The Janus report – looking back over 2016 and forward to 2017

2016 is now drawing to a close and what a year it’s been. Thank goodness in my little area of publishing things are going a little better than in the world in general. Perhaps this is a useful reminder that things are never completely black or white and that there are more than fifty shades of grey.

What we did in 2016

Bridge House got out its annual anthology, called Baubles this year. You can read a few extracts here. We managed at last to get out the Shelagh Delany collection Salford Stories just in time for Shelagh Delaney Day 2017. A week’s illness in January 2016 set us back months. It just shows how finely balanced everything is for the small press.

CaféLit on-line continues to thrive. The Best of CaféLit 5 came out nice and early in August. A few more cafés have been added to the Creative Café Project. We’re always looking for more, so do let us know of any you come across.  

CaféLit and Baubles writers, along with their friends and family and other writers and connections of Bridge House, CaféLit, Chapeltown, The Red Telephone and their associates met for a celebration on 3 December at the Princess of Wales pub, Primrose Hill. This seems to be the ideal venue but we’re probably about to outgrow it. Tickets were free but we “sold out”. In any case, we’ve already booked for next year.

The Red Telephone is open to submission and I’m currently reading a couple of scripts that are looking promising.

Chapeltown is now accepting collections of flash fiction. There are currently two in production, one waiting in the wings plus three being read.  

Looking towards 2017

Bridge House’s new annual anthology for 2107 will be Gliterary Tales. So, glittery stories that have a touch of literature about them. I wonder what that will add to the debate about the difference between literary and popular fictions? Debz Hobbs Wyatt will be getting the call for submissions out soon.

Bridge House is also offering to publish single-author collections. These are for authors we’ve published before and they may include stories we’ve already published,  ones they’ve had published elsewhere and new ones. We’ll be putting a description out about this soon but we’ve already had some enquiries.

Bridge House is also being a bit cheeky and getting a little political. Are we are in danger of getting our books burnt? Well, there’s no such thing as bad publicity. We’re doing an extra anthology, Citizens of Nowhere, with the theme of the global citizen. Oh, I hope we don’t upset Ms May. We’re commissioning just over half of the work from known authors but there is room for a few open submissions. Stories can be “one you prepared earlier” or a brand new one, with a cut-off date of 31 January, though this may very well be extended. Stories between 1,000 and 4,000 words. Submit to editor at bridgehousepublishing dot co dot uk.  

CafeLit, Chapeltown and The Red Telephone are all open for submissions. Check out the details by clicking on the names in the previous sentence.

Chapeltown is also excited to be publishing Colin Wyatt’s Who will be my friend? – a delightful picture book about friendship and accepting others. Yes, Colin is Debz’s dad. He is a Disney licensed illustrator and his latest publication is The Jet Set. We feel very honoured to be publishing him.

I’m also organising a summer celebration event in Manchester. Watch this space and follow my newsletter.    

So, we’re busy and optimistic about what we can achieve over the next year. We just hope we can take the world with us.                                            

Delight in putting books together

I have several projects on the go at the moment and they’re all filling me with delight. I’ve a couple of on-going calls for submissions, too. So, watch this space ….

Baubles

This of course is the annual Bridge House anthology. We’ve a lovely selection of stories this time. The inside of the book is almost ready for final proof-reading and we’re working on the cover. I’m busy too, putting together a book trailer.

Don’t forget, we’re holding our annual celebration on 3 December in London. It is free of charge and there will be a few copies of the anthology on sale. We do ask you to sign up, however. You can do this here.

Come and chat to us editors and to our authors and see whether you might be able to write for Bridge House.

Flash fiction collections

I’m busy working on three of these at the moment. One is my own, January Stones. Currently, I have that a as blog. That will be taken down apart from a few excerpts once the book is out. Do take a look here. This will give you the flavour of the type of thing I’m looking for.

We aim to produce small square books. They will be good to hold and will make suitable gifts. I’m hoping that our authors will be proactive in offering readings. I’m currently thinking of fairly plain covers, rather like some French books. Perhaps a tweet-length blurb on the front and a short author bio on the back. I’ll allow the authors to select the colour each time.

At the moment I have signed up Allison Symes and Neil Campbell.

Here are tasters from them:

Allison:

A KIND OF HELL

I never believed in hell. Of all my mistakes in life, I never thought that would be my biggest. But it is.

There are no flames. There’s no smell of sulphur. I am surrounded by furry animals of differing sizes. So where is the problem?

