The End is Nigh (HURRAY!)

If you’ve been keeping an eye on our blog recently, you might have seen Naomi talking about her preparations for the Bologna Book Fair on her ‘Day in the Life’ vlog. Well, Bologna is upon us, and today Naomi will walk you through her not-so-mixed emotions about saying farewell to all that preparation…

Bologna Schedules!

Last night, for the first time in about five weeks, I left the office at a normal time (6pm) LIKE A NORMAL PERSON. I didn’t arrive home with my mind still whirring about emails I had/hadn’t sent, invites I had/hadn’t RSVP’d to, hotel rooms I knew were definitely booked because I had checked them three billion times but was still convinced something would go wrong about. No, I arrived home at midnight, slightly wobbly on rose wine, because BOLOGNA PREP IS DONE. IT IS DONE.

Well, it is done for this year. And London is just around the corner. And then it will be Frankfurt before you know it. BUT FOR NOW – no more book fair schedules!

This year was a bumper edition – we had a record number of people going, so this meant organising from scratch three people’s schedules, plus coordinating and remotely organising two other people’s.  On top of that, things were complicated further this year as the Bonnier International Sales Conference is this week, meaning I had to get everything ready two days earlier than normal. But whatever.

Flights and hotels were sorted in October, but not everyone is arriving at the same time, so this meant making sure the various different dates were booked for the right people, and me and the travel agent getting ourselves thoroughly muddled on more than one occasion. FYI people – it doesn’t help when your professional name differs from the one on your passport…

Then came the appointments. A few very organised people were emailing in December with requests, but January is when it kicks off in earnest. Over the past two and a half months I have sent emails to hundreds of people requesting appointments, almost none of which were met with ‘Sure! Sounds good.’ responses – so then you enter the negotiation phase, where you try to find something that will work. I find you quickly get to know and empathise with a person when there is a mutual burden of organising book fair schedules connecting you – I had to ring someone else’s assistant this year to try to rearrange something and she greeted me (somewhat wearily) like an old friend.

If you’ve started emailing people, this means (hopefully) that you’ve got your blank template ready. For those that don’t know, book fairs are intense – REALLY intense – so although it is tough for me to organise them, I get that it will be horrendous for someone going if their schedule isn’t 100% correct – hence why I put the kind of effort into organising them that I do. Everyone’s days are divided into half an hour slots (starting at 9, finishing at 6) and then that day will be filled to the brim with these half hour appointments. They don’t get a break for lunch, and although the appointments stop at 6,  they will then usually be attending at least one drinks reception (usually two) before heading off to a dinner somewhere. SO, if something is wrong (time/location of the appointment usually) it throws a massive spanner in the works.

This means you need a very, VERY organised system of keeping track of what times you’ve offered to what people, where you’ve said the meeting will take place, and then whether the person has confirmed that meeting (ALWAYS repeat back what you’ve arranged in your final email – then if something goes wrong you know you were right!). I personally like to use Excel, as it means I can colour-code the hell out of it. Italics means appointment has been suggested but not confirmed, red means it is confirmed, orange means the person whose schedule you are organising has requested you keep the time free for something, yellow means ‘extra-curricular’ (drinks, dinners, etc.) and green means ‘travel/free time’. Everyone I do the schedules for knows my system now, and although they find the Excel spread sheet useful to look at as an overview, they also prefer to have a more traditional day-by-day breakdown on a Word document. This means re-typing out everything, but actually this is a good time to double-check all the appointments against your original emails – meaning really nothing should be getting through the net.

However, for all my complaining about them, there is a kind of manic pleasure to be taken in watching a book fair schedule grow from an empty Excel spread sheet into the packs I was distributing yesterday: brightly coloured manila folders with taxi details, flight details, hotel details, further taxi details, book fair passes (x2; one for the weekend and one for the week) the full Word breakdown of the schedule plus the overview and day-by-day Excel one, THEN maps for each of their personal evening schedules, with invitations attached. Plus these things organised into daily mini-folders, with copies of everything too, natch. Let’s just say this kind of thing really brings out the Monica in me.

