Novel ideas

There's an interesting article in the Bookseller, claiming that literary agents are 'struggling to sell début and literary fiction, with novels taking longer to sell to publishers and more failing to find a buyer at all'.

I can't say I'm surprised. The sales figures for new hardback literary fiction have never been great and since the demise of the Net Book Agreement, the situation has got worse: if a novel isn't price promoted then it's hardly worth taking it out of the box.

The hardback fiction table used to be the jewel in the bookseller's crown. It would always occupy the prime position on the shop floor, whilst (with a few exceptions) non-fiction titles would be tucked away in dimly-lit nooks. Sordid little publications like celebrity memoirs were usually displayed upstairs, preferably spine-on.

Then a number of things changed. First, new high-tech stock control systems taught booksellers that the latest Milan Kundera novel was no.67 in their top 500 titles, whilst a diet book by an Eastenders actor they'd never heard of was no.8. Second, the book trade was invaded by people who knew nothing about books and were only interested in what was selling. Third, Margaret Thatcher and her cohorts redrew the ideological map of Britain, replacing quality with quantity. Fourth, the end of price fixing widened the gap between the bestsellers (or 'superlead' titles as some publishers like to call them) and the less commercial books.

These factors have created a climate in which publishers and booksellers are less inclined to take risks and the end result is not fewer and better books, but a lack of innovation.

Twenty years ago, a publisher could justify printing a new literary novel by an unknown author on the grounds that they believed that X had great potential and in three or four novels' time, would achieve critical and commercial success. In the meantime, X's loss-making novels were effectively subsidised by the bestselling titles. There was also a view that even if X wasn't a commercial success, they added credibility and prestige to a publisher.

To some extent that view still prevails and publishers do take risks with new, unknown authors. However, today it is rarer to see writers indulged in the way they used to be and unsuccessful authors risk being dropped before they have really found their voice.

What can be done? One answer would be to stop publishing new fiction by unknown writers in hardback, as readers are more likely to buy a £7.99 paperback than a £20 hardback. Publishers don't like doing that because the critics generally ignore paperbacks, but if enough new writing was published in this format then hopefully the reviewing culture would change.

As a bookseller I felt like Brian Hanrahan when it came to new hardback fiction titles that were sold at full price: I counted them in and I counted them out. No sales, plus the cost of sending the titles back to the publisher, who'd either remainder them or have the books pulped. If the rest of the shop had been run on this basis, we would have gone out of business within months.

However, publishing in paperback isn't enough. Unless a new writer is lucky enough to receive fantastic reviews or the endorsement of a book club, they will still struggle to reach the reading public. If publishers and booksellers truly believe that new titles are worth stocking, the reader needs to know why. Bunging a new novel in the latest 3 for 2 promotion will just mean that X is lost in a crowd of more familiar names. I'd like to see the traditional hardback fiction table replaced by a selection of the new and unfamiliar.

I also wonder if the book trade is too busy chasing the zeitgeist, looking for the next Da Vinci Code/Bridget Jones/Harry Potter when they should be trying to find the best new writing. I don't know. I'm not a publisher and my knowledge is anecdotal, gleaned from years of listening to sales reps complaining about being asked to sell the unsellable.

It all sounds rather bleak, but I would argue that this is a fantastic time to be a reader. The culture of blogging and easy availability of out of print and cheap books on the internet has created a vibrant new reading culture in which titles are promoted soley on merit. It is the ultimate free market: democratic, unregulated and borderless, presenting many opportunities for authors to connect directly with readers. If new writers are having trouble getting published, then it isn't necessarily the end of the story. Veni Vidi Blogi!

Today in pictures

Eight hours ago - Lewes:


Seven hours ago - Ditchling Beacon:


Two hours ago - classy personalised car sticker:


One hour ago - DIY sunset:


50 minutes ago - Newhaven traffic jam:


Now:

And Gay used to be such a lovely word...

