This week in books

Like any job, publishing is full of small bits of unexciting detailed work that builds to a fulfilling life at the cutting edge of literature. That, at least, is what I keep telling myself when doing those bits of unexciting, detailed work. Not that I mind packing parcels for Amazon, a task so skilled that it can only be done by senior management at Five Leaves PLC. This week, however, has been exciting. On Tuesday I spent seven or eight happy hours on trains working on the first edit of Russel D McLean's next, third, novel, Father Confessor. We've already announced the book, signed a contract, designed the cover... and it is always a relief when manuscripts live up to their expectations. No slashing and burning required. In an earlier McLean manuscript I'd had fun tracking the route of every gun through the book as a shoot-out at the end seemed to have one firearm too many. No superfluous firearms in this book but it's still bloody dangerous to live in Dundee. McLean fans will be happy.
On the journey back, David Belbin's forthcoming Student lasted from Carlisle to Alfreton. This was my third read of the book, following some editorial changes by the author. There had been an interesting issue as one, now changed, chapter had previously included a lot of action around Second Life. How do you manage to make a novel about students read as current, when aspects of their behaviour pass so quickly? Nobody now uses MySpace, how many people have even heard of Second Life? Whatever students do now, or terms they use, will be out of date by publication date, which is challenging for authors and publishers.
The big local news is the new book of short stories by Jon McGregor, reviewed everywhere the last few days - This Isn't the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like You. One of the stories appeared earlier in the Five Leaves' anthology, Sea of Azov, so we can marginally bask in the acclaim. At the launch Jon revealed that if he'd had his way the book would have been called (I think it was) "I Bought You a Shovel". His publisher, Bloomsbury, thankfully squashed that idea, but wittily and usefully sent him a snow shovel as a present on publication day, so that the sender could add a note saying "I bought you a shovel".
The same evening author Rebecca Buck and editor Victoria Oldham from the American-based lesbian and gay publisher Bold Strokes were giving a talk at Nottingham Writers Studio on their experience writing for and editing a mid-size publishing house. It was hard not to regret the loss of so many of our lesbian and gay publishing houses, Sheba, Brilliance, GMP, Oscar's... when hearing how successful Bold Strokes are, and how mainstream they are too, being stocked in major bookstores. Here there is no discrimination against lesbian and gay writers being successful - think Alan Hollinghurst, Sarah Waters, Carol Ann Duffy - but outside of Gay's the Word you will rarely see lesbian and gay books in any quantity or labelled as such.
Bold Strokes will be at our States of Independence day in Leicester on March 17 and this week the programme went on line at http://www.statesofindependence.co.uk/. I'll post later about States, but if you are withing striking, or stroking, distance of Leicester do make a date. In short it is a free book festival in a day, with seventy writers taking part, with its roots in the independent publishing sector.
This was the week the programme had to be finalised for Lowdham Book Festival's winter weekend, held over the first weekend in March. And it has, though it is not yet on line. The theme of the winter weekend is Local Heroes, and it includes an evening with the film-maker Billy Ivory as the highlight. Lowdham's winter weekends have always been on a more intimate scale than the summer festival (intimate being code for smaller), which suits us just fine. The date, for those who follow all things Lowdham, is, however, the usual date for our Flicks in the Sticks film weekend. Well, after ten years Flicks has gone dark. It may return, we hope so, but ten years was a good run and frees up some time to develop our winter mini-festival in the future. Lowdham also now runs a "First Friday" lecture series, with one of our regular speakers, Mike Wilson, yesterday having to cover the whole of Dickens' life and work in a hour. Easy, given his last challenge was to cover the whole of English Literature in an hour...
The week closed with National Libraries Day. That is something. Last year there were dozens of protest actions (including one organised by Five Leaves and UNISON) about library cutbacks, but the day has morphed into a day to celebrate libraries - and protest where necessary. Our local Nottingham Post included a good article in support of libraries, with short interviews with me from Five Leaves and our writers David Belbin and John Stuart Clark (the cartoonist Brick), together with some national figures including the ubiquitous Stephen Fry.
Except the week is not over yet. There are many emails to get through and - hurrah - tomorrow night the next order from Amazon arrives, telling me exactly which books I'll be packing on Monday morning. I'm looking forward to it already.