So, it is with not much regret that I say – God’s speed, mighty Bologna schedules. Have a great fair and see lots of interesting books.

Please don’t be wrong.

Urban Legends

This week is National Storytelling Week, and so I thought it would be a bit of fun to do a blog on my favourite urban legends. They’re a bit weird, but the best urban legends always are!

1) Dick Whittington and his Cat

Not just a pantomime starring failed TV stars! Richard Whittington was a real man, who really did become Mayor of London three times, but as for whether the Bow Bells really did call him back to London, or whether his cat was the basis of his fortune (it ridded a sultan’s palace of mice, apparently) is more the stuff of legend. You can see a memorial to Dick’s cat on Highgate Hill – not bad for a fictional moggy.

Photo Attributed to Julian Osley

2) The Corpse on the Tube

I can’t tell you the number of times I have been told this story by someone who knows someone who knows someone who this actually happened to: the friend of a friend of a friend was on the tube late one night, and there was a person asleep opposite them. They noticed they didn’t seem to be moving much, and just as they were about to see if the person needed help, the person sat next to them stops them and says: “Listen mate, I’m a doctor, and that person’s not sleeping. They’re dead.”

But why would there be a corpse on the tube?! And why wouldn’t the doctor want to help? It makes no sense.

Spooky!

3) Old Mother Red Cap

This one is a particular favourite as it’s a legend local to me – Jinney Bingham, or ‘The Shrew of Kentish Town’ / ‘The Crone of Camden’ lived in a cottage where the The World’s End pub now stands in Camden. Hers is a pretty grim legend – her parents were hung as witches when she was a child, and after giving birth to an illegitimate daughter at sixteen she slipped into poverty, and, allegedly, witchcraft. If she was a witch, it didn’t do much to help her, as she was eventually found dead and so stiff that the undertakers had to break her bones to fit her into her coffin. Before she died though, she made this one prophecy: “Before the good folk of this kingdom be undone, Shall Highgate Hill stand in the midst of London.” Jinney now allegedly haunts The World’s End – which probably suits its heavy metal patrons just fine.

Photo Attributed to Duncan Harris

4) Banksy vs. King Robbo

This one puts the ‘urb’ in ‘urban’ – this is a fun legend that is best depicted here, but in a nutshell, Bristol-based graffiti artist Banksy majorly annoyed London boy King Robbo when he ‘wallpapered over’ one of Robbo’s Camden pieces. What ensued is a hilarious and witty tit-for-tat graffiti argument, but with plenty of legend along the way – it’s not known if the two artists were battling themselves or whether it was their ‘teams’, and whether or not King Robbo is even still alive is much in debate.

Photo Attributed to Matt Brown

5) The Dog in the Suitcase

Similar to ‘The Corpse on the Tube’, I’ve been told this one so many times that now I just interrupt people when they try to tell me it. The legend goes thusly: a friend of a friend of a friend was asked to look after a neighbour’s beloved dog for the weekend. Unfortunately, the dog dies (exactly how is a matter of some debate). Friend panics, and rings the local vet to see if they can destroy the dog’s remains before the neighbour returns (friend plans on telling neighbour dog ran away) – vet says fine, but you’ll have to bring the dog to me. Friend has no car, and doesn’t want to get a cab (considering the next part of this story – WHY?!) so PUTS DOG IN SUITCASE and gets on the tube. Obviously, the dead dog is heavy. So, when friend gets out of the tube and is trying to heave the suitcase up the stairs, a kindly stranger offers to help. Stranger picks up suitcase – and runs off. Friend is left gawping on platform… but is presumably quite relieved, as the dead dog is gone.

Thus concludes my favourite London urban legends – and if this kind of thing is up your street, you might want to consider picking up a copy of Alison Rattle’s The Quietness when it comes out in March. Based partly on the life of notorious Victorian baby-farmer (read: baby-killer) Margaret Waters, we will be bringing out a bonus-content e-edition of the book, which will include all the facts behind the story. Also, let me know what your favourite urban legends are – and whether you’ve heard any of these ones yourself!

