Absolute Beginners

Rereading Colin Macinnes's Absolute Beginners, I was reminded just how exciting the book is. Jerry White has a good chapter on it in our London Fictions and it is one London novel I would dearly love to have on our New London Editions list, not least because of the book's other Five Leaves connections, Unfortunately for us, Allison and Busby, under a series of owners, keeps the book on their list.
It was first published in 1959 by - who else? - MacGibbon and Key, my favourite publisher of the era but remains completely fresh.
Rather than rehearse the full story of the book - you can read a version of Jerry's introduction on the London Fictions website at http://www.londonfictions.com/colin-macinnes-absolute-beginners.html.
There he mentions that Manny and Miriam Katz is based on Bernard and Erica Kops (we've published a couple of books by Bernard) and reading the book you can hear Bernard's voice has not changed since Macinnes used him as a character in the 1950s to today. Bernard has told me a few stories about Macinnes's visits to his house. Having read a lot about Macinnes I was not surprised he was often drunk, rude and dominating. Not someone to forget, but not always someone to dislike. Bernard is more tolerant than me, I should say.
The second Five Leaves connection is that the anonymous teenage narrator of the book - a photographer who deals in fashion and porno photography (or what passed as porno at the time, about as pornographic as the side bars of the Daily Mail website) is based on Terry Taylor whose one published book, Baron's Court, All Change is a steady seller on our New London Editions list. That too was originally published by MacGibbon and Key.

Free verse is on its way

Free Verse, the the big poetry bookfair organised largely by CB Editions, has had to move - again - to bigger premises. This time the fair will be at Conway Hall in London and takes place on 7 September. If you are around at 2.30 come and join Five Leaves session - twenty minutes of Ian Parks reading from Versions of the North: contemporary Yorkshire poetry or drop by our stall. All the readings are twenty minutes so apologies to other Yorkshire poets but we thought it best that the editor does the whole job, and he will do it well. The list of stalls is bigger than ever - including Picador (goodness) and Faber (shock) rubbing shoulders with the groundlings. I wonder if Faber will bring that, what was his name, Mr Eliot along. I've got a few words to say to him. Last year's book fair was an eye opener. Firstly, it is a book fair. Books - that's the attraction. The readings are all very well - and we are pleased that one is ours - but the main story is books, books and books, some of them in the weirdest shapes and sizes, most definitely the sort you don't see in bookshops. Actually most of the books there, sadly, will be ones you rarely see in bookshops.
The second reason it was an eye opener is that many of those attending were young, carefully working their way round all the stalls before splashing out. I doubt anybody made their fortune on the stalls, but I doubt any stall holder went away empty handed. The secret is - from our point of view - to come back with less than we arrived with and I think we did sell more books than I bought! The event is free and the details are on http://www.poetrybookfair.com/.

Lowdham Book Festival 2013

Lowdham Book Festival is over for another year, though with our monthly First Friday lectures, our winter weekend, an autumn season planned and the annual "Lowdham Lecture" it can be difficult to tell.
But the summer festival is always our best attended event, our highlight of the year, which this year featured 46 individual events. This summer was our fourteenth.
Family problems in Scotland limited my personal involvement in 2012 and we were unable to run our "last Saturday" that year, which has always been part of my contribution, so it was great to be fully involved and to bring that particular day back. My colleague Jane says that is "the heart of the festival". I am less sure on that, as the festival has no shortage of hearts, but it certainly felt great to have hundreds of people rushing from event to event or spending money at the - this year - 33 bookstalls. Ten or twelve of the seventeen events for adults on that day had house full notices up and the children's events were pretty busy. You can't always predict what will be popular - who would have expected 60+ people to turn up for a talk on women in the Sudan? But that is the nature of a day which provides a showcase for many regional writers and a leavening of authors from elsewhere. What else was popular? A talk on fairytale in fiction, on Vesuvius, the poetry of the first world war, John Clare, London Fiction... That day is the day we really do aim to merge the idea of a literature festival with a village fete so a lot of people come to meet their friends and just soak up the atmosphere. The most popular stall? Cleeve Press from Leicester showing off their letterpress printing, allowing people to print out their own cards, and Ed Herington to make up the illustration here.
We basked in sunshine, which always helps, but did miss the local allotment-holders stall this year, missing due to a bad spring affecting their produce. They'll be back next year.
I've heard good reports on the events on that day - but my role is to stand in the one position to say "the Methodist Chapel is down the road", "sorry, I don't have any Blutac", "Thank you for telling me the women's toilets are blocked..." and to clear the café tables in the spare moments. Thirteen years of that particular day and I've yet to attend an event. But the toilets have only blocked twice, so I can't complain.
Of the other events over the festival, my favourite day was the Victorian Day at Bromley House Library (Lowdham Book Festival on Tour) which was magical. We could only seat 40 people at this great venue, a Grade 2 listed building in the centre of the town, and the lucky 40 had a set of speakers whose contributions all flowed into one another - Michael Payne on Victorian Nottingham, Judith Flanders on Victorian London, Michael Eaton on the Victorian criminal Charlie Peace and Ann Featherstone on Victorian fairs and entertainment. Throw in a guided tour of this fascinating building, rather a lot of cake, and it was a day hard to beat.
What else? Impressed with Simon Mayo, enjoyed interviewing Kerry Young, Hazel O'Connor got two standing ovations... I could go on, but I do want to mention how much I enjoyed the reading of Will Buckingham, accompanied by his own playing of classical guitar. That was magical and rather unexpected.
Problems? Not a lot. One author missed a train and just got there in time; there was a technical problem on a highly illustrated talk which meant I had to interview someone at five minutes notice about a television programme I'd never seen and a book I'd never opened. It was an exciting five minutes preparing questions. No floods (we remember that year well...), no overhead power lines going down (another year to remember)... it all ran rather smoothly. Thanks, of course to the team - the front of house volunteers and the Warthog group that runs the music events during the Festival - and, especially, my colleague Jane Streeter and her staff from The Bookcase in Lowdham. One of the authors emailed afterwards to say "A very enjoyable day and the Festival was clearly a real success. Many congrats to you and Jane and all your helpers for an excellent job. It's really hard work putting on something like this and you all seemed to do both very well, yet in a stress-free and good-humoured way. Quite an achievement! I was delighted to be a small part of it." I'm a bit embarrassed printing this comment, but for once, let's boast.
Lowdham moves on... our First Friday programme is sorted. Our big event this autumn is a reading from War Horse with Michael Morpurgo and accompanying musicians John Tams and Barry Coope, in the wonderful setting of Southwell Minster. You can join Lowdham Book Festival's email list via janestreeter@thebookcase.co.uk or follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
Meantime, I've got lots of new reading material.
 

