Me And My Big Mouth

Behind The Counter

Watched Shopgirl at the weekend.  The movie is based on a novella by Steve Martin.  I haven't read it but I have read his follow up, The Pleasure Of My Company, which was really rather good, excellent in fact (sort of Curious Incident 20 years on).

The movie stars Claire Danes which is always a reason for me to watch something and she is wonderful as the shopgirl working the glove counter at Saks on 5th Avenue who has to choose between Jason Schwartzman's awkward, well-meaning slacker and Steve Martin's rich but cold older man.

This is one of those quiet, subtle films that never threatens to be a classic but is eminently watchable with lots of nice touches and clever moments.  All three actors are great, and Martin as the straight guy is very good indeed, if not as cute as Danes.

Well worth recording on your Sky+ or whatever you have as it is doing the rounds on the movie channels at the moment.  I really must read the book now.

Summer Sunday Music

Bought the new Feist and Arctic Monkeys CDs yesterday.  Was pondering the latest Killers and Avril Lavigne as well but I cannot bring myself to pay more than a tenner for CDs nowadays and HMV had these both for £12.95.

The Arctics are noisy and lots of fun, Feist is perfect summer Sunday music and has been on repeat play all of today.  The kids love it too.

Some Feist for you.

And some more.

See you Monday.

We Are The Champions!

Scunthorpe United secure the League One championship with a classy 3-1 defeat by Blackpool.  Fortunately for us, Bristol City lost as well which means that with one match to play we cannot be caught.  In 30 years of supporting them, this is our finest moment.

We'll probably come straight back down next year.

(The relevance of the image will only make sense to people born before 1980 or so).

Friday Project Stateside

A really nice piece by one of our authors, Jamieson Villeneuve, is up at the American Chronicle website.  The editors liked it so much they are giving him a regular gig.  Jamieson had been working on a novel for us but that has been overtaken by a memoir based on his blog about living with cerebral palsy.  We are publishing towards the end of summer next year.

Independent Spirit

Indie publishers listen up!  Borders have just launched a permanent display highlighting the best books from UK independent presses.  Every shop will give over a full bay to a range of books from small publishers called 'the best of independently published books' or something like that. 

This is a bloody great idea and deserves a polite publishing industry ripple of applause but you'd be forgiven for not knowing about this because they haven't actually made any sort of trade announcement. Given their current troubling 'we're for sale' situation you'd think they'd be up for all the good publicity they could get.

Unlike Waterstone's, Borders don't have one buyer that handles the indies so, if you do want to try to get your book featured you'll need to approach the relevant genre buyer, I guess.  This strikes me as a splendid opportunity for the independent publishing sector to get their books profiled on the high street and is well worth investigating.  Hopefully the buyers won't be swamped with loads of shite and end up regretting they ever had the idea.

Just When You Thought It Was Safe To Go Back In The Chatroom

It isn't out for another week but it is already a hit (sort of)!  The buzz around Confessions Of A Chatroom Freak has been building for a while in the trade (mainly because everyone at Macmillan who read it fell about laughing) but soon actual real life readers will be able to get their hands on it.

The book has shot up 500 places on Amazon today to #316 at time of writing which is pretty much the only live indication of sales a small publisher can get these days without paying Nielsen Bookscan a small fortune.  Our fingers are crossed but we have high hopes for it.

For the uninitiated, the author, Mr Biffo, posed as a 21 year old girl called LoopyLisa21f on a number of chatrooms and then engaged dirty old men in the most surreal and hilarious conversations.  The book contains the transcripts of those chats.  It is painfully funny in places, especially when Lisa finally relents to mail across a photo of herself.

For a sample of these snaps, and some excerpts from the book, you could do worse than check out this video.

You will never engage in cybersex again.

It's Not Who You Read, It's What You Read By Them

What on earth do I mean by that?  This is going to be another of those rambling posts I'm afraid.  Hope you can bear with me.

I have, over the years, come to believe that when you tackle an author for the first time it is of the utmost importance to make sure you choose the right book.  Approach a novelist from the wrong angle and it can scar you for life.  Catch them on a bad day and you may never want to read them again.

Allow me to offer some examples.