Great Expectations for Adaptations

This blog may be a bit controversial considering it will be going our to hoards of all y’all book lovers, but has anyone ever considered that sometimes… SOMETIMES… the film is better than the book?

I went to see the new Les Miserables film this weekend, and I LOVED it. I’m a huge, huge fan of the stage musical, and so I was expecting to be a little under-whelmed in comparison, but I can safely say it’s just as good – and Anne Hathaway’s performance of ‘I Dreamed A Dream’ trumps anything I’ve seen on stage, just based on sheer emotional intensity. When I was 15, my school play for that year was Les Mis. I was cast as ‘Prostitute 3′ and ‘Grantaire’ (one of the students – the one that’s always drinking), and this sparked a huge obsession with everything Les Miserables related. Naturally, this lead me to try and read the original Victor Hugo book, and wow, was I let down. It’s long – REALLY long – and un-bel-iev-ab-ly slow. There are a million characters and subplots that do nothing except gum up the narrative, and worse, there is no singing! Also my two favourite characters (Enjolras and Eponine) are barely featured – but hey, there is a 30 page description of the Paris sewer system, so it’s not all lose-lose. I have no qualms in saying that not only is the stage and film adaptation better than the book, the online fan-fiction is a MILLION times better than the book. If not a little weird in places.

So, I’ve been thinking about a few more cases where (I think) the adaptation beats the original. Here’s my top three:

1) Apocalypse Now (adapted from Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad)

A school book I LOATHED due to its horrendous racism and general sucky colonialist excuse-ism. I know it’s of its time, but I don’t have to like it. Pace is again an issue here, and not even the beautiful new Penguin Classics cover can convince me to give this another go. The film, however, is one of my perennial favourites.

2) The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald

God I’ve tried to like this book. It should be so up my street – parties, glamour, romance, deceit, – but somehow, I prefer to see Robert Redford act out all of these things rather than have boring old Nick whinge on about how awful his fabulous lifestyle is. I’ll be very interested to see what the new adaptation is like too.

3) The Crimson Petal and The White – Michel Faber

This is a bit of a fib, as I actually also love the book, but the BBC’s recent adaptation was just stunning. It was so well done, trimming fat where fat needed trimming, without ever losing any of the story’s power, detail or momentum. I was personally VERY glad they chose to remove some of the book’s more shocking scenes, as there is definitely some things I’m happy to leave to my imagination.

4) Any and All James Bond Films – Ian Fleming

Has anyone ever read the books? Could they really be better than the movies??

And how about you — have you ever found yourself aghast after seeing a movie adaptation of a novel, either because you loved it so much or hated it completely?

Gender, Gender, Everywhere

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock recently, you’ll know that here at Hot Key Towers we’ve been wildly celebrating the fantastic news that Sally Gardner’s MAGGOT MOON has just won the Costa Children’s Book Award. There’s obviously been lots of press about the awards recently, and one of the key things people have been talking about is that for the first time ever, all of the winners are women.

This got me thinking a bit. Would we all have been quite so surprised (even if it is nice surprise) if all the winners had been men? Why is an award’s list dominated by women so newsworthy? There is a general assumption  that Children’s and YA fiction authors tend to be female, but a) I’m not sure that’s really true, and b) if you were to look at the statistics relating to the gender of prize-winning Children’s and YA authors you certainly wouldn’t think so.

A lot of the credit for this blog should go to this Lady Business blog – they’ve done an amazing round-up of all the stats surrounding the main Children’s and YA prizes, and looked at the proportion of male, female and male & female protagonists in prize-winning books, and the proportion of male and female authors who won.

Surprisingly for an industry apparently ‘dominated’ by women, female authors won 56% of the awards looked at, compared to male author’s winning 42% of the time. If women really do dominate Children’s and YA fiction, wouldn’t we expect them to be winning significantly more awards for it?

When it comes to prize-winning protagonists, the boys clearly lead. 49% of prize-winning books have a male protagonist, compared to female protagonists (36%) and male & female protagonists (15%).

