Too much fancy formatting to cut and paste into here, but this is it (email us on info@fiveleaves.co.uk if you want to go on our newsletter list in future): http://tinyurl.com/5LeavesOct2012
Friday, 19 October 2012
Thursday, 18 October 2012
Tuesday, 16 October 2012
New ebook edition from Five Leaves, Zoe Fairbairns' Benefits
Having long lost touch with everyone with whom I went to school, I think I've known Zoe Fairbairns longer than anyone who is not a blood relative. I came across her as an author in 1971 when I was working in a library, one of my jobs being to daily tidy the "f"s. I have to say that she was not the most popular author in Hawick Public Library so I dusted down her early novels quite a lot. She had been taken up by a major publisher as a teenage prodigy, which can happen. She returned to fiction later, as a grown up. By then I'd got to know her, by chance, as a student activist and subsequently as editor of CND's then journal, Sanity. Zoe became a very successful novelist, her usp being an ability to write traditional novels, family sagas, airport novels and the like but with a strong feminist slant. Novels like Stand We at Last were hugely popular. Benefits was an exception, being a feminist dystopian novel set in the dying days of the twentieth century. The country was in chaos and the government had nothing better to do than attack welfare benefits for women. And women fought back using unorthodox means.
Benefits was a real feminist classic and did well for Virago in 1979. It was reprinted in a Five Leaves edition in 1998 and again did well for a few years. A spin off from the book was the alternative Xmas card giving a quote from the book - "The birth of a man who thinks he's God isn't such a rare event". Printed with text only, elegantly on card, it sold - what? - 30,000 copies over a few years for Mushroom Bookshop in Nottingham, with royalties going to the Women's Research and Resource Centre. Five Leaves later published Zoe's collection of short stories, How Do You Pronounce Nulliparous?
Now, yet again, the country is in a mess and welfare benefits are under attack. This is the right time to publish a new edition, with a new introduction by Zoe, giving the book a modern context. The print book is still available, but the ebook edition includes the new intro - and it is out now at £2.99. Available here:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Benefits-ebook/dp/B009R283ME/ref=sr_1_2_title_0_main?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1350404231&sr=1-2
Saturday, 6 October 2012
Three bookish nights in Leicester
Over the last few days I've been developing Leicester envy. I know that in Nottingham this is heresy, but there is a lot going on there. On Sunday I was the guest speaker at the Leicester Secular Hall, talking about the history of radical bookshops. It was nice to meet such well read people - some of whom even follow Five Leaves' progress - in such a historic setting, and to speak where many of my heroes, William Morris, Emma Goldman, Colin Ward and others had spoken. I suspect that one or two of the audience had heard them all, which is the problem there. A couple of literature/political regulars from Notts are the youth wing, being in their early 50s. The Secular Hall has a regular meetings programme and is in desperate need of younger people to take the Hall onwards. I'd love to have such a hall in my hometown.
But literature in Leicester, or at least those parts of it around De Montfort University, does have its young people and there were plenty of them at the reading to inaugurate Ian Parks as the Royal Literary Fund Fellow at DMU for the next year. Ian is currently editing an anthology of contemporary Yorkshire poetry for Five Leaves so I trucked along. I'd already reading his The Exile's House (Waterloo, £10) but it was nice to hear him read from the book, as well as some of his earlier love poetry and his recent translations from Cavafy. Ian's family on both sides were from mining families in Mexborough, and, to me, his narrative poems, including those written in memory of his family's involvement in the 1984/85 strike. I particularly liked his "Standards", a short poem about his father who "...sang the standards / through the long months of the strike", ending the poem Speak Softly Love, My Kind of Town. / There was snow and bitter fighting. / My father slicked his hair back, / disappeared into the night / and one by one / the earmarked pits shut down."