Not only am I allergic to fur so I spend most of my time sneezing my head off, I spent my time on Earth shooting furry animals. Not with a camera either. Somehow I thought hunting animals only for fun was macho.

Guess who are holding the guns now?

Neil:

THE SUN IN SEPTEMBER

Corned Beef went to his local in Burnage to ease himself out of the day with pints of bitter. For years he did this until at one stage he began to see scratches on his face in the bathroom mirror in the morning. Usually they were on his forehead but sometimes on his cheeks. He washed away the thin lines of dried blood and then got on the 197 to work as usual.

     The scratches began to develop into cuts and one morning he woke to see blood across the pillow. He felt for his forehead and his forefinger squished into a gash. He went to the bathroom mirror and took a plaster from the cabinet, placing it across his forehead. In work that day, below a staircase in a dark chamber within the neo-gothic splendour of Manchester Town Hall, he sat with the other porters at break time drinking coffee from his flask.

     ‘Hey, Corned Beef,’ said Bungalow, ‘what’s with the fucking plaster?’

     ‘Cut me head.’

     ‘How did you manage that?’

     ‘Don’t know.’

You can find the full call to submissions here:

      

The Red Telephone call for submissions

I’m looking for the next great young adult book. Will it be yours? Submission guidelines here.

   

Right- now back to more book making!

Small Press is not Vanity Press

I was rather dismayed recently to have one of our authors say to me. “I’ve never worked with the vanity press before.”

None of the imprints I work with are vanity press. In fact, they’re pretty traditional because:

·         We don’t charge authors to be published

·         We don’t publish everything that is sent to us.

·         Everything that is published goes through a rigorous editing process.

One Publisher’s Editing Process

At The Red Telephone we identify a three stage editing process.

The Structural Edit

This is the biggest.  Here we look to see if your story has a strongly defined structure. Do each of the characters play a big enough part? Are they well enough defined?  Does the time scale work? Is the setting clear enough? Most importantly, is the resolution satisfying? Is it convincing? Is it dramatic enough?

Then almost coming into the realm of the line edit, does the pace vary? Is there cause and effect? Is the story logical? Does time work correctly? (We don’t want snow in summer – unless that is the whole point - and we don’t want two year pregnancies.)

The Line Edit

This is where we look carefully at every single scene and every single paragraph. Is that scene actually needed? Does it need to be longer or shorter? Does it need to tell more or show more? (Showing is usually preferable but just occasionally telling is better. Showing slows the pace. Telling quickens it.) Is there a good balance of action, dialogue, exposition and description? Is the dialogue convincing? Would that character say that, actually? Does it convey their voice? Is every word effective? It must always show character, take the story forward or create atmosphere and better still if it does all of these at once. Have you kept the voice / style consistent? Are there any clichés that can be replaced? Is your point of view stable? Are you working with the right narrative voice? Are there any darlings that need killing off?  

The Copy Edit

Is there a good overall flow? Are there any typos? Are there any serious grammar mistakes? Does it actually make sense? Are there any clumsy or awkward sentences?  Are any words used incorrectly? Are there any misspellings? Are there any formatting mistakes?  

The Proof Read

This isn’t really an editing stage at all. This is where we recheck that all is well after the book has been designed.

What actually happens

We try to use a different editor for each editing stage. All of our editors can do all of these tasks but it is good to bring in fresh eyes each time.

The editing stages overlap a little. The structural editor may well comment on frequently occurring general writing weaknesses but won’t go into as much detail as the structural editor. The line editor may also see and comment on some copy editing issues.

Generally another copy-editor and the author will check the proofs. Sometimes on more complex texts other people help.  

It still always helps if your text is as good as can be before we put it through these stages of editing. If there is too much wrong with your text we may not be able to see everything that is wrong.    

One Publisher’s Selection Process

At the The Red Telephone we’re pretty conventional in what we ask for. We like three chapters, a synopsis, a bio and a blurb sent electronically. Electronic submission is becoming more and more common, so even that isn’t all that unusual.

Having said that, we do have a particular submission process. Please adhere to it. We’ll never reject an outstanding script because it was submitted wrongly but it if your script is border line and not submitted correctly and in the order we ask we’ll most likely reject.

If we tell you a little more about our selection process, you’ll perhaps understand. 

The blurb

We ask for this to be in the body of the email. This helps to determine whether we’re even going to look at the submission. If the blurb straight away warns us that this is a novel for nine-year-olds we won’t even bother opening the attachment. We publish novels for young adults.

