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My Bloody Brilliant Weekend at Bloody Scotland. :)

September 20th, 2012 by Stefani Sloma | Posted in Blog | 1 Comment
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The first full weekend I was in Stirling saw me volunteering at Bloody Scotland, “Scotland’s First International Crime Writing Festival.” I’d heard about the event before arriving in Scotland and offered to volunteer during the weekend. I am SO glad that I did. I had the time of my life!

Due to my previous experience volunteering at the Eudora Welty Writers’ Symposium at Mississippi University for Women, the Front of House Manager for Bloody Scotland, Dom Hastings, asked if I’d be willing to volunteer more than one four-hour shift. I wanted to say “Are you kidding me??!! DUH!” but I politely said, “I can be here whenever you need me.” I ended up being on the schedule all three days (Friday through Sunday) for pretty much the entire day; this was exactly what I wanted.

Friday was the first evening of Bloody Scotland, and I worked the Author Hospitality room, where I checked authors in to the festival and gave them their name badges and goodie bags. I also worked at and helped set up the reception for the authors, which was the kickoff for the festival. After the reception, it was back to Albert Halls for the opening session called, “Why Bloody Scotland?” featuring Alex Gray, Lin Anderson, and Ian Rankin. This session was followed by an author signing, which is where I started getting authors to sign my program (more on this later). I loved these duties because it meant that I was able to meet EVERY author who came into the Stirling Highland Hotel to check in. Friday Night Highlight: Ian Rankin remembered me! I’ve met him previously, as I interviewed him last year for my honors research project (“The City as Character: Edinburgh in the Works of Ian Rankin”), and I was hoping that he’d remember me when I saw him again. HE DID! It made my entire weekend. We had a short conversation about the future of publishing and editors at the reception before I left him alone so he could socialize with other authors.

Saturday began at 9 a.m. with the Author Hospitality room. I spent all of that day at the Stirling Highland Hotel. I worked FOUR signings that morning, meeting authors like Allan Guthrie, Sara Sheridan, Yrsa Sigurdardottir, Caro Ramsay, and more. After that I worked inside front-of-house for two events, which meant I operated the roving microphone and made sure the authors got to their signings after. My shift on Saturday was supposed to end around 3:30 p.m., but I was still needed so I didn’t leave until 7:45 p.m. I worked about 8 hours that day alone! Saturday Highlight: “Meet My Alter Ego” session with Gillian Galbraith, Aline Templeton, Tony Black, and chair Lin Anderson. At the session, the authors spoke as if they were their characters. This was fantastic, because at one point Gillian Galbraith spoke as her character about her author, so it ended up sounding something like, “Sometimes Gillian writes about things that even I don’t know!” or “She explains what happens to me even better than I could!” It was great.

Sunday was the last day, and I can’t even explain how sad I was about this. It was spent at Albert Halls, where I worked inside front-of-house and signing for “The Next Big Thing” with Jade Chandler, Yrsa Sigurdardottir, Val McDermid, and Barry Forshaw. While they didn’t stay on topic much, it was a laugh and very interesting. I also worked inside FOH and the signing for “A Formidable Duo” with Quintin Jardine, Anne Perry, and chair Peter Guttridge. Sunday Highlight: I was able to attend the dramatized performance of “The Red-Headed League.” Stuart MacBride as Holmes was amazing.

Every author I met this weekend was fantastic. Alex Gray remembered my name ALL weekend and called me “wonderful” and “a star.” I thought this was amazing. Also, Gordon Brown (not the ex-prime minister, but the red-headed crime fiction author, as everyone joked at Bloody Scotland) was one of the nicest guys I’ve ever met. I got him, Craig Robertson, Gillian Philip, and Gordon Ferris to sign books I’d bought by them. I also had TWENTY-FOUR authors to sign my program, which is something I will always treasure; I plan to have it framed! I am so glad that I decided to do this; I couldn’t afford to buy one book by every author I wanted to read and have signed, so I used my program. I think it was a great idea!

I learned a lot about publishing, and I came to realize that I’d one day like to work festivals. It has also fueled my love for crime fiction, and I think I would like to work with it in the future. I think Bloody Scotland is one of the most amazing things I’ve ever been involved in.

I’ve since had a few of the authors follow me on twitter, which is an honor. I hope to keep in contact with them and see them again next year!