Ten years ago I had never read anything by Ian McEwan.  I was aware that he was viewed as one of our finest novelists, and I had seen half an hour of The Cement Garden on the telly, but I had never actually read one of his books.  I thought it was high time I did.  Fortunately for me he went and won the Booker Prize and it seemed obvious that Amsterdam was the place to start.  How wrong I was.

If I had a Top 10 of the most disappointing books I have ever read then Amsterdam would most certainly be on it (probably mid-table, an Aston Villa of a novel).  It had won the Booker Prize for goodness sake.  A panel of the literary great and the good had selected it as the finest novel of the year.  What better recommendation could I have?

By making Amsterdam my introduction to Ian McEwan it put me right off him.  I had no desire to read any more of his books, but people kept telling me that I should give him another go.  Enduring Love was the one they all suggested but it took me six years to build up the energy to bother.

And that was another mistake.  I have lost count of the number of people who told me that Enduring Love had an 'amazing opening scene' or that they had been 'blown away' by the balloon sequence.  It had been built up in my mind as something remarkable but when I finally sat down and read it it really wasn't quite as good as they had suggested.  Don't get me wrong, it is a powerful piece of writing and a great way to start a book but my expectations were far too high.  I hadn't learned from my Amsterdam experience.

The other problem was that the balloon sequence is the single best thing in the book.  I found the rest to be a rather cold and damp thriller which never got beyond a pedestrian pace.  I knew nothing about the story in advance apart from that bloody balloon so the nature of the plot was a surprise but that was the only interesting element of the whole reading experience for me.  It went straight down the charity shop once I had finished.

So now I have had two bad experiences with McEwan and I cannot summon up the enthusiasm to try any more.  I suspect this is my loss.  The Cement Garden and Atonement sit furtively upon my bookshelves should I ever waver from that position, or should anyone here post a comment that convinces me.

And then there is Philip Roth.  Colossus of American literature, with reviewers falling over each other to praise each book that comes along.  I had yet to read any and a copy of Everyman arrived on my desk so I got stuck in on the journey home.  Exceedingly dull and rather annoying.  If it was a first novel no one would have noticed it.  What is all the fuss about?

Again, I have a liberal selection of his other works on my shelf but about this much [makes a gesture with fingers indicating something teeny tiny] desire to bother with them.

So you see, the route you take with certain authors is very important.  I am sure I would have found the work of these two revered writers impressive and stimulating if I had simply chosen a different book to start with, but by opting for the wrong ones I may never get round to trying any more.

For this reason I am always very cautious when recommending books to people, especially those by authors dear to me.  When a bloke asks me which Murakami he should start with I always suggest South Of The Border, West Of The Sun.  I do this because a) it is quite short, b) the subject is something most men can relate to or fantasize about, and c) it contains just enough of the classic Murakami elements to prepare you for the weirdness of his other novels.

However, if a member of the opposite sex asks me the same question I recommend Norwegian Wood.  I just think girls tend to like this one more, at least to start with.

What I would never do is propose that anyone starts with his later work.  I do not think the last few novels are his best and worry that people will think they are indicative of his work as a whole and I wonder if I would be such a fan if the first Murakami I read had been Kafka On The Shore as opposed to A Wild Sheep Chase.  I probably don't want to know the answer.

All Killers No Fillers

Short stories: great to read, buggers to sell.

I love them myself.  I always have at least one collection on the go and find them wonderful to dip into when I have a few spare moments, or last thing before shut eye.

They are a real pig to publish though.  The market is tiny.  It is rare for a collection to sell very much at all.  People claim to read stories but so few actually shell out for a book of them.  I can bloody talk, for the past 6 years I have been given most of my books for free.  90% of my short story books didn't cost me anything so it isn't surprising that I am prepared to give them a go.  I'd like to think I'd own almost as many if I had to pay for them but, let's be honest, I wouldn't.

UK publishers and writers often peer enviously over the pond to America where the short story seems to be a popular and commercial art form.  My friends in the trade over there tell me that isn't the case at all but it bloody well looks like it to me - hundreds of literary magazines, collections in the bestseller lists, anthologies of the finest stories every year.  That compares more than favourably thank you very much.

