WATERSTONES' WORDS OF COMFORT

On hearing of a visiting Texan accidentally trapped in the basement of a Waterstones bookshop after closing time, I remembered the words I’d seen displayed in other Waterstones stores:

“We only have this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand – and melting like a snow flake…”

Sir Francis Bacon

And:

“The World is a book, and those who do not travel, read only one page...” 

St Augustine

Waterstones' words of comfort to a trapped Texan tweeting for help.

TAKING STOCK

Following on from Joyce Dunbar’s email in my last post, this week I stood back and took stock of where children’s publishing stood today and where Plaister Press stood in relation to it. Three events that I attended last week had given a lot to think about: a talk I gave on Tuesday to a group of illustrators in Cambridge, the retirement party of Dr Jim Parker Head of PLR at the British Library on Wednesday and the Bookseller Children’s Conference at Southbank on Thursday.

    The talk on Tuesday was a business talk – ‘Ways into Publishing’. Many of the illustrators were graduates of the MA course in Children’s Book Illustration at Anglia Ruskin; a course that attracts students from all over the world. Yet here they were without work. “Why is it so competitive?” asked one graduate. “We were given no business training,” said another. Then someone showed me a picture book she had written and illustrated and finally self published after years of dialogue with UK publishers who were happy to keep asking for revisions yet never agreed to publish.  She used Blurb which she thought was a better self publishing platform than Lulu. Was there a possible way forward here; bypassing the UK market, large print costs and thousands of copies to store and sell? You only need one sample copy to take to the Bologna Trade Fair to sell the rights to overseas publishers and there are UK Trade & Investment grants available through the Publishers Association; it just needs a group of determined people to learn how to go about it and share the cost of a stand.

     The party on Wednesday for Dr Jim Parker was not as bleak as I’d feared thanks to his tireless work all last year to bring about a smooth transfer to the British Library; at least we still have a Public Lending Right.  But it did all feel absurd; why get rid of someone so popular with authors and illustrators and with so much PLR expertise and hand over to people who have to learn it all from scratch?  Jim’s is a hard act to follow especially as the new Head of PLR Policy and Advocacy has to do the job in only two days a week.  But if anyone is going to succeed, it will be Julia Eccleshare who stepped into the role on 29 September.

   The Bookseller Children’s Conference on Thursday was depressing despite statistics showing a healthy growth across the children’s book market. The image above makes the conference look fun, child focussed and innocent but it was all about ruthless big business.  I’d hoped to see more independent bookseller there but was told that the large fee had kept them away. Ann-Janine Murtagh of HarperCollins, the first speaker, set the tone of the day. Her talk was dominated by the sales figures of celebrity David Walliams’ new book Awful Auntie published on 25 September. 

As she talked the HarperCollins sales team, sitting below her in the front row, held up the figures as they came through. All big publishers have a special ‘luvvy’tone of voice they use when talking about ‘their authors’. But by the end of this conference, dominated by publishing giants and the Mass Global Market, I had the strong suspicion that this tone of voice was reserved for just the favoured few best selling celebrities. As for the mid-list authors, they hardly featured and as for those who had defected to self publishing, they were not mentioned at all. Indeed, that was the strange thing about the conference’s overview of the industry, self publishing was completely ignored; it was as if it did not exist. 

   So, what conclusions can be drawn? There’s very little room for everyone in this industry. Publishing for children has become an absurdly competitive industry and will become even more so as giants like Random House decide to publish fewer books and as art schools and universities pour out more and more writers and illustrators.

EMAIL FROM JOYCE DUNBAR

Hi Gillian,

Thanks so much for the copy of FLOOD. It's a lovely book and to me it's a marvel that you have written, illustrated and published this book on your own. A brave undertaking! You need a very special combination of skills. At first you must have been a lone ranger - but as recent articles show, more and more authors are taking charge in this way - including many who are previously published.

