Archive for the ‘Literary Fairs’ Category

The Revealing Dust Cloud

Friday, April 23rd, 2010

 

Monday to Wednesday was London Bookfair. Due to the famous dust cloud half of my meetings were cancelled and many book stalls remainedwebite-home-131 empty. But Peirene and I had the best fair ever. Honest to God. And I promise you if you read on – there will be no sad, sudden traumatic twist to the story. Total bliss. For three days. And the glow is still written all over my face.

 

It was of course Peirene’s and my first bookfair as exhibitors. Three beautiful titles displayed on a shelf at the Independent Publishers’ Guild stand. Passers-by stopped in their stride when they spotted my little book babies and they couldn’t resist touching and looking them over. Yes, looks matter and I was pleased I had splashed out and bought myself a new dress for the occasion to keep up with my sparkling nymph.

 

But we didn’t just look the part, hoping for glances from passing admirers. That could have become a real bore after a while. No, we were indeed very busy with meetings. Unscheduled ones. But often they are the best. A lot of the big publishing houses from abroad didn’t come. But the smaller ones somehow found a way – by car, by boat, rebooking at huge expense onto the Eurostar at last minute. Where there’s a will there’s a way. A group of Swedish publishers got in the car and drove 27 hours. A Canadian publisher who had made it to Amsterdam by plane and then completed the rest by train, had lost all his luggage and turned up in a shirt and trousers he had worn for four days. Perhaps he minded. I didn’t. He pointed me in the direction of a fantastic Spanish book.

 

Big publishing houses usually offer me their front list - the latest stuff  but all somehow rather similar. Those books rarely even  tickle my interest. This week, on the other hand, I had a number of meetings where I felt there was a “meeting of minds”. I encountered directors of small companies, individual agents with an interesting eclectic mix of texts – in short, professionals with a passion for literature. Only recently I was worried that I would never find any worthwhile Peirene novel for 2012. Now I have a number of real contenders – Italian, French, Spanish and Swedish -  and I can’t wait to read them.

 

So, what’s the moral of the story? Small publishers have got it all – guts and drive and passion for literature and taste in clothes too. Not even a volcanic eruption deterred us from meeting on this island to show dedication to our books. Power to us, long may we live! 

 

 

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High Heels brought down to Earth

Wednesday, October 21st, 2009

 

High hopes. That’s what I had for the Frankfurt book fair last week. Yep, those ones over there. But, my God, how low did I sink, stripped of all webite-home-031smallmy dignity at the end.

 

Day One I managed well, twelve half-hour meetings and two parties at night. The next day I was fading. Another twelve meetings, one reception and one party later, I stood at the side of a road, ready to burst into tears because my feet were so painful and there was no taxi in sight. The following day I woke up with a desperate urge for some down-to-earth pragmatism. With five minutes to spare I rushed into the next best shoe shop and grabbed the plainest boots with the lowest heel I could find in my size. They did the trick – I admit. As I walked pain-free to my next meeting, I could hear my mother’s voice in my head: I told you, didn’t I, you’d break your neck with these mickey mouse shoes. Ha, she was wrong – I didn’t break my neck, did I, merely had a little cry because of swollen feet. That’s all.

 

So obviously I was terribly busy with shoe issues. Did I achieve anything else? Well, I sold all the Peirene books to Canada, made headway with American and Australian publishing houses who might buy one or the other title, I pitched for three new Peirene books. But the best was the networking. I just love the Frankfurt book fair. The amount of people one can meet there is just phenomenal– old faces, new faces, unexpected faces and afterwards all the contact via email and phone becomes so much easier. Face-to-face communication is still the top runner.

 

I also had some deep philosophical thoughts about numbers and that we humans are so impressed by numbers and want to impress with numbers. The first day, when asked how many books I intend to publish a year, I’d say six. A straight forward lie. I intend to publish four. Because with four I know I can give them their due – after all I am a one-woman-show and publishing books is just one part of what I do, in fact the easy part. It’s the marketing and publicity that takes the time. And I truly want to give each of my little babies their fair share. Somehow that sounds far less impressive than throwing around big figures.  I got better at sticking proudly to the truth the lower my heels went. But I vehemently would like to reject the idea that there might be a link between numbers and heels. In fact my mission until the next Frankfurt book fair is to find the ultimate heel  - high but marathon proof. I am open for suggestions.

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Party Talk

Thursday, July 9th, 2009

I am aware that I have slightly short changed you on the real gossip in my last blog entry. First I made such a song and dance about the castle party and then I don’t tell you about it. I will now fill you in. The castle party itself however does not lend itself to juicy gossip. Everything was fine and comme il faut. I talked to people, people talked to me, we sipped our champagne, everything was very polite, very civilised. I went to bed with the feeling of having done a job - the networking job - well and to my best ability.

 The next day the readings continued. I had by now figured out that to be really in the in-crowd I should have rented a bicycle. That’s at least what everyone else had done - because it is quite easy to cycle from the hotels to the television studio where the readings take place and then from the studios to the lake, which is about 20 minutes bike ride, so too far to walk. By the time I understood the must-have factor of the bicycle, there was none left to be rented. Of course you can get a taxi, but the Woerthersee is big and I wanted to go swimming where everybody else went swimming- in order not to repeat my last year’s ordeal of swimming all alone. Thus, when one of the guys there offered to take me in his car down to the lakes I was more than happy to accept. Then in the evening he gave me a lift to the restaurant where everyone met. We had delightful conversations. Afterwards I asked him to drop me back to my hotel. Which he very kindly did. I was terribly pleased with myself. Well done me - I thought - I am accepted, I belong. I had reached the zenith of my networking crash course. Where do you go from here? Only downhill!

