State of the Nation Panel: It's a Mad World

 By Katrina Charman

Nicola Morgan

The State of the Nation panel was held on Saturday morning at the conference, and was chaired by award-winning author, Nicola Morgan, sporting a pair of fabulous spiky red boots! The panel consisted of Imogen Cooper from the Golden Egg Academy, Templar's designer and paper engineer Nghiem Ta, picture book writer and founder of Plaister Press Gillian McClure, multi award-winning Young Adult author Teri Terry, and winner of the 2010 Brit Writers Awards, Catherine Cooper. 

The panel discussed how to avoid the pitfalls and make the most of the opportunities in publishing today. They were asked first of all to answer the question of where we are now in publishing.

Gillian McClure

Gillian McClure noted that she had seen many changes in publishing since the 1970's, and that there had been a shift in power in the 1990's from the editors to those in sales, marketing and rights. With the emergence of the global mass market, Gillian decided in 2010 to start up her own publishing company - Plaister Press, as a platform for her books to be free of the constraints of the global mass market. She has now been nominated for the Greenaway award, maybe a sign that self-publishing is coming of age.

Catherine Cooper

Catherine Cooper, a successful self-published author, moved on to be traditionally published after she won the Brit Writers Awards with her book, The Golden Acorn. She noted that being traditionally published has taken her to places she could never have imagined or have been able to visit, such as the London Book Fair, Frankfurt and also being able to sell foreign rights to her book. When you self-publish, she said, you can do what you want, but you have to sell yourself, nobody else is going to do it for you. One of the biggest changes she has noticed in the industry in the last four years is the introduction of the Kindle. It has changed what she does and how she does it, being able to produce interactive teachers notes to accompany her book, for example.

Teri Terry

Teri Terry said that you need to do what works for you. Using social media such as Facebook and Twitter as a virtual watercooler, if you enjoy what works online. She also said that it is okay to say "no" every now and then to a marketing/promotion request if it is not for you. She initially began engaging with reviewers and bloggers online but now engages a lot more with the actual readers. When asked what an author can do on social media, she replied that it is more important to have a book that is good - the writing is more important than social media.

Nghiem Ta

Nghiem Ta said that good quality work is a combination of good teamwork. (Nicola Morgan noted that some publishers have forgotten about the importance of the author within that team.) For Nghiem, the role of the author is to perform various functions to various degrees. For the books that she  produces through Templar, especially with design-led books, her role is similar to that of a film director - she puts everything in the right place, and the writer writes to fit. Her job is to make sure that the story is told in the best possible way. But, she said, it is the authors name on the front of the book and they have to make sure that they get their name out there.

Imogen Cooper

Imogen Cooper from the Golden Egg Academy noted that there has been a change in the authors that publishers are interested in now. She said that showing the ability to get out there and that you understand the market, and what is happening in the market place, is desirable. With a fall in the sales of physical books and an e-books plateau, publishers are having to look into other streams of income, from world rights, TV and film companies, gaming and audio. Novels need to be able to be translated into exciting new ideas, and so the novel has to be focussed. The central concept is really important.



Nicola Morgan then opened up to questions from the audience. 
One question asked was 'Who are the new gatekeepers in publishing?

Nghiem - The public hold more sway than they used to.

Gillian - Self-publishing has opened the floodgates and it will be hard to sift between what's good and what's not.

Catherine - The book is key.



The panel were also asked 'What did they like best about the industry?'

Catherine - She is the master of her own books.

Gillian - There are more openings now for self-published authors.

Teri - The validation of traditional publishing.

Imogen - Being allowed inside writers' minds.

Nghiem - The privilege of working with creative people.



Nicola and the panel offered a fantastic insight into the ever-changing world of publishing, and the main thing that I came away with was that the industry is constantly changing, and with more options out there, it is an exciting time to be a writer.