When did Five Leaves actually start?

"Independent publishing since 1966". Really? Only the most sensitive of archivists and bibliographers would care about the starting date of Five Leaves. But was it really 1996? I left Mushroom Bookshop in 1995, taking the publishing wing of the shop with me, which had started in 1994 with The Allotment: its landscape and culture. That title, with others, passed into Five Leaves ownership, and in, due course, livery when reprinted. Since I did all the work it would be possible to argue that Five Leaves started in 1994, or in 1995 when I took over Mushroom's book publishing - the first Five Leaves books actually said Mushroom Bookshop Publications as they were in press when I left, or 1996 when the first books entirely unconnected with Mushroom were published.
Why does it matter? It matters because the twentieth anniversary is drawing near and I can't make up my mind whether to celebrate in 2014, 2015 or 2016.
We had a big celebration for the tenth anniversary in 2005, which had some of our writers arguing that we were too late, though I thought we were too early.
Decisions, decisions.
Anybody who can use the above poster, by the way, inbox me. No - tried typing that phrase and it really is as awful as I thought. Don't inbox me, please. Email me.

Beeston Poets, up and running... moving on

In 1996, when Five Leaves was merely a small twig we published Poems for the Beekeeper, an anthology of poems from the first fifteen years of  Poets in Beeston (that's Beeston in Nottinghamshire). Poets in Beeston had been a substantial series of annual readings by the top names in British - and sometimes world - poetry. Contributors included Danny Abse, Fleur Adcock, James Berry, Alan Brownjohn, Catherine Byron, Wendy Cope, Robert Creeley, Kwame Dawes, Carol Ann Duffy, Helen Dunmore, Gavin Ewart, UA Fanthorpe, Elaine Feinstein, John Harvey, Adrian Henri, Selima Hill, Mick Imlah, Jenny Joseph, Jackie Kay, Liz Lockhead, Michael Longley, John Lucas, Roger McGough, Ian McMillan, Wes Magee, Adrian Mitchell, Henry Normal, Brian Patten, Tom Paulin, Nigel Planer, Peter Porter, Peter Redgrove, Christopher Reid, Vernon Scannell, Penelope Shuttle, Jon Silkin, Ken Smith and Charles Tomlinson. The collection is well worth buying still (yes - we have some left!) for a snapshot of the best the poetry world could offer from the 80s and 90s.

It is pretty remarkable that these, and so many more, pitched up in the back room of a suburban library to read. The County Council was happy to fund the series, and it was run personally by Robert Gent, the librarian there. Robert also edited the collection.

Prior to attending Beeston I'd had no interest in poetry at all. I'd started doing bookstalls at the events on behalf of the shop I was working in, and, well,  you have to listen, don't you? In due course Five Leaves published the collection, launched with a memorable reading by Jackie Kay, to celebrate the first fifteen years.

Some time afterwards Robert left the library and I took over running the series. In Robert's absence it was not the same, and I was also starting to organise poetry readings across the county. Rather than putting all the available money into Beeston I decided to abandon the series... with new sets of readings in Newark, Worksop, Ollerton and other far flung parts of the County. And Southwell Poetry Festival was established.

Many years later, though Southwell Poetry Festival survives as a County Council project, the readings across the county vanished, the Council has little money and other public readings tended to be of a performance nature.

Together with Nottingham Poetry Society and Nottinghamshire Libraries, Five Leaves reestablished the Beeston Poets series, on a shoestring. Naturally Jackie Kay was in the first series. The first year ended last night, with Martin Figura's Whistle performance - which will stay in people's memories for a very long time. The series is established. Pippa Hennessy had been the key figure in this, given that she straddles Five Leaves and the local Poetry Society.