The rest of us are threatened on two sides - on the one hand the new breed of self published authors - often very media savvy - why else would they do it? - and good at self promotion. On the other side, publishers forming larger and larger conglomerates with a tight agenda - and with precious few exceptions, smaller publishers afraid to take risks. Which leaves traditionally published authors somewhat stranded.

It's a beautiful book, with your characteristic variety of texture and delicacy of tone - telling a story with a strong theme of survival against the odds - in such a quirky way that I couldn't help wondering where it came from. The happiness
of the ending is muted and left me with a vague feeling of melancholy.

Then, it struck me.  It reads very well as an allegory of your (our) struggles as a writer. You are Fussy Hen, Slodger the children's book industry - now getting old and lumberingly large; fox at first is the wolf at the door, morphing into the guy who helped you set up Plaister Press; the flood is what threatens us all. 'Fussy hen
found to her surprise that she could steer' - is your discovery that you can take control of your career with a bit of financial backing; the island is where you are now - a lone publisher with the big old one beside you -   not altogether secure but
not drowned either. The ending is safety on a tiny lonely island, so both happy and sad.

I didn't try to figure this out - it just dawned. Maybe it is as much my projection as your unconscious. But anyway - it is a very intriguing example of the way images indirectly and metaphorically can tell a story about change.  I think we are both
so lucky to have started our careers in the 70s and 80's. A golden time.

I can only say this because I've known you so long as a friend - and I hope you won't think I've taken liberties. I hope it sails forth into the world with as much courage as you have shown in producing it and in taking charge. Bravo! To you and Fussy Hen!

Love

Joyce

Thank you, Joyce, for your insights. My last three picture books have had a water theme but not the one I’m working on now. This new book is about a mouse with not a drop of water in sight.  I wonder what that can mean.

SURPRISE PARTY

Last Saturday was Helen Craig’s 8oth birthday and a surprise party was thrown for her. Friends and family had been asked to arrive early and park their cars, out of sight, in the field, before waiting very quietly for Helen to arrive. Did she suspect?  Here’s her expression as she walked through the door. 

Despite repeatedly saying she didn’t want a surprise party, when it happened Helen was smiling.

 

 The remarkable thing about Helen Craig at 80 is that she is still having picture books published. She’s currently working on the illustrations of Snowy Sunday, eighteen years after doing the first book in the series, One Windy Wednesday, published by Walker Books in 1996. 

One Windy Wednesday is a story about the animals on Bonnie Bumble's farm having their voices blown away by the wind and all ending up with the wrong sounds. Here’s a link to it and the other books in the series:  One Windy Wednesday, Meow Monday, Turnover Tuesday, Thirsty Thursday, Foggy Friday and Soggy Saturday.  

Helen told me that she wanted the images for these books to be quite different from her Angelina Ballerina  books. She said she found it hard to draw in a bold manner and so she did the original line drawings very small - about 3 inches square for the single page and then enlarged on the photocopier to 8 inches square so the enlargement was quite great and the line ended up nice and chunky. She then dampened the picture and stretched it onto a board, before colouring it. 

“In Snowy Sunday,” she said, “it’s snowing snowflakes as big as balls of wool and all the animals are shivering, so Bonnie Bumble has to knit them coats and scarves, beak warmers and tail warmers. These stories are always whacky and fantastic but that's what makes them such fun to do.”

This must be the secret to Helen’s long illustrating career – the fun of it all and the sheer delight of drawing and painting.

A TALE OF TWO TAILS

When I’m asked which comes first in my picture books, the images or the words, I say the words come first. I like to do a first written draft and then, when I’m thinking about page layouts and the integration of image with text, I do the second draft, removing unnecessary words where images can do the work instead.     However, I do hold an image in my head right from the start – it forms the essence of the book.

    In my latest book, Flood– published in July 2014 - that first image was a bit paradoxical - a hen in a flood, safe in what looks like a red furry nest but really it's a fox’s tail. It was from this image that the story started to emerge; a hen trying to dodge the eyes of a hungry fox who wants to hold her in his stare and then eat her. So what's preventing the fox from doing just that?

Another tail. In order to survive the flood the fox has to grab the tail of an ox and cling on tight.