-Stefani Sloma

AHRC Digital Transformations Project: The Book Unbound

February 15th, 2012 by Claire_Squires | Posted in Blog | No Comments
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 We’ve just heard that the Stirling Centre for International Publishing and Communication has been awarded a grant from the AHRC in its Digital Transformations Research Development call.

Our project, ‘The Book Unbound: Disruption and Disintermediation in the Digital Age’, will be led by the Centre’s Director, Professor Claire Squires, with Dr Padmini Ray Murray (Lecturer in Publishing Studies) and Dr Paula Morris (Lecturer in Creative Writing) as Co-Investigators. The staff team will be completed by Scott Russell, as an External Consultant. We’ll also be working with the Electric Bookshop in order to present some of our findings, and there will also be opportunities for collaborations between creative writing and publishing students.

The project will examine changing business models in the digital publishing environment and their impact on the communications circuit and notions of authority, authorship, audiences and access. It will do this both via a series of case studies, and an experimental mode (live publishing – watch this space!).

We’ll have a new website up with full details of the project soon, but if you’d like any information about it in the meantime, please get in touch via our Contact page.

“Publish and Be Damned”: Banned Books at the National Library of Scotland

November 15th, 2011 by Nuria_Ruiz | Posted in Blog | No Comments
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A selection of Banned Books from the exhibition.

‘Banned books: Censorship of the printed word’ was a major exhibition at the National Library of Scotland, running from 24 June to 30 October 2011.  Although the exhibit has now ended, all of the books on display are available for consultation in the Library.  For those who missed their chance, Jan Usher and John Nicklen have produced an excellent guide in the current issue of Discover NLS.

Bring me your blasphemous and raunchy, your libellous and seditious, your controversial and vitriolic.  A trip to the “Banned Books” exhibition which ran at the National Library of Scotland until 30 October 2011 promised an afternoon of thought-provoking displays and analysis on a subject which has existed almost as long as books themselves have existed – censorship.  It did not disappoint.  The history of banned books is indeed a tale of the unexpected and the uncomfortable.

Arranged around the juicy themes of sex, religion, politics and society, the exhibit threw up some familiar old favourites – and some surprising additions.  Lady Chatterley’s Lover, The Satanic Verses, the ‘official’ biography of Linda Lovelace, these I expected.  But Bambi? The Bible?  Housewives’ favourite Woman’s Weekly? Surprising too was the sheer number of children’s picture books and stories.  Sometimes it is not profane language and incendiary politics that offend the most, but the simple introduction of different worldviews.  Three books selected for special attention were And Tango Makes Three (2007), The Rabbit’s Wedding (1960) and Daddy’s Roommate (1991).  All three are children’s stories which to this day are attacked because of their perceived alternative messages on lifestyles and relationships.  Yet taking time to read them, I was struck more by their captive storytelling than anything else.  Banned Books posed the question, what role should editors play in censoring an author’s work?  To author Garth Williams after all, The Rabbit’s Wedding was “only about a soft, furry love and has no hidden message of hate”.  To this I answer that the point where a story becomes something else is highly subjective; perhaps no editor can ever prevent a book being misrepresented somewhere along the line.

What moved me as I walked between the glass cases was the preservation of these books and magazines.  From Republicas del Mundo, written by Jerónimo Roman y Zamora in 1575, to Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho from 2007, all of these books were in excellent condition.  They may have had their words mutilated and obscured, their pages stamped with brands of shame, and their covers confined by shrink-wrap to protect innocent eyes, yet someone, somewhere had loved this book enough to keep its dangerous words safe.  They may not have liked its content, but perhaps a respect for the written word is culturally ingrained in all of us?

My optimism lasted precisely for the minute it took me to walk from the themed displays to the ‘Living with Censorship’ section, where I was confronted with the history of book burning and the growing violence of censorship.  For every book the National Library had on show, a hundred thousand more have been ceremonially destroyed in the name of censorship.  I can understand, in a historical perspective, why books have been banned and entire libraries have been burned.  While I may not agree, I can understand.  But the trend for individualised violence against books is not something that I can comprehend.  There have been books considered so controversial that they have become living things to these societies, to be issued death warrants, burned alive with their authors, and actually hanged.  Mass book burning is acknowledged as a public event that makes a political statement, but just what kind of statement trying and hanging a lonely book makes is another matter entirely.