We've given it a year, which shows there is a demand for the "formal" and traditional one person or group reading, without the need for open mics. All the readers can perform, but they can be read with pleasure on the page. But our resources are tight and we can't afford to give up work time so generously any more. Other projects are calling our name. Beeston Poets will, I hope, thrive. It will be up to the group which has come together this year as to how it will continue. It would be nice to think that at some stage there will be a second volume of poems for the beekeeper. Go well.

Berta Freistadt memorial event

We are pleased to say that friends of Berta Freistadt, whose poetry we published, are unveiling a memorial at Mary Ward Centre in London on Monday 29th July 3.15 to 5pm. This will be just after the third anniversary of Berta's death.

 

The  memorial has been designed and sculptured by  Judy Veal, a Mary Ward art student who won the prize to design a memorial for Berta. Berta taught poetry at the Centre for many years, was very happy there and beloved by generations of students.

 

There will be drinks and nibbles.    Any offers to bring cake would be appreciated as the group has limited resources. There is a lift part of the way but you will need to climb up at least one flight of stairs to the Centre's roof garden

 

The Nearest tubes are Russell Square and Holborn. Queens Square is behind Southampton Row. Please RSVP to lcurbach@aol.com.   

 

Berta's poems appeared in an early Five Leaves book, The Dybbuk of Delight, and we published her only pamphlet, Flood Warning, in 2004. Berta's poems explored her love of women, and her journey as a Londoner of mixed heritage to explore the Jewish world. She became a committed Jew, active in opposing Israel's occupation. Her poems were also published in magazines in the UK, Israel and the USA and on a London bus.

 

Slow train coming... Red Groove by Chris Searle, new from Five Leaves

Somehow Red Groove slipped from last year, and has only now appeared. It happens sometimes. Chris's book is published in association with the Morning Star, where the material collected here first appeared - reviews of records (as we used to call them) and live performances. Chris is the Star's jazz reviewer and this collection includes about 100 pieces selected from fifteen years of jazz reviews.
As you would expect, the reviews are political, but mostly they are reviews and politics comes in where relevant - but with jazz from around the world that is often the case. There is not a bad review here - that is on purpose. Chris reviews to promote the artists, the records and their music, not out of sycophancy but as a way of giving people airtime, or space in the paper. He aims to promote the best. For the regular jazz listener there is much here to remind him or her what he/she has forgotten, for the less regular jazz listener the book is a vade mecum or buying list.
It was fun editing the book because each of the article was meant to be read on the day, not conceived as sitting alongside other reviews, so we had to get rid of a lot of heartbeats and confreres and various other writing tics that only became apparent when the articles were collected.
The book is introduced by Robert Wyatt and has a great photograph of Joe McPhee on the cover. Further colour photos, of Norma Winstone, Sun Ra and the late Niels-Henning Ostred Pederson are included, as well as some black and whites.
For me, the most exciting part of the book was being able to publish something by Chris Searle. I've followed Chris's work from his days in Stepney Words (described also in our book Everything Happens in Cable Street) through to his current writing in Race and Class. People might remember him as the teacher who was sacked for publishing his school students' poetry - this led to a student strike and Chris's eventual reinstatement by the then Minister of Education, one Margaret Thatcher. I wonder what happened to her. Chris has also published books of his own poetry, books about Granada (he knew Maurice Bishop and the other leaders of the New Jewel Movement) and cricket. This is his second book of jazz writing, the first being Forward Groove, published by the jazz specialists, Northway Books.
The two chapters I liked best in Red Groove were inspired by a fellow Star supporter Chris met on a train, who suggested an artists to write about, and a chance meeting with a cleaner from one of his old schools who suggested another jazz singer to review.
Chris loves his jazz. If you are by any chance reading this in time, Chris will be appearing at Lowdham Book Festival on 22nd June. He is available for gigs elsewhere, to talk about jazz, as is our other recent jazz writer, Peter Vacher, who will be at Lowdham on June 29.

A Taste for Malice, the first review

We were very impressed with Michael J Malone's 2012 debut crime novel, Blood Tears, which introduced the highly dysfunctional protagonist (even by the standards of the genre) Detective Inspector Ray McBain. So we approached A Taste for Malice with some trepidation: would Michael J Malone be able to produce a second novel that lived up to the promise of the first?

The answer is a clear "yes": he has. He has also produced one of the more unusual detective novels we can remember reading. Most crime novels kick off with a dead body within the first few pages, and build from there. What is particularly fascinating about A Taste for Malice is that the story does not revolve around the tracking down of a killer or serial killer. Yes, there is a murder between the covers, but it's very much "off stage", and DI McBain's involvement is only peripheral (though it is also critical). But the central story, which develops in two parallel strands that steadily converge as the book moves towards its climax, deals with something altogether less wholesome.

We first encounter DI Ray McBain as he returns to work after the events in the earlier novel. The physical scars he has been left with are healing, but the mental scars still run very deep. McBain has other problems. His superiors do not wish to risk his fragile mental health by exposing him to the full rigors of the work of a Detective Inspector, so he is attached to a team led by a man who used to be his junior officer, and tasked with administrative tasks that have little interest and no challenge for him. One of the files he looks at deals with the harming of two children by a woman the family thought could be trusted to look after them. Then another similar case emerges. McBain sets out to discover whether the two cases are linked, behind the backs and against the wishes of his senior officers. Meanwhile his personal life is as chaotic as ever, and he also begins to fear that his nemesis from Blood Tears may be waiting in the shadows.

