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30 Sep 2006: F-F-F-Frankfurt
The weekend before Frankfurt, and I'm worrying about luggage. We have about half a hundredweight of stuff to take over: copies of books that have only just arrived from the printer that couldn't be shipped earlier; catalogues, posters, and the fabulous CDs that James has made that contains our standalone rights guide website (I'll post a photo Monday morning because the design alone is worth it).
But we're clever about things now. This is our fourth Frankfurt which makes us old timers, and we have worked out the tricks to surviving it after a lot of trial and error. So here is my Top Ten Tips of how to have a successful Frankfurt if you're a small publisher.
1) Don't go it alone. The IPG stand is the best way to exhibit - not only do you get all the dull stuff done for you (they put up the stand and break it down) but you don't have to be there the whole time, plus you don't have to pay as much or try to get any sense out of the Frankfurt Bookfair organisers who are, let's say, tricksy.
2) Don't take hotel rates at face value. We stay in the middle of the red light district in the local equivalent of the YMCA for a fraction of what it costs to have a hotel room - but Frankfurt being Frankfurt, the red light district is all clean and well maintained and really quite charming - and ten minutes from the Fair.
3) If this is your first Frankfurt, ignore what your peers say. They'll say that it's impossible to start a new publishing company, and to save your money. They'll mean well, but they will be patronising and thoroughly unhelpful. Just ignore them.
4) Don't take a coat. It's roasting. Don't wear heels. I reckon I walk at least three miles a day - fast - down those grey corridors.
5) Don't expect to see anyone reading a book. Hah! This is business, people. We are trading, not visiting Hay on Wye. Sad but true.
6) Don't sit talking to your colleagues when someone's trying to catch your attention. You're there to engage with people from around the industry, not catch up on office politics. That means you, lady from Palgrave Macmillan who was so rude to me last year.
7) Do smile. It's nice to be nice.
8) Do turn up every day. It's tempting to just come for one day but it's a day of utter hell, trying to get around everyone at once. The best parts of Frankfurt are the serendipitous meetings, the chance happenings. Last year our shelf fell down, so we took turns standing in the aisle holding it up. We got a lot of funny looks - and a lot of conversations were started. At that same fair we were offered €8000 on the spot for a book by a publisher we'd never met - he just found our stand and liked what he saw. Magic!
9) If you're an author, don't go. That applies to London Book Fair too. Your time is better spent editing your work. The only possible outcome is negative; agents and publishers are there to talk to as many people in the trade as possible in a short space of time and if you get in their way you'll only make them cross. Stick to their submission guidelines and you'll stand a much better chance of them being in a good mood when they read your work. For once that's not just a Snowbooks perspective - it's what everyone thinks.
10) Do find the parties. One publisher last year had a hotel 40 miles away in the countryside - nice location but she missed out on so many conversations. Conversation is the whole point of attending.
So we'll keep you updated on how it goes!
posted on September 30, 2006 10:18 AM | link | Comments (0) | Leave a comment
27 Sep 2006: A message from our Chairman
Here, by way of introduction, is a note from Rob, our chairman. I am his puppet - he has all the good ideas and I pass them off as my own. Over to you, Rob:
"I keep reading criticisms of e-ink e-readers and I think most of the complaints miss the point to such an extent that it almost seems wilful.
Complaint: It's a heck of a lot (~£200) for a crippled PDA when books are cheaper and better.
Answer: I remember when electronic calculators and portable CD players both cost more than that. This is still about refining the technology - it's not a mass-market roll-out yet. What about when they cost £10, contain as many books as you want plus encyclopedias, dictionaries, maps, your favourite blogs and maybe the Top 100 bestsellers, each of which you only have to pay for if you read more than three chapters?
Complaint: But books look, feel, smell better. I love books; I despise gadgets.
Answer: The implication is that everyone feels like that. But ordinary people crack the spines of their paperbacks and then drop them in the bath. Some people love books; some people merely tolerate them because that's where the words are. Paperbacks aren't especially lovely things, but an e-reader designed by Apple might well be lovely.
Complaint: You'll never get rid of paper books completely.