Back in Leicester the next day, with an older crowd again, for the launch of the film of The Dirty Thirty, a documentary about the thirty Leicestershire miners who struck out of a coalfield of 2,500. 28 years on it was still hard not to feel enraged about the Government's attack on the people of the coalfields. The highlights of the film for me were the long interviews with Michael "Benny" Pinnegar, the leader of the group (who died very recently) and Mick "Richo" Richmond, who could easily have had an alternative career as a comedian. Prominent in the film was the song of The Dirty Thirty by Alun Parry, which he wrote after reading David Bell's Five Leaves book on the group. The showing was part of the excellent Leicester Everybody's Reading book festival, which aims to take literature festivals into the whole community. After the film we managed to find the last eight members of the local labour movement who had not yet bought their copies of David Bell's book before he gave me a lift back to the station to complete a great set of Leicester visits. Or at least that was the plan. The last I saw of David as I hoofed it was him wailing "I've forgotten where I parked me fuckin' car!". I hope he got home safely.
But literature in Leicester, or at least those parts of it around De Montfort University, does have its young people and there were plenty of them at the reading to inaugurate Ian Parks as the Royal Literary Fund Fellow at DMU for the next year. Ian is currently editing an anthology of contemporary Yorkshire poetry for Five Leaves so I trucked along. I'd already reading his The Exile's House (Waterloo, £10) but it was nice to hear him read from the book, as well as some of his earlier love poetry and his recent translations from Cavafy. Ian's family on both sides were from mining families in Mexborough, and, to me, his narrative poems, including those written in memory of his family's involvement in the 1984/85 strike. I particularly liked his "Standards", a short poem about his father who "...sang the standards / through the long months of the strike", ending the poem Speak Softly Love, My Kind of Town. / There was snow and bitter fighting. / My father slicked his hair back, / disappeared into the night / and one by one / the earmarked pits shut down."
Back in Leicester the next day, with an older crowd again, for the launch of the film of The Dirty Thirty, a documentary about the thirty Leicestershire miners who struck out of a coalfield of 2,500. 28 years on it was still hard not to feel enraged about the Government's attack on the people of the coalfields. The highlights of the film for me were the long interviews with Michael "Benny" Pinnegar, the leader of the group (who died very recently) and Mick "Richo" Richmond, who could easily have had an alternative career as a comedian. Prominent in the film was the song of The Dirty Thirty by Alun Parry, which he wrote after reading David Bell's Five Leaves book on the group. The showing was part of the excellent Leicester Everybody's Reading book festival, which aims to take literature festivals into the whole community. After the film we managed to find the last eight members of the local labour movement who had not yet bought their copies of David Bell's book before he gave me a lift back to the station to complete a great set of Leicester visits. Or at least that was the plan. The last I saw of David as I hoofed it was him wailing "I've forgotten where I parked me fuckin' car!". I hope he got home safely.
Monday, 1 October 2012
Sheffield Independent Publishers' Book Fair
Do drop by our stall if you are near Sheffield on 3rd November. There are also readings from our writers John Lucas, David Belbin and Danuta Reah while Liz Cashdan is taking part in a panel discussion. Not that we're trying to take over or anything.
Saturday, 29 September 2012
Bread and Roses Award 2012, with added Ken Livingstone
Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing 2013
Nominations are now open for the 2013 Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing
Former Mayor of London Ken Livingstone joins the team of judges
Bread and Roses radical bookfair planned
Nominations are now open for the second Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing, for the best radical books published in 2012. The Bread and Roses Award began last year when a team of judges, which included the writer and broadcaster Michael Rosen, awarded David Graeber £1000 for his book Debt: the first 5,000 years (Melville House).
Ken Livingstone, the former Mayor of London, joins the writer and academic Nina Power on the team of judges (third judge tbc), which will again be drawing up a shortlist early in 2013 followed by a presentation to the winning writer of a cheque for £1000.
In 2013 the Trustees of the Bread and Roses Award are organising a one day radical bookfair, on Saturday May 11th at Conway Hall in London, with stalls from publishers and bookshops, together with a series of author discussions and panels based on the six shortlisted books. The winning entry will be announced at the end of the Bookfair.
Mandy Vere, on behalf of the Bread and Roses Trustees said "We are delighted that Ken Livingstone will be one of our judges this year. We are also pleased that the public will be able to join discussions based on the shortlisted books. Radical books, integral to movements for social change, are meant to be discussed not simply read in private!" Nik Gorecki, from the Alliance of Radical Booksellers said "Last year seemed a good time to launch an award for radical publishing and we were pleased that nominations came from the general trade as well as from established radical publishers. The award has been welcomed by publishers, writers and booksellers and we hope that by adding a bookfair element this year more people will become involved in the Bread and Roses project."