Heinrich Heine, the German poet and essayist, noted in the nineteenth century that “where they burn books, they will ultimately burn people also”.  This led me to ponder on the vogue publishing development of the moment, the electronic book.  How does the digital word fit into the centuries-established tradition of literary censorship?  You cannot burn an electronic book, nor does it carry the connotations of personification that so characterise the printed word.  Moreover, while you may ban citizens from buying a book, it is infinitely more difficult to stop them downloading an illicit copy.  As this exhibit clearly illustrates, for much of their history, books have been contentious because of their ideas.  The twenty-first century however, has rather different concerns: the book’s physical form.  Yet in the furore about an e-book not ‘being a book’, perhaps we are missing a new and exciting chapter in the history of censorship.

The Road to Becoming An Agent, and Where It Is Heading

October 8th, 2011 by Kate_McNamara | Posted in Blog | No Comments
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Literary Agent and consultant Maggie McKernan of The McKernan Agency ended up in her position in an interesting fashion. After studying Philosophy and Logic, she got on a train and ended up in Paris. She took it into her head to become a writer, and spent three very hungry weeks with no fixed accommodation before she stumbled into the Shakespeare and Company bookshop, where the owner offered her a bed on in the library above the shop in exchange for work. McKernan took him up on this offer, and spent her days working at the till, reading, and serving a few customers. At night she slept upstairs among rats with writers who boarded there. McKernan watched them come and go, and  slowly began to realize that she did not actually want to write, but work with writers.

The turning point came when a young Sebastian Barry wandered into the store. Speaking to him, she discovered that what she really wanted to do was publish people like him. Determined now to work in publishing, she wrote to sixty publishing houses in London and got a job, which she partly puts down to her looking up the name of a managing director and addressing her letter to him personally. She began working in design and production, as this was the only way in. She never believed that she could work in editing like she wanted, but her views on editors were soon to change.

“None of them were quite as clever as they first seemed, and you could become an editor,” she told us. She worked for a while, then moved houses, set up a literary fiction imprint, and worked more and more with writers, which she loved. Her particular approach was to keep the writers’ interests to the forefront of what she did. “My strength as an editor…”, McKernan said, “was what they call in publishing Author Management.” This entailed working closely with the authors, managing their expectations and helping them to achieve what they wanted to achieve.

Four years ago, she changed tack and became a literary agent as she wanted to be her own boss, as commuting to London was no longer an option for her. This was a good move for her personally, and everything was going quite well. And then along came the recession.

McKernan was undeterred. She began to take on a client list, and now has between twenty and twenty-five writers, which she hopes in time will become fifty.

McKernan doesn’t seem overly spooked by the technological advances in publishing and what these will mean for the literary agent: ““As long as writers are still enabled to write I will be happy, and I may have to do something else, I may have to make my living some other way.”Her attitude to e-books is refreshing: “All that really matters is that people keep writing books and that we keep being able to find books.”  Naturally, McKernan clearly sees the need for the literary agent – they are a way of filtering out unpublishable material so that publishers do not have to employ a whole division solely to read new manuscripts. Surprisingly for a literary agent, she is fully supportive of the idea of self-publishing: ““If you do it yourself, you get all the money…the writer sees the possibility of getting all the money, and why should they not?” However, she does mention that self-publishing authors may want to consider hiring someone to do P.R for them. Unlike some agents, she gives no indication of wanting to be both publisher and agent to her authors, but she does insist that ebooks are an area she would love to work with if she was just starting out.

In spite of this attitude, McKernan realises the publishing industry is changing drastically for everyone:“Challenges and opportunities are almost the same thing…technology has frightened everyone, and agents in particular….Will people still print books? Will they still buy books?” All those in the industry must watch and wait as technology and e-publishing develop further before these questions may be answered with any certainty. Whatever happens, it seems McKernan will take it in her stride and continue to put the author first.

By Kate McNamara

Life in the Gutter…

December 30th, 2010 by Lauren_Hunter_Nicoll | Posted in Blog | No Comments
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A literary journalist (who shall here rename nameless) overhead at the Wigtown book festival bemoaning the fact there were ‘no good writers under the age of forty-five in Scotland’, and a frustration at a lack of literary magazines exhibiting new Scottish writing, were the key factors which propelled editors Adrian Searle and Colin Begg to establish Scottish literary magazine Gutter.