In parallel we follow the story of a family having difficulty coping with the mother's loss of memory in an accident, and their befriending by a young woman. The reader's suspicions that all is not right build steadily, and the two strands of the story come together very satisfyingly in a conclusion that offers some genuine surprises.

Courtesy of Undiscovered Scotland

New from Five Leaves, A Taste of Malice by Michael J Malone

Here's the first of our new crime books to be shown here in their new livery, courtesy of JT Lindroos, who is something of an expert in saying "no, your idea doesn't work but if you do this, this and this..." and so we get a type of wood any self-respecting teddy bear or even teddy boy would be best advised to avoid.
The book is our second Malone book, both in the Scottish hard-boiled genre and featuring Ray McBain. The story starts with him in filing hell, where he realises two unsolved cases could be linked, but nobody wants to know. And both involve women who insinuate themselves into vulnerable families. Children get hurt and unless McBain can get someone to listen more children are at risk.
Malone's first book Blood Tears was our best selling book so far. I think this one is better. I'm not knocking the first book but one particularly critical review really helped us iron out some difficulties with Malice. Even bad reviews (and mostly they were not!) can be useful!
We also had fun again with Michael Malone's natural Scottish diction. We want the book to retain a Scottish flavour but not lose any English readers. One pre-publication reader was American, who reminded us that not only Scottish diction can lose readers, but so can English lose American readers. What do Americans call ladders on their tights? (The "on" is Scottish, by the way.) We did not have fun with mixing past and present tenses. It seemed like a good idea at the time but caused the author and me a great deal of editorial toothache.
But we have a great book and those who have read it so far agree.
Scottish Waterstones is behind this one, especially Ayr of course, as is Blackwells in Edinburgh. You won't find many copies in English bookshops - not yet anyway - but English (and American) readers really can enjoy Scottish crime novels and, like Rankin and MacBride, our Scots almost speak proper English ...sae dinna be feart.

Guest post from Mark "I am Spartacus" Patterson

Of course you've always wanted to see people marching through Nottinghamshire in sandals and togas, haven't you? Good, because later this month a merry band will be doing just that to raise money for Newark's forthcoming new museum and Civil War Centre, which is set to display many of the area's Roman and ancient treasures including the famous gold Iron Age Torc and the Roman cavalry cheekpiece that graces the cover of my Five Leaves book Roman Nottinghamshire. The team will be walking 68 miles from Lincoln to Leicester, basically following the Fosse Way. On June 20 they'll be stopping in Newark to hear a talk by me on the history of the Fosse Way (Newark Town Hall, 7.30pm, £4) and I may be joining them for the walk the day after. Newark hasn't had a decent museum for ages and consequently all the artefacts have been locked up in the town's Resource Centre. 
The Torc itself has been at the British Museum all these years as Newark didn't have facilities deemed good enough to put it on display. Now it's coming home. The best of the 100,000 artefacts found alongside the Fosse Way during the recent dualling work should also be coming to the new museum. Details of the talk can be seen at http://www.civilwarnewark.co.uk/category/news/while the brave walkers can be sponsored via http://localgiving.com/charity/friendsofnewarkandsherwoodmuseumservice.
Note: the picture is not Mark Patterson

Staffing changes at Five Leaves

For those who are interested in this kind of thing... Pippa Hennessy, who has worked at Five Leaves for the last three years, has been appointed Development Director of Nottingham Writers' Studios - an organisation conveniently situated approximately half a second from our office. I hope she will be a quiet neighbour. Pippa has worked on a number of Five Leaves projects during the three years. These range from turning 25 or so of our books into eBooks through to organising, typesetting, designing and launching our latest poetry book Versions of the North. I won't bore you with the other things that she has done, not least because she will still be at Five Leaves for two days a week until September, then dropping to one day a week. Someone will have to do our eBooks... Over the summer she will undertake a stocktake (that's teach her to reduce her hours) and more constructively be reviewing and replacing our website, which has got a bit creaky.
It is a good step forward for her to move to NWS, but I am pleased that Pippa will still be around, even if on reduced hours.
Pippa can't have a leaving do 'cos she is not leaving, but Five Leaves Towers did stretch to a small tart and a handful of grapes served on our best chipped plate. We are all heart. Good luck in the new job, Pippa!

Unrelated to the above note, Angela Foxwood will be working as an intern at Five Leaves one day a week, her role being to research book and other festivals to try to secure more bookings for Five Leaves writers. She has meantime been sent home with a sack of books to get to know our writers better. Though we did not save her any grapes.

 

One day all bookshops will be as good as the London Review Bookshop

...and all cafes as good as their cake shop, which has this nice window display.

