It’s hard to believe, but there is a dark side to publishing.
And we here at Hot Key Books have a sworn duty to expose it. We have video evidence of this evil that we risk our lives to show to you.
We have secretly recorded the CEO arriving for another day, to bend the dark side of the Force to the will of the Bonnier Publishing Empire.
May the Force be with you.
P.S. We’re trying to make the Dancing CEO a monthly feature. See this video, at about 1.00. We’ll let you know if we suceed!
Posted in Publishing Industry Insight
A little while back we invited the blogging community the chance to guest blog for us, and today we have our first taker! Please welcome Duncan from Literature for Lads who takes the floor to talk about boys and reading…
“Boys just don’t read”. Is this perhaps one of the most popular myths of contemporary education? I would certainly argue that the concept of boys being reluctant readers or unwilling to read fiction is not an experience that rings true with me in my role as school librarian at the all-boys school, Stewart’s Melville College, Edinburgh. Although I have a somewhat captive audience here the sheer number of titles published and aimed squarely at young adult males would suggest that there is a real appetite for fiction amongst this particular demographic.
However something I have recognized in my role as librarian is that despite the popularity (not to mention influence that they can have) there are very few book review blogs dedicated to the discerning male reader. Apart from the excellent and longstanding Book Zone for Boys, the blogging world can appear as a rather large sea of pink and purple.
There are many excellent book blogs out there (www.bookangelbooktopia.com & www.thebookette.co.uk are two great blogs which provided inspiration for my own blog) but many are not particularly ‘boy-friendly’. (Boys are notoriously bad at ignoring anything that can be construed as girly, i.e. flowers, the colour pink, cute pictures of kittens). In order to try and redress this balance I decided to launch the book review blog, Literature for Lads.
The concept of Literature for Lads was, and remains, a simple one. Read and review books that I feel boys (and men, as I review across a range of ages from 10+ – adult) would be interested in reading. In addition to the book review I felt it was important to include some extra information at the end of the review as I feel boys are always keen to be able to explore further. At the end of each review I include a link to the author and/or book website and also a You Tube video. The video is usually a book trailer, or if a trailer is not available, a video which links to the story or the author of the book.
Within the site I also feature interviews with authors and sometimes I’m lucky enough to have authors write guest posts. Each of these appeal to boys as they enjoy finding out about the person behind the books. The reviews follow the same structure, (book summary followed by approx. 300 word reviews) and I’ve tried to keep the layout as clear and easy to navigate as possible. Boys are notoriously lazy and easily distracted so it’s important to keep distractions to a minimum!
Literature for Lads was launched in September and I have been overwhelmed with the response I’ve received. Authors, publishers and fellow librarians have all given valuable feedback and the site does seem to be attracting a regular readership. (Maintaining this readership whilst balancing my day job can be a tricky balance!)
There have been a number of books published recently which are guaranteed to be a hit with boys and I have been lucky enough to be able read and review some of them. Here are a few of my highlights…
• May Contain Nuts (The Word of Norm) – Jonathan Meres, “Full of jokes, comedy scenes, and rip-roaring laughs”
• Socks are not Enough – Mark Lowery, “A hilarious debut novel from Mark Lowery….full of both laugh out loud moments and points where you will find yourself snickering behind your hands.”
• Blade 1: Enemies – Tim Bowler, “The pace of the book is electric, with suspense and mystery in nearly every chapter”
Duncan
www.literatureforlads.com
Thanks Duncan! If anyone else would like to take the floor and blog about a subject of their choice please email me!
It’s been a little while since my first Did You Miss? post, so I’ve built up a few more good things to highlight for you lovely blog readers.
There are so many people out there who are quite a lot smarter than me. Luckily, these people write down some of the smart things they think so that I can read them – sometimes for free, sometimes not. Here are a few people, all connected either largely or loosely to the publishing world, that I think are smart:
John Green – YA author and online personality. Have you seen his and Hank’s new educational vlogging? It’s a Crash Course in the history of the world and the basics of biology in weekly video blogs. It’s smart and funny and informative.
Darcy Pattinson – writing coach and author of the must have, go and buy it, DON’T QUESTION IT, JUST BUY IT revision workbook called NOVEL METAMORPHOSIS. Or at the very least, look at her website.
Rob Horning at The New Inquiry - He’s written a thoughtful and thought-provoking analysis of the Hunger Games. Here’s a good extract from the article: “We’re all supposed to use Facebook and Twitter, etc., but no one can read and “share” for very long without starting to have some reservations. The creepy voyeurism and exhibitionism of it is palpable, no matter how much of a digital native one might be.”
Robin Sloan – if you have five minutes and an iPad or iPhone, I was very impressed by this free app called Fish about the difference between “like” and “love” on the internet.