Both editors recently visited Stirling University’s Publishing Studies centre to share their experiences about establishing the magazine and to provide an insight into the world of publishing.

As graduates from the University of Glasgow’s Masters in Creative Writing course, both Adrian and Colin highlighted the fact that beyond being published in the course’s annual anthology there were few outlets in Scotland for the publication of new writing with the demise of literary magazines such as Cutting Teeth and Cencrastus.

Gutter was established to fill this void. With the proviso to promote new and exciting Scottish writing, the magazine showcases emerging and established writing talent side by side. Published twice yearly, with the first issue launched in August 2008, recently published writers have included Alan Bissett, Patricia Ace and University of Stirling Royal Literary Fund Fellow Linda Cracknell.

Plans for the future include the publishing of a Gutter anthology and the continuation of Gutter events. This year saw a Gutter event ‘McSex’ at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, a night which explored the tradition of eroticism in Scottish Literature – think smutty prose and nipple tassels (the smutty prose from the writers/nipple tassels on the burlesque dancer, although the opposite could have been interesting!), and events at the National Library of Scotland and the Glasgow Aye Write! Book Festival.

With the most recent issue full of stories from Scottish writers such as Louise Welsh, Zoe Strachan and Ewan Morrison I think that particular literary critic’s assertion was perhaps slightly misguided; there are certainly lots of good writers in Scotland under forty-five… Gutter is proof of that.

Lauren Nicoll

Scotland’s favourite national pastime: NOSTALGIA

December 15th, 2010 by Karen_Margaret_Raith | Posted in Blog | No Comments
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Adrian Searle by David Lemm

Over the past few decades, Scottish literature has become slightly repetitive.  As Liz Lochhead’s quote above affirms, Scots are continuously looking back at the good-old-days.  Kiddies getting milk at school, Ah- Bisto!, the fish man on Tuesdays and working in factories and mines.  Read James Kelman’s The Burn or Gregory Burke’s Gargarin Way, and you will be slapped in the face by a depressing (albeit brilliantly written) anti-Thatcherite society.  Although it has only been twenty years since Mrs Thatcher has been in power, perhaps it’s time to embrace the new literary scene.  Welcome to the spotlight Adrian Searle and Colin Begg, the creators of Gutter magazine.

On the 25th November, these two ambitious young men joined the publishing studies class at Stirling, to promote entrepreneurship and contemporary Scottish fiction.  In reaction to a nameless critic asserting that ‘there were no “young literary Turks” out there,’ Searle and Begg set out to prove that ‘the new writing scene in Scotland is bouncing’ [Hind].  Meeting each other at a Glasgow creative writing course, the double act teamed up to form literary magazine Gutter, which has been compared to industry heavy-hitters MacSweeny.  The magazine concerns quality writing that is well-presented.  Writers have included Louise Welsh, Ewan Morrison and Zoe Strachan.  Searle would love to snag Scottish literary royalty, Kelman, Agnes Owen or Douglas Dunn.  They ardently promote the value of intellectual thought, and aren’t afraid of injecting a bit of Scottish ‘cheek.’  One of their events has been called ‘McSex’ and assessed eroticism in Scottish literature.  Also, the current poem on their webpage concerns the couple of the moment, Prince Will and Kate Middleton.  Excerpts include,

Life may be grim, but bankers and toffs have misery at bay

With this assertion, create a diversion, a Royal wedding day.

[…]

So, welcome back the Tories and their Liberal rejects;

We’ve cuts and riots, it’s strangely quiet, but cardboard city’s next.

Searle with modesty maintains that he is ‘playing with publishing’ or as he quirkily deems it ‘micro-publishing.’  From a marketing and design background, he co-founded the Glasgow-based publishing house, Freight, in 2001.  He decided to self-commission projects, in order to have complete control over the creative process.  Freight has churns out rare titles, including The Hope that Kills Us: An Anthology of Scottish Football Fiction, Snacks after Swimming and The Knuckles End: A meaty Collection of New Scottish Writing.  They base themselves around Scottish writers, and the projects are visually stimulating, and have already received several accolades.  Again, Searle refers to the titles unpretentiously as ‘fairly self-indulgent.’  Freight enjoys a sense of humour in the creative process.  When naming the title Knuckle End it refers to an obnoxious assertion that Scotland is the ‘knuckle end’ of England – the leftovers that you might make soup from or throw to the dogs.  Wittily The Knuckle End is broken into two hardbacks joined in the middle by a knee joint: one section is on fictional short stories, the other a cow’s journey from the field to the abattoir.  Artistically, the text employs squint double columns, and uses vernacular typography, created by ‘non-designers.’  Colin Begg? Well, in his spare time – he’s a doctor.  Doesn’t it make you tired just hearing what they’re up to?

