States of Independence report

It's always tempting after events to think "we've got away with it again", but on this occasion I do feel that this is the case. States of Independence II (programme still on http://www.statesofindependence.co.uk/) was attended by at least 350 people on Saturday in Leicester. We know this as we gave out day programmes (300 in 2010) which some people shared or managed to avoid so the numbers would perhaps be around 400 attending the 26 events. Why the worry? In 2010 we produced 6,000 printed programmes circulated in advance, but felt that most people attended via facebook, blogs and other electronic means. This year, with less money to play with, we circulated about 2,000 postcards and a handful of posters directing people to the website and concentrated on electronic means only. And the whole event was conceived, programmed and promoted in four weeks. Those of us from the poster and leaflet days get nervous doing without. But it worked. The short notice obviously excluded some people so more notice and perhaps a bit of postering might have brought us to around 500 people, which is as many as this kind of event should have. What is good about States is that the average age of attendees is much lower than the norm at any other literature project we are involved with - and I mean young people not just early-middle aged - and, increasingly, multicultural.
It was not difficult to pull together an interesting programme, nor was it last year, but that might not always be the case with a relatively limited pool of regional speakers. The day - being free to the public - relies on speakers' mutual goodwill (to use the phrase Ni Smith posted on facebook), accepting travel expenses and meal vouchers only, and pitching in to join panels, chair events, and mooching around the stalls like everyone else. There is certainly little barrier between reader and writer, publisher and the published, the well-known and the less well-known on the day. It would be invidious to ship in "national" names who would need paying, while relying on the free labour of local writers and organisers.
We charged stall holders a token fee, a fiver or "an interesting book" more to introduce the idea of charging at a similar event in the future, but though some stalls do well it is hardly a commercial operation, and with so many writers involved sales are spread widely. Nobody makes anything significant, but one of the major features is that much maligned networking. Last year, for example, led to Nine Arches from Birmingham forming partnerships to hold regular "shindigs" in Nottingham and Leicester, while Writing School Leicester formed a publishing partnership with Pewter Rose of Nottingham. This year I signed up a couple of writers I'd not come across before to read at Lowdham Book Festival.
The cost? De Montfort University provides the premises free, but there is a direct cost to them, albeit small, of security on the day. Feeding the speakers cost about £200, travel probably the same (by the time I've tracked down several of the speakers who ran off without their expenses). Say a couple of hundred for publicity. Excluding DMU, £600 all in. Let's say we took £100 in stall hire. £500 then, with no payment for organising time. Five Leaves picked up the bill, and the £1000 it cost last year, the remains of a fund we administered to promote independent presses. This fund is now exhausted so future States projects will need a degree of funding. We are, however, talking with Nine Arches about a similar event in Birmingham.
And on the day? A bit early to say but I know that the sessions on anarchism and on writing speculative fiction were full, that 32 people came to the session on Moomins and philosophy, that Penny Luithlen, the young adult agent who carries some of our writers, was busy throughout the day doing short advice sessions, we sold out of the graphic novel Depresso we were carrying for the day to support one of the speakers and the cafe was rather pleased with its takings. I also know that some friends are ganging up to ensure Five Leaves moves into the eBook era following a session on that subject by Abi Rhodes from Spokesman. Why don't they just leave me alone? I like the twentieth century.

How low can you get?

There was a publishers' panel at the Derbyshire Readers' Day comprising small indies. A member of the public asked about book sales. Route came out tops with 14,000 copies sold and counting of their music and rugby league-land memoir Bringing It All Back Home (a great book). Shoestring remarked on the astonishing success of their Daily Mail promoted academic book that included the words "swapping wives" in its title, though the Mail readers must have been terribly disappointed that it had nothing to do with the sort of swapping wives that they are used to. Poetry? 300ish seemed about standard, with Peter Sansom from Poetry Business remarking that certain well known poetry publishers rarely achieve above 500 for single author collections. Peter also said that sales can be much lower, with one of his titles selling two copies. Two. Clearly that author did not even have aunties. I can't remember if it was on or off the panel when he mentioned a certain major poetry publisher only selling seven copies of a book by a well known writer, albeit one that does not do readings.

