Newgen Author Newsletter
November 2021
Hello!
This time last year, the first issue of this newsletter came out on our second birthday as Newgen Publishing UK. Today, on our third birthday, we have more wonderful and useful articles from Newgen staff and authors, and we have something a little different.
We are working in collaboration with a new publishing company called Lived Places Publishing, and we have an article from co-founder and publisher David Parker on who Lived Places Publishing are and what they hope to achieve. I’ll let David tell you in his own words, but we’re very proud to be working with them.
Our author profile this issue is by Dr Will Bowden, an archaeologist of Roman Britain and the Roman Mediterranean who is now writing a book for a general audience. You might recognise him from Time Team or The Flying Archaeologist!
Our book club has recently read the hugely successful Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens. My colleague Jennie takes us through the many opinions the book club had about this book!
Finally, as in the May issue, Sam has recapped the recent IPG Conference. Back in May, the conference was still completely virtual, but this time we had our very first hybrid event, where people could access the sessions on an online platform or attend in-person. As one of the first in-person publishing events, it was an emotional experience for all, and, as it happened during the week of COP26, discussed some very important issues.
Eleri
Lived Places Publishing, David Parker
I signed my first author to write a book in business communication in 2001. Twenty years later I have signed, published, distributed, and promoted more than 1000 books. During these two decades of acquisitions and publishing work, I have witnessed the transition from print-first to digital-first thinking. And during these many years I have watched publishing business practices shift in sometimes helpful but sometimes damaging ways for authors and consumers. Over this time I have served as an editor-in-chief of a major educational publisher, a founder of a speciality digital collections educational publisher, a leader of a market-leading ebook platform, and now as the co-founder of Lived Places Publishing.
The impetus to the founding of Lived Places emerged in the summer of 2020 when two simultaneous, global dynamics converged in the educational publishing world: first, the pandemic pushed all faculty into immediate digital-first course delivery and materials selection and, second, examples of police brutality, massive inequality in distribution of global resources, racism, and a failure to equally represent all voices in educational materials burst into our collective consciousness.
Lived Places Publishing is built on two driving propositions:
- We can deliver affordable collections of course readings to universities through the library with perpetual ownership, no digital rights management, inter-library loan rights and publisher-funded open access for author-opt in.
- We can build interdisciplinary collections of course readings that feature a truly global and endlessly diverse mix of editors and authors that are committed to exploring the intersection and intersectionality of social identities and the places, spaces, and contexts where we live.
Lived Places Publishing launched in April of 2021: https://livedplacespublishing.com/ founded by myself and Chris McAuley of the University of California Santa Barbara: https://www.blackstudies.ucsb.edu/people/christopher-mcauley. Chris and I have shared a quarter century of scholarship, friendship, and a commitment tobuilding a better world. We have launched five collections to date, including Disaiblity Studies, Latinx Studies, and Queer and LGBT+ Studies. And we have signed close to 10 books already at the time of this writing.
Are you a potential collection editor or an author? Do you use your research experiences with people and places in your teaching? Do you rely on course readings? Are you dissatisfied with the representation of voices in your course readings selections? Do you invest equal time and attention in your research, teaching, and community practice and/or activism? If you answer yes to any of these questions, then let’s have a meet and greet: https://livedplacespublishing.com/contact/.
We offer collection editors a 10% royalty on all sales, all titles in their collection. We pay authors 20% royalty on all sales of their book. We dedicate 5% of all sales to funding open access publishing on author request. We offer the most library and university friendly pricing, access, usage, and library-lending policies in publishing today and we will always be on the leading edge of equity for authors and equity for institutions supporting student access.
Turn your professional experience, research, and passion into a Lived Places Publishing course reading. What are you waiting for?
The Newgen Pubcast featuring Lived Places Publishing, Rebecca Bush
If you enjoy the Newgen author newsletter, you might also be a listener of our other content platform: The Newgen Pubcast, a monthly podcast hosted by your friendly neighbourhood Newgenners. (If you’re not yet, you can check out season one, and the first couple of episodes of season 2, here.)
Following on from co-founder David Parker’s introduction to LPP in this newsletter edition, you can find out a little more about Newgen’s new publishing partner in the latest episode of the podcast, where Phil and I speak with David and his co-founder Dr Chris McAuley.