Inspirational and informative the talk had the students swigging their lattes and developing formative strategies for our own publishing houses.  Can’t wait to see what the boys are up to next.

PS: Now you’ve finished reading my blog go over to Gutter to subscribe to their mag, and read the rest of the poem On the Announcement of the Engagement of HRH Prince William & Miss Kate Middleton by Carl MacDougall (Parental Advisory Recommended).

Image copyright David Lemm, www.davidlemm.co.uk.

Karen Raith

Inspiring Paula Morris

December 12th, 2010 by Saskia_Spahn | Posted in Blog | No Comments
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Personally, I have remained much inspired by the talk of Paula Morris, who was the last guest speaker of our series. Paula is an author and teaches Creative Writing at Stirling. In fact, listening to her felt like ‘Yes, I will write more myself’. Firstly, she addressed the myths people nourish about writers, e.g. the writer isolating themselves, being oblivious to the world, while, in fact, they have another job instead, to make a living. Also, there is the opinion they would compromise for anything that would stimulate sales. However, in the case of popular writers, they might not be prepared to, – an example being Jonathan Franzen, who did not like Oprah’s Book Club (endorsement) sticker on The Corrections. Another ‘myth’ that Paula wanted rid of is that people seem to feel each and every publication be available on Amazon. Not true. Amazon is not hosted in every country, books are out of print, and smaller publishers may not be able to afford distribution through that channel.

Paula then talked about the author–publisher (editor) relationship, and the frustration of many writers, who complain that they aren’t looked after well enough, or that the publisher didn’t do enough for their book to do well. On the other side, there’s the writer, who also needs to become proactive. Not only has he or she to win the publishing team over, so that they will care more about the book, and put more effort towards its realization, but also, if an author won’t show initiative, he or she might sell the book to a publisher to see it disappear before long. Claire asked the curious question, how much it would be also about the team liking you, the author, as a person. Paula’s answer: a lot. No surprise. Nowadays, authors are expected to have Facebook and Twitter accounts, a website, a blog, etc. Their own initiative counts, literally. Paula is a great example herself. On one occasion, when living in the US, she promoted herself, with her husband designing book flyers, to be sent out to bookshops, who, in turn, invited her to do signings. These things make the publisher happy, as the author themselves has provided for a growth in sales. Ideally, the author would subsequently receive more attention from the publisher’s part. However, this may depend on how well the book will do after all. Curiously, if you’re a poet, your book won’t be expected to sell as well as if you were doing fiction. At the bottom line, if the records tell that your book has done great, you are likely to get another deal with your publisher.

According to Paula, everything is about getting your product ‘out there’. She also thinks that you want slightly too many copies of your book on the market, and that it is a good sign if there are returns, as this would confirm that there are a lot of copies out there. Additionally, Paula emphasized the status of London and New York as centers of publishing. Once your book hits London or New York, it would go out in the world – Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India…

Paula Morris, in my opinion, has been one of the most inspiring guest speakers we had. The effortlessness and candidness she applied speaking about her work, views, and experiences invigorated her talk to evolve into one ever so multi-faceted, relevant, and genuinely stimulating.

Visiting Speakers 2010-11

November 8th, 2010 by Claire_Squires | Posted in Blog | No Comments
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Every year, we welcome to the Stirling Centre for International Publishing and Communication a number of Visiting Speakers. Our speakers all have some sort of connection to the publishing industry, and some of our speakers have previously studied at the Centre.

This semester’s Visiting Speaker programme includes Louise Franklin (Publishing Sector Coordinator, Skillset), the literary agent Lindsey Fraser (Fraser Ross Associates), Willie Anderson (Deputy Chairman, John Smith & Son), Marion Sinclair (Chief Executive, Publishing Scotland and a graduate of our courses), Adrian Searle (Gutter Magazine and Freight) and Paula Morris (author and Lecturer in Creative Writing at Stirling).