Naturally there are exceptions and the UK charts will occasionally be dented by a new Murakami collection or the like, but the prevailing wind rarely puffs up the sales (sorry) of the short story.  As a result, publishers will go out of their way to hide the fact that a book is a story collection at all - look at Matthew Kneale's Small Crimes In An Age Of Abundance, cunningly disguised as a novel.  And some of our finest novelists - David Mitchell and Dan Rhodes for example - are really short story writers who have become adept at linking their tales together to create the longer form.

There are occasional attempts to kick start interest in short stories - the current Radio 4/Prospect competition is very welcome (if seemingly for big name authors only), and we shouldn't ignore the indie scene - magazines, both printed and online - which beavers away valiantly.  But they don't seem to make a lasting difference to what is a pretty dormant market.

I have a few ideas that could, perhaps, help to grow the readership of stories in this country but they need a lot more thought and a hefty amount of collaboration so I will shut up about them for now and make more noise once I've sounded out a few interested parties.

Anyway, this whole preamble is leading up to a book review which concerns, naturally enough, a collection of stories.  Leading The Dance is the debut collection from friend of Big Mouth, Sarah Salway.  As mentioned above, I tend to dip into story collections and they consequently take me some time to get through (Richard Yates' Collected Stories has been on the go for six months now) but this was a book I couldn't resist reading from start to finish.  Having completed one story I was eager to move on to the next, pausing merely for a cup of tea or quick browse of the internet as a form of punctuation.

Fans of popular music will be familiar with the phrase I use to head this post.  'All killers no fillers' refers to an album where ever track is a corker.  The pop world was notorious for padding out albums with sub-standard songs, surrounding a couple of hit singles with fillers and hoping for the best, and we've all got CDs in our collections which would have to plead guilty to that crime.  I often find that story collections try the same trick - two or three stunning pieces alongside less impressive fodder - but that is most certainly not the case here.

Leading The Dance is as fine a collection as you are likely to read.  18 beautifully crafted stories, several of which will linger long in the memory.  Like Quiet Hour, in which a small boy is left to play in his father's new car while his parents go upstairs 'for a sleep' with predictably unpleasant results.  Or Blind, where a cleaner working for a blind man strips naked while she dusts and hoovers to see if he'd notice.  And my favourite, Painting The Family Pet, which sees a troubled suburban housewife employ a pet portrait painter even though there are no animals in the house.

There are twists in some, others are revealing slices of life.  All are incredibly well-observed and full of the meaningless minutiae of human existence which become so meaningful when Salway gets her hands on them.  I would heartily recommend anything she has written but this would be a fine place to start.

Leading The Dance is published by Bluechrome.  Support the independent publishing scene by clicking through and checking them out.  They recently sent me a pile of their books so I hope to review more in the weeks and months to come.

Modern Technology

Phones, email and the internet are completely down at our office at the moment so all communication is at a standstill.  I am working from home today so can crack on with quite a bit of stuff but can't send or receive anything through my TFP email address.  Just in case you have mailed me and think I am ignoring you.

Things might be back to normal tomorrow.

Value For Money

I found this story in Publishing News interesting.  Publishers are complaining that the rising cost of promoting books with retailers means that fewer books will be promoted.  With Jodi Picoult's latest novel being Offer Of The Week and selling for half price at Borders, Waterstone's and WH Smith at the same time it would appear that they have a point.

Most publishers, large or small, review how their books perform in retail promotions and judge whether the cost was worth it or not.  Increasingly the answer is 'not' but crucially everyone keeps paying the charges.  They might haggle a bit but they usually end up paying.

I can see both sides.  As a retailer I always had a simple response to anyone who felt the promotional charges were too high - if it isn't value for money, don't pay it.  Rarely did anyone back out because the charges were supported with the promise of strong sales.  Word on the street is that this is no longer the case and that even books that sell a few thousand copies are losing money once the discount and promotional spend (oh, and returns!) are taken into account.  I can't say I have noticed that myself.  Most of the books we have promoted with retailers have sold enough to warrant the outlay, and if they haven't it was a pretty close call. 