Full details of the Award, including criteria and timetable, are on http://breadandrosesprize.wordpress.com/. Entries are welcome from general, specialist and radical publishers worldwide but authors must live in the UK. The Award is for non-fiction books. Currently we are unable to consider fiction or poetry. Publishers may enter books now or anytime up until January 11th 2013.
Background:
The Bread and Roses Award is an independent annual award for the best radical book published each year. Shortlisted entries last year included books from Melville House, New Internationalist, Verso, Pluto, OR Books and Vintage
The aim of the award is to promote the publication of radical books, to raise the profile of radical publishing, and to reward exceptional work. There is no entry fee but shortlisted publishers will be asked for £50 per title on the shortlist as a contribution towards marketing costs.
Without being too prescriptive in defining “radical”, we expect that shortlisted books will be informed by socialist, anarchist, environmental, feminist and anti-racist concerns, and primarily will inspire, support or report on political and/or personal change. They may relate to global, national, local or specialist areas of interest.
The Trustees of the Bread and Roses Award are Nik Gorecki (Housmans Bookshop in London), Mandy Vere (News from Nowhere Bookshop in Liverpool) and Ross Bradshaw (Five Leaves Publications in Nottingham). The Award is organised and funded by the Alliance of Radical Booksellers and the literary and political publisher Five Leaves.
The name Bread and Roses is taken from the slogan attributed to textile workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts, who, at least in the song commemorating the event, struck “for bread, and for roses too.”
Further details of the May 11 Book Fair will be announced later.
Note for publishers: Please send two copies of each nominated book to Steve Mills/Bread and Roses, UNISON Bristol Branch c/o Trinity Road Library, Trinity Road, Bristol BS2 0NW and Nik Gorecki/Bread and Roses, Housmans Bookshop, 5 Caledonian Road, Kings Cross, London N1 9DX
For further information on the Bread and Roses award please contact Nik Gorecki at the above address or 020 7837 4473, nik@housmans.com
Ross Bradshaw (Bread and Roses Trustee)
Nominations are now open for the 2013 Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing
Former Mayor of London Ken Livingstone joins the team of judges
Bread and Roses radical bookfair planned
Nominations are now open for the second Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing, for the best radical books published in 2012. The Bread and Roses Award began last year when a team of judges, which included the writer and broadcaster Michael Rosen, awarded David Graeber £1000 for his book Debt: the first 5,000 years (Melville House).
Ken Livingstone, the former Mayor of London, joins the writer and academic Nina Power on the team of judges (third judge tbc), which will again be drawing up a shortlist early in 2013 followed by a presentation to the winning writer of a cheque for £1000.
In 2013 the Trustees of the Bread and Roses Award are organising a one day radical bookfair, on Saturday May 11th at Conway Hall in London, with stalls from publishers and bookshops, together with a series of author discussions and panels based on the six shortlisted books. The winning entry will be announced at the end of the Bookfair.
Mandy Vere, on behalf of the Bread and Roses Trustees said "We are delighted that Ken Livingstone will be one of our judges this year. We are also pleased that the public will be able to join discussions based on the shortlisted books. Radical books, integral to movements for social change, are meant to be discussed not simply read in private!" Nik Gorecki, from the Alliance of Radical Booksellers said "Last year seemed a good time to launch an award for radical publishing and we were pleased that nominations came from the general trade as well as from established radical publishers. The award has been welcomed by publishers, writers and booksellers and we hope that by adding a bookfair element this year more people will become involved in the Bread and Roses project."
Full details of the Award, including criteria and timetable, are on http://breadandrosesprize.wordpress.com/. Entries are welcome from general, specialist and radical publishers worldwide but authors must live in the UK. The Award is for non-fiction books. Currently we are unable to consider fiction or poetry. Publishers may enter books now or anytime up until January 11th 2013.
Background:
The Bread and Roses Award is an independent annual award for the best radical book published each year. Shortlisted entries last year included books from Melville House, New Internationalist, Verso, Pluto, OR Books and Vintage
The aim of the award is to promote the publication of radical books, to raise the profile of radical publishing, and to reward exceptional work. There is no entry fee but shortlisted publishers will be asked for £50 per title on the shortlist as a contribution towards marketing costs.