Answer: Sure. Of course. Why would you? But even selling 30% of new novels electronically would represent a huge shift in the publishing market - and there's every reason to think it will happen.
Complaint: No one wants to read books on a horrible, flickering screen.
Answer: It's worth getting hold of an e-ink reader to see just how good they are. Zero flicker, crystal clear, readable in the brightest sunshine. Far prettier to look at than cheap ink on Bulky News.
And consider what happens if the gorgeous, paper-like display of the e-reader finds its way into some other device - a mobile phone, a Blackberry e-mail thingie, a PDA. You're carrying round this device anyway; why not load it up with a few books? Click, click, click and it's done. Touch a word if you want it translated/looked up in a dictionary/looked up in an encyclopedia/searched for on the web. Plug in your headphones and have the book play you music while you read. If you don't feel like a novel, push a button and have it be a newspaper instead. You'll still want beautiful editions of your favourite books on paper, but will you really insist on your airport thrillers being a two-inch-thick slab of fibrous paper with a lurid cover rather than a file on your slinky, gorgeous Apple Slate?"
posted on September 27, 2006 10:47 AM | link | Comments (0) | Leave a comment
24 Sep 2006: Sacred monsters
There are some benefits to living in London. Being twenty minutes from Sadler's Wells is one of them. Last night Andy (who I don't think I've introduced. Andy, meet the internet. Internet, meet Andy, my perfect husband and the man whose patient willingness to pay for the cat food and the mortgage has led to you reading this blog) and I went to see Sacred Monsters, the latest Sylvie Guillem production.
I'm no dance critic: all that can be said is that I stared at the stage, round-eyed, for an hour and a half, in awe at what can be done with the body and how it can express what I would have thought could only be achieved with language. The reason I'm mentioning it here on Snowbooks' blog is because of the nature of the production. It's a critical rant; a backlash against classical training. Guillem is angry about the constraints of the traditional ballet school; she breaks convention to speak to the audience about her frustrations of not being allowed to find your own path or alter the rules in the traditional school. The critique gives way to a duet in which Sylvie wraps herself around her partner, and both twine their arms and move their upper bodies so they become like the Hindu god Shiva, the purifier who destroys in order to create.
So if you know anything about the genesis of Snowbooks you can see why I'd enjoy it.
posted on September 24, 2006 12:11 PM | link | Comments (2) | Leave a comment
21 Sep 2006: Oh boy
Here are three fine books. They look, feel and smell *so* good. If you hold them close to your ear they whisper "I am pretty, so pretty, and full of goodness and interesting things and you must buy me." I might taste them in a minute, just to see...
See how they fall open at a page and stay open? There are no photoshopped fingers in these images holding the pages flat. That = high quality. If you're a publisher and need a recommendation for low cost colour print I can heartily recommend Oriental Press for both quality and service. You can tell from their website, actually: although there are folks in this world who think a pretty website is just puff, it shows that a company has taste and an understanding of design principles and attention to detail, unlike some members of the book trade who shall remain nameless.
Incidentally, these photos did not necessitate a trip to the beach. The stoney background is the pavement outside our office. It's like a little slice of the seaside up here in King's Cross.
While I'm on, thanks to all of you who requested a copy of the Woolf. They are in the post!
posted on September 21, 2006 02:46 PM | link | Comments (0) | Leave a comment
21 Sep 2006: Please ignore the Man behind the Curtain
Boringly, we're currently undergoing a massive, yet - we hope and pray - almost imperceptible, reconfiguration of the website. While the difference to you, the reader, will be minor in the long run, there may be a few technical glitches - the odd missing image or broken link - in the short term. We apologise in advance and assure you that all will be back in order shortly.
*bllzzzzt* *creeeeeeeeek* *shblblblblk*
*ominous low rumbling noise*
Stand by for re-entry.
>>UPDATE: About three hours later... <<
Well, would you look at that. Snowbooks.com is now fully css'd up, almost fully XHTML compliant and generally pretty darn spiffing. If this means anything to you, God bless you, and if not, just move along, nothing to see here.