Promotions aren't the be all and end all though.  When Blood, Sweat & Tea was pulled from one retailer's 3 for 2 (quite fairly, as they weren't selling enough to keep it in) we actually saw our overall sales increase.  With the strength of the internet nowadays, if you can create demand for your book then readers can track it down quite easily, and it doesn't need to be in a multibuy for them to purchase it.

Although an interesting piece, one part of the Publishing News article is incorrect.  The usual 'unnamed publisher' (coward!) claims that

'With all the retailers asking for more money, it inevitably means everyone will promote the same books. They're all charging too much.'

Which seems a fair point until you realise that Borders have actually reduced their promotional charges, and reduced them quite a bit at that.  This bold move actually means you can promote your book on the high street, cough up the requisite fees and still make a tidy profit on each copy you sell.  As you can imagine, there are a lot of people hoping they get through their current troubles and find a buyer for the business.

At TFP we are happy to promote with anyone who thinks our books are right for their customers and, in general, this proves successful for everyone concerned.  If anything, we'd like to promote more with them.  If a particular book fails to sell in sufficient quantity to make the costs work then at least it has got our foot in the door and it may pay off in the long run.  But it may not be too long before the big publishers start taking the retailers head on and that could be interesting to watch.

This Old Man

I picked this book up just after eleven on Friday evening, fully intending to sample just a few chapters before nodding off to sleep.  Next thing I knew it was one in the morning and I was two thirds through.  I swiftly polished off the rest over breakfast the next morning.

Regular readers will know that Columbo is a firm favourite of mine and I have been eagerly awaiting this memoir from Peter Falk.  It didn't disappoint, even though it doesn't really go into any detail about the man himself.  It is a memoir which tells us next to nothing about the author at all.

Flicking through the numerous photographs that pop up every few pages you will see Falk's first wife, his two daughters, his pretty young second wife and some great shots of his parents and grandparents.  You'll be wise to pay close attention as many of them do not feature within the text at all.

As the subtitle, Stories From My Life, suggests, this is more of a collection of anecdotes than straightforward autobiography.  Falk's childhood is glossed over in a page or so;  his first wife introduced but then never appears again, no word about how they parted (death? divorce?); his two daughters are not mentioned anywhere.  This book is devoid of detail, but full of Falk.

Thankfully, he is very fond indeed of Columbo and there is no shortage of detail for fans.  Falk played a big part in the creation and development of the character and he is rightly proud of that fact.  As he said on Front Row the other night - he is one of the most memorable characters of all time and made him a pile of dough.

Reading Just One More Thing is how I would imagine sitting down for a drink with the author might be like.  He entertains and teases with acting tales, and each of them is a good one.  You share a laugh with him, have a great time, shake his hand and then cheer him off.  And then you realise he has not really revealed anything at all.  An actor through and through.

You'd have thought this would be disappointing, but it is not.  It's a blast.

The Other Woman

Meet Uma.  She's been tripping me up and getting under my feet for 14 years.

Bobby Baby

Getting played a great deal in our house at the moment...

and...

More info on Bobby Baby here.

Like Father Like Son

The Author With No Name

Just had a chat with a delightful journalist at The Independent wanting to know if I was the author of The Book With No Name.  She had done her homework though - she reckons it can't be me as it was self-published originally and my book wasn't.   Her assumption was that I would have the pick of publishers and command a whopping advance - not quite so accurate there, I'm afraid.

Also heard from friends in two different retailers that the papers have been on to them as well.   It is all quite amusing.

I called the press office at Michael O'Mara who are publishing the book.  They have also had calls asking if it was me.  They assured me the rumours didn't come from them.  I did likewise.

I am finding the whole thing curiously entertaining.  I may have to get a copy and review it on the blog.

All A Matter Of Timing

Offer Of The Week in more than one book chain at the moment is Jodi Picoult's new hardback Nineteen Minutes.  It is, in many ways, a fine choice.  Picoult has become a hugely popular author in only a couple of years and she has eager fans awaiting each new title.  The publisher will be keen to make sure she has a high chart position on week of publication, ideally number one, so has coughed up the cash to ensure it is half price and promoted in as many bookshops as possible.  I have blogged about how the once prized OOTW slot was now being filled by the same titles in every retailer in a much earlier post - basically it costs so much that there are only a few books that are worth the expense and rather than fighting over them the retailers are increasingly sharing them - but that is not the point to this blog entry.