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Katrina is a member of the Words and Pictures Editorial Team, and lives in a small village in the middle of nowhere with her husband, three daughters and a manic-depressive hamster. She writes mostly YA Sci-Fi and Fantasy, and tweets sporadically  @katrina_charman.

The Chalkface Challenge: The Shadowing Results

So far no one has told me that the Chalkface Challenge isn't the only kidlit competition wholly judged by children so, so far, we are! Half way through the preparation for our first Chalkface Challenge I thought wouldn't it be interesting to find out if some industry professionals chose the same as the children....

...or not.


Here are the three industry professionals I asked to Shadow Judge and who all, wonderfully, said YES:

Imogen Cooper              Sara O' Connor           Gemma Cooper

All very good friends of SCBWI and Words & Pictures.

The three shadowing judges chose from the five shortlisted entries. They were asked for their 'favourites'.

Imogen, Senior Editor, Chicken House Books
"I have eventually decided on entry 1. The author knows how to handle their material, the voice is consistent and by the end of the excerpt the reader knows where the novel is going." Jennifer Killick, Alex Sparrow and the Really Big Stink

Sara, Editorial Director, Hot Key Books
"I'm really liking entry number 10... And I'm really pleased to see how many middle grade stories there are floating around in SCBWI land!" Mike Pringle, Autopet Farm

Gemma, Literary Agent, The Bent Agency
"What I liked about this one (entry 10) was that it instantly threw us into a world that had android dogs (of sorts), but it didn't dwell on this or explain it." Mike Pringle, Autopet Farm

Gemma went on to comment further about Mike's winning entry:
"The world just is this way, and because the opening is so confident and the first paragraph so fantastic, the reader is happy to go along for the ride. I loved the little details thrown in, like Cedric eating a curry without any lubricating oil additives - it added to the world-building without being a massive info dump. The main character, Berthold, is likable because he's been given this faulty little terrier, but despite having to clear up all his poo, he shows a lot of affection for the little dog. I found the beginnings of their relationship rather sweet, with Cedric slobbering in Berthold's ear. I'd love to read more. "

In fact all three judges wanted to read more. I'm so pleased for the authors and for everyone who was brave enough to enter, as they all ticked boxes for the young judges.

In the autumn we'll have a new Chalkface Challenge for  a younger age group, I'd love to hear from any industry professionals who would like to shadow judge, do contact me at editor@britishscbwi.org.

Meanwhile all good wishes to Mike and Jennifer and again, many heartfelt thanks to Gemma, Sara and Imogen.

Another Top Week for Tips

It’s been a top week for tips, from K.M. Lockwood’s for Authors Working in Public and School Libraries (part 1) on Monday to Ten Top Tips and Techniques for Illustrators from Paul Morton on Friday, with Rosemary Bird-Hawkins' feature on writing workshops for kids the week before, we’re building a great resource.


All this talk of tips reminded me of my childhood Best Christmas Present Ever – a tin of Caran d’Ache 'fibralo' - felt tips. I loved everything about it – from the opening click of the tin, the rainbow inside, the smell and the feel of each pen, to the way they’d glide across the paper soaking it with colour. Lots of kids love to draw and colour and I was no exception. I'd spend hours copying Arthur Rackham’s fairy pictures or covering the page in psychadelic swirling paisley patterns, very seventies. I have one colour left from my tin. Sadly it’s not my favourite indigo blue, but the 41 year old felt tip does still work...

Another Top Tip

...just.

With the London Book Fair about to kick off, I was glad Network News this week was from London. The officially lovely Anita Loughrey has so much going on. My hope for Network News is that each region will be inspired by what the others are doing. The London goal setting brunch definitely looks like an idea that will travel.

@Words8Pictures

Have you spotted our Twitter feed? We're using it as a cheeky way of importing Industry News onto the blog. I already have two noble volunteers who will 'Twitter hover' to keep the feed updated  but if you're a SCBWI British Isles member and you think that retweeting for Words & Pictures could fit into your daily schedule do get in touch or leave me a comment below.


