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Professional Expertise Is No Match For Gut Instinct

29/8/2017

The other day I was hawking one of our latest titles round some local bookstores. It's shortish, can be printed and shipped at far less than the usual cost and I'd hoped it would be a Christmas winner as a stocking-filler.

So far so good. But despite the fact that it was designed by a professional designer, the cover didn't appeal to one bookseller. The person in question has been incredibly supportive in the past, so I really was naturally disappointed by her lack of enthusiasm. That disappointment was compounded by the fact that the book in question was one of my own. She'd no idea why, the cover just didn't do it for her. However she kindly promised to take it home and read it.

Today I popped back in to see her. I'd had favourable responses from other bookstores and hoped she'd changed her mind.

But again I was disappointed. She still couldn't quite tell what she didn't like about the book, although now she added that she'd found an awful lot of typos in it – saying she's never noticed typos before in books. (The book was actually proofread in hard copy by three different people.) I've just checked it again and found just one – the one she mentioned herself.

All first editions have the odd typo or print error, although readers mostly miss them because they're engrossed in the story. However I felt that this bookseller had set her mind against the book – purely on the basis of a cover she didn't like – and was looking to justify that gut feeling. It's happened before, by a different bookseller, to one of our other author's books. Without opening the book at all, the bookseller was set on proving that it was poorly written.

It's human nature, really. When we have a gut feeling but we're not sure why, we all look for other random justifications for that instinct. We can't change that, nor should anyone try. But it does demonstrate how important a cover is to a book, and that even using a professional designer (at no small cost) is no guarantee of success.

Gordon Lawrie
(First published on LinkedIn)

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Review: Edinburgh Book Festival

26/8/2017

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David Greilshammer (left) and David Mitchell

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David Mitchell and David Greilsammer: Scarlatti and Cage
St Mary's Cathedral, Manor Place

This collaboration between Cloud Atlas author David Mitchell and Israeli pianist David Greilsammer was actually an experiment in trying to blend Mitchell's spoken words with the keyboard sonatas of those two groundbreaking composers: Domenico Scarlatti in the 18th century, John Cage in the 20th.

There were five readings, each followed by a few Cage or Scarlatti pieces, played alternately. Greilsammer's performance of both composers' work was spellbinding – he made even Cage accessible. Greilsammer had two grand pianos, one conventionally set up for the Scarlatti pieces, the other "prepared" specially to fit Cage's work. The audience were never told in what way it had been "prepared", sadly.

I'm not sure that Mitchell's reading did his own writing justice. The first story featured Scarlatti himself, and that was easy enough to follow. But then Mitchell moved into the sort of prose-poetry that Dylan Thomas created for Under Milk Wood. Mitchell's writing sounded lovely, but sadly, Mitchell gobbled his words a little and it was hard to make them out. He also has a slightly distracting habit of swaying from side to side as he reads. And he was let down by poor amplification, and a spotlight would have been good, too. But his texts were good.

Greilsammer, on the other hand, was simply sensational. Every piece commanded my attention, and when the pair were given a standing ovation at the end, I felt the pianist was deserving of the lion's share.

As an encore, Mitchell read a poem about a nightmare, which Greilsammer then complemented the text by playing a Scarlatti sonata – on the prepared Cage piano! It certainly produced strange sounds, but curiously not so strange as to be unbearable, reinforcing his very point that the two composers had more in common than at first seemed.

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Review: EDINBURGH BOOK FESTIVAL

26/8/2017

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THE UNTHANKS
Baillie Gifford Tent, Friday 25th August

Rachel and Becky Unthank are singing sisters from Northumberland who have gradually built a reputation for 'doing their own thing' in many different ways. Here they appeared in conversation with the author David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas amongst others), interspersed with some great music. They were accompanied on piano by Adrian McNally, their manager, accompanist, arranger and, incidentally, Rachel Unthank's husband.

Mitchell asked some prepared questions in an amusing manner and clearly loves the Unthanks' music. They all came across well on stage, Rachel answering more of the questions than her younger sister, but each of them seemed to be enjoying it. McNally, too, gave articulate and thoughtful answers, trying to be a slight counterpoint to Becky and Rachel's more light-hearted responses. McNally, by the way, is an outstanding piano accompanist.

The music was outstanding, if slightly disrupted. Despite having to compete with a nearby rock band, the noise of heavy rain on the theatre roof, and, comically, fireworks from the nearby Tattoo, they ploughed on manfully. Fortunately everything died down in time to hear Becky sing Nick Drake's River Man, accompanied only sparsely by McNally on piano – albeit an extraordinarily complex accompaniment at times.

Excellent. Listen out for The Unthanks.

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Review: Edinburgh Book Festival

21/8/2017

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Laura Albert (left) with Susie Orbach

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Laura Albert: In Therapy With Susie Orbach

Baillie Gifford Tent, 21st August 2017

Paraded as an “experiment” by Susie Orbach – she of Fat Is A Feminist Issue – this extraordinary show was indeed much more performance than simple interview. It’s probably fair to say that most of the audience were primarily there to see Orbach, but her day job is as a psychoanalyst, and this interview with Laura Albert took the form of a therapy session with the American writer.

Orbach started well – with the words "Tell me", then silence. Taking that cue, Albert talked on her own terms, and I took to her straight away. Not knowing a lot about her, it became clear that the key features in her life were abuse (primarily) and the use of food and writing as counterweights. She looks nothing like her years – nor does Orbach, by the way – which suggests that each of these women gains vitality from their work. Briefly, Albert was allowed to touch on how abuse has affected her and her work, and on a period when she was (as she put it) 'outed' as her pseudonym JT LeRoy. Albert, it transpired, had got herself into difficulties by signing a contract under her pseudonym and had subsequently successfully been sued for fraud.