You see, the subject matter of Nineteen Minutes is unfortunately timely.  It concerns a shooting (massacre as the media seem to like the call them) at an American high school.  It is published, and being massively promoted, in the same week as some nutjob did something similar in a real American campus.  A case of bad timing.  No one involved in the book or the promotions will take any pleasure from the coincidence.

However, the truth is that this book is probably going to sell a lot more as a result.  Given its sympathetic, non-exploitative cover and the fact that Picoult is firmly marketed at a female audience there will be many readers outside of her fanbase who may turn to the book in the light of recent events.  Those involved may not be proud of the coincidence but the tills will be ringing loudly as a consequence.

It doesn't always work out that way though.  Back in 2005 the debut novel from Chris Cleave concerned the bombing of the new Arsenal stadium.  Incendiary was written from the point of view of a bereaved wife and mother and took the form of her letter to Osama Bin Laden.  It was, and is, a very good novel indeed, but it was published in July 2005.  The day press ads hit the pages was the same time as the London bombings.  One newspaper had to print an apology for running an ad in the same edition as the ad itself, explaining that there was no time to pull it.  Sadly, this promising debut was smothered at birth and never really had a chance to succeed.

So why did Incendiary fail and Nineteen Minutes is being promoted all over the place?  Time moves on, I guess.  Also, distance is a factor.  The London bombings were close to home and extremely fresh in our minds.  The shootings in America seem far away and, some would say, are not that uncommon over there, not that that makes them any less tragic.  I make no moral judgement on the matter.  Art will always imitate life and writing about these sort of events will inevitably throw up coincidences like this from time to time.  I am intrigued at how the response differs from book to book though, and it will be interesting to see if Nineteen Minutes hits the number one spot this week.

Are You Sitting Comfortably?

Quite a day yesterday.

Off to the doctor's first thing as something isn't quite right and it made sense to get it checked out.  Took along Sarah Salway's collection of stories Leading The Dance to read in the waiting room.  It is a wonderful book but will now always be associated with a having doctor's finger up my backside.  Only fair of me to reveal that it was a very attractive lady doctor so I didn't mind all that much.

Then straight to hospital for blood tests.  Apparently there is a long list of things that might be wrong with me, some very nasty indeed, or it might be nothing much at all.  I now have to wait patiently to find out.

One amusing outcome is that I have to keep a poo diary for the next week.  I trust that notes will suffice and I am not expected to write an essay as a result of each visit to the little room.  When I mentioned this to a couple of friends they both assumed I would be publishing the diary on this blog.  But fear not, I have more ambitious plans for that magnum opus.

When I got home from my various prods and pokes in the name of medical science there was an email waiting for me from a reporter at the Evening Standard.  Apparently there is a strong rumour that I am the author of The Book With No Name.

If you haven't heard of this novel then you probably will soon.  It purports to be a mysterious story discovered on the shelves of a South American library and everyone who reads it ends up dead.  Now you too can give it a go - if you dare.  It is published in July.

Supposedly (and I wasn't there so I don't know) there was talk at London Book Fair that this was the mysterious book I have authored.  I wonder if it is?

Which brings me back round to my poo diary.  I was thinking of getting an agent and seeing what sort of advance I could get.  Any bidders, you know where to find me.

Thank You, Raymond

The magnificent National Theatre Of Brent are back on Radio 4 which is always a highlight of the artistic year.  Their new series is entitled The Arts And How They Was Done and, once again, the entire cast are under the inspired leadership of Desmond Olivier Dingle.

Essential listening.  You can hear the latest episode here.

Bombs And Biscuits

Reporting of the Iraq war hit an all-time low on Saturday when the story of more than 30 people being killed by a car bomb took second billing to news that Prince William had split up with his girlfriend.  And this was on the BBC for fuck's sake.  How bored have we become with the horrors in the Gulf that news editors chose to lead with a couple of rich 20-somethings moving on to shag other people?