I'm very excited that we could have our very own UK Query Sharks. Really, there is only one, and that is the esteemed Janet Reid. So what personae are The Bent Agency's Gemma Cooper and Molly Ker Hawn going to adopt? Suggestions so far are: Query Eagle, Query Vulture, Query Kitties and Query Goldfish (I have to own the last two.)  I’ll leave the decision about branding to Gemma and Molly but I hope lots of you will send them your questions, and query letters for honest but 'gentle' critique. 

Did you enjoy Rowena House’s cracking interview with Imogen Cooper? Imogen is such a good egg to be so generous with her knowledge and the academy deserves every success in their efforts to incubate shiny new writing talent. If you're unpublished, feel you're almost there,  and  haven't already, The Golden Egg Academy is well worth checking out. 

Our other big feature for the week was Sam Hawksmoor’s So You Want to Write for a Living. We worried that Sam’s honest take on the subject, might be depressing – we didn’t need to, W&P readers are a realistic bunch. I think our eyes wide-open attitude to our craft has some part to play in the SCBWI successes we celebrate every Saturday. Sam’s article is a zippy read from the heart, sobering yet highlighting the very positive advantages of keeping the day job, which aren't all financial.

Next week, as well as the usual, news, celebrations, and Nick's Ten Minute Blog Break, we have Library Tips (part 2), we welcome our first Author Guest Blogger, Bryony Pearce, and we’re having a laugh with Celia Anderson – what do kids think is funny?

Finally, on Friday, Gillian McClure will be celebrating the life and work of Jan Ormerod, sadly lost to us earlier this year. The Guardian said that Jan "brought a fresh vision to children's picturebooks with her luminous images, storytelling genius and understanding of how children behave." Words & Pictures is privileged to have a tribute feature from those that knew her.

Thank you so much for reading and I do hope there's something here that will bring you back next week!

Jan Carr

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Jan Carr is the editor of Words & Pictures. Her fiction is older middle grade, she blogs occasionally and loves to write in magenta.

South West Writers At Large

Report from Lesley Moss

Some of us from the South West SCBWI group came out of our writing caves to meet for an impromptu Exeter Café Write-In just before the Easter break.

Our group included three Undiscovered Voices winners and one Cornerstones Wowfactor winner!


We also welcomed Sandra Greaves, a UV 2012 winner and soon to be published by Chickenhouse to her first Write-In.

And I finally got UV 2009 winner Lucy Jones to sign a copy of her latest publication, Rise Of The Shadowmares, for me.

Maybe a Talk-In is a better description of this particular meeting! 


When writers get together after working on their own for several weeks or months, there is always a lot to discuss, and so it proved.

We had a lively discussion on ways to tackle structure in novels, ranging from screenplay models – UV 2010 winner Yona Wiseman is a film-maker as well as a writer - to Chickenhouse editor Imogen Cooper’s excellent Bookmap© tool.  (You can learn more about Bookmaps© by attending courses with Imogen’s Golden Egg Academy, based in Frome, Somerset: a great new resource for writers.)

There's always a lot to discuss...

Next, Ellen Renner provoked an interesting chat about contemporary publishing, sales and marketing, and why most of our editors are women.
I asked everyone what they had brought to work on. Ellen (a Cornerstones Wowfactor winner, now multi-published) is completing final edits on her latest book, Tribute: a YA epic fantasy, to be published by Hot Key Books in March 2014.

Lucy is working on an exciting new teen mystery/fantasy, and Sandra on The Skull In The Wood, coming out in September 2013 with Chickenhouse.

Amelia Mansfield is researching material for her YA crossover historical fantasy, set in the Regency period, which is part of her Creative Writing Phd (sounds fascinating!), and Yona is continuing on her YA Urban Fantasy. I'm digesting some editorial feedback from the Golden Egg Academy on a middle-grade novel …

All too soon, after much tea and cake had been consumed, and ideas for future meetings discussed, it was time for us to leave.