Becoming a Five Leaves writer

Five Leaves is pretty clear on unsolicited manuscripts. Our website says we are not looking for submissions. Despite this, we receive one, two or three pitches a day. Several hundred a year. Of these, some are clearly sent, scattergun, to every email address the sender can find. Others are from people who've carefully examined our list (although not noticed the note on submissions) and even some who have read some Five Leaves' books (we are grateful). A few have seen the submissions note but write "I see from your website that you don't normally accept unsolicited submissions, but..." Sorry, no buts.
Why don't we look at unsolicited manuscripts? Bloodaxe does, for example, and in consequence it receives - according to the firm's website - getting on for 100 submissions every week from new writers, say 5,000 a year, only one or two of whom will be taken on. God knows how they manage to check through them. And that is one reason we are not keen - we do not have the staff to go through the unsolicited work.
How then do we recruit new writers? Are they all friends, a clique? Well, we could survive happily taking on no new writers. Existing writers on our list have a habit of writing more than one book. We don't, contractually, tie people down and some of our writers have gone elsewhere, somewhere bigger, or somewhere more appropriate with their other work. Good luck to them. But some writers are now on their second, third... eighth book with us and that leaves little room. Most of the books we publish are commissioned. We might think of an idea, and find the right person to right it. Thus we commissioned Mark Patterson to write Roman Nottinghamshire - we'd been looking for a writer, and luckily for him he wrote a piece in Nottinghamshire Today, which had just the right tone. We approach writers whose work we like. We'd noticed that Naomi Jaffa had been publishing some good poems over the years in good poetry magazines but had not published a pamphlet or a book. We asked her. I attended a talk by Michael Billig on Jews in rock'n'roll - I asked him if he would write a book on the subject for us... and so it goes on. Our historic reprints are another matter as we usually ask around for suggestions, from people expert in the areas we are interested in. Beat material, working class fiction, utopian social history, London novels. Sometimes things just develop. Some years ago we published an anthology of East Midlands' young adult fiction writers... one of the stories by Berlie Doherty became the novel A Beautiful Place for a Murder, published by us, another story by David Belbin will form part of his book Student, due out this year and we have republished a novel by one of the other contributors, with another pending. Our next poetry pamphlet, Oxygen Man by Joanne Limburg, is by someone who appeared some years ago in our anthology Passionate Renewal, where we printed substantial sections of her work. Later this year we are picking up a book by Bali Rai, whose agent represents several of the young adult writers on our list, and through them we've got to know Bali. But our favourite anecdote was that J. David Simons joined our list through my starting reading his first novel in an in-law's bathroom. This led to a mention of the book in a blog entry, then to some correspondence, then to attending a reading by him, and a conversation where he was encouraged to write along a particular line, and the consequent book, and his first one, are now Five Leaves. The in-law is now thinking of putting in a special shelf. Two of our writers this year - both writing on jazz - came to us by recommendation by another publisher, but we knew Peter Vacher and Chris Searle's work already. And so it goes on.
Getting on Five Leaves' list is the most inexact science. It's not fair, but publishing a book is a bit investment of our time and our money, which will often result in much more time being spent and a loss of money (in publishing, the story goes that 80% of books make a loss) so it seems to work best when we have, somehow, built a relationship with a writer, or admire their work, or have come to them by serendipity. Wading through submissions does not do it for us.
So my advice to all potential writers is to get out more; get yourself noticed, write for small magazines, turn up at readings, give talks, don't be a hermit. But also, don't scare off publishers by being demanding or needy. Don't forget to stay in more too - reading the books you have bought or borrowed. Good writers are good readers.

World Book Night

Writing on Facebook, our writer J. David Simons said about the forthcoming World Book Night: I'm not sure what to think of World Book Night. Of course, it is a noble cause to get great books out there into the hands of readers. I wonder what kind of deals these already well-known writers have with their publishers - is there anything in at all for the writers apart from the proliferation of their books? [I know a couple of the writers on the list- I must ask them]. If it's all for free, could we have other such nights of free services for other noble causes? A World Boiler-Fixing Night, A World Car-Servicing Night, A World Free Banking Night, A World Free Bottle of Wine Night, A World Free Cinema Night, A World Free Insurance Night. Why does it always have to be the writers that give away their work for free?!

My own experience of WBN is limited. Last year I was a "giver" but rather than send the books to my appointed pick up point, a bookshop, WBN sent them to a library miles from where I live and work. Two buses away in fact (I don't drive). I was not keen on carrying 48 copies of The Spy Who Came in From the Cold on the buses, but I did not need to as the books never actually arrived. They are out there somewhere. I did, however, make up part of a panel at an arts association in deepest rural Leicestershire, with a writer, a librarian and a bookseller. Several of the association were givers. We had a very good discussion on all things bookish, and WBN was the trigger.

I can see David's point, but I know that he and most other writers do want to create a reading culture whereas I doubt the bloke who comes to mend our boiler wants to put boilers at the heart of public life. And, locally, some people have from time to time organised free cinema showings on giant screens for all to see. Certainly we give away some overstocks from time to time - usually anthologies lest any individual author gets upset - as freebies in, for example, Library Reading Day goodie bags.

My main concern about WBN is that as that it relies on well known writers giving their work away free (I presume it is free) it will perpetuate the dominance of those big name writers. Wouldn't it be grand if WBN also had some dosh to pay deserving writers, and deserving small publishers to enable, well, us to give away 25,000 books to help draw the reading public's attention towards, say, J. David Simons?

