Hurry - final weeks!

Today's Guardian usefully sums up the disastrous state of bookselling today. On page 13 Waterstone's has taken out a big advert promoting Nigella Christmas for under a tenner, less than half price. For a penny under half price the main literary bookseller in the UK will sell you the Guinness Book of Records, and for the same low retail price you can buy a volume of letters to their younger selves by Rolf Harris, Jonathan Ross, the racist bigot Alan Carr and others of that ilk.

One page 19 WH Smith offer up to 75% off another bundle of useless books that is only redeemed by the presence of Andrew Marr's book on Modern Britain. The Guinness Book of Records is a tenner though - you can save a penny by sticking with Waterstone's.

Two pages on, Borders, in their last gasp, is offering up to 60% off their stock as they are closing down. I'd never noticed their mission statement printed next to their logo before - "Let's escape" it says. And they will, as fixtures and fittings are also up for sale.

Look again at the figures.... half price at Waterstone's, up to 75% off at Smiths, up to 60% off at a chain that is closing at Xmas.

Someone trying to tell us something here?

Exiled Writers

Back to literature....
Saturday 12 December: 2.00pm
AGM of Exiled Writers Ink, home of many of the writers in Five Leaves refugee anthologies, Crossing the Border, The Bend in the Road (now out of print) and The Silver Throat of the Moon. The guest speaker is Daljit Nagra (pictured), contributor to the Anglo-Dutch pamphlet By Heart-Uit Her Hoofd (Five Leaves) though he is marginally better known for his Faber collection Look We Have Coming To Dover!, which won the Forward first collection prize in 2007.
The new issue of Exiled Ink magazine is now available, £5 cheque to Exiled Writers Ink, 31 Hallswelle Road, London NW11.
AGM venue: Universal Peace Foundation, 43 Lancaster Gate, London W2 3NA (Lancaster Gate tube)

This is a late entry, other Five Leaves events are listed on our main website.

EDL in Nottingham

Well, I never did get to the poetry reading on Saturday (see two entries ago). In case anyone was wondering why people were concerned about the EDL, check this one out:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dzvj06Ngt98. The moment around 2.20 seconds is a great one, presumably the EDL felt that a lamppost looked suspiciously Islamic.

The rise and rise of creative writing courses

The excellent Tindal Street Press from Birmingham is a well known publisher of fiction from Birmingham, whose modest output has a singularly strong record in being shortlisted or winning various literary prizes. They have just published Roads Ahead, short stories by 22 newish voices, some from the West Midlands, some from further afield. The book is edited by Catherine O’Flynn, one of their earlier big success stories. As the title suggests, the book is a marker for the future with most of the contributors being at a fairly early stage in their writing career.

Of the 22 writers, five mention that they have completed or are attending creative writing courses at university level. I know two of the others, both of whom used to live in the East Midlands and both of whom completed creative writing courses but did not mention doing so in their authors’ notes. It may be that some of the others have also completed such courses, but at least seven have certainly done so. Of the others, four currently teach creative writing at university level.. Thus at least half of the line up is involved in that world.

It takes a few seconds on google to find that there are many creative writing courses. Locally you can find them at Nottingham University, Nottingham Trent University, Derby University, University of Lincoln, De Montfort University, Loughborough University. Apologies if I have missed any. The number may well have increased since starting this article.
Creative writing courses may well have replaced the old style writing groups. They have, however, been subject to some criticism. Nottingham writer Jon McGregor, for example, as part of a most interesting article on making a living as a writer, comments “Some will find patronage within the great pyramid schemes of creative-writing courses…” as an alternative to his dressing up as a bear, handing out leaflets outside the pound shop in Barnsley, as a way of getting by as a struggling writer. (You can find the full article in Pen Pusher 12, orderable via http://www.penpushermagazine.co.uk/.)

I don’t think Jon was suggesting his ursine habit was a better option. Nor here am I criticising M.A.s in Creative Writing. Some of my best friends etc. And some of the authors I have published or have signed up have done such courses and some teach them.

But I don’t think it would be a good idea if the road ahead for any publisher has the equivalent of a bus lane for people on creative writing courses.