Later this year we plan to follow up our Write-Ins with Edit-Ins – a natural progression! We will be sharing editing techniques and thinking about how to apply them to our own work.

Our Socials Organiser, Yona will also be arranging another social meet-up very soon

If you can’t make it to Exeter but are a SW SCBWI_BI member who would like to meet up with other local members in your town, do contact us Ellen Renner or Lesley Moss and we will try to help - email southwest AT britishscbwi.org.

Or you can come and join our South West Ning Group, where we arrange our meetings and chat.  

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@anonymoss

Lesley Moss joined SCBWI in 2003 and over several years has volunteered as an e-critique group moderator for Picturebook Too! and the original poetry e-critique group, and as SW Joint Co-ordinator. She is a member of www.thefuneverse.comand writes picture books, funny poetry and 8-12 fiction. She originally studied art and design and spent some years in community arts, including a spell as a mime animateur, working creatively with children of all ages, and much more. But her first love is writing. 

Imogen Cooper: in search of cracking good stories

Rowena House went to rural Somerset to talk to Imogen Cooper, senior editor at Chicken House Publishing, about writing, the industry and her latest venture: the Golden Egg Academy which was launched earlier this year.

What inspired you to start running Golden Egg Academy writing workshops at your home?

Part of what I’m trying to do is give writers a window into publishing. It feels to me like there’s a kind of divide between writers who haven’t got into publishing yet and publishers, a divide between the business side and the totally creative side. Even when writers sign a contract, they often have no real idea why their book was taken on and how it’s going to be marketed. So the Academy is partly about enabling writers to see through the eyes of agents and publishers.

Why is that so important?

You’re much more likely to get a foot in the door if you’re talking a publisher’s and an agent’s language. Everybody in publishing has very, very limited time. An agent or a publisher has to sell this book, therefore they need it in three lines. When Barry (Barry Cunningham, managing director of Chicken House Publishing) sits in front of Waterstones or whoever, he’s got to have a handle on the main idea and why that’s so exciting. Booksellers are getting so many novels through all the time that you’ve got to give them a reason to read your book first and then to remember it.

So is the Golden Egg Academy a nursery for potential Chicken House authors?

Certainly in part. That’s why we’ve just agreed this First Look deal with Barry. That means that anything I think is written and crafted well enough will go to Barry and he’ll get a month to have a look at it. But it’s not all about that. I’ve got good links with other agents and publishers and there will be things that are beautifully written but are not suitable for the Chicken House list. We’ll be very excited about them but they’ll be too old, too literary or whatever. But that wasn’t the main reason for setting up the Academy.

What was the main reason? 

Talking to people at conferences and people on creative writing MAs, I realised there were a lot of people who weren’t getting the in-depth look at their work that they needed to move on. They may have been sending it to people who were working around the edges, but who weren’t getting to the meaty, structural issues. There aren’t many people who do that anymore, and even writers who are published aren’t getting enough time with them. So my desire was to enable writers who haven’t been published to get that sort of support.

I’ve heard you talk a couple of times now, and you always stress the need for authors to be able to define the core concept of their stories. How does the core of a book differ from ‘The Hook’?

Everybody has a different vocabulary for these things. In my mind, the core of the novel is your through-line, the emotional drive behind it and the theme. The hook is what the marketing people make out of it. In my head those two things are slightly different.

Can you expand? 

The through-line is just the main plotline. The emotional driver is really the motivation of your main character, why they do the things they do, and the excitement and vibrancy of the whole story ... If you as a writer understand what you want the heart of your novel to be, it infuses everything you write. That is the emotional driver. And from that, publishers, agents and marketing people can sell your book in the way that you want it sold.

And themes? Can you give any examples of what you mean by that?