Conversation ranges from the impetus to found LPP, the publishing mission and why David holds the vision of contributing to a world where LPP is no longer necessary … to the really hard-hitting important topics like food and vampire fiction.
As one of Newgen’s commissioning editors, I have been working closely with David and Chris to commission books for their new collections, and it was a real pleasure to chat with them on the pod – so please do check it out.
Author profile: Will Bowden
A specialist publisher once ruefully told me that the archaeology book market was 'all producers and no consumers'. I can believe it. As an academic, I write a lot. Our published output is one of the measures by which scholarly success is counted. At last count I had published some fifty journal papers and book chapters, four edited volumes and four monographs. In the arms race that is academic publishing, I’m doing ok, although I have doubts about how much of it has been read by more than about ten people.
Despite the ever-growing mountain of publications that my colleagues and I are inflicting on the world, over the last few years I have noticed that the things that we write about usually fail to break through to the public consciousness. In my own field (the archaeology of the Roman Empire), the picture that the general public have of the Roman world seems to have scarcely changed over the last few decades. For most people, the Roman Empire remains a world of soldiers, straight roads, baths and gladiators bringing civilization to the tribes of places like Britain. This is very different to the world that my colleagues and I have been building, which is a messy and chaotic place full of people with identities that were every bit as mixed and contested as those of the 'culture wars' of our own times. This suggests that academic writers have been mainly talking to each other.
As a writer, I’ve been grappling with this for a few years. I’ve always enjoyed writing. I had short stories published in my youth and later wrote magazine pieces about the tribulations associated with being a failed rock star (my first-choice career before circumstance and lack of talent forced me into my fall-back position of Professor of Roman Archaeology). Like many people, I’ve got a few half-written novels kicking about the place. So I thought that I should stop worrying that I and my colleagues were failing to connect with the general public and try to write something to reach that audience.
It was (and is) harder than I thought it would be. A lot of popular history is written by journalists, who are very good at prioritising clear narrative while ignoring things that might not fit or might not be relevant. Academics on the other hand always have a nagging voice in their heads that says 'don’t forget that you need to account for that other bit of evidence that might not really fit'. I didn’t want to forget that nagging voice because that knowledge is what I bring to the party, but at the same time I needed to rein it in. The knowledge had to serve the narrative rather than constantly interrupt it.
I’ve had some good advice from agents and publishers who told me the sorts of things they wanted. Being Mary Beard seemed to be an important criterion for many of them but I was always going to struggle with that. Nonetheless, although I was initially unsuccessful, my early experience of trying to find a market and audience for my writing was valuable.
Although it led down a few blind alleys, it ultimately helped me to clarify in my own mind what I was trying to do and gave me confidence in the voice that I wanted to develop as a writer. Working with Eleri Pipien at Newgen to put the proposal together and with Claire Hopkins at Pen & Sword I felt comfortable arguing for the book that I wanted to write and in turn they have given me the sense that they trust me to do it. Now all I have to do is finish it.
Book club pick: Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens, Jennie Wright
My name is Jennie Wright and I am a Project Manager in the Education team. We work on resources for schools, teachers and students.
I have enjoyed being a member of the Newgen book club for over a year. To decide which book to read in August, I chose several books for a poll and members of the book club voted for the book they most wanted to read from the selection. It was a tiebreak between Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens and The Midnight Library by Matt Haig, but a second vote finally decided the winner.
Where the Crawdads Sing is the story of Kya, a ‘marsh girl’ who grows up isolated from society. Abandoned by her mother at the tender age of six, Kya is left vulnerable and constantly awaiting her return. At the age of ten, Kya is deserted by the rest of her family, leaving her completely alone to fend for herself in the wild and unruly marsh. As she comes of age, she starts to yearn to be loved. When two young men from town become intrigued by her, Kya starts opening up to the idea of an alternative life away from the marsh until something unimaginable happens. This is a story of resilience, survival, hope, love, loss, loneliness, desperation, prejudice, determination and strength.
Despite spending 124 weeks on the bestseller list and selling an estimated seven million copies in two years, Delia Owens’ debut novel received a mixed response at the Newgen book club!
