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!

A plea for patience

I will be thoroughly frank with you. I grow impatient with some writers’ impatience. If you have a contract and I’m editing your work, you will get it when it is ready. If you chase me about it I’ll probably ignore you. If there is a delay – and most times there isn’t – it will grow even longer as I stop to answer your email.

Everything takes longer

It does seem that no matter how long we allow, everything takes longer than we first thought. What are some of the things that delay us?

• Webs sites working more slowly than usual
• Odd formatting appearing form nowhere in a text
• A missing bio
• An author not returning an edit or a proof read on time (Yes, we give a tight deadline on this and it may seem that we are taking forever to do our work – but believe me, we never really stop. As I’m a writer as well I’ve been on the receiving end of this and know how it feels though I understand why it happens)
• We’re suddenly offered a fabulous marketing opportunity and we daren’t ignore it for all of our sakes.
• We get ill, have family crises and technical breakdowns also.

What can you do to help?

• Follow submission guidelines to the letter. We ask for a certain type of formatting because that makes it easier for us to produce the photo-ready copy.   
• Don’t ask for major changes at the third stage of editing or when proof-reading.
• Trust us.  
• While you’re waiting just get on with your next piece of writing.   

We’re all on the same side really

Yes, we are. We all just want to produce a superb book. So let’s just get on with it. And with the next project.  

Creating a happening

Yes. Happening. The old hippy word for an event. Yet it means a little more than just an event. It has added extra. Its success depends to a large extent on the energy that both organisers bring. It’s not just a matter of deciding a time, finding a venue and inviting folk.

Venue found

I’ve successfully found the venue for the 2016 joint Bridge House / CafeLit celebration. Or rather my daughter did. It’s a pub in north London, Primrose Hill. It has a very pleasant upstairs room, a nice selection of gins and real ales. There is even free on-street parking on a Saturday.

Next steps

So, I’ll be putting together my Eventbrite invite. I’ll initially be inviting the writers who are included in the two new anthologies. Then it will be open to other Bridge House, CafeLit and Red Telephone writers. After that it will be the general public.   That particular general public is likely to be one that has a vested interest in the imprints.

Energizing the events

So, what will go on? How will this become a happening? There’ll be books for sale, readings, speed-dating, where we all swap tips about marketing. We’ll give the latest news. There’ll be a book exchange. Most importantly we’ll get to put names to faces.

Oh. And try the real ales and gins.

           

A glimpse across a busy schedule

There are several things happening at the moment. All of them are joyous but there’s pressure as well. So what’s keeping me busy at the moment?

Bridge House’s Baubles

We’ve made our selection, we’ve got the contracts out, we’ve started editing and we’re putting together a book trailer as well as working on other marketing strategies. We’ll have to design the book, find a cover, get everything done so that we can launch on 15 November. We also need to arrange our annual celebration for 3 December. 

The Best of CaféLit 5

We’ve made the selections and we’re letting the chosen know. We don’t really need to edit here- that stage has already passed as the texts were put onto the web site. However, the reformatting here is more challenging as we’re moving form web format to print format.   

Shelagh Delaney Collection

This is pretty well ready to send out to authors for checking. We just then need to get the cover sorted and a launch date.

Single author collections Bridge House

We’re offering this to our Bridge House authors. They may recycle stories they already have published with us.

Flash Collections

This we’re offering under our Chapeltown imprint. I’ve possibly two lined up to start work on in September.

The Red Telephone  

This will open again to submissions from October for young adults novels.

Book Tour kit

We’re offering authors twenty copies up front if they organise their own book tour. The author takes the book to the shop and we invoice the shop directly for any that go through the till. We top up the books between events, so enough time needs to be allowed between events.

At the end of the tour, the author can pay at cost or may keep the books and pay later at normal author discount rate as they sell the books on. Or they can be off-set against royalties.

Events, events, events

We’re encouraging our authors to hold their regional events, perhaps gathering in small groups. That way you might manage to see to each other’s readers. If it’s local enough to us we’ll come and join in. We love events. Especially if they involve wine or cake.   

Mentoring scheme

This takes off in the autumn. We have five people on board. We’re looking forward to it.        

      

Backlist or not?

A poet friend of mine is on the editorial board of an online poetry publication. Such publications are pretty well there forever, though earlier works gradually disappear from the search engines. One poet asked if their work could be taken down. The publishers didn’t want to do this. They took the view that this was art of that poet’s work and should stay.

Arguably the same can apply to print-on-demand. The book need never go out of print.  However, that may not necessarily be an advantage. In my area of expertise we’re plagued with constantly changing technology. Books date very quickly. They could become historical fiction but they don’t date quite enough for that. One solution here is to keep the book in print for four years and then re-edit and re-title it. In fact, we’ve just launched a new imprint that does exactly that: Renascienta. 50% profit share with the author.  

Here are some other strategies we use:

• We ask for exclusive rights for one year on stories in our anthologies though are open to them being republished before that.
• We keep books in print until they stop making a profit.
• E-books never go out of print – except single author titles at the author’s request after four years.  
• We’re happy to take down online publications after one year at the author’s request.     

New titles can help to sell backlist. Backlist is part of the author and actually makes significant contribution to an author’s income though sales, PLR and ALCS payments.