Iron Press at Forty - the festival

From time to time I give talks on independent publishing. I often draw on the story of David Almond. David was a writer of short stories, often based on his own North East working class background. He was not the most successful writer of short stories, though he was regularly published in small literary magazines and even broadcast on the BBC. In 1985 Peter Mortimer's Iron Press published a collection of his short fiction. It sold modestly. Twelve years later Iron Press published a second collection of stories. It sold modestly. David's next book was Skellig, which became an international commercial best seller. At the fortieth birthday festival for Iron Press David launched a third collection of short fiction for Iron, Nesting, which included many of the early Iron stories and some new material. In the book he gives credit to Iron Press for its early support for his work, a support which kept him going, kept him in print and thus enabled David to become an internationally known writer. The introduction to Nesting should perhaps be read by every Arts Council administrator, owners of bookshop chains and reviewers of books. It might change their mind on the value of small presses.
There were 200 people at that launch reading, and the next day there were 200 people at a discussion of, and reading from, the 1991 Iron collection The Poetry of Perestroika. The book was introduced by Jackie Litherland, with readings by local actor and activist Charlie Hardwick. It was one of the best readings I've attended, with people listening with great attention to Jackie's tales of how the poems were sourced and received, the tour to Russia by North East poets and the tour to the North East of Russian poets. The event, and Charlie's readings, brought to life a collection that marked such a change in the lives of Soviet citizens and writers. 200 people, listening to poems translated from Russian, first published twenty-two years ago! And all in a community centre in a small fishing village - Cullercoats, home to Iron Press for the forty years.
Few small presses last forty years, only the recently retired Tony Rudolph's Menard Press comes to mind. If Five Leaves lasts that long I will be 82 - though Peter is knocking on a bit. Not that you would know, from his boundless energy and enthusiasm, his rattle of bangles and bright clothes. Five Leaves is pleased to have published half a dozen of his own books, but this weekend was all about Iron. And the arts community of the North East coast. There were few people from Newcastle itself - city folk! - but plenty from up and down the coast, from Durham, from rural Northumbria, and three from Nottinghamshire. I use the words arts community on purpose, because there were artists, luvvies, musicians, community activists as well as literary types. Plus which (to use one of Pete's own phrases) the events were generally a mixture of music and literature, with local bands playing ranging from an a cappella women's group to some very imaginative new folkies.
Peter tells something of the Iron story in Through the Iron Age, an A6 pamphlet. I wanted more, but this will have to do. You can order it through www.inpressbooks.co.uk or send Iron Press £3 and a copy will be yours.
I thoroughly enjoyed my weekend - including talking with editors from North East publishers Red Squirrel, Bloodaxe, Smokestack and fellow visitors Route as well as seeing Pete and his partner, the writer Kitty Fitzgerald. Fortunately I was stuck behind a bookstall so did not have to even  pretend I would have loved to have gone out to sea to write Haiku, one of the Iron Press Festival's oddest moments. But the sea was too rough and the sea Haiku trip was called off. Is this the first time a rough sea has ever cancelled a poetry event? There were other odd moments - it takes some doing to get lost in a fishing village in the middle of the night, but I did so ("I know the sea is here somewhere...") and it took two policepeople to help me buy a ticket at Cullercoats Metro on leaving so that I did not have to commit the crime of travelling without a ticket. But I did get to see the sea, a bonus if you live in Nottingham normally, and in its honour, here's a photo of a boat taken at the beautiful house of my host for the weekend, Jill Clarke, Cullercoats' answer to Mrs Madrigal.

 

Pushkin sonnets explained

Andy Croft - author of 1948 and Ghost Writer - explains how to write a Pushkin sonnet at Beeston Poets:
http://t.co/YsicfgILjB. For the avoidance of doubt, the image is Pushkin, not Andy Croft. The clue is that Andy  is never seen without his leather jacket on.

Amazon is more expensive shock!

There are many reasons to avoid ordering through Amazon. Their policy of ripping us off collectively by choosing not to pay taxes, their anti-union regime, the enormous discounts they charge publishers and because we do value bookshops. But, it is easier to say than do. You might not live near a bookshop (increasingly that is the case, thanks to Amazon), you might need a book in a hurry (and there is very little chance of Waterstones stocking a specialist book) or you are on a low income and need to watch your expenditure. But a good way to save money is to not use Amazon, or at the very least shop around.
Here are the prices of some current Five Leaves books, four recent and one backlist. These may not be fully representative of our 200 books, but the message is obvious (though we would still prefer you to buy from an independent bookshop, over the counter). Note that Book Depository is owned by Amazon, though is less grasping on discount, and is the only way to my knowledge of overseas customers obtaining books post free.
The Killing of Emma Gross (retail £7.99)
Amazon: £7.99
Waterstones.com: £7.99
Guardianbookshop.co.uk: £6.39
Book Depository: £7.99
Foyles.co.uk: £5.59
London Fictions (retail £14.99)
Amazon: £14.24
Waterstones.com: £14.24
Guardianbookshop.co.uk: £11.99
Book Depository: £11.68
Foyles.co.uk: £10.49
Talking Green (retail £7.99)
Amazon: £5.99
Waterstones.com: £8.99!
Guardianbookshop.co.uk: £6.39
Book Depository: £6.10
Foyles.co.uk: £5.59
Versions of the North (retail £8.99)
Amazon: £6.74
Waterstones.com £8.99 (with the book marked "availability uncertain")
Guardianbookshop.co.uk: £7.19
Book Depository: £6.74
Foyles.co.uk: £6.29
Jazz Jews (retail £14.99)
Amazon: £21.24
Waterstones.com: £24.99
Guardianbookshop.co.uk: not available
Book Depository: £19.74
Foyles.co.uk: £17.49