This sounds like the common poets' conversation of describing their worst and least well attended reading. Ian McMillan always scoops the pool by describing an early reading of his which was attended by minus one. When Ian got to the event the audience was one person but he had not realised it was Ian reading and left immediately making, in Barnsley logic, an attendance of minus one.

Another quiet weekend at Five Leaves Towers

Apart from the Derbyshire Readers Day mentioned earlier, there was: The Colin Ward and Childhood conference in Cambridge, well attended, excellent speakers, good programme, good booksales especially from our friends at Freedom Press. Up in Scotland Zoe Wicomb had a full house at the Aye Write Glasgow Book Festival, and was the guest at BBC Scotland's Book Cafe. The Scottish Daily Record gave Ray Banks' California an excellent review, while J David Simons talked at the Scottish Jewish Archives (shame the publicity was so late) and at the Edinburgh Jewish Literary Society. And we finished the weekend by finding a sponsor for a forthcoming big book on London fiction. And I cleaned my bedroom.

Where are the Moomins when you need them?

Only four more days before our second States of Independence day in Leicester, celebrating the wonderful world of small and independent presses, this Saturday at De Montfort University. A one day - and free - book and spoken word festival. This list gives you an idea what it is about.

The 1950s, artists' books, publishing, eBooks, Asian writing, Irish writing, speculative fiction, spoken word from Short Fuse and Word!, anarchism, sex and sensibility, crime fiction, graphic novels, the Moomins, music, short fiction, money, poetry, making it as a writer, editing, East Midlands Book Award, book and magazine launches. Cafe available. Come for an hour or all day. Full programme on http://www.statesofindependence.co.uk/. All human and Moomin life welcome.

Where would we be without amoebas?

Derbyshire Readers Day - mentioned earlier as drawing its speakers only from small independent presses - was a great success, at least as far as this indie is concerned. Six of the speakers, Berlie Doherty, Stephen Booth, Dan Tunstall, Maxine Linnell, Danuta Reah and Charlie Williams are all associated with Five Leaves, though we are not their sole publisher in four cases but on this day they were all in our orbit. I was also pleased to chair a publishers' panel with the editors of Smith/Doorstep, Templar, Shoestring and Route, and to attend a lecture by one of the editors of Peepal Tree on the Caribbean history that forms the backdrop to Caribbean writing. I hope Jeremy Poynting repeats this talk elsewhere. It will certainly soon appear on Peepal Tree's website. Quote of the day was from Danuta Reah who mentioned that she had some dealings once with a computer shop where the owner, "would have been a serial killer had he not gone into computing". Malcolm Burgess also raised a laugh when he reported that I'd [accidentally] described Five Leaves as a "micro press" which made him think that his Oxygen Press must be an "amoeba press".

Thanks and congratulations to Derbyshire Libraries for taking the risk of devoting their whole annual event to the groundlings.

Mod culture

Safe to say that, save for humming along to the odd Small Faces track while at work, Mod Culture has never intruded on Five Leaves nor we on it. Not that there's anything wrong with it. In County Council days I organised a Mod Night in a library - with half the audience arriving on scooters. The more respectable elements - the other half - told some hair raising tales of their pill-popping youth. Anyway, here's Five Leaves debut article on the Mod scene. More on this book sometime later.
http://www.modculture.info/2011/01/cult-terry-taylor-novel-gets-reissued.html

On board the Carousel

We don't usually post our reviews in full, but I rather liked this one from the children's book mag Carousel. This also give an opportunity to say nice things about the mag, details on www.carouselguide.co.uk/, which is a good read - and for those of us printists out there, happily produced in a paper format.