And then I realized that the anxious little hen, at the back of this string of animals relying on two tails to survive, might also be able to help. From my very scant knowledge of rudders, I knew that if you turn a rudder one way the boat goes the opposite way.(I tried it out with a toothpick and match box) So the hen in my story discovers, in the course of looking this way and that, trying to avoid the eyes of the Hungry Fox, that she can steer.

She squawks out directions, the fox turns his head, pulls on the tail of the ox who then changes direction. 

In this way they proceed through the flood until they reach land.

And so, from the first image of a hen in a foxy nest, I arrive at my story; a sort of flood fable with friendship at the end.

FORGET NOAH'S ARK!

Forget Noah’s Ark! When the floods arrive, there are three creatures who have their own ideas about keeping their heads above water.

Flood, a captivating picture story underlining the importance of co-operation in times of trouble, is the work of author and illustrator Gillian McClure who has set up Plaister Press to bring back into print some of her most popular books and to publish exciting new titles.

McClure’s distinctive illustrative style, which involves the use of watercolour, waxing and sprayed ink to obtain a ‘splattery’ look, is ideal for this warm-hearted cautionary tale about pulling together when a soaking wet disaster strikes.

It just won’t stop raining and out in the fields, Old Slodger the Ox keeps his head down and his eyes to the ground. Close by is Fussy Hen who is too busy squawking and looking this way and that for the cunning Hungry Fox. And sure enough the Hungry Fox has his beady eyes on Fussy Hen. What none of them has spotted is that the waters are rising rapidly and when the three animals finally realise that they must work together as a team if they are to reach land safely, there is a danger they might have left it too late…

A funny, characterful and beautifully illustrated way to show that getting on swimmingly solves a lot of problems!

(Plaister Press, paperback, £6.99)

I'm very grateful to Pam Norfolk, books editor for the Lancashire Evening Post newspaper group for this review.

THE DEBATE: ARE WE ALL ON THE SAME PAGE?

On 8 July in the Churchill Room at the House of Commons there was a debate: 'Are we all on the same page? Can a fair deal for authors be balanced with a fair deal for all?'

    The debate was organised by The Authors' Licensing & Collecting Society who invited writers and other professionals from the creative industries, politicians and broadcasters to debate the issue of what type of marketplace gives authors the best opportunity to make a living at a time when the perception of copyright by the public is seen as a barrier to free and easy access to the works of creators and when 'sharing' on-line content is not considered theft. 

    A technological revolution has brought greater opportunities for the commercial exploitation of works. This debate was asking whether the rights and interests of creators were now the weakest link in the value chain. And if so, what could be done to address  it.

    Baroness Floella Benjamin chaired the panel which included Wendy Cope, poet, Joanne Harris, novelist, Richard Mollet, Chief Executive of the Publishers Association and Richard Hooper, chairman of The Copyright Hub.

    We were told that now is a really important time for authors regarding their copyright and their ability to make a living from their creativity. Recent research carried out by ALCS, ‘What are Words Worth Now?’ looking into authors' earnings, showed that digital use earnings are going up but overall incomes are coming down and the proportion of professional authors who earn a living solely from writing has fallen from 40% to 11%. Professional authors are earning less than the Minimum Income Standard (the acceptable standard of living) in the UK while the UK creative industries are a world-leading success story. If writers are going to continue to make their vital contribution to the economy, they need to receive fair remuneration for their work; indeed, all creators have a right to be paid for their work.

    I was interested in what Richard Hooper, chairman of The Copyright Hub  had to say. Having recently completed a review for the Government into copyright licensing, Richard Hooper argued that instead of legislation, there should be copyright education and that licensing should become fit for purpose. He said there needed to be an effective database with a micro payment system in place to make it easier for the public (especially schools and colleges) to contact creators to ask for permissions and to pay to use their works; failure to do so would result in an email saying a theft had been spotted.

    It was all very interesting but, sadly, with the big internet service providers like Google invariably absent, would anything concrete ever come out of this debate?