Having been encouraged to open up by Orbach, Albert then found her 'therapy session' being channeled by Orbach into the therapist's favourite topic, food, fat and body shape. Now Orbach began to direct the show, and there was far less opportunity to find out about Albert – whose story was, frankly, far more interesting for this observer.

Then the "performance" ended and there followed a debrief and then questions from the audience which were once again dominated by Orbach rather than Albert. Orbach felt that she'd been "unable to draw a thread" from Albert's talk – as if that were the therapist's job. For her part, Albert, clearly a vulnerable woman, made it clear that she felt taken advantage of by Orbach. And although Orbach said she was sorry that Albert felt 'disappointed', she failed to apologise that Albert was in tears at the end of the show. I found Orbach's lack of professional concern unacceptable, and actually quite shocking. Audience members near me seemed to share that view.

I'd like to have bought one of Laura Albert's books afterwards in the signing tent, but the pair of them were sitting together – how that could be I couldn't fathom – and at that point I couldn't bring myself to be near Susie Orbach.

What on earth was Orbach playing at?

Gordon Lawrie

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On Kickings And Plan B

12/8/2017

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I can still remember the very first piece of advice I received as a would-be author: develop a very, very thick skin. Boy, has that been useful.

It felt like an achievement to finish a novel of 100,000 words – it is an achievement, actually – and it was pretty devastating to send the manuscript off to agents and publishers only to receive a series of rejections. What was wrong with my book? I thought it was OK, and secretly I still think it is.

The commonest response was "Sorry, Gordon, it's not for me." I just saw REJECTION in that sentence, but with the benefit of hindsight I now take the statement at face value: my manuscript simply didn't do it for that particular agent or publisher. Others might have a different view. Five years down the line, I also recognise that commercial publishing means looking for books that sell, not for good books, and a book can be an enjoyable read without being marketable. Publishing is a business.

Eventually I ended up doing some publishing myself. I'm not running a business – Comely Bank Publishing is a self-publishing collective – but we still need to make sure authors don't lose money. So I listened to words of wisdom from cover designers, from editors, from printers, and most of all from booksellers. Even from LinkedIn. I believe that the books that we now put out are high quality, both the written content and the product itself. When readers that you've never met say the nicest things about your book, it makes all the kickings to get there worthwhile.

A happy ending? Well, sort of. However, just as you never stop learning in this business, so yet another kicking is just waiting for you around the next corner. This week, a normally very supportive bookseller took an instant dislike to the cover design of a new title. Even she couldn't identify what the problem was, which didn't help either, but her opinion will still be useful, whatever we choose to do next.

Because the second bit of advice (from the same person) was also useful: always have a Plan B – and a Plan C, a Plan D and a Plan E. Don't just wring your hands in despair, do something. I do have two or three backup plans, but I'm keeping those thoughts to myself for the moment.

It doesn't mean to say that any of those plans will actually work, of course. Another corner turned could mean yet another kicking. Which means the skin has to get just a little thicker in response.

Gordon Lawrie

This article first appeared on LinkdIn.

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Blackwell's Writers At The Fringe

10/8/2017

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Jane Tulloch

August in Edinburgh means "Festival", in this case "Festival Fringe". Blackwell's Writers At The Fringe is now in its 10th year, and hosted by the sublimely eccentric Ann Landemann the excellent Edinburgh bookstore allowed five more Scottish authors the chance to strut their stuff tonight.

First up was Willie Hershaw, erstwhile head of English at Beath High School in Fife, but now focusing on writing Scots poetry. For those of us familiar with the language, this was a major treat: this was precise, accessible, unaffected Scots, a far cry from some of Hugh MacDiarmid's more affected efforts. I liked Hershaw's very first poem about the wartime pit disaster in High Valleyfield and his observations on wildlife more than the longer Lockerbie poem he read later: the latter didn;t quite work for me. A nice translation of Prospero into Scots at the end worked well, though. Hershaw is funny, to the point, and should be watched out for.

Ever Dundas nor Charles McGarry both disappointed me somewhat. Dundas read from a child-centred fantasy book set in World War 2 and did almost nothing except read from her novel. Since the genre didn't interest me, I was never going have the opportunity to find her interesting either. On the other hand Charles McGarry came across as a little aggressive. He's written one crime novel, which took 5 years, but he spoke as if he were a superstar who'd written 25 or more. I wasn't sure about his writing style either. It seemed a little forced, too flowery: crime fiction is entertainment first, second and third. The reader should never be aware it's well written until long after the book's been put down. Perhaps both Dundas and McGarry were a little nervous.

Then we had Comely Bank Publishing's own Jane Tulloch. Jane has really grown in confidence, and despite admitting that many in her audience wouldn't really like her feelgood style, she came over well, read a couple of nice pieces from her new book, and generally picked up the pace of the evening well.

The last act was Willie McIntyre. By sheer chance I'd bought his new book as a present for my son's birthday the previous week, so I was doubly interested. A criminal defence lawyer himself, McIntyre's crime writing seems easy reading, occasionally amusingly politically incorrect (but not offensively so) and he came across as a man who writes for fun – something Tulloch had referred to earlier as well. McIntyre's readings were funny, and read well, too. Based on this alone, I'd recommend his books.

Gordon Lawrie, 10th August 2017

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Professional Expertise Is No Match For Gut Instinct

Review: Edinburgh Book Festival

Review: EDINBURGH BOOK FESTIVAL

Review: Edinburgh Book Festival

On Kickings And Plan B

Blackwell's Writers At The Fringe

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