Naomi Dunford of IttyBiz – she’s a business coach for small businesses and writers. She sends around a very useful, very amusing free newsletter with practical thinking about how people can sell things better.
Let me know if you like any of these!
A big day for many authors and illustrators today – the shortlists for the Carnegie Medal and Kate Greenaway Award were announced. Cue lots of congratulations all round and happy authors and publishers. There are some absolutely fantastic books on the shortlists this year.
At Hot Key obviously we don’t have any books out yet to qualify (fingers crossed for next year…) but it prompted a series of conversations around the Carnegie Shortlist that all went ‘ooh I love that book‘, ‘ah that one definitely deserves to win‘ and ‘aw, I really must read that!’ (N.B. we’re not snubbing the picture books – we love picture books, we just don’t publish picture books…so, we thought we’d focus on the fiction) Anyway, each year there is an official shadowing scheme which runs alongside the awards involving children from many schools around the country reading and discussing the books from longlist, shortlist and through to the winning announcement. And so we thought, well, why don’t we do the same?
Each week (if we can keep up!) we’ll be discussing a different book on the Carnegie shortlist and we’d love you to join in. Here are the books we have to read:
So far I’ve only read the already multi-award-winning A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness (amazing book which as discussed on Twitter today, made me feel VERY SAD at the end) and my one that got away Annabel Pitcher’s My Sister Lives on the Mantlepiece – which you all know my feelings about (and if you don’t then basically, LOVED IT). But that’s only 2 out of 8, so the challenge is on.
But what to start with? Suggestions and reviews please?
When I was younger I always imagined being an author was the most glamorous thing. How lucky they are to spend all day in front of a (then) typewriter, making up stories that hoards of fans will read. In my mind they went to posh dinners, fancy clubs and never had to worry about a boring day in an office.
When I started working in publishing, many moons ago as a marketing assistant, authors continued to be swathed in mysterious glamour, protected from us marketing folk by editors and agents, meeting only at the annual author party where we spent a day studying our catalogue for who’d written/illustrated what so we could be trusted not to say the wrong thing on the one day we were allowed to TALK TO AUTHORS.
As my career progressed through various marketing departments and companies, my involvement with authors in turn increased and gradually I started to see through the curtain of mystery. And, I started to realise that being an author is actually quite hard (much like publishing is hard – see here, and here) and in most cases, not glamorous at all.
This has become more evident in recent times when I surprised myself (not to mention colleagues) by accidentally falling for one of these strange, mysterious author beings, and now being the girlfriend of a full time writer. (For those of you who don’t know / hadn’t figured it out from Twitter – it’s teen thriller author Will Hill, who’s epic second book Department 19:The Rising comes out this week). Suddenly I see first hand the ups and downs of the life of an author: I see and share in the delight of a great review, a lovely email sent by a fan, a fantastic event, a foreign rights sale, the proud moment the finished copy arrives from the printers. But I also see and feel the stresses and pressures: how many times in one day an Amazon ranking might get checked; the worries that come near book release that people will like the book, and better still, buy a copy or two; the occasional calculation of how many books need to be sold before an advance will earn out; the challenge of keeping an inbox under control and replying to all those ‘when you have a sec, would you mind sending me…’ emails that come from people like me, who before now didn’t consider that the recipient of said email is also trying to write a book, with all of these things going on in the background.
And being involved in an author’s life, has suddenly gained me access to a whole community of other authors, all of whom share the same worries, joys and stresses. In fact, even here at HKB, we have two secret authors in our midst – in her previous days at Working Partners, Sara O’Connor created the middle-grade My Sister, the Vampire series and wrote four of the books, and our Publisher, Emily Thomas, is *drum roll* behind the scenes, actually author Lee Monroe, of Dark Heart Forever and the other Dark Hearts books.
It’s funny that marketing and sales people tend not to get too close to authors in some companies because as soon as you do, you start to think differently about the way you approach your job. It means that on our first week, we decided it was important for our authors to know who we all are in sales and marketing, and whom they need to speak to if they have any problems/concerns. It’s also why, when our website launches, it will have a special section just for our authors, where they’ll be able to access marketing materials, sales reports, and event dates from wherever they are, without us spamming their inbox and interrupting their writing time. It’s a small thing, but when I ran the idea past the author I live with, it certainly got a BIG thumbs up from him.
Authors have so many options open to them about how to publish their books than those days when I pictured my heroes swanning around at literary dinners. It’s the role of publishers to make life easier for authors, not harder, and we can only do that by understanding and making them part of the process as much as possible. So to our authors, and future authors – we’re here, we get it and we can’t wait to start telling people about your books.
And until then, I’m off to check the Amazon ranking of The Rising.