Spoilt for choice

This coming Saturday looks interesting. Here in Nottingham you can attend Nottingham Forest versus Leicester FC (only 1,000 tickets left) or go ice-skating in the Market Square, or pick up a present at the German Christmas Market. Cathy Grindrod is launching her excellent new Shoestring Press poetry collection, The Sky Head On at Bromley House Library. Meanwhile, elsewhere in town, the English Defence League will be showcasing the worst of England in protesting against Muslims, seig heils optional. There will of course be counter protests.

It is hard to imagine that poetry is a major debating point among the English Defence League. But on the other hand, I've only just hastily returned an unsolicited manuscript about the glories of Englishness compared to say, the beastly Scots, the unspeakable Welsh and the dreadful Europeans, which was in poetic form. It is always a good idea to look at a publisher's list before sending in material.

Not that there is anything new in groups like the English Defence League. Turning to the last posting here, Roland Camberton's Scamp, published in 1950, has a character picking up a leaflet from the fictional Association of Freemen and Yeomen of England "Britons! In times of old your forefathers knew how to draw the sword for liberty. It was they who carried the flag to the furthest corners of the globe... Alien influences dominate our native land".

No doubt there was a Pictish Defence League, demonstrating against alien Romans coming across here, stealing their woad...

John Minton

Five Leaves has got the go ahead to re-issue the two Roland Camberton books - Scamp and Rain on the Pavements in our New London Editions series. No date set yet, more details to follow etc. Camberton was one of the great mysteries of London literature, which meant of course that Iain Sinclair got on the case. Sinclair wrote a long piece on Camberton for the Guardian, which will be included in Scamp. We'll be using the original John Minton covers, which will gladden some hearts, and this led me to read Frances Spalding's Dance till the Stars Come Down (the title taken from an Auden poem), Minton's biography. Spalding's book is out of print, and not cheap on the net.

John Minton was a household name in his day, but died young, by his own hand, in 1957. He was part of that Soho set who would hang round The Colony Room and drink too much. Minton was part of the "homosexual freemasonry" (Spalding's phrase) and led a promiscuous life. He knew a sailor when he saw one, that's for sure, yet often fell in love with heterosexual men.

Minton inherited money, and was a successful artist. He supported many who needed his help and many who were spongers. He was never known to turn down a commission - it would be terrific to see an exhibition of all his book covers. As well as Camberton he produced covers for Martin Goff, Alan Ross and the cookery writer Elizabeth David, for John Lehmann and other publishers. A general retrospective would be good too.

Spalding has probably covered everything biographically, but her book is short on illustrations. An illustrated John Minton anyone? I'd buy one.

No Borders

The problem with Borders - see financial pages and book blogs everywhere - is that they just simply got it wrong in the UK. They thought this was America, and it isn't, yet, but rents are higher. Driving to a huge out of town bookshop was not for us. Now 45 shops and about 1,000 workers livelihoods are at risk as the company slips into administration.

Borders always bothered me, particularly since I got my hands on the Borders (USA) managers' manual for smashing unions. Some of the content was hilarious, along the lines of advising managers that if they saw workers who don't normally talk to one another speaking together, beware, they could be talking unions. Worry if managers are not invited to staff nights out - they could be talking unions. From 1996-1998 the independent union the Industrial Workers of the World started to get a toe-hold in Borders USA, which led to firings and a Boycott Borders campaign. Like so many US companies they come over as all hip (the Guardian made much of their appeal to the Friends' generation) but at heart they were an anti-union firm, keen to hire till jockeys for low wages, operating a central buying system.

Yet their bankruptcy is terrible news. Many smaller publishers can't get into Smiths, can't survive off the indies and Amazon alone, which give Waterstones immense power over certain types of books. If they use that power wisely we all gain, if badly, we are stuffed. Yet I imagine the biggest losers will be the big publishers who need volume and need - to some extent - to be able to play someone off against Waterstones.

And Borders had its strong points - it stocked, at times, a very good range of magazines, literary and political. This will impact on Central Books, the main mag distributor to shops (and our distributor). From time to time they got behind local books in a big way - the Dundee Borders ordered 100 copies of our The Lost Sister, even though the author works at Dundee Waterstones.

There is a welcome spread of good indies, and small chains and good indies may be the future, but meantime we are in for a tough ride.