Some book club members found the story too unbelievable and undeserving of the incredible hype the book has received. They found the characters to be two-dimensional and the story unrealistic. Why would Kya’s siblings leave her and not take her with them? Can a young child really survive and thrive in the wild in the way Kya does? How does Tate teach Kya to read so quickly? We also questioned the rather inconsistent dialogue. For example, when Kya learns to read, she suddenly no longer speaks in Patwa. We agreed the poems that are scattered throughout are rather childish and the courtroom drama near the end of the book drags on too long.
However, other members of book club (including myself!) were able to forgive the novel’s inaccuracies and were swept along with the gripping plot, which switches back and forth in time to keep the reader hooked. For these readers, the story had a little bit of everything: a likable main character, crime (light!), a murder mystery, escapism, romance and a courtroom drama. We also liked some of the less prominent characters, such as Jumpin’ and Mabel. Delia Owens was originally a nature writer and something we all enjoyed were the poetic, lyrical and at times simply beautiful descriptions of nature. This line at the start of the Prologue is an excellent example: ‘Marsh is not swamp. Marsh is a space of light, where grass grows in water, and water flows into the sky.’
Where the Crawdads Sing was a controversial book at book club with some loving it and others not at all. I find that contentious books are the best for book club as they make for the most exciting discussions! Overall, I think most members would recommend you give Where the Crawdads Sing a go, even if it is just to enjoy the descriptions of the natural world or to simply read it before the film is released in June 2022!
The IPG Autumn Conference 2021, Sam Town
This November myself and Jo Bottrill (Newgen UK’s MD) were excited to exhibit at and attend the Independent Publishers Guild’s (IPG) 2021 Autumn Conference.
For the first time in nearly two years the conference was held in person at the Shaw Theatre in London, and it was brilliant to be ‘back in the room’ with our industry colleagues. With 12 exhibitors (including Newgen) and around 400 attendees overall an online stream also ensured that those who couldn’t make it or preferred to keep it virtual also had access to a full day jam-packed with sessions and 26 different speakers.
In the week of COP26 the day started with an urgent and thought-provoking presentation from carbon footprint researcher and author Mike Berners-Lee. With a theatre full of publishers eager to know if printed content was the ‘elephant in the room’ Berners-Lee made it clear that publishers can be part of the solution by producing content that helps change attitudes and behaviours and creates awareness of the climate emergency which we are facing. This was followed by a session detailing the findings of IPG-led research into harmful emissions and wastage in book journeys with five firm targets set for improvement with the ultimate aim for all companies in the book industry to be carbon-zero by 2040. Over then to Georgia Amson-Bradshaw from Quarto who spoke about their planet-friendly children’s imprint, Ivy Kids, and the realities of the cost and effort involved in setting up and running a truly sustainable list – but which, it was clear, in no way negates the essential work in hand.
A very engaging session each from the founders of two of British publishing’s most successful independents, Profile Books and Nosy Crow, highlighted why independent publishers are special and what makes them different to the corporates, and also how working from home has impacted a team of publishing professionals who previously worked together in the office, and how HR and recruitment approaches must now cater to more diverse needs. These sessions linked in nicely with Emerald’s Vicky Williams talking about the company’s diversity and inclusion actions.
A warning came from speakers from Ingram and Gardeners around book production and distribution and how paper shortages, delivery delays, Christmas returns and a possible rise in inflation will mean that publishers will likely have to increase prices, and consumers of books will therefore be paying more in 2022.
A continuing key topic in industry session on audio books firstly looked at a largely untapped Spotify audience as consumers of audio book content and secondly at how artificial intelligence (AI) is being used in the narration of audio books and what this means for the cost and timeliness of production, and for the experience of the listener.
A session on copyright and then a final keynote from performance psychologist Jamil Qureshi about attitude, mindset and taking a look at things differently in business, and in life, rounded off the day.
Some things the virtual attendees did of course not benefit from were a delicious lunch, good coffee and the opportunity to network throughout the day and over a glass of wine in the evening with industry colleagues. The general consensus was that everyone had missed this sort of interaction very much and we are looking forward to the IPG’s Spring 2022 Conference so that we can (hopefully) do the same again.