It had to happen really, and if you work on the internet in any way yourself and don't know why, then you should read this rather excellent article. Standards, gawd demmit, they stand for something.
That's it: we're going for beers now.
>> UPDATE: The next morning <<
Didn't we speak too soon. Apologies to anyone who came along overnight and got a few lines of bad text. All should be well now - do let us know if you have any problems.
>> UPDATE: We can't stop ourselves <<
Some more pretty boxes with ticks in them, to go with Emma's BIC accreditation from a few days back.
That's right: Snowbooks.com is now actually XHTML compliant. Well, the front page is, but this will gradually bleed it's way across the site.
posted on September 21, 2006 11:25 AM | link | Comments (0) | Leave a comment
20 Sep 2006: Freebies
Isn't the book trade lovely and full of the nicest sort of person? You'd never get anyone from Black and Decker buying five Flymo lawnmowers to give out to people because, wow, it just cuts such a neat lawn. But that's just what two publishers are doing at the moment. Not with lawnmowers, though. I have been mightily impressed to see both Susan Hill and Scott Pack putting their money where their mouths (or at least opinions) are and buying books they liked just to give them away to others, in the hope that the word will spread. They are much better people than me because whilst I want to muscle in on the action, I want to give away one of our own books which I think deserves more attention (plus I happen to have a box full in the office. Plus it's quite thin so quite cheap to post. Emma Barnes=Skinflint.)
The book is Virginia Woolf's The London Scene - a collection of essays originally commissioned by Good Housekeeping magazine (ah, how times have changed). There's one essay that's never been published in a book before, which makes it extra special. To encourage people to both enjoy this book and discover a particularly excellent litblog (which I'm sure you'll know about already, but just in case), a copy is yours if you answer this tie-breaker question...what book has Lynne at Dovegreyreader just read? Answers on an email to emma@snowbooks.com. There is no upper limit on the number of copies to be sent out (yes, it was that much of an over-printing disaster) so get emailing!
//Update 21st Sept 3.30// All the copies in the big box in the office have been claimed and sent out! Thanks so much for your interest but I think I'll close the competition now.//
posted on September 20, 2006 01:42 PM | link | Comments (0) | Leave a comment
19 Sep 2006: Stimulated
What a great day I've had! Always one who is happier up the strategic end of things, I spent the morning in a focus group thing about IT. The organisers were asking about 'disruptive technologies' which got my hackles up because I'm ignorant and didn't know that a disruptive technology or innovation is a new technological innovation, product, or service that eventually overturns the existing dominant technology or product in the market. I thought it was going to be another one of those meetings where an angry old man shakes his cane at the speakers and calls for an end to barcodes, or summat. DTs can be positive for the user (think PCs superceding mainframes, or, as wikipedia helpfully says, the musket superceding the crossbow) but negative for the industry (think IBM's P&L the year people stopped buying computers that filled up a couple of rooms, required industrial ventilation and provided enough storage for, ooh, at least a gig of data. To put that into context, we have just taken delivery of a couple of external harddrives that are 500gb each. A terabyte of data... for seventy quid. Poor IBM.)
Annnyway, this focus group was fascinating and filled with people from publishing who were having sensible, thoughtful and clever conversations about which technologies will affect our industry in the coming months and how we should be positioning ourselves to exploit it. The discussion included, but wasn't limited, to, the effect on the creative industries of ebooks; creative commons, wikis, peer to peer networks, filesharing, authorities, RFID, and all the ways people want to access content. There was discussion about how the current value chain stops at the user experience, wheras a more likely future value chain will be more cyclical, with the user experience turning into feedback (think comments on blogs, capturing word of mouth on corporate websites, sharing opinions on peer to peer networks like myspace) which could guide future editorial direction. Ooh, the possibilities. The other interesting idea was around DRM and trying to stop people stealing content. Someone shared a new point of view: these people were never in the market to buy the content anyway, so it's no lost revenue, so treat it as an opportunity to spread word of mouth instead!