WBN givers often do try hard to get books into the hands of those who don't read very much, but I confess that over the last year I've got my hands on several of last year's list, introducing me to writers I'd been meaning to read. We all like freebies. I mentioned recently to Robert Chandler, the translator of Life and Fate, that I'd recently found a copy of his book in goodie bag at a Vintage event, having already bought two copies. He said that he was recently at a similar event and on leaving found his goodie bag had that book in it too.

Some bookshops have been concerned about books being devalued by being free, or taking up people's reading time to the exclusion of bought books. I don't accept that. Most book readers read from all sorts of sources, bookshops, second hand bookshops, libraries, book sales at summer fetes, borrowing from friends. But I'm interested to see how this argument develops.

August 12 1952 commemoration

Advance notice
From Revolution to Repression: commemorating the Soviet Yiddish writers executed on August 12th 1952
Five Leaves Publications and Jewish Music Institute are holding an international event to mark the 60th anniversary of the executions
Sunday 12th August 2012
2.00pm to 5.00pm
School of Oriental and African Studies, lecture theatre G2, Russell Square campus, London (Russell Square tube)
Speakers: Gennady Estraikh, Associate Professor New York University on the Soviet Yiddish writers; Robert Chandler, translator of Vassily Grossman's Life and Fate, on Vasily Grossman and Isaak Babel
Music from the Soviet Jewish world: Polina and Merlin Shepherd
This event will also launch From Revolution to Repression: Soviet Yiddish writers 1917-1952, edited by the late Joseph Sherman, published by Five Leaves
Admission free
Light refreshments will be available
RSVP and further information mailto:myra@fiveleaves.co.uk
www.fiveleaves.co.uk
The illustration here is by Chagall, the cover of a small volume of poetry "Troyer" (Grief) published in Yiddish by the Kulture Lige in Kiev in 1922, as a fundraiser for a Jewish orphanage. The poems are by Dovid Hofshteyn, one of the poets killed on August 12 1952, and will appear in translation in From Revolution to Repression.

Laure Del-Rivo and Michael Horovitz in conversation

Tuesday, 31st January 6.30 for 7pm LAURA DEL-RIVO and MICHAEL HOROVITZ In Conversation with Julian Mash, formerly of the Travel Bookshop
Ladbroke Grove Underground
This event brings together two local writers to discuss their work, and the lives and times that influenced them.
Laura Del-Rivo's debut novel The Furnished Room was published in 1961, and filmed in 1963 by Michael Winner as West 11. Recently re-published, the novel was described in the Guardian as "an evocative taste of black-coffee blues". She was part of a loose collective of writers and artists including Colin Wilson and Alexander Trocchi, and was photographed by Ida Kar. In addition to writing, Del-Rivo had a series of jobs, including working as a bookseller, a Lyons' counter hand and an art-school model before she started running a market stall in Portobello Road, where she is still a regular stall-holder.
Michael Horovitz is an internationalist polymath. He has edited and published New Departures and coordinated the Poetry Olympics festivals for 50 years (poetryolympics.com). He was described by Allen Ginsberg as a "Popular, Experienced, Experimental, Jazz Generation, New Jerusalem, Sensitive Bard", and his magnum opus, A New Waste Land, was selected as Book of the Year by D.J. Taylor in the Independent as "A deeply felt clarion call from the radical underground". He has been a Notting Hill resident for most of his adult life, his artworks and picture-poems continue to be exhibited locally and internationally, and he currently performs in a jazz poetry duo with Stan Tracey as well as with the ebullient William Blake Klezmatrix band.
All events cost £5, include wine and take place at the Lutyens & Rubinstein Bookshop, 21 Kensington Park Road, London W11 2EU

We are a small venue and our events sell out quickly so please purchase a ticket to guarantee a seat. Tickets can be bought in-store or by contacting bookshop@lutyensrubinstein.co.uk or calling 020 7229 1010.

Here comes trouble!

Here comes trouble! The radicals of Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire is our next book by David Bell, author of the successful book on the Leicestershire miners' strike Dirty Thirty. Trouble will be written for a general audience (I almost used the word popular, but that might be pushing it) and include radicals of all types - political, of course, but also religious - think George Fox of the Quakers, trade union, literary, lesbian and gay... whatever we come up with. David and Five Leaves are keen to spread our net widely to include well known radicals (Byron) as well as people who should be better known, or whose work was or is (cliche alert) ground-breaking. Any ideas are welcome, either here or to info@fiveleaves.co.uk.

The UK Beat Scene

Our recent series of reprints, Beats, Bums and Bohemians, has started us thinking... why not do more than those three? We're also in discussion with one of our regular writers about a book on the British Beat Scene, a structured anthology, with a linking narrative. But we need to know more than we do. Any suggestions or ideas on this would be very welcome. Please contact Five Leaves on info@fiveleaves.co.uk or add a comment with suggestions - even just names to check out. Free polo-necked sweater to anyone coming up with ideas. (Note: this gift can also be declined.)