It just so happened that as the earth-shattering news that Wills is single again was hitting the wires I was finishing a wonderful book called High Tea In Mosul by Lynne O'Donnell.  I was only reading it as I am doing some consultancy for the publisher, Cyan, and I must admit I didn't think it was going to be my cup of tea (pun not originally intended, but realised and persevered with), but how wrong I was.

O'Donnell is an Australian journalist who has spent a fair bit of time in Iraq, covering the conflict for the Irish Times and the South China Morning Post.  In 2003, when talking to the head of a hospital in Mosul she was invited to meet his wife.  She readily accepted in the hope that it would give her a different angle on the story.  Little did she know quite how different.  The 'wife' turned out to be an Englishwoman called Pauline, who in turn introduced O'Donnell to a fellow Brit, Margaret, also married to an Iraqi.

High Tea In Mosul tells the fascinating story of these two women.  How they met their husbands in the UK in the late 70s and ended up living in Mosul where they stayed through three wars (Iran/Iraq and two Gulfs) and raised families.  It begins with much of the culture clash stuff you would expect but actually Pauline and Margaret settle in very quickly and it is their day to day domestic lives which prove fascinating for the early portion of the book.

The charm of the early love story soon changes when the Gulf wars impact on their lives and you get a first-hand account of the deprivation suffered by normal people in Iraq.  It is hard hitting stuff and is hard to read in places.  The really shocking content is when both women talk about life in Mosul in 2006, very recent events.  People scared to leave their houses in case they were kidnapped by fellow Iraqis, ransom demands becoming the currency of the streets.  Staggering stuff.

But despite the content, this is actually a pleasure to read.  I felt I was being educated by these brave, yet ordinary women and view the Iraq war in a whole new light.  It brought it all home so clearly.

High Tea In Mosul deserves to be as widely read as The Bookseller Of Kabul or Reading Lolita In Tehran, and certainly if you enjoyed those books you will love this, but I fear that the dodgy cover won't help the hardback edition and the Gulf fatigue that propels William and whatsername to the top of the headlines will turn people off.  That would be a real shame.

Bicycle Freaks

Amram Ducovny is David (X-Files) Duchovny's dad.  Yes, they spell their names differently and no, this isn't particularly relevant but I thought I'd mention it anyway.

Coney is set in, you guessed it, Coney Island during the late 1930s.  When teenager Harry Catzker crashes his bicycle into a dwarf he unwittingly ends up embroiling his family in the mob and himself with a group of sideshow freaks, associations that will have a long lasting effect on all involved.  His parents are Jewish immigrants and the majority of the action in this novel takes place within the cultural confines of that world as its inhabitants look helplessly to Europe and the families they left behind.

I have long been fascinated by Jewish culture, primarily, I think, because I really don't understand it.  It is largely a mystery to me.  Growing up I had no exposure to it whatsover.  I knew and knocked about with people from a variety of backgrounds - Malaysian, Chinese, Indian, African, Italian, Japanese -  and absorbed tiny elements of their culture as a result.  But not Jewish.  My entire understanding of Jewish culture is based on what I have gleaned from art and literature.  I suspect the holes in my knowledge are vast.

Good thing then that Ducovny's style and narrative pace carried me through the matriarchal world that Harry inhabits, with its smatterings of Yiddish and ladling of Jewish history, and stopped me getting bogged down in things I didn't understand.  At its heart this is a coming of age story, and a very good one at that, with some unforgettable set pieces.  Harry losing his virginity to the freak show fat lady is both grotesque and remarkably tender at the same time.   His grandmother's response to the death of her husband could seem over the top but here is entirely believable, her eventual return to Poland weighing heavy on the reader as you know all too well how that will turn out.

Coney is dark but injected with warm humour and tone which renders it an easy read.  Ducovny, who died a few years ago, writes wonderfully well about New York (DeLillo take note) and has crafted a moving family drama that I would highly recommend to fans of Richard Yates or John Updike.

Coney by Amram Ducovny was published back in 2001.  I asked a friend at a bigger publishing house to look on Bookscan and see how it has sold.  It has managed to shift 9 copies in 6 years.  Where's the justice, eh?  Hopefully my review will prompt someone to take it into double figures.