In summary, in five out of five cases Foyles.co.uk is the cheapest in every case. Waterstones is the most expensive in every case (and seemed to have difficulty with book information). Amazon's prices vary between second cheapest and equal most expensive.
I am only commenting on price rather than service, but if I was a regular or even occasional book buyer I would go to Foyles.co.uk as my first choice, or at the very least check their prices. I should say though that they only give post free if orders are over £10, so if the books are cheaper than £10 it is best to wait until you have more than one book. Foyles is a tax-paying company with bricks and mortar shops, which normally charge full price. For the avoidance of doubt, I have no direct connection with Foyles, nor have I ever discussed prices with them or offered them extra discount. Indeed, Foyles asks for less discount than any of the other companies mentioned. I was not aware of this significant price differential until half an hour ago.
If anyone were to buy all five books, this would be the charge:
Amazon: £56.20
Waterstones.com: £65.20
Guardianbookshop.co.uk - excluded from total comparision as one book not carried
Book Depository: £52.25
Foyles.co.uk: £45.25

The London Radical Book Fair - where next?

It is perhaps premature to start discussing where next for the London Radical Bookfair when it has only just happened, but we have to. It was a success. Around 50 publishers took part - large and small, mostly "movement" publishers with commercially published radical books represented on the stalls of radical booksellers. This alone seems a way to go. I can recall operating from a tiny space at the big socialist bookfairs of the 70s and 80s (where you had to pay to get in!) next to enormous displays of radical (if academic) books published by the likes of Routledge and Cambridge University Press who were keen to take part. They could buy big space, we groundlings could not. In addition, the bookselling beneficiary was Bookmarks - they had organised it, so fair play - whereas we need to ensure that the new radical bookfair benefits all the radical bookshops, including those outside of London. We need, for example, to ensure that everyone attending at least has a list of such book shops, and find a way of making it economic for them to attend.
The title "London" is deliberate. There is already a longstanding radical bookfair in Edinburgh run by Wordpower. But London is where most publishers are based and the centre that more people can come to. Perhaps - as has happened with the spread of anarchist bookfairs - others can organise their in their own area.
Certainly the exhibiting publishers and bookshops did seem to do pretty well this year. The public came. The public spent money. More than I thought would come - 750? 1,000? - nobody was counting. But we have only scratched the surface - with more notice it would be easy to increase the number of stalls, and to ensure that advance publicity goes out in such a way that radical readers see the day as an important fixture in their calendar, as anarchists do for the London Anarchist Bookfair. And with the radical bookfair involving a wider range of publishers we should be able to reach a wide audience. New Internationalist, for example, has 30,000 people on their database, and Occupy London also contacted thousands of people. With a longer lead up, and with a commitment from all participants to promote the event it should grow.
Copying the anarchist bookfair is not a bad thing. For many years Cliff Harper created beautiful posters for the fair, which are still sold to help the funds. It would be useful to find another artist who can make radical bookfair posters as memorable. Mugs? Postcards? Other merchandise? We have to think that way because big halls cost money  and it would be good to be able to at least pay travel expenses to speakers rather than draw on Londoners only.
The hall... At the busiest times, Conway Hall was stuffed full. There was no more room for stalls, and gangways between stalls were too narrow. There were, at the busy times, too many people.... Well, we don't want fewer people so we might need a larger venue... which costs more money...
Organising... the event really leaned on the work of one person, Nik Gorecki at Housmans. Good in that Housmans - that was the original idea - is a radical bookselling hub, but bad in that the team is too small. We  don't want to clog our diaries with meetings or arguments but we do need one or two more people who will do a lot of work for no reward and without fuss. It would be nice if there was money around to do a bit of rewarding... unions, trust funds, left wing solicitors...
It is not that every event should be enormous, but we need to reach a natural level and this event will do the world of good for radical bookshops and publishers if it does grow.
The linkage with the Bread and Roses Award was deliberate and it worked well. We got to announce the winners in front of hundreds of people rather than a social for fifty, and shortlisted books were bought. The shortlisted authors found it useful, I hope, to present their books to bookfair audiences and there was a lot of interest in their meetings. But we only had one at a time... and there are so many other radical books out over a year. Perhaps next time, let's take it gently, a series of meeting around the shortlisted books and a series of meetings around other books or themes, perhaps curated by an author or well known activist. And of course we need to ensure good chairing and better publicity about when each event is on, and, oh yes, technology so that speakers will always be heard and can show images.
There's a lot to think about. Nik and I are exploring other venues, the participating publishers are all being asked for feedback and we have to think about money. The bookfair about broke even with stall holders income providing all the funds, plus some generous support from a Trust as a fall back. We have some money in the bank but can't take risks as there is nobody and no organisation with deep pockets in the background. Yet.
Do contact me on fiveleaves.co.uk@googlemail.com if you have any suggestions, or talk to Nik at Housmans. Meantime, here's a couple of pics of the first radical bookfair, those attending the Bread and Roses/Little Rebels award and of people browsing. As you can see, though these pictures only show part of the main hall, we need more room.