Without being too prescriptive in defining “radical”, we expect that shortlisted books will be informed by socialist, anarchist, environmental, feminist and anti-racist concerns, and primarily will inspire, support or report on political and/or personal change. They may relate to global, national, local or specialist areas of interest.
The Trustees of the Bread and Roses Award are Nik Gorecki (Housmans Bookshop in London), Mandy Vere (News from Nowhere Bookshop in Liverpool) and Ross Bradshaw (Five Leaves Publications in Nottingham). The Award is organised and funded by the Alliance of Radical Booksellers and the literary and political publisher Five Leaves.
The name Bread and Roses is taken from the slogan attributed to textile workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts, who, at least in the song commemorating the event, struck “for bread, and for roses too.”
Further details of the May 11 Book Fair will be announced later.
Note for publishers: Please send two copies of each nominated book to Steve Mills/Bread and Roses, UNISON Bristol Branch c/o Trinity Road Library, Trinity Road, Bristol BS2 0NW and Nik Gorecki/Bread and Roses, Housmans Bookshop, 5 Caledonian Road, Kings Cross, London N1 9DX
For further information on the Bread and Roses award please contact Nik Gorecki at the above address or 020 7837 4473, nik@housmans.com
Ross Bradshaw (Bread and Roses Trustee)
Thursday, 20 September 2012
How to sell more than 600 ebooks a day (for a short while)
Five Leaves debut crime author Michael J Malone discusses the marketing tactics that got his first novel Blood Tears into the top five on the Amazon Kindle chart... First printed on the blog of another good crime writer Damien Seaman who blogs at http://damienseaman.posterous.com) and is published by Blasted Heath (http://blastedheath.com/?p=2958).
It’s a brave new world, this world of E. A world where, it is said, authors shall publish and sell. And sell. Where Kindle millionaires are verily as many as leaves on the largest of trees and if that Konrath fellow is to be believed, Amazon will rule the world. And lo, it came to pass that my publisher thought it might be wise to make Blood Tears available for the e-readers. Did it work? Depends. Everything is relative, so it depends on where you are coming from. Would Stephen King’s publishers be happy with my figures? I think not. But we at Five Leaves have more modest expectations and we were kinda chuffed. The wheeze was thusly – actually I’m getting tired of the olde worlde speak now so I’ll stop – anywho, we had a chat about what our strategy should be and we decided to give the paperback a few weeks’ run before releasing in digital format. The Olympics were coming up. Why don’t we – I suggested – make Blood Tears available for free on the first couple of days, as an alternative for the peeps who can’t be arsed with all that sport? Then put the price up to 99p for another week, and then increase gradually until we get to a price that we are comfortable with for the long haul. So, Amazon was contacted and the promo was agreed at £0 for the first 4 days of the ‘lympics and 0.99p for the next few days. Sadly, we had to agree to exclusivity to Amazon for three months. However, given that they appear to be the only game in town at the moment, that didn’t feel too much of a problem. On reflection, I feel that this is one of the methods by which Amazon is cementing their monopoly and THAT worries me.
Early days and the numbers were goooooood. Me and my peeps tweeted and FB’d and blogged and did what we could to bring it to the attention of the great unwashed. And Blood Tears rose up the rankings. By the end of the weekend BT was number 1 in the free crime/ thriller chart and number 1 in the general book chart. The number of downloads? Over 18,000. Which is not too shabby. And in actual fact, I don’t think that even Mr King’s publishers would have been upset with that little lot. I mentioned to a non-writing friend how many downloads we’d had. His response: some people will take anything when it’s free. Git.
Then the price went on at 99p. And Blood Tears moved in with the big boys to the paid chart, and the book rose up those charts as well. We made it to no 5 in the general book chart – sandwiched in among all the porn books. In fact, I’m pretty sure that for a few hours BT was the only non-erotica book in the top 6. Which is nice. For a few days we were selling over 600 copies a day. Again, not too shabby. We peaked there and began the slow, inexorable slide down the rankings. And from a point where I was checking the chart position every 5 minutes, I stopped checking altogether. It was kinda sad to see my baby being ignored. Now, we are left with a whole load of questions... How the feck did we manage to get all those downloads? There was a knock-on effect with the paperback – I know because people let me know they had bought it – what we don’t know is how many people
went on to do so.