It wasn’t until I sat at the airport waiting for my flight back to London, when suddenly it hit me sideways. “What would people - the world - now  be thinking of me?! Continuously getting in and out of this car! What on earth did it look like?!” My teenage daughter would have been probably - hopefully! - more streetwise in safeguarding her reputation. I couldn’t sleep for two nights, even wondering if I should confess to my husband about a non-committed act of adultery. Better confessing to something before a rumour tsunami would sweep across the channel and cause eternal havoc. I was gloriously descending into the paranoia abyss when luckily a good friend appeared on the scene. I cried on her shoulder. She was pretty unimpressed. ”What are you fussing!” She barely raised an eyebrow. “ Better to be talked about than not at all!”  The ultimate form of networking.

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The Literary Apprentice

Monday, June 29th, 2009

scn0002So, I did make it to the castle party! But I forgot my camera! Otherwise, and if I were already an expert blogger, I could have shown you the proof. Now you have to take my word for it.

It’s a fascinating concept, that Ingeborg Bachmann literary festival and I don’t think there is anything like it here in the UK. Quite surprising actually since it’s got all the right ingredients. It’s basically an abridged version of The Apprentice plus Britten Got Talent for literature. Fourteen authors, known and less known, renowned and less renowned, each read for half an hour an unpublished text. After each reading a panel of seven judges, made up of literary critics, writers and academics, voice their opinion in an half an hour discussion. At the end the best text is chosen and awarded the Ingeborg Bachmann prize. All of this is televised.

Its a show for the judges really. The discussions are often more interesting than the texts, because over the course of the three days you get to know the characters of the judges and can predict in advance who will say what to which text. You will have your favorite judge and the one who you feel has absolutely no clue. They turn into fixed characters in your head and cannot escape their roles. This year was no exception until one text came along that changed it all. The text was by an unknown poet who ventured for the first time into prose. And … it was dull. Static and void of any internal movement. At best, these eleven pages could have been reduced to a beautiful poem. But then the big surprise came: almost all judges, including my favorite, thought it was a remarkable text. I frantically skip read again the pages on my knees, wondering if I missed something unbelievably important. I hadn’t. Only one judge had real issues with the text - my least favorite with whom I up to then had mostly disagreed. Suddenly we were allies.

It took a while to piece together the jigsaw puzzle. The text had been recommended by the leading critic who in turn was pointed in the direction of the text by the most imminent of all German agents. In addition the leading critic is best mate with one of the leading Germophone publishers. So there were a lot of important people to reassure that their opinion was sound. There you go, that’s how literature is made.

Anyway, let me not over-dramatize. Not all is lost in the German speaking literary scene. This text did not win the Bachmann Preis 2009. Indeed the text that won has my stamp of approval ( no! I am not best mate with either the author, or the publisher or the agent). Jens Petersen’s “Till Death May Us” which won with five panel voices against two, was an haunting extract from the author’s soon to be published novel about euthanasia and the attempted suicide in a relationship. Written in sparse language it sent shivers down my spine. (You can read an English translation of the text here.)

By the way: Just in case Simon Cowall will ever read this blog and create a Brit Lit TV competition - please Simon, don’t forget to mention Peirene and her books!

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Networking Queen Seeks Castle

Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009

I never believed in the art of networking. And so I didn’t do it. My talents and abilities will one day be recognized, I thought, and there werelarge_fairy_castle1 enough people who seemed to share the same belief system: “Oh, no, I don’t network. Awful.” “Going to parties just to network. How ghastly.” I had to become a mature woman  to realize that it is often a lie, not a bad one, just a white one, and especially people who insist they don’t network all network like hell and that’s one of the pillars of their success.

I have changed. I am now a networking queen. Or at least I am trying. 

Tomorrow I am flying to the beautiful Austrian town of Klagenfurt to attend a German literary festival. Every year the prestigious Ingeborg-Bachmann prize is awarded there. Last year I went for the first time. Although it’s an important event it is not a big one in terms of numbers. Perhaps 150 to 200 all told - writers, journalists, publishers, audience. That also means it’s a very hard place to make contacts - full of insiders and very few outsiders. I was an outsider. On the second day at around 6pm the urge overcame me to get away from all this standing-alone, trying-to-chat-to-people, smiling-at-them-in-full- knowledge-that-they-don’t-want-to-talk-to-you and I ran back to my hotel room, wanting to hide under my pillow. However, just as I was putting the key into the door, a voice in my head ordered me back to the action, after all I didn’t spend all this money for flight and hotel to actually end up in my room at 6pm.

So back I went. Only to find that no one was there any longer! As if the earth had open up and swallowed the lot. Klagenfurt is not a big town, the walk to and from my hotel took me half an hour. There is one pedestrian area where all the restaurants are. I walked it up and down, sneakily looking into the windows but noone was to be seen. Eventually I did go back to my hotel, took my swimming costume and decided to go swimming in the lake. What else was there to do?!

It was one of those evenings where after an extremely humid day the sky was now grey and very low and very solid. Thus, I swam in the grey lake with the grey sky pressing down on me, drowning in self-pity and loneliness and if it hadn’t been for the thought of my children who I just couldn’t let grow up without a mother,  I really felt it wouldn’t have mattered if I had disappeared at the bottom of the lake. Anyway, I eventually got out. As I headed back to the hotel, I noticed a lit castle-like building on top of one of the hills overlooking the lake. Someone clearly was having a good time!

Next day everybody was back again. We listened to more literature, had some more discussions, I met more people. And then someone actually came up to me. “Where were you last night?”, she asked. I must have looked surprised. “There was the big dinner up at the castle. I am sure you were invited too.”

Last year I didn’t make it to the castle. I had forgotten to register with the festival organisers. Clearly, the networking queen had a steep learning curve to undergo. And indeed she has. This year I am going with the full intention to make it to the party!

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