Sarah
A small weekly round up.
1. Bologna is over! The news from the front has been hugely exciting and we’re so glad that our amazing titles are being well received. We are glad to have the HKB team back in full force at Northburgh House though!
2. We were all absolutely astounded at the talent and genius emerging from the boys’ pen with Jan’s incredible graphic illustration.
So… Inspired by Jan and Meg, I had a go at creating my own comic charting my first experience of a book fair! 
My first Book Fair and my first go at illustration (and my first time going to work as a Tiger)… That’s what’s so brilliant about working in publishing. Every day brings firsts, things that are new, exciting, and a whole new challenge!
Posted in Book Talk, People We Like, Publishing Industry Insight
Tagged Our Books, Team Hot Key
Our correspondent in the field, Kate Manning, has been updating us on all Bologna happenings this morning. And there is
… The Pink Bar is closed!
So to compensate for lack of Pink Bar stories and to distract from the fact that some of us are STILL dressed up as animals, we have for you here Bologna 2012: the walking tour. Actually, it’s more of a running tour, so if you do happen to spot any familiar faces, you will be awarded a million points. (1,000,000 = one hot cross bun).
Thanks Kate – now back to the studio!
Posted in Misc., Publishing Industry Insight
In the comics vein of previous posts our inhouse cartoonist Jan (with a two year comics education from Sweden) did this little diary.
I’ve always enjoyed that magic combination of words and pictures to create stories and express ideas – from baby books to picture books and graphic novels for adults. Graphic novels and comics can explain complicated political, cultural and existential ideas with ease, making them accessible and a pleasure to read. Some of the best graphic novels tell apparently untellable stories through this medium like Maus and Palestine (read our read and tell blog posts about these).
As a child I read whatever I could get my hands on – including the weekly Dandy and Beano and the frankly weird Rupert the Bear annuals. I was never really into superheroes or fantasy, preferring explorations of domestic worlds or periods of history.
As an adult, favourites include Persepolis Marjane Satrapi, Fluffy by Simone Lia and Kikki de Montparnasse by José-Louis Bocquet and Catel Muller. I’ve been following the Cape/Observer/Comica Graphic Short Story Prize (bit of a mouthful!) which has been discovering and publishing the graphic writers and artists of the future for the past five years. One of my favourites is Paint by Viviane McDermid and you can see a selection of Brian Talbot’s favourites here.
For the past ten years whilst working with children’s books, I’ve watched with interest the UK’s attempt to adopt comics and graphic novels for itself. There is a strong culture of comics in countries like the USA, Japan, France and Italy but they have never taken off to same degree here. Projects like David Fickling’s DFC may not have been a commercial success but have highlighted rising stars in children’s graphic illustration like Sarah McIntyre, Dave Shelton and Kate Brown. Take a peek at this new comic creation, The Phoenix.
In the UK we have a strange snobbish attitude to comics, indeed to using pictures with text in general. It’s often viewed as childish and children are encouraged to leave illustrated books behind as quickly as possible in favour of text heavy chapter books. Images are seen as less important to our children’s education to words, something Anthony Browne, the former Children’s Laureate highlighted, urging the need for visual literacy in our education system. It’s well documented that people spend longer reading the information panels next to art works in galleries than the artwork itself.
So, I’d been enjoying reading all these comics, when one day as I was cycling to work mulling over little stories from my childhood, it suddenly struck me – I should do a graphic novel class! That would be the perfect way to tell my stories. With the help of Paul Gravett’s fantastic website, full of useful links about graphic novels and comics, I came across this jewel of a class – Drawing the Graphic Novel with Emily Haworth-Booth at the Prince’s Drawing School. This was the only class I found that was open to people of all drawing abilities which was encouraging, and the Princes Drawing School promised to be an ‘experience of art college for all’. Very appealing since I hadn’t done any drawing for over 15 years so I was beyond ‘rusty’ at drawing.
And what a great course it’s been – I couldn’t recommend it more. Taught by Cape/Observer/Comica Graphic Short Story Prize runner–up Emily Haworth-Booth (check out her brilliant comic here) and full of enthusiastic students (including Timothy Bird who does a great weekly comic strip for his website) with a range of technical abilities, styles and ideas.
Emily has taken us step by step through the process of putting a comic together through drawing and writing exercises, access to a life model, looking at other graphic novel artists as well as lots of great advice and feedback on our work. I’ve learned so many great tips – using thumb nails that you can cut out and move about to create your story, using different types of transitions and the inking process. I’ve got so much out of the course – at the very least two hours every week to myself to draw … a rare thing with a full time job and kids. I had forgotten how rewarding (and frustrating) it is to create something.