Why did the sales tail off like that? Had I reached my entire prospective audience? Did everyone see it that should have – given Amazon’s famous algorithms? Will the follow-up, A Simple Power (tbp May 2013) benefit from this “increased awareness”? Will people remember who the feck I am? Will Prince Harry ever get his hands on the real crown jewels? Whatever happens, it’s fair to say it was a lot of fun while it lasted. And who knows, it might receive another surge of popularity. I just need to find a royal party that’s up for some strip billiards. Lo. Verily.
Check out BLOOD TEARS by Michael J Malone in the UK:
http://goo.gl/IE97k and here if you're in the US: http://goo.gl/6IQZf
It’s a brave new world, this world of E. A world where, it is said, authors shall publish and sell. And sell. Where Kindle millionaires are verily as many as leaves on the largest of trees and if that Konrath fellow is to be believed, Amazon will rule the world. And lo, it came to pass that my publisher thought it might be wise to make Blood Tears available for the e-readers. Did it work? Depends. Everything is relative, so it depends on where you are coming from. Would Stephen King’s publishers be happy with my figures? I think not. But we at Five Leaves have more modest expectations and we were kinda chuffed. The wheeze was thusly – actually I’m getting tired of the olde worlde speak now so I’ll stop – anywho, we had a chat about what our strategy should be and we decided to give the paperback a few weeks’ run before releasing in digital format. The Olympics were coming up. Why don’t we – I suggested – make Blood Tears available for free on the first couple of days, as an alternative for the peeps who can’t be arsed with all that sport? Then put the price up to 99p for another week, and then increase gradually until we get to a price that we are comfortable with for the long haul. So, Amazon was contacted and the promo was agreed at £0 for the first 4 days of the ‘lympics and 0.99p for the next few days. Sadly, we had to agree to exclusivity to Amazon for three months. However, given that they appear to be the only game in town at the moment, that didn’t feel too much of a problem. On reflection, I feel that this is one of the methods by which Amazon is cementing their monopoly and THAT worries me.
Early days and the numbers were goooooood. Me and my peeps tweeted and FB’d and blogged and did what we could to bring it to the attention of the great unwashed. And Blood Tears rose up the rankings. By the end of the weekend BT was number 1 in the free crime/ thriller chart and number 1 in the general book chart. The number of downloads? Over 18,000. Which is not too shabby. And in actual fact, I don’t think that even Mr King’s publishers would have been upset with that little lot. I mentioned to a non-writing friend how many downloads we’d had. His response: some people will take anything when it’s free. Git.
Then the price went on at 99p. And Blood Tears moved in with the big boys to the paid chart, and the book rose up those charts as well. We made it to no 5 in the general book chart – sandwiched in among all the porn books. In fact, I’m pretty sure that for a few hours BT was the only non-erotica book in the top 6. Which is nice. For a few days we were selling over 600 copies a day. Again, not too shabby. We peaked there and began the slow, inexorable slide down the rankings. And from a point where I was checking the chart position every 5 minutes, I stopped checking altogether. It was kinda sad to see my baby being ignored. Now, we are left with a whole load of questions... How the feck did we manage to get all those downloads? There was a knock-on effect with the paperback – I know because people let me know they had bought it – what we don’t know is how many people
went on to do so.
Why did the sales tail off like that? Had I reached my entire prospective audience? Did everyone see it that should have – given Amazon’s famous algorithms? Will the follow-up, A Simple Power (tbp May 2013) benefit from this “increased awareness”? Will people remember who the feck I am? Will Prince Harry ever get his hands on the real crown jewels? Whatever happens, it’s fair to say it was a lot of fun while it lasted. And who knows, it might receive another surge of popularity. I just need to find a royal party that’s up for some strip billiards. Lo. Verily.
Check out BLOOD TEARS by Michael J Malone in the UK:
http://goo.gl/IE97k and here if you're in the US: http://goo.gl/6IQZf
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