Bread and Roses... and Little Rebels... and the winners are...

The 2013 Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing, for the best radical book published in 2012 goes to Scattered Sand: the story of China's rural migrants by Hsiao-Hung Pai, published by Verso. The winner was announced on Saturday at the new London Radical Bookfair organised by the Alliance of Radical Booksellers. Unfortunately Hsiao-Hung was ill on the day, but the award was accepted on her behalf by Sarah Shin from Verso.

 The winner will receive a cheque for £500. Scattered Sand is essential reading for anyone interested in how the economy of a quarter of the world works. The author is not an outside commentator, but was able to travel throughout China, and her books give voice to the millions of internal and international migrants on whom the country depends. Nina Power, speaking for the judges, said that the book was their unanimous and clear choice.
This year, only the second year of the project, saw the inaugural Little Rebels prize, for radical children's books. The winner of this section was Sarah Garland for her book Azzi in Between, published by Frances Lincoln, which was written and illustrated by the author. The award was presented by Bookstart founder, Wendy Cooling and included a framed picture of "little rebels" by Guardian cartoonist Ros Asquith. The Little Rebels section was organised by Letterbox Library, a member of the Alliance. Sarah will also receive a cheque for £500.

Her book is a short graphic novel which details one family's escape from a country at war and their adjustment to life in a new country. The book is endorsed by Amnesty International in the UK and is aimed at children aged 7-11.
The full shortlists for both prizes, information on the judges and the Awards, appears on http://www.breadandrosesprize.wordpress.com/ and http://littlerebelsaward.wordpress.com/.
The Trustees of the Award (Nik Gorecki from Housmans Bookshop in London, Mandy Vere from News from Nowhere Bookshop in Liverpool and Ross Bradshaw from Five Leaves Publications in Nottingham) would like to thank all the authors and publishers who submitted books.
The Trustees hope to include a third, young adult, section next year.
For further information on either award please contact nik@housmans.com.
Submission information for books published in 2013 will be announced later this year.
The two awards were presented at the first London Radical Bookfair, held at Conway Hall on Saturday 11th May, which looks set to become an annual event. For details of next year's event please contact Ross Bradshaw via fiveleaves.co.uk@googlemail.com.

London Radical Bookfair interim report

In 1991 I wrote an article for Tribune. concerned that the number of radical bookshops in Britain had fallen to close to a hundred. Innocent that I was, not thinking that the next decade would wipe out most of those shops - the economic and political impact of Thatcherism bringing radical bookselling and publishing to a low ebb.
About three years ago a group of us associated with Housmans Bookshop in London noticed that sales had picked up and that there was a new interest in radical books, particularly those trying to explain the economic crisis. There was a spring in the step of radical publishing not seen for a while, and attendances were picking up at events. Out of those discussions came the Alliance of Radical Booksellers, the first organisation for many years, operating on a light touch basis. We discussed, and set up the Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing. We - the Trustees being Nik Gorecki at Housmans and Mandy Vere at News from Nowhere in Liverpool - wanted to encourage radical publishers, to encourage radical writers and to encourage the commercial sector to value radical writing. Following the prize-giving social at the first year, the idea developed that it would be useful to provide a forum for the shortlisted writers to discuss their work in front of an audience... some events... and why not have a small bookfair around that discussion?
By now other publishers were becoming interested, though nothing yet was firm. Various cheap and unsuitable premises were discussed. We were keen not to be in competition with the longstanding  London Anarchist Bookfair held every autumn. The Anarchist Bookfair had weathered the downturn and - more than that - had flourished to become  major event, but we wanted a bookfair that would appeal to a wider audience - socialists, greens, radicals of all sorts - including anarchists. The London Radical Bookfair idea was developing... Suddenly one of the group discussing the project indicated he knew of a Trust that might help, a bigger venue was found, Conway Hall, and the idea took off.
At this stage difficult family commitments got in my way, Andrew Burgin became overwhelmed by the growth of his and his partner Kate Hudson's Left Unity initiative and Nik Gorecki at Housmans found himself with a looming bookfair on his hands. With Zen-like calm, and the support of Michael Gilligan, also from Housmans, stalls were booked and publicity started. Around this time the Bread and Roses Award changed to include the Little Rebels Award, organised by the Letterbox Library. There would now be a bookfair, events and two awards. But would people turn up, with next to no advertising budget, no dedicated staff, half the expected organisers gone AWOL? On Saturday the answer was a resounding YES.
Here's the evidence:

This is only a partial view of the main hall. Elsewhere there were meetings with the Bread and Roses shortlisted writers, the food area and the bar... and the usual milling about and conversations outside the main area.
There were stalls from the London radical bookshops, Housmans, Newham Bookshop, Bookmarks and others; distributors including Turnaround and Active; publishers including Pluto, Merlin, Verso down to smaller outfits like Five Leaves; trendy young things whose books I could not understand and wizened veterans selling heavy duty texts. Fifty stalls in all - including the one below, offering hundred year old copies of Arbeiter Fraynt, the Yiddish anarchist periodical banned by the British Government during WWI.

