Signs of Change in Book World?

What could be nicer than books and chocolate? The Galaxy Book Awards are rapidly upstaging the Booker prize, which has taken a knock lately after arguments about the need for readability which supposedly clashes with perceptions of literary value  (are the two things irreconcilable?).

Alan Hollinghurst won the Author of the Year award - after having been left off the Booker shortlist - for his novel 'The Stranger's Child'.   A lot of people will be pleased to see an award going to Sarah Winman's debut novel  'When God was a Rabbit',  and an old-fashioned literary biography won the non-fiction prize ahead of the much hyped celebrity bios.

Apparently there's been a reader's revolt against the trend towards (often publisher generated) celebrity memoirs/biogs  and Claire Tomalin's 'Dickens' is doing much better than anyone (even Claire herself) predicted.  Hurray!!!!

Nothing for poets this time though.

Interesting post by Elizabeth Baines over at Fiction Bitch, about the experience of re-reading books you loved as a child.    It's called 'What do we read, when we read?'

Galaxy Award Results:- 

Waterstone's UK Author of the Year: The Stranger's Child by Alan Hollinghurst (Picador)


Specsavers popular fiction book of the year: A Tiny Bit Marvellous by Dawn French (Penguin)

More4 popular non-fiction book of the year: How to be a Woman by Caitlin Moran (Ebury Press)

Crime and thriller of the year (available on iBookstore): Before I Go to Sleep by S J Watson (Doubleday)

Daily Telegraph biography of the year: Charles Dickens by Claire Tomalin (Viking)

International author of the year: A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan (Corsair)

Food and drink book of the year: The Good Cook by Simon Hopkinson (BBC Books)

WHSmith paperback of the year: Room by Emma Donoghue (Picador)

National Book Tokens children's book of the year: A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness (Walker Books)

Audible.co.uk audiobook of the year: My Dear, I Wanted to Tell You by Louisa Young, read by Dan Stevens (HarperAudio)

Galaxy new writer of the year: When God was a Rabbit by Sarah Winman (Headline Review)

The Lakeland Book of the Year and Self-Publishing

Just as well that I love books! The submissions for the 2010 Lakeland Book of the Year awards have just arrived - three boxes of fiction, non-fiction, travel, cookery, children’s literature, poetry and memoir, all piled up on my dining table. So that’s my reading taken care of for the next month or so.
There aren’t many regional book awards in the UK - the Yorkshire Post is, I think, the only other prize like this. Hunter Davies (who is married to that other famous Cumbrian writer Margaret Forster) founded the prize just over 25 years ago to give a higher profile to Lake District authors. The third judge is television presenter and author Fiona Armstrong. It’s great fun to be one of the judging panel; the sheer diversity is a challenge. I read everything - from military history to books on sheep breeding and mining technology.
I’ve noticed, over the past six or seven years, that there is an increasing proportion of self-published books. This seems to be a trend and I think, with the parlous state of publishing at the moment, that this is going to increase. Self-publishing is a good thing - someone described it as the ‘democratisation’ of publishing and I agree. But many self-published books are so shoddily produced it gives the whole process a bad name. It makes my heart sink when I take a book from the box that looks and feels thoroughly ‘amateur’. However good the content, if the book doesn’t look right and isn’t easy to read, no one is going to pick it up.
If you’re self-publishing you need to get a book designer to design a beautiful jacket AND the inside pages. Many self-published books are printed out as cheaply as possible, with the maximum number of words that can be squeezed on the page - narrow margins and tightly crammed lines. They don’t look right and they’re difficult to read. You need plenty of space around and between the text and a font that is easy on the eye. Book designers know how to do it. If you can’t afford one, take a page from one of your favourite books and show it to the printer, telling him/her that you want your book to look like that.
But however beautifully produced, if the content isn’t right you’ve wasted your money. Every author - even the most famous - needs an editor. I despair when I read book after self-published book full of typos and grammatical errors. You can’t copy-edit your own work - your eye sees what it expects to see and you won’t pick up your own errors. And it’s not just the copy-editing that’s been omitted. A good editor will challenge what you’ve written on every page - do you need this sentence? Couldn’t this have been worded better? They will pick up the continuity errors - characters sometimes have blue eyes on p.1 and brown eyes on p.178. They will also tell you that sections of the narrative don’t work and need to be re-drafted.
It’s this process of critical analysis that is most obviously lacking in self-published books (particularly fiction). It doesn’t cost much to use one of the available editorial services (a quick google supplies a list), and it’s money well spent.
If your book is worth publishing at all, it’s worth publishing properly.

The Literary Award

I’ve just spent a sleepless night worrying about a literary prize I’m judging. OK so this is not the Man Booker - only a small regional award, but very important to the authors and publishers who have submitted their books. Literary prizes are coveted these days for their marketing value as well as the pleasure they give to the winners. I always seem to come second: this year my Passionate Sisterhood came second to Wainwright in the best-ever Cumbrian non-fiction on-line poll!! But I still count myself lucky to be there at all. When I was starting out, even a ‘highly commended’ made me feel like a Real Writer and encouraged me to go on. They have another useful purpose too, even if you don’t win anything, they make you finish things and sometimes there’s the possibility of getting feedback from the judges.

Often, in the big prizes, the advertised judges only get to read the long-list; the organisers of the competition weed out all those they think are substandard. Understandable when there are more than a thousand entries, but you do wonder how many really good things get thrown out at this stage.

When you’re judging, you have to ration yourself to reading only so many at a time - otherwise you become tired and find yourself skipping, which isn’t fair to the writers. And there are always compromises. What should get the most marks - the story that’s full of innovation and good imagery whose author hasn’t learnt how to use the spell check and chooses a weird font that makes you think you’re getting glaucoma? Or the one that is perfectly structured and presented, beautifully crafted, but somehow leaves you unsatisfied? I give marks for each aspect of the narrative and I also have a separate group of marks for the ‘wow’ factor. Believe me, a good story needs a wow factor even more than a property developer!

So, you now have half a dozen stories which have roughly equal marks, but no outright winner, and you read and re-read. In the end the one that wins is the one that stays with you - the one you think about when you wake up in the morning. The one you wish you’d written.

There’s always a subjective element - any judges who say otherwise are bending the truth. This time it’s a panel of judges and we don’t agree on everything - but in public we have to present a united front. Any screaming has to be done behind closed doors - or in this case with a computer mouse.



And then what do you wear to a Literary Award? I generally slob around in jeans, t-shirt and cardigan, but the LA demands something much more glamorous. People expect you to look like a writer - whatever writers look like! I stand in front of the wardrobe with about ten minutes to go before I have to leave, in a complete panic. Something young and trendy? Young is definitely The Word in publishing at the moment - anyone over 50 is encouraged to have plastic surgery or sign up for voluntary euthanasia. With that in mind, I put on a short skirt and dangerous heels and look as if I’m auditioning for Big Brother. ‘You’re a judge,’ I remind myself in the mirror. So perhaps I should look serious? Longer skirt, flatter heels, business suit jacket - now I’m a walk-on part in the Granny Diaries!! With two minutes to go and one eye on the hazy sunlight outside the window, I throw on a summer dress and grab - yes! - a cardigan. It’s the Books that are important after all.