Thumbnails for final project
We’ve all been working towards a final project that we’ll discuss this evening – here’s my first attempt at drawing the graphic novel. As you can see I still have so much to learn and am sorely tempted to do the follow-up class in the summer term where you can further develop your projects and skills. I might just do it!
Posted in Book Talk, Misc., Publishing Industry Insight
Tagged Books We Love, Dear Auntie Hot Key
A few weeks ago we started a series of blogs on our friends in the book blogging community – asking them how they got into it, why they like it, and tips for anyone wanting to start out now. We’ve had some lovely responses – if you missed them you can read parts one to three below:
And we’re not done! Today, Liz from My Favourite Books steps up to the chair to talk you through her experiences…
Name & blog
I am Liz de Jager and I run My Favourite Books
Tell us a bit about your blog…
MFB started as a blog about genre fiction. Then, it grew from there when I started getting followers and people engaged with me as a reader and reviewer and publishers liked what we were doing. More stuff came in, not just genre books, and I threw open the gates and now we review everything we can get our paws on. I’ve got a great team on MFB – I dragged my husband, Mark in on the reviews and my friend and fellow-aspiring writer, Sarah Bryars. Together the three of us chomp our way through books by the hundreds. And we love it.
How did you start blogging?
I wanted a place to remember the books I was reading. As an aspiring writer I thought (laughs hysterically) that this would be a good way to suss out how it’s done. I took Stephen King’s advice to “read read read” more literally than he intended, maybe. What started as something personal and unformed and vague for myself grew into something much bigger and now I can’t remember a time when my reading was without wanting to tell the world about this awesome book, or this annoying character, or this hot boy or this kick-ass girl, or this mad adventure the main characters are going on.
What’s the best thing about blogging?
The thing about blogging, once it’s in the blood, nothing gets it out. The perks of becoming a blogger: meeting people you admire in the industry, not just your favourite author but editors you have heard great things about; being able to help bring a new debut author to the attention of readers who may not have even thought about picking up that title because they don’t know about them; finding older gems and reminding the world about them; showcasing diverse voices and new genres to try and taking part in mad book challenges but also, being treated with respect by publishers, by people who value our input and respect our integrity.
What kind of books are you most excited about reviewing?
I love both adult fiction and YA and MG [Middle Grade] titles. I have a soft spot for picture books too and have started a combined blog for picture books with two others. It’s called The Picturebook Shelf and it’s early days yet, but we are hoping it’s going to rock even more than it does now. I love falling in love characters. I don’t care if they are hot teen boys or girls or strong adult protagonists. Character and voice sells a book for me.
Who are your favourite authors?
Where do I start? Joe Abercrombie for fantasy, along with George RR Martin and David Eddings. For urban fantasy I would say Kate Griffin, Mike Carey, Kevin Hearne, Ben Aronovich. Contemporary fiction my vote goes to Julie Cohen, Katie Fforde, Sarah Addison Allen and Ali Shaw. In crime, Jack Reacher rules my heart, so it’s Lee Childs and Duane Swierczynski and Tess Gerritson all the way. For YA and MG titles: Frances Hardinge, Cornelia Funke, Sarwat Chadda, Sarah Singleton, Tanya Byrne (everyone MUST read Heart Shaped Bruise the second it comes out), Courtney Summers, Marie Lu, Kirsten Cashore, Will Hill, Garth Nix, Anthony McGowan, Sam Enthoven, Graham Marks, Bill Hussey, Karen Mahoney…and I’ll stop there for now or we’ll be here all day.
Do you have any advice for new bloggers?
Don’t do it for the free books. Be honest with yourself: when those books start coming in, realise that it is going to put masses of pressure on you. And you are going to suffer guilt. You will be utterly miserable and yes, it may be nice at first, seeing all those pretty books on your shelf but you will have to review them. And you have to fit that in around your homework, your housework, the kids, your husband or your wife. Start small, buy the books you love to read, review them and be honest. Let your own voice develop and grow and then totally own it. Follow other blogs, see what you like and don’t like. Find us on Twitter and talk to us. Don’t ask us to link to your site if you’ve got 3 books up for review. It sounds arrogant, but really, build your site first. Show the community and publishers that you’re not just after free books. We’ve seen enough flash-in-the-pan blogs come and go. Get to know how things work. Don’t beg for books online on Twitter or Facebook. Go out and buy them or better yet, get them from the library. Never stop reading and telling people about the amazing, annoying, disturbing, beautiful, romantic, adventure packed books you are reading. If you shout loud enough, they’ll listen.
Thanks so much Liz and all the bloggers who have taken part so far!
We’d love to invite any book bloggers who would be interested, to guest post for us occasionally about a subject of their choice – if you fancy it email me here!
Sarah