What was encouraging was the level of interest and the absence of sectarianism. There was a collection at the end with half the proceeds going towards a radical bookfair next year and half to the anarchist Freedom Bookshop, rebuilding after an arson attack. People warmly welcomed the speaker from Freedom at the plenary closing event as much as they did the children's writers from the Little Rebels prize. I was MCing the plenary and got a big ovation for the main organiser Nik Gorecki, who was of course busy on some practical thing elsewhere in the building so never heard it. But he and his colleagues at Housmans deserve all our thanks. Radical bookselling is on the move again. And I'm pleased to say that Housmans itself is doing well.
I'll shortly post a report on the Bread and Roses/Little Rebel award winners, and put down some thoughts on how the radical bookfair might continue. It is many years since the old socialist bookfairs, and the third world and black bookfairs so we have a fairly clean slate. This is exciting.

London Fictions at The Londonists (we like this one)

The introduction to this new book immediately got our attention: “We asked a selection of contemporary Londonists — the term is coming once more into fashion but is originally Marcus Fall’s from 1880…”. Well, blimey.

The 26 contemporary ‘Londonists’ — and most do have strong London connections — were each asked to critique a London-based novel. Their choices certainly intrigue. Dickens is missed entirely, and the list also steers clear of “that quartet of modern sages and visionaries of the city, J.G. Ballard, Michael Moorcock, Peter Ackroyd and Iain Sinclair”. Also absent are Conrad, Amis, Carter, Gaiman and Self. As the Afterword says, the editors make no claims to comprehensiveness, instead relying on the individual enthusiasms of the contributors.

The resulting list, then, is far more interesting than another slog through the usual suspects. A few old favourites do reel us in (Conan Doyle, Virginia Woolf, Patrick Hamilton), but then we’re drawn to a dozen less-familiar authors such as Pamela Hansford Johnson and Thomas Burke. We begin with George Gissing’s The Nether World and end with what seems to be its abbreviation, NW by Zadie Smith.

The contributors are also well chosen. Sarah Wise tackles A Child of the Jago, Rachel Lichtenstein analyses Simon Blumenfeld’s Jew Boy, Cathi Unsworth takes on The L-Shaped Room… Some writers really tubthump their choice, others are more critical. Andrew Lane’s appraisal of The Sign of Four, for example, imagines Conan Doyle piecing the action together from a London gazetteer, rather than drawing on any first-hand knowledge of the capital’s streets.

All in all, this is a surprising and approachable collection, which can be enjoyed by a general audience as well as literary types. The mix of familiar and not-so-familiar sets it apart from the numerous other London anthologies from recent years. Our reading list just got several novels longer, and the application of the word ‘Londonist’ just got broader.

39 years of News from Nowhere

I was pleased to be part of the Liverpool radical bookshop News from Nowhere's 39th birthday party, where we had an evening session based on the Five Leaves' book Utopia. The book featured a long history of the bookshop by Mandy Vere, who has been at NfN for 37 of those years. I worked in a radical bookshop for seventeen years, indicating some lack of commitment issues compared to Mandy. Indeed, the other four paid staff at the bookshop look like they'll eventually get a gold watch too. Gillian Darley also spoke, on the utopian Moravian community (from her chapter in the book) and other self-organised utopian communities and the local philanthropically-built Port Sunlight. We were interested to hear, from the audience, about some local housing schemes in Liverpool that are being self-organised, particularly in areas of high Irish-background occupancy, as a counter to the desperate economic situation people are in.
The event was also supposed to have Alun Parry singing utopian songs, but a family illness kept him away, with the wonderful Tayo Aluko (from Call Mr Robeson) depping at the last moment.
My own contribution - aside from talking about the contents of the book - was to draw out some strands from major utopian novels. Attitudes to decision-making and money, for example, in Thomas More's Utopia (actually, if NfN is really utopian the workers would scorn gold watches when the time arrives, as in Utopia gold was considered worthless metal and used only for cheap jewelry and chamber pots). News from Nowhere itself was written in response to Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward - if socialism comes. Re-reading Bellamy I was impressed how many of his ideas came about. He predicted the credit card, that could be used internationally, and he called it "a credit card". His vision of retail was based on the model that Argos and, to some extent, Amazon use. He suggested a personal economic system which looked like the citizen's income idea popular in the Green Party, and some of the centralised services that did come about in the Soviet bloc.
News from Nowhere was, of course, more libertarian, more rural, more feminist, more child-centred... but re-reading the book I was aware it was written just a few years before William Morris died, after an exhausting political, artistic and personal life. The book opens with "William Guest" after an evening "Up at the [Socialist] League" wanting to know what would happen "on the Morrow of the Revolution". Guest remarks "If I could be see a day of it... If I could but see it". The book is Morris's attempt to envisage such a future, but re-reading it the repeated call of "If I could but see it" felt like a cry of pain from someone who knew he would not see the socialism he so worked for.
I mentioned in passing Marge Piercy's utopian novel Woman on the Edge of Time, but Mandy remembered Piercy's Body of Glass where she wrote about something very close to the internet. Utopian novels have a habit of predicting the future.
What of course few would have predicted 39 years ago was that News from Nowhere would still be around, in a building owned by the workers-cooperative, a bit chaotic but buzzing with activity from groups as diverse as the Woodcraft Folk (meeting elsewhere in the building) and those running a vegan cafe on Saturdays.
Happy birthday, News from Nowhere