s the rub: what you write needs to be almost completely unnoticeable: the extraordinary sitting within the ordinary. As a commissioning editor I don’t wish to feel your discomfort within your writing (or all the smears on the pane); writing needs to surprise and thrill me by making me believe it’s there but I don’t happen to have noticed it. There is a rich view to be had through that windowpane, and we at Ravine Press want to find those writers who want to provide that.
If you’re the kind who wants to write a book but haven’t done it yet, there is room for you to learn your craft with professionals. Alongside taking on the exceptionally skilled writers at Ravine, we will be developing a sister company to help the not so skilled with a professional publishing service, assistance and tips - which includes the vital editing process.
Ravine Press will be championing subjects such as psychology, autism, prehistory, magical realism, science fiction and environmentalism. It goes without saying that having shed the mainstream publishing industry, I am happy, at last, to have an opportunity to help and enjoy the work of those who bleed.
The war is on, and we women at Ravine are not aiming to take prisoners.
This is a publishing industry colleague’s vision, some years ago, of the ascending digital age. What he meant was digital would provide the pleasure and convenience of creating one’s own books, but the possible sacrifice within the writing/publishing/marketing process was bound to change things in the literary field. Should digital comfort ever replace traditional sweat, he said, it might have a negative impact on literary talent, or even go as far as causing it to become extinct. We would find ourselves with unskilled writers dominating an unskilled industry.
Heavy words from my friend, but are they true?
We all have to admit that the digital publishing age is upon us, and its allure is strong: it is practical, ecological, compact, and just about every writer loves the idea. But just because you can do something - i.e. write a quick book and fit it together - doesn’t necessarily mean you should. Unless seeing yourself in print is as far as you ever wish to go, it could turn out to be an unfruitful and disheartening ride, fraught with lack of industry know-how, and headache marketing.
While all this sounds pessimistic, I’m actually in favour of the digital revolution. If managed well it can do everyone a lot of good, across the writing/publishing field, but we don’t have to sacrifice talent. Believing that golden opportunities lurk at the other end of a few clicks shouldn’t necessarily inspire complacency. There is of course plenty of help out there - for the right price – and another industry is busy blossoming: one where anyone can pay any price to enjoy that ‘I’m a published author’ feeling.
‘One of the bigger surprises this year, according to analysts, was a marked slowdown in the decline of physical book sales,’ so Robert Budden of the Financial Times said, while Richard Mollett of the Publishers Association said, ‘This is another strong year for digital which has more than offset a slight decline in physical.’
Having paddled in the shallows of the publishing industry as an in-house magazine editor, I cannot help but ask: Is the two-headed beast beginning to threaten everyone at last? Do I smell a whiff of anxiety among mainstream publishers? People in the industry are scared. Make no mistake. The digital revolution is upon us whether we like it or not, and it is about to plunge us into new ways of doing things. We will all have to go digital in the end.
Although mainstream publishing and the physical book still have the edge, there is in fact a publishing war going on. Two armies, with sticks and a lot of silent shouting are at the gates as the walls of a conventional industry threaten to come tumbling down. Digital is the threat, but as innocent as it may be it is causing us to risk losing vital elements within the writing/publishing/marketing process: good professional editing and marketing being two of them.
‘The road to ignorance is paved with good editors,’ said George Bernard Shaw. Even Socrates was known to say, ‘The misuse of language induces evil in the soul.’ Good editors are the stuff of a book’s soul. If your book, however good it may seem, hasn’t been blessed with the eye of the perceptive professional editor, it simply won’t hit the mark, and could spell the difference between an exceptional book and an embarrassingly bland one.
The mainstream publishing side of the monster (probably the biggest of the two heads) has been big business since the 1960s, more or less. It has grown phenomenally yet has changed drastically over the decades. Having begun life as something of a ‘cottage industry’ in the early twentieth century, it occupied a different world back then. Virginia Woolf, when writing for the Hogarth Press, the publishing company she created with her husband, Leonard, was able to write and market in a very different universe. It was personal rather than finance-driven. Not so now. And this is where mainstream has lost the plot. There’s no getting away from the fact that throughout the first half of the twentieth century the literary scene was bursting with talent, oomph and dare, the industry turning out writers such as Woolf, Hemingway, Huxley, Orwell, Lawrence, Tolkien, Somerset Maugham, Nesbit, Mansfield, Lewis, Salinger, Christie, Waugh, Scott Fitzgerald, du Maurier, Joyce, Conrad, Barrie, Kipling, Sayers, Forster - the list is endless. These writers are without doubt in a league, and an era, of their own.