Reading this blog, you could be forgiven for thinking that I'm consumed by a nostalgia for the past. However, as much as I like steam engines and deerstalkers, I have no urge to return to the age of backstreet abortions, racial intolerance and discrimination against anyone who isn't 'normal'. The modern world may be crap in many ways, but it's easy to be seduced by the notion of the recent past as some sort of idyll.

Films like this remind me how far we've come. Look out for the Jack Nicholson lookalike who tries to seduce boys with 'off-color jokes' and crazy golf:

A sense of place

Earlier this year a local man called Paul Wheeler was knocked down and killed by a car as he wheeled his bike across a busy road. The death sent shockwaves around the town, as Wheeler was the 'archbishop' of the Commercial Square Bonfire Society, but to relative newcomers like me, it was just another name I'd never heard of.

I realised that whilst I lived in Lewes, I was not a Lewesian.


The centre of Lewes was packed during Paul Wheeler's funeral and although I felt conscious of being an outsider, I was glad to live in a town where individuals still mattered. The fact that Lewes could come to a standstill (with huge traffic delays) because people wanted to celebrate the life of a friend, reminded me why I moved to Lewes in the first place.

Recently, the magazine Viva Lewes published an extract from a tribute to Paul Wheeler that was written by a local artist called Peter Messer. I found it extremely moving. Messer's prose could, at times, have been written by Orwell or Betjeman and although you may find it nostalgic and sentimental, it encapsulates the spirit of Lewes: a town which still has a mind of its own and, in Sussex dialect, won't be druv by politicians or big business.

Here is an extract from Peter Messer's tribute:

We were neighbours for over ten years, good friends for many more and for seven years we shared an allotment (plot of land, for non-British readers) in Paddock Road. On the Sunday morning I'd heard he died, I was planning to meet him. The ritual never varied much; five minutes after the Archers' theme tune died away, Paul would turn up and we'd spend a quarter of an hour discussing the week's events in Ambridge. There'd be a bit of work, a bit of a chat, a bit more work, a rant, some weeding, some harvesting for Sunday dinner then a full five minutes' gloating self-satisfaction at what we'd achieved before adjourning to the Gardener's Arms.

Paul was a romantic and an escapist but a practical one. Instead of just dreaming about the atmospheres, artifacts and customs of the past, he recreated them as much as possible in his everyday life. He found much of contemporary life tawdry and alienating and he railed at its emptiness, yearning for something simpler, more essentially human, where comradeship and community meant more than social position and personal gain.

A life that revolved around good beer and food, and good friends and neighbours suited him down to the ground. Anyone lucky enough to have spent a Boxing Night with Paul and Dawn will have gained a brief insight into the things they felt to be important. No electric lights, just an intimate glow from a couple of oil lamps glinting from below his beloved old enamel signs, hung with plain holly and ivy from the allotment. Endless talk and laughter, drink and good homemade food over a background of hit songs from the forties.

If there is such a thing as heaven...I imagine Paul's as a kind of idealised cross between Lewes and Brighton in the 1930s, full of steam engines and coal smoke, advertisements for Kolynos Toothpaste, Robin Starch and Keatings Flea Powder. A heaven of thriving hot-metal printworks, manufacturers, bakers, brewers and other industries called Royal-this and Empire-that, with pie and mash shops, the Brighton Belle and Max Miller at the Hippodrome for One Night Only.

Bank Holiday cycle tripes out to rural pubs and tea-rooms, behind which stand the Downs, covered with Southdown sheep and seagulls forever following the plough. Steam-driven fairground gallopers, Harvest Homes and the singing of old songs. The pubs all full of dark wood and engraved mirrors, billycock hats, pipe smoke and pianos.

And if you heard laughter coming from inside, you'd certainly know the one Wheeler was in! Paul was an English Man with all that entails, but essentially he was a Sussex Boy. You can be a hundred years old in Sussex and still be a boy.