Okay. With Numbers, a girl can see the death date of every person in their eyes. The theme is what that would mean. If a teenager really had that ability, what would it mean? Is she the new messiah? Of course, not every story has a theme like that. In Wolf Princess, which just came out, the author is fascinated by Russian literature so she wanted to infuse the whole novel with that feel. For me the theme always comes back to the writer. What are you trying to say? You’ve got this plotline and these characters who are doing all these things but what - right deep down in your heart - are you trying to say? That’s where the excitement is, the vibrancy of your whole story.

So you want to see everything - the excitement, the vibrancy - focused on the novel’s central concept?

Absolutely. It’s all got to hang on that single idea. I like using visual images, so the idea of the coat hanger is great. You’ve got to hang everything on it. Or there’s the idea of the warp and the weft (in fabric). Your main plotline, the main protagonist and what they do, have to be very strong. But then you can go off and weave the most intricate pattern you like because your main character will be holding the reader’s hand throughout the whole thing. That’s why a novel like Northern Lights works so beautifully because you’ve got this central plot and Lyra dragging you along, even if you don’t understand all the layers.

Why did you get into children’s publishing? What’s so special about it for you?

I think it’s because of the big element of story and the excitement of being able to slip into other worlds. I had a wonderful childhood and I read very widely from Susan Cooper to Alan Garner, all of the greats, and they influenced me hugely. I was the girl under the covers late at night! And whilst I absolutely love reading adult literature, it’s that wonderful ability to get into the shoes of the inner child. There’s a wonderful poem by Robert Graves, I think it’s called the Island of Poet, where he says that it’s so important to see in black and white and engage with extreme emotions. That’s what a child does. I suspect that for an awful lot of people in this business, that’s what drives us.

Do you think it’s essential for anyone writing for young people, too?

Yes. We were talking about taking risks earlier on. For me the risk is almost putting the pen down, going to the theatre, going to a gallery, doing something you’ve never done before, and getting in touch with that fear, that excitement or that joy, to a level we don’t experience as adults very often. It’s not a matter of thinking about what age group you want to write for. That’s secondary. It’s thinking about what age you can see the world through. That comes first. That’s where the authenticity comes from. In a sense, it’s dangerous. For some of the authors I work with, it’s like splurging their guts on a plate, especially the teen writers because their writing is cathartic. They’re coming to terms with things that are quite deeply buried, and that’s why the trust between editor and writer has to be really strong. We’ve got to connect with who we really are at the deepest, at the most painful or the most joyous level.

Did JK Rowling connect with some deep level of herself?

Mmm. Good question. I think she must at some level. Harry is probably not the character with whom she is connecting. It might be Hermione. It maybe something fearful she’s connected with. It doesn’t necessarily mean seeing through the main protagonist's eyes.

Let’s go back to publishing. What would you like to be the next big thing? And I stress the word like. I know no one really knows.

There’s so much now on the news about the Arab Spring, or war-torn areas and revolution, I would be fascinated to see some novels on those subjects, but clearly with kids as the main protagonists. The other thing I’d love to see, which I tweeted about the other day, is some really big, emotional animal stories, with a sense of the wild that perhaps children are missing these days.

And what’s been done to death?

Well, vampires, werewolves, any paranormal romance. Post-apocalyptic has gone, really. It might be of interest in this country but certainly foreign publishers are turning things down. They’re not interested in novels with eco-themes either these days. That’s all turned on its head. But, saying that, if a novel is good enough it’s good enough. If it has an extraordinary take on that subject, then people will still buy it. 

If you enjoyed this interview and would like to read an extended version, you can find this on Rowena's Ning page on the SCBWI website. 

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Rowena House

Rowena House is a journalist by trade - an ex-Reuters foreign correspondent in Europe and Africa, now a sub-editor specialising in international affairs. She turned to writing fiction for young people to meet a deep desire to tell gritty stories that are true in an emotional sense, without being constrained by ‘the facts’.  At the moment, she’s working on a love story for teens set in Africa as part of the MA in Writing for Young People at Bath Spa. Rowena lives in rural Devon with her remarkably tolerant family and their less tolerant dog, a grey-and-white sheep dog called Fletcher.