Edinburgh City Reads, Iain (M.) Banks

January 24th, 2010 by SCIPC | Posted in Blog | No Comments
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Edinburgh Central Library hosted the second of its Edinburgh City Reads events just before Christmas, with a reading by Iain Banks from his new novel Transition, followed by an interview from Alan Taylor and a question and answer session.

There was a very relaxed atmosphere in the Reading Room of the library when we arrived, despite choosing seats right next to a camera, where my embarrassing laugh was a risk of national exposure. Perhaps the wine helped. After reading the prologue from his new book, questions from Alan Taylor and a member of the audience encouraged Iain to speak about marketing books in the science-fiction genre as well as the fiction. Iain Banks has written 24 books, split pretty much evenly between the two, but uses the name Iain M. Banks for his sci-fi books and Iain Banks for fiction. Initially, his publisher discouraged him from using ‘M. Banks’, saying it was “too fussy” and because of its association with Rosie M. Banks (Wodehouse character). In time he settled into using it as his science fiction pen name, considering it American-sounding and also simply a better name to promote science fiction under.

Despite having achieved acclaim in both genres, the number of fans crossing over between his styles (particularly towards science fiction) may be slim. Iain joked about the snobbery involved in picking up a book and being repelled on discovery that it contains parallel universes or quantum physics. It would be interesting to know how sales of his books would have fared had they all been published either with or without the M (which stands for Menzies, by the way, and there are a couple of funny stories to go with it). This point is of practical concern to Little, Brown and Company, as it is the first of Iain Bank’s novels in which the requirement of an ‘M.’ is debatable. ‘Transition’ contains the multiverse theory that each event that occurs involves a different event occurring in another possible world. Several characters in the novel can travel between these infinite variations.

It sounds incredibly complicated, but reviews suggest that Banks’ latest book will be a success with fans. I wonder how well exposed it will be to his science fiction fans, who may choose not to bother after noticing the absent ‘M.’

Later there was time for a few questions from the audience. Having dared my girlfriend to ask “Where do you get your ideas from?” which we considered to be the most embarrassing question possible, we were both spared the effort when a woman in the front row spoke about multiverse theory for a couple of awkward gap-filled minutes before finishing with the noticeable absence of a question mark. The microphone was taken from her and given to a man who asked to what extent Iain was aided by drugs in his writing. I knew he was a keen whisky drinker (and he now does no other drugs, excluding the espresso machine), but the answer that followed was so open and frank that at first I wondered if he knew the camera was there, and then just found him more likeable.

I went to the event having only read Iain Banks’ first novel, The Wasp Factory, but will gladly go to see him at other readings and am now looking out both for books by Iain Banks, and by Iain M. Banks.

– Alistair Coats

That 5.30am moment…

November 18th, 2009 by SCIPC | Posted in Blog | No Comments
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‘I finished the stories early in the morning and wanted to phone him straightaway. Then I realised that calling someone at 5.30am on a Sunday morning wasn’t very sensible.’ Last night at Edinburgh’s Central Library, Jamie Byng, publisher at Canongate, described the moment of excitement when he finished reading a batch of short stories from Michel Faber.

Michel FaberHe managed to wait until 7.30am to make the call, which was promptly answered by the normally phone-phobic author. They had a lengthy conversation about the stories and the possibilities for publication, thus beginning a strong friendship – and publishing partnership. Faber’s writing career with Canongate includes the Whitbread-shortlisted Under the Skin, The Fire Gospel and The Crimson Petal and the White, set in Victorian London and described by the Guardian as ‘the novel that Dickens might have written had he been allowed to speak freely’.

Faber began the evening by reading a tantalising passage from a novel-in-progress, stopping just before his protagonists have sex in a motorway lay-by en route to an airport parting. The entertaining and candid discussion that followed, chaired by the literary agent Jenny Brown, addressed the relationship between author and publisher.

The speakers touched on the reasons why a successful author might remain with his original publisher rather than being lured away by the big London conglomerates. In the case of Faber and Byng, a shared interest in music is one, but a passion for literature and a frank interchange of editorial and publishing values are others.

Byng concluded the evening by mentioning a piece of advice passed down by generations of publishers: ‘Never expect gratitude from an author, but be grateful when you get it’. But it was clear that in this author-publisher relationship there was gratitude on both sides – and a story of literary integrity and achievement.

The event was organised by Edinburgh Central Library.

– Alastair Coats