This is a bit alarming to me, but – Strident Feminist and graduate of an MA in Gender Studies though I may be – ultimately I suppose, I have to ask myself whether these gender divides really matter to the people that matter – i.e. the children and young adults reading the books. People are always saying ‘ooh boys won’t read books with female protagonists’ – but can you really say the success of something like THE HUNGER GAMES is down to only girls buying it? Similarly, Hermione Granger was recently voted ‘Best Film Role Model’ (OK, OK, it’s for FILMS but it’s based on a book people) in a poll voted for by children and teens – Harry himself didn’t even make it into the top ten.

So what do you think? Should we be trying to increase the presence of girls (and women) in prize-winning fiction (heck, fiction more generally) or does it not matter? Also were your favourite characters growing up usually boys or girls – and did you care? Let us know!

All credit to Sara O’Connor, the Lady Business blog and this very interesting article in Publishers’ Weekly for sparking off this debate in my head!

Red Ink vs. Kentish Town – A Musical Love Story

Few things thrill me more than when I read a book, or watch a TV program, and there is SOMETHING FROM MY REAL LIFE IN IT.

Imagine my delight then, when I first read Julie Mayhew’s unbelievably wonderful RED INK, and discovered that my own dear and beloved Kentish Town features quite heavily in it. Not THAT heavily, I grant you (the book is mainly divided between Crete and East Finchley) but old K-Town has a pretty significant part to play in the plot. I’ll say no more, but when you read it, you’ll know.

Anyway – Julie has prepared a playlist on Spotify (here) which is designed to reflect the mood of the book as it progresses (kind of like a soundtrack) and I thought perhaps you might like to listen to it whilst going on a ‘Features of Kentish Town Virtual Walking Guide’. So, come with me now on a journey through time and space (but mainly North London), and have a listen whilst you go:

1) ‘One Big Family’ – templecloud

A great and moving song choice – perfect for looking up at the HMV Forum! Just look at its fabulous Art Deco exterior.

So Art Deco!

2) ‘Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want’ – Slow Moving Millie

As we get nearer to Christmas, this is surely a pertinent song choice. And, luckily, you have a great chance of getting what you want if you visit the Kentish Town Pound Stretcher! Funnily enough, this bobby dazzler of a shop is also featured in Imelda May’s song ‘Kentish Town Waltz’. Kentish Town: inspiring a generation.

3) ‘Zorba the Greek’ – Mikis Theodorakis

If you are in the mood for Greek food, look no further than The Phoenician Mediterranean Food Hall. They do a stunning range of baklava, cheese, mezzo and every sort of olive you can imagine. It is also compulsory to hum this song as you browse – fact.

4) ‘The Girl From Ipanema’ – Astrud Gilberto

There are few landmarks more famous in Kentish Town than Rios – but maybe ‘infamous’ is a better word… Errrm, it’s a naturist spa. Let’s skip over that detail,  and enjoy its joyous 80′s facade instead (look at those palm trees!), whilst listening to a bit of Astrud Gilberto and imagining we’re in the REAL Rio, not the (let’s face it) slightly grotty North London version.

5) ‘La Valse d’Amelie’ – Yann Tiersen

Julie has included a lot of the Amelie soundtrack in her playlist (one of my favourite albums! More me real life stuff!), so if you’re in the mood for some whimsy to match these magical tunes, perhaps you’d like to pop in for a pint at The Pineapple – a beautiful pub nestled in amongst multi-coloured houses – and filled with pineapple paraphernalia (it’s also Venue Of Choice for my birthday party this year).

6) ‘I Remember’ – Deadmau5, Kaskade

Well, we have come to the end of our tour. I hope YOU will remember all the magical sites you have seen – and that RED INK is out awfully soon, and is truly brilliant. I will leave you at the station, which seems appropriate – but before I go, I offer a challenge. There is a significant launderette in RED INK, and it’s based in Kentish Town. I cannot find that launderette anywhere. It might be that it’s fictional – but if you find one, let me know. Especially if it happens to be run by Cretians…

Hope you’ve had fun!