Do I believe these writers were more talented than those who are writing today? Of course I don’t. I believe the talented are still out there - even if they are a little thin on the ground. A trend resulting from the digital age is that skills are diminished as an expectation, i.e. you can write well if you want to but don’t necessarily have to: an expectation which wouldn’t at all have suited the earlier writers. But there’s a more important question here: could earlier writers fit in to the digital age we are enjoying now? They might expect courtesy and the personal touch (as well as good editors) at the very least. Times and requirements have changed significantly in just fifty years; if talented writers are here, then they are not always on the lists of mainstream publishers with their bias towards celebrity status. Many good writers are now with independent publishers, by choice, because they appreciate the right kind of editing/selling, and particularly the personal touch.
Let’s be honest, most serious writers wouldn’t describe writing as a particularly comfortable craft, even though they can’t help doing it. Some are, unmistakably, born geniuses, but even the geniuses have to work hard to land where they do. Hemingway’s, ‘There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed,’ says it all perfectly. Where are the bleeders? - if you’ll pardon the expression. An unfathomable and over-the-top comment this may be - especially from the average self-published author’s point of view - but it aptly sums up the creative writing process. Some may try their best to write; some may get the bug after sticking at it awhile and perhaps ‘bleeding’ a little, which may eventually result in perfecting the craft. Perhaps, Orwell’s, ‘Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness,’ also applies here. Let’s get real. Let’s restore our loyalty to the craft. Let’s see writing as an intelligent art form, at the very least, because it pains me to think of talent passing us by because it is now almost totally unnoticeable, just as much as it pains me when self-published authors expect returns for work that has no sweat in it. It in fact pains me enough to have me do something about it.
Having retired from the publishing industry some years ago, but having kept a hand in, I still have that thrill and sense of urgency when I discover new writers. I realised that I would need to be armed with more than a sticking plaster if jumping back in to take up the greatest literary challenge: to make quality writing work in this digital revolution we’re in, and to take up arms in the publishing war. We need to hear those hidden voices speak.
That is why I couldn’t refuse when a colleague and I decided that the launch of a new digital publishing company (catering for those who bleed), Ravine Press, is timely; if I am adamant about anything it’s being in a position where, as ex-industry, I can help to provide a service that makes a stand for those hidden voices who might otherwise remain hidden. There are writers out there whose talents and messages are being overlooked by mainstream, as we speak.
The point is that a small publishing company can help exceptional new writers because it can afford to help them. We are of course small, and for that reason are able to preserve the personal touch. As strange as it sounds, we’ll be able to care; we will not allow the art of writing and the ability to produce professionally, face extinction.
Jason Epstein, who began as a slush-pile reader for Doubleday, believed that the successful future publishing company would be like the Random House of the 1950s - a little like Virginia Woolf was in the other universe. The company would be composed of a ‘small group of likeminded managers’. He also believed publishers should be improvisational, personal, devoted, small scale. Was he seeing Ravine Press? I believe that if you love a craft you should inevitably love supporting and promoting it. It would now be impossible for me to work alongside people who serve that other monster: the industry that doesn’t even acknowledge that a publishing war is raging outside its door.
The large will always outweigh the small, but the small’s time has come.
After the exhaustion, the bleeding and the pain, writers need a door to knock upon which understands the adventurers, the visionaries, those who challenge and dare, those who don’t mind voicing the pain. These are the writers our small publishing company, Ravine Press, will be looking for. These constitute those hidden voices that need to speak.
‘Good prose is like a windowpane,’ Orwell said, and indeed it is. Here’s the rub: what you write needs to be almost completely unnoticeable: the extraordinary sitting within the ordinary. As a commissioning editor I don’t wish to feel your discomfort within your writing (or all the smears on the pane); writing needs to surprise and thrill me by making me believe it’s there but I don’t happen to have noticed it. There is a rich view to be had through that windowpane, and we at Ravine Press want to find those writers who want to provide that.
If you’re the kind who wants to write a book but haven’t done it yet, there is room for you to learn your craft with professionals. Alongside taking on the exceptionally skilled writers at Ravine, we will be developing a sister company to help the not so skilled with a professional publishing service, assistance and tips - which includes the vital editing process.
Ravine Press will be championing subjects such as psychology, autism, prehistory, magical realism, science fiction and environmentalism. It goes without saying that having shed the mainstream publishing industry, I am happy, at last, to have an opportunity to help and enjoy the work of those who bleed.
The war is on, and we women at Ravine are not aiming to take prisoners.
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