In summary, it was lovely to immerse myself in interesting, pioneering discussions for a morning.
posted on September 19, 2006 04:34 PM | link | Comments (0) | Leave a comment
15 Sep 2006: Triple whammy
So after much hand-wringing and impatient glances at the road ("Is that the van? No? Where's the van? What about that van? Is that the van? No?") not one but two books turned up from the printer. And they are LOVELY:
You saw it here first, folks: these titles will be very big at Christmas. I tried to get the goldy foil on Sand Daughter to catch the light, but it's a lot shinier and mirror-like in the flesh, as it were. I suppose to see what it really looks like you'll have to go into stores to find out... or you can email us and the first five lucky, er, emailers will get sent a copy of either Sand Daughter or How Very Interesting ABSOLUTELY FREE. Hey, we're just crazy!
And to make the hat trick, we've been awarded a new certificate:
It means we send the right bibliographic data to the right people at the right time to the right place (their ftp site) at the right price (er, free). Thanks for enabling this, Anko!
Next week: more books from the printers. It's like Christmas!
posted on September 15, 2006 04:13 PM | link | Comments (0) | Leave a comment
13 Sep 2006: Eek
I saw my first conker of the year today. They're so shiny, aren't they? It's a wonder people don't use them for hypnotising instead of conkering. Of course, conkers means only one thing: Christmas is here.
We have what I believe is a stonking Christmas range. I was writing some information packs about our Christmas titles today and was getting more and more excited. We've got previously unseen material about Peter Cook; the best crafting book on the market; an 880-page Adept/Ex Machina omnibus; the next book from the brilliant Sarah Bryant; a seminal martial arts book; a hardback of The Sunny Side by A A Milne. Yes - they *are* perfect gifts. Yes - they *are* unique and needful and brilliant. Yes - people might buy them!
Which got me thinking. Oh god, what if they sell *really* well? Have we printed enough? What happens if we get a real runner? How quickly can the printers respond - or will they be too busy responding to everyone else? What if a customer places a huge order for, ooh, let's say 20,000 copies in November, and we print them and it takes three weeks and we get them into store with two trading weeks left and then they all get returned in January? What if... [breathes heavily into paper bag].
It's not all reindeer and port, you know. Christmas is mighty scary - 'specially when you're a little publisher doing quite well who might do a little bit extra well which might, ironically, bankrupt you. Thankfully I have ten years of blue-chip supply chain management, collaborative forecasting, planning and replenishment and strategy training behind me, so what could possibly go wrong? Er...
Still, I remember this time last year thinking that we were going to have a ghastly time of it for the other reason - insufficient sales. The mighty, merciful Scott Pack came to the rescue and bought a couple of books for Waterstone's 3 for 2 which got us through the season unscathed. It shows how far we've come in a year that I'm now worried about too many sales.
Maybe to steady my nerves I should attempt self-hypnosis. Where's that shiny, shiny conker...?
posted on September 13, 2006 05:33 PM | link | Comments (0) | Leave a comment
04 Sep 2006: Top Ten Tips
I had to write this for another website but I thought I'd post it here too. Here, for what it's worth, are my top ten tips for brand new trade publishers.
1. Ignore most advice. You're starting a publishing company because, presumably, you've got an idea that is different from the norm. It stands to reason that existing players won't be able to advise you very well. Listen, take what's useful, and discard what isn't. This applies to the next nine points.
2.Put yourself into others' shoes. This is the single most useful thing that you can do and it applies at every stage of the publishing process. For example, when you are making editorial decisions, it really doesn't matter what you think about the books: what will your target readers think? Similarly when you approach retail buyers, try to think about things from their point of view. They are exceptionally busy people with stressful sales targets and a limited budget to buy stock. Do something that will help them achieve their goals and your books stand a much better chance of being listed.
3. Make planning the most important aspect of your company. Don't focus entirely on the first stage of the publishing process - developing your list - and end up with a garage full of books before you've thought about how to sell them. You need to develop your company's infrastructure from the start, including distribution, IT, and sales. Think through your processes and scheduling before you start.
4. Stick to the industry timescales. It helps enormously if you allow enough time for other people to do their jobs easily. Magazines work four months in advance; retail chains and wholesalers buy between three and six months in advance. Bear in mind point 1 - there are always exceptions - but sticking to these timescales is much less stressful.