History, Music and Wonderful Company – The A WORLD BETWEEN US Book Launch

Last Thursday I was lucky enough to attend the launch event for the brilliant Lydia Syson’s A WORLD BETWEEN US. In classic Lydia/Hot Key fashion, the night was an amazing mix of enormous fun, fascinating historical facts and delicious food and drinks. This was literally my idea of a perfect event – for those of you who don’t know, I LOVE HISTORY. I love history and A WORLD BETWEEN US so much that after reading the book I felt compelled to buy a 1940′s nurse’s cape – which I of course wore that evening.

The launch started with everyone gathering outside of Whitechapel station to meet the marvellous David Rosenberg, who would be taking us on a specially-customised A WORLD BETWEEN US walking tour. If you haven’t read the book yet (if not WHY NOT), I won’t spoil anything for you, but it opens with a young nurse (Felix) finding herself caught up in The Battle of Cable Street. Whilst there, she meets a dashing young fellow called Nat, who is determined to go to Spain and fight against Franco’s fascist forces.

I’m sorry to say that I didn’t meet any dashing young fellows to pick me and spin me around, thus causing my cape to swirl delightfully and flash its red underlining like Felix did. However, I did learn a huge amount, as although I studied the Spanish Civil War at uni, I had no idea that the inspiration for so many young men and women to go and fight was due to their experiences of fascism back home. The East End was a primarily Jewish neighborhood in the 1930′s, and (as David told us on the tour) by the time the International Brigades were recruiting many people had already begun to feel threatened by the anti-semitic and fascist actions of Oswald Mosley and his Black Shirts. The Battle of Cable Street was all about people standing up to fascism and letting people know that they would not let the Black Shirts pass - ¡No pasarán!

 

David Explaining About Oswald Mosley’s Fascist Party

The tour was fascinating and it was so wonderful to see the streets of A WORLD BETWEEN US come alive – Cable Street is very different now to how it was then (there is definitely irony in seeing well-to-do yuppies living in buildings which were once part of an extremely poor slum) but it’s easy enough to find yourself slipping down the narrow and rambling streets of Whitechapel and imagining Felix and Nat whispering together just ahead of you.

Disputes Over Houses Such As These Were a Large Part Of the Tensions That Caused The Battle Of Cable Street

This feeling of falling back in time was only made stronger as we finished the tour at Wilton’s Music Hall – I’d never heard of this place before last Thursday but I will definitely be going back! It’s a wonderful still-somewhat-semi-derelict Victorian building which used to be (unsurprisingly) a music hall. It’s run as a music venue and bar, but the building still needs a lot of work doing to it. Luckily  they’ve just been given a grant by the National Lottery which means they can return the hall to its former glory – which I can’t wait for, as I’m sure it will be stunning and a fantastic music venue once more. Most excitingly, we found out that Wilton’s had acted as a make-shift hospital during the battle!

Wilton’s Music Hall Entrance

We all gathered in a room to the side of the bar (which, appropriately enough, seemed to be hosting a Spanish music night) and enjoyed a wonderful end to the evening listening to speeches, mingling with Lydia’s fascinating guests – and singing International Brigade songs around a piano! I was so pleased that everyone really got into the spirit of things and sang along – all the more impressive considering I don’t think many people had heard the songs before.

Lydia Preparing To Lead Us All In A Rousing Version Of ‘The Internationale’!

So now you’ve heard me waxing lyrical about the evening I can only hope you feel like finding out more and doing some exploring of the area yourself – David regularly runs excellent tours on political activism in the East End, and I can’t recommend popping into Wilton’s for a drink enough! And most importantly of all, I hope you feel compelled to pick up Lydia’s fascinating A WORLD BETWEEN US – I can think of no better introduction to the Spanish Civil War or The Battle of Cable Street, and it’s got a jolly good dash of heroism and romance thrown in too.

Five Writing Tips, or How to Write a Great Short Story by Someone Who Never Has

Today’s blog is a guest post written by the wonderful Jonathan Strahan, who edited our fantastic (and spooky…) short story collection UNDER MY HAT – which is out now! 