We’re not too bothered at this stage about how good the blurb is as if we do accept your book we’ll probably supply this ourselves. However, if yours is exceptionally good we’ll use it and we’ll probably base ours on this one anyway.

First three chapters or 5,000 words

We like to see the first three chapters, as we want to know if the story engages. We  ask for three chapters or the first 5,000 words, whichever is the longest, as we want to see a substantial amount of writing. Can you write well and sustain the momentum? If we like what we see here, we’ll carry on and read the synopsis.

Two quite common problems stop us reading further.

·         The writing is poor and would take too many editor hours to put right. This usually comes from very new writers.  If we have time we’ll point out the biggest fault when we reject.

·         Often, even in chapters that are basically well written, the voice is wrong. When writing for young adults as opposed to about them, the narrative should be by a best mate, or just slightly older brother, cousin or aunt. First person works well here, though, so the text needs to sound like a friend who has had something amazing happen. Whether you love or hate Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series, she does have this voice right. I’m convinced too, that Bella had the first adventure then told us about it before she had the second.

The synopsis

If all is well, we’ll go ahead and read the synopsis. We want to know whether you actually have a story and whether it is convincing. Even better if it is something unusual or is something that has not been done before.

The three most common failures in story-telling are having a deus-ex-machina resolution where the hero has had no control over the good outcome, having a damp squib where the reader says “Was that it?” or having something totally over the top and melodramatic. The resolution is hard to get right and if it isn’t right it’s doubtful that even our most experienced editor could help. It’s actually easier to correct a badly written text even though lack of man-hours may forbid this. A failed story is a failure of the imagination and of creativity. We don’t have a magic wand to set that right.  

The bio

Even if we’re going to reject and have read the synopsis, we may well read the bio. We’re curious after all. If your text is border-line or you are dealing with a slightly tired theme, there may be something in your bio that persuades us to take the risk.  So do mention:

·         Other publications. This shows that other people have appreciated your writing and that you are familiar with the editorial process.

·         Prizes and awards. This again shows that other people have found your writing pleasing.

·         Higher education courses. This shows you are used to and can respond to rigorous criticism and that you have some knowledge of craft and canon.    

·         Experience of working with schools, libraries and festivals. This will convince us that you will be able to help us market the book.

·         Connections you have with the media. Again, this will help to persuade us how much you can help with publicity.

·         Use of social media. Point us to your twitter handle, your Facebook pages and profile and your web site. We can find out even more then and see what sort of presence you have.     

We’re going to judge your proposed book on its own merits, not on you. But all other things being equal, you may be able to provide us with some valuable information that could persuade us to issue a contract.

The outcomes

We aim to let you know we have your script within 48 hours and let you know the outcome within two months of the close of the submission period. If you’ve not heard within these limits, please get back to us. Our decisions will be one of the following:

·         Outright rejection, usually by email. We feel you’re not currently for us. That doesn’t stop you submitting other material in the future. Don’t be too disheartened. Everybody gets rejections. One more rejection is one step closer to being accepted.

·         We like it but … not for us at the moment. It may be too similar to something we’ve just done, not our style or your writing is a bit too raw yet. For this type of rejection we will probably write a very short critique; we do want to see you again in the future.  

·         The story is great. You write well. You’re a cool dude.  But eh, the voice is wrong. At this point we’ll ask you to rewrite the whole novel in a different voice. Gulp. Sorry, afraid so. We can’t risk liking a few chapters and offering a contract then having to wait months for the finished script. At least if you get this sort of note, we shall be prepared to read the whole novel. Even if we ultimately reject it, your novel will have improved a lot and may be acceptable to another publisher.

·         Everything is great – we like this, we like you, please send us the rest. A word of caution here. About 70% of whole scripts are still rejected. Maybe you didn’t keep up the standard of the writing, maybe the plot was a little unbalanced or, as often is the case, the first few pages shine then it goes downhill; you have obviously sent your story out several times. So, a little advice here. If you revise between submissions, revise the whole novel. Maybe we just weren’t excited about it enough in the end and we have to be excited or we won’t edit well or be able to market it.

If all of this seems a little negative, it isn’t meant to be. It’s just an attempt to be completely honest about what is involved.

And don’t be too discouraged. If you really want to do this you can.  It is a big IF, yes, but obstinacy is a virtue here.

Still want a go? Check out our submission guidelines here.