5. Use IT. One of the reasons that you are able to start a publishing company is because of the cheap, robust IT that exists today. The Adobe suite of software (including Photoshop, InDesign and Acrobat) allows seamless pdf workflow. If you don't know what that means, look it up and learn about this stuff. Use databases to manage your bibliographic data - extremely cheap ones exist from companies like www.anko.ie that allow you to ftp your ONIX compliant bibliographic data direct to Nielsen. Again, if this makes no sense, make it your mission to understand.
6. Use your background to best effect. Your background will turn out to be your company's compelling USP. Your approach will be determined by what you know and understand best. I used to be a retail buyer, so Snowbooks' core strength is that we understand how retail works. Other companies have strong journalistic backgrounds and use that to great advantage in PR. Use what you know.
7. Understand that you can sell a book by its cover. The one thing a reader cannot judge a book on at the point of sale is the quality of the writing: they haven't read it yet. Design and packaging is thus crucial. There are more than 100,000 new titles published a year. How do you make yours stand out? Make it blend in first so that it looks like it belongs in the category. It will reassure the retail buyer that you know what you're doing, and once the book is in the stores it has a chance of selling. Readers have to rely on visual cues to place the book in its genre. If the author name is blocky and foiled, and there is a moody looking picture of an alley, chances are the book is a crime thriller - and readers understand this shorthand. Use visual clues to place your book in its genre.
8. Go shopping. Don't isolate yourself in your office. Visit the places where you hope to sell your wares - the bookstores. Watch and listen to people as they browse. See if you can identify what they're after. Talk to them. Customer research can cost thousands of pounds, but it can also be free if you are clever.
9. Cut your cloth accordingly. The cash flow cycle in publishing is quite brutal and the entire publishing process can take up to 18 months, so ensure you have enough cash to fund the first couple of years. If you're not adequately capitalised to achieve your business plan, revisit your plan or your funding, but don't assume it will all work out. You might want to consider your exit strategy too, and factor that in to your Day One fundraising.
10. Enjoy it. There's no point in doing all this unless it fits with your personal values - so if you want to be happy and proud of what you're doing, make sure all your decisions stand a chance of leading to this state. Don't produce books that you think will turn a fast buck if you're going to be embarrassed by them. Conversely, don't publish a book that you know no one will buy just because you love it - it won't sell, you'll lose money and you'll go bust. Take as much pride in building a solid business as you do in building a solid list and you'll stand a greater chance of happiness.
posted on September 4, 2006 11:43 AM | link | Comments (0) | Leave a comment
01 Sep 2006: Phewfo
THAT was one hell of a week. Indeed, I think the amount of coffee I've drunk has corroded a hole in my stomach, the way I feel at the moment - but you don't need to know that.
This week was the week of getting all the books to print for Christmas. Our key learning? (as they used to say at Deloitte, shudder.) Things take a lot longer than you'd think. I'll leave it there, and not mention the average time I've finished work.
We're in a funny position at the moment: successful enough to be financially stable; successful enough to have people say lots of nice things about us, but not quite successful enough to be rolling around in wonga or to have a sufficiently large team to do all the things that need doing - or to be able to pay for external help. And in true control freak style, when I read about people saying nice things about us it worries me, because I know all the things we're doing badly. I know how bad we are at getting reviews (why, newspapers? Why don't you want to review our books? They are good books and you should review them) and how we don't have sufficient hours in the day to chat as much as we'd like with our authors. I know that I haven't updated the business plan for four months, and that I don't know enough about accounting yet, or IT, and that I still haven't finished the rights guide for Frankfurt.
But I think the main thing is that you have to keep worrying about this stuff. Complacency would be more of a problem - thinking we were doing everything perfectly - because then we'd never keep trying. And we are trying, really hard, and we keep achieving miracles - like getting those Christmas books off to print.
Right - back to my current reading. "Excel 2003 VBA - a programmer's guide". How do they bind these books - must be nearly three inches thick...
posted on September 1, 2006 05:46 PM | link | Comments (0) | Leave a comment