So you want to write a short story? A great one? When I was first asked to provide a list of tips on how to write a terrific short story I drew a blank. I’ve not written a short story since high school, so I’m no expert. I’ve not even thought about writing a short story. But then I realised that, like you, I read. I read a lot. And what I mostly read is short fiction. So, it’s possible I might have picked up an idea or two.

1. Write

This might seem obvious, but no one has ever finished a short story without sitting down and actually writing.  I have a folder full of stops and starts on a handful of short stories and novels, but none of them are finished. So, do that. Write. Write every day and finish what you start.

2. Re-write

I know you think you’re finished when you write “The End” at the end of your newly minted short story. You probably are. But it’s possible, just possible, that there’s still a little bit of work left to do. Put it in a drawer for a week, and come back to it fresh. Suddenly you’ll see, if you’re at all like me when I write anything, all sorts of problems with it. You might also let a trusted reader see it. Get their feedback, try to listen to it with an open mind, and be willing to re-write.

3. Read

The only way to learn how to write a great short story is to read great short stories. Read them a lot and think about them. Try to work out how they work and why. Pick a writer whose work you love and see how their stories work. If you love witch stories, try the work of Roald Dahl or Diana Wynne Jones, and see if you can unpick their stories. They knew what they were doing.

4. Keep it short

We are talking about writing short stories after all, so keep it short. You probably only want a single plot line (the story) and a single point of view character (the person whose eyes we’re seeing the story though). Longer stories, novellas and short novels, can sometimes have subplots and more than one point of view character, but basically you only need one.

5. Make your story work

I don’t mean make it great. Of course you’re going to do that. What I mean is make your words count. Everything you write in a short story should do more than one thing. Setting builds character, voice advances plot, and so on. Look very carefully at each scene in your story. You won’t have many of them – this is short after all – so make sure each scene does more than one thing. Each scene should build setting, develop character and move the story forward.  Avoid scenes that only do one thing. You want to avoid your story being dull (which it was never going to be, but you know what I mean) and making sure your scenes are doing the heavy lifting helps.

If you’ve already written a great short story you probably know all of this stuff, and possibly far more. If you’re just starting out, though, it might help. And if you are starting out keep going. You’ll probably write some stinkers. You’ll possibly write some stories that are almost exactly like stories written by people whose work you love. That’s fine. That’s what you should be doing. You have to write through that so you can get to the stories that only you can tell, the ones that are definitely going to be great. And when you do, send them to me. I love great short stories.

Jonathan Strahan

The Times They Are A Changin’

As you might already know, yesterday our very own Sarah Odedina was featured in The Telegraph commenting on the Publishers Association’s news that sales of children’s e-books were nearly triple what they were this time last year. Sarah (and the rest of us) think this is “marvellous” and (as we’ve said before) it’s not HOW children read that’s important – just the fact that they’re reading is.

However, not everyone is so sure. In the same article, Joan Brady said that she felt: “There is a certain amount of gravitas to a page that you don’t get on a screen” and I stumbled upon this article yesterday too, in which author David Gaughran ponders whether e-books are killing the ‘literary’ novel.

David actually concludes that no, e-books are not doing literary titles any harm – their lack of popularity in the charts is mainly due to fans of literary books being a bit more reluctant to buy downloads (but they’re getting there), and that publishers are unsure about how to market literary e-book titles.

I can definitely see where he’s coming from – I was recently desperate to read Slammerkin by Emma Donoghue, but rather than simply download it and access it immediately, I waited to get hold of one of the new special-edition hardbacks Virago has just released. I suppose that was because I wanted to have the book on my shelf (it is exceptionally pretty) and I felt willing to wait – and pay more – for what I was fairly certain would be a classic book.

But that said, digital publishing is becoming more and more exciting, and recently I actually seriously considered buying an iPad just so I could download the multi-touch edition of Maggot Moon (if you have an iPad, DO IT, YOU WILL NOT BE DISAPPOINTED). I wish I was exaggerating. Sorry bank manager.

So maybe it is a case of how we publishers go about producing and marketing our more literary titles in digital format. Luckily here at Hot Key towers ALL of our books will be available in e-book format (this was one of David’s complaints – many publishers don’t convert titles into digital format, especially back-list ones) and our multi-touch editions are actually focusing on our more literary titles.

So, we hope as ever that we can be considered to be leading the way in how digital books are produced, marketed and consumed… but let us know!

Old Slates, New Tablets – Same Difference?

It might feel as though we have done quite a few blogs recently on education, but it’s such an important subject to us, and there is just so much to talk about!

At one of our recent meetings, Sara O’Connor mentioned that during the July Children’s Media Conference it was reported that three schools in the UK now exclusively use electronic tablets to teach, and that South Korea, India and Turkey are launching initiatives to give all children access to tablets.

This got me thinking about how children used to be given slates and chalk to learn on. Much like the electronic tablets, you would be given your own slate, be expected to take very good care of it, and then hand it back at the end of the day. Also, just like electronic tablets, slates were considered an expensive break-through in learning technology – a revolutionary way for children to learn to read and write.

I don’t doubt that tablets are a really useful tool for children who don’t find traditional methods of learning accessible. However, (and although I’m all for children having access to technology – especially children who might not get that access at home) I am a bit concerned that old-fashioned hand-writing might suffer if we’re only teaching our children to type – or to write using their fingers on a touchscreen. We already know we don’t send letters like we used to and I wouldn’t be surprised if one day hand-writing becomes completely obsolete. Also, I am a bit concerned that if we become completely reliant on computers, we are tempting some kind of SKYNET future. ALSO – how will kids throw notes to each other in class if there are no notebooks?!

But that could just be me being a fuddy-duddy – what does everyone else think? Is handwriting dead – and should we therefore adapt our teaching to reflect that – or should we make sure our kids still know how to use a pen and paper?

Team 15 – You’re Hired!

So if you’re a regular reader of our blog, you’ll know that last week myself, Becca and Cait were invited down to Chichester to see how our colleagues at Autumn Publishing run their offices – which included a trip to their warehouse.  This is because we are members of Bonnier’s Team 15 – which is, in their words: ‘selected rising talent from within the group’. Rather flatteringly, this means they think members have the potential to go far within the company. If you would like to see an embarrassing photo of us, go to the Bonnier Publishing website , admire the animation of our CEO, select the S.T.A.R book from the bookshelf, and then select ‘Team 15 2012-2014′. Or, there is a nicer one of us here:

So on Friday we were back in Chichester for the first of our planned get-togethers. This meant all the Team 15 members – including Liz and Craig from Five Mile Press in Australia – were gathered together for some training, but also rather a lot of (fiercely competitive!) fun. Richard Johnson, our Group CEO, and Sharon Parker, our Chief Operating Officer, basically run Team 15, and so they explained to us that our mission for the day was to complete an ‘Apprentice’-style task, where we would be responsible for creating the Next Big Thing In Publishing. We would then present the idea to Derek Freeman, our Executive Chairman, and the winning idea would be taken into development, presented at Frankfurt, and the winners be given a small royalty from any sales!

We were immediately split into two teams – Cait and I (plus other colleagues from Templar, Autumn, Five Mile Press and Bonnier Publishing) on Team 2, and Becca on Team 1 (plus others too!). Team Leaders were picked, and we were off.

I will say right now that it is REALLY HARD to come up with the Next Big Thing In Publishing. Most of our day was spent trying to come up with something completely new and exciting, but also practical and (most importantly) profitable – which is tough! You can have the most amazing ideas in the world, but unfortunately you’ve got to think about the costings of them too. We also had the fantastic Steven Edney from The Edney Partnership  on hand to give advice on leadership skills, idea development and presentation – did you know that body language and tone of voice count for over 70% of how well a presentation is judged?

The presentations went really well – so well in fact, that both teams won! We were assured that this was no cop-out decision – they just thought both ideas were really great, and had brilliant potential. Now the teams have until September to really get our business plans together, and then we’ll present them again…

And as for what the Next Big Thing In Publishing could be? Well, you will have to wait until Frankfurt to find out!

Massive thanks to Richard, Sharon, Derek, Steven and the rest of Team 15 for a fantastic few days and a really brilliant training exercise!