https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Et9Nf-rsALk<\/a>) \u00a0There is, she said, \u00a0a difference between \u2018the production of a market commodity and the practice of an art\u2019<\/i>. She went on to wonder at us \u2013 the writers and creators – \u2018who let profiteers sell us like deodorant and tell us what to publish and what to write<\/i>. This address has been viewed over 300,000 times \u2013 so it must be hitting some buttons other than those on writers\u2019 shirts. Le Guin finishes by demanding, not shed-loads of money \u2013 but freedom.<\/p>\nWhat might this freedom look like for someone like me? To be able to publish powerful, meaningful stories in powerful, meaningful language. For young people. Yes \u2013 young people. \u00a0For being too \u2018quiet\u2019 was not Island\u2019s only sin. It was also, apparently \u2018too literary\u2019 for these supposedly lesser mortals. I\u2019ve felt this chill before. Not least when I was asked to expunge the word \u2018bonnet\u2019 from a previous novel, on account of the fact that no self-respecting 12 year old would know such a word. The publisher was unmoved by my assertion that, at the same age, I was required to be able to spell and define words like \u2018sinecure\u2019. Does this matter? I think so. Put simply, we think in language. It there isn\u2019t a word for something, or that word is not in our vocabulary, it impairs our ability to know – and also to communicate. And no, Beatrix Potter would not get away with soporific<\/i> today. She might even have trouble with lettuce<\/i>.<\/p>\n
So – what do you do when you book is too quiet and too literary for your long-term publisher? Try a new publisher, of course. Only that\u2019s not quite so simple these days either. Because of Branding. Yes \u2013 how is New Publisher to position you in the market if you are so closely associated with Old Publisher? Branding costs, you see. Shed-Loads of Money. And that\u2019s another problem with Nicky. She can\u2019t be branded. She writes too many different sorts of thing. She started off writing for adults. Then she switched to children. She writes novels for 8-12 year olds. She write YA fiction. She writes plays. She writes musicals. She even writes opera, for heaven\u2019s sake. How are you going to pile that on a shelf next to 21 identikit David Walliams\u2019? Or, as my agent once famously put it, the problem with you Nicky, is that you always write what you want to<\/i>. Which, for the record, I thought was the job of the creative artist.<\/p>\n
Anyway, it wasn\u2019t too long before said agent was running out of possible publishers for Island and I was running out of cornflakes.<\/p>\n
There seemed to be three options 1) lie down and die (only I\u2019m not very good at that) 2) lie down and die (I seriously considered it) 3) put up or shut up.<\/p>\n
I decided on 3) and began exploring crowdfunding platforms. Crowdfunding is not to be confused with vanity publishing \u2013 although many people do confuse them.<\/p>\n
Crowdfunding is actually more akin to eighteenth century subscription publishing. Vis you would find out how many friends and family wanted to buy your new collection of poetry, ask for money upfront and print the relevant number of copies. Only now \u2013 with the internet, the concept has the potential (emphasise potential<\/i>) for global reach. Enter Kickstarter. One of several on-line platforms where you can hawk your creative wares.<\/p>\n
I did some homework (not least with a friend of mine who raised \u00a310,000 to make a film about the plight of illegitimate children in Morocco which the BBC had turned down) and launched a Kickstarter campaign.<\/p>\n
For months my job description changed. I wasn\u2019t a writer any more (we\u2019ll come back to that). I was a film-maker, an administrator, a mail-chimper, a twitterer. I had to get to grips with my website, with technology. I had to self-promote. Puff myself up. Again and again and again. I\u2019m probably more naturally bullish than the average Brit. And certainly more bullish than the average writer. But even so. It was humiliating. As was asking for money.<\/p>\n
And I still didn\u2019t have any cornflakes.<\/p>\n
It was at this moment that my agent rang again: she knew it was terrible money but did I want to do a re-telling of Wind in the Willows? \u00a0I should have said \u2018no\u2019. Of course, I should have said no. If you take a sublime classic like Wind in the Willows and re-tell it at 4000 words, there\u2019s going to be blood on the carpet. But I was poor and, to be frank, I had no idea how much of the blood was going to be mine.<\/p>\n
I left the Kickstarter to simmer and turned my attention to Mr Grahame. The contract said nothing about how I was to approach the project \u2013 only that there was a word count and a deadline. I thought I could be faithful to the original, do a radical edit, but keep the colour and rhythm of Grahame\u2019s language.<\/p>\n
Wrong.<\/p>\n
I was back in the land of bonnet. The motorcar that knocks the four friends off the road couldn\u2019t be a \u2018dark centre of energy\u2019, \u00a0there was to be no \u2018poetry of motion\u2019. Toad was not allowed to \u2018expand\u2019 on anything. And as for the snow in the Wild Wood, it couldn\u2019t be a \u2018gleaming carpet of faery\u2019. It had to be \u2018a gleaming carpet of – white\u2019. \u00a0My heart began to break.<\/p>\n
And that was before the diktat came about weapons. I wasn\u2019t to have any. The animals weren\u2019t to have any. The book was to be a weapon-free zone. No brace of pistols for Ratty. No guns for the ferrets. No great cudgel for Badger.<\/p>\n
Because why?<\/p>\n
Because, Nicky, weapons are violent. And some countries \u00a0\u2013 notably the United States of America, (which incidentally is big market<\/i>, Nicky) \u2013 they don\u2019t like violence.<\/p>\n
Well – not in books anyway\u2026.<\/p>\n
I contemplated my task. Grahame has Toad, Ratty, Mole, and Badger explode out of the secret passage-way into Toad Hall, \u2018bulging with weapons\u2019 and \u2018whacking every head they see\u2019. What was I supposed to do? Send the friends in to dispatch 400 stoats and weasels with a landlord and tenant eviction notice?<\/p>\n
I brooded in my lair. I would have liked to have had a conversation with my supposed editor. But guess what \u2013 for \u2018market\u2019 reasons (ie it\u2019s cheaper), much of this sort of work is no longer conducted in-house. The person I was dealing with (or rather through<\/i>) was a freelancer. She was decent, she was sympathetic but she didn\u2019t sit anywhere near the seat of power. \u00a0It was all too easy to fend me off with the call centre tactic: sorry, it\u2019s just the way it is. It\u2019s the rules.<\/i><\/p>\n
I felt a letter coming on. The ban on weapons gave me practical problems in telling the story. It also touched something much deeper in me.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m going to quote from the actual letter I sent. Because, until this year, I could never have imagined having to write such a letter to a fellow children\u2019s book professional.<\/p>\n
Dear X, I began:<\/p>\n
Taking the weapons out of Wind in the Willows gives me major narrative problems. I know because I\u2019ve tried! Please see the exchange below:<\/p>\n
Current text:<\/p>\n
Standing guard at the gate of Toad Hall was a long, yellow ferret.<\/p>\n
With a gun.<\/p>\n
\u2018Who goes there?\u2019 said the ferret sharply.<\/p>\n
\u2018Stuff and nonsense!\u2019 said Toad, angrily.<\/p>\n
Without a word, the ferret brought the gun up to his shoulder. Toad (sensibly) dropped down flat in the road.<\/p>\n
BANG.<\/p>\n
The bullet whistled over Toad\u2019s head.<\/p>\n
Toad scrambled back to the river \u00a0– a slightly wiser beast.<\/p>\n
Possible replacement text:<\/p>\n
Standing guard at the gate of Toad Hall was a long, yellow ferret.<\/p>\n
\u2018Who goes there?\u2019 said the ferret sharply.<\/p>\n
\u2018Stuff and nonsense!\u2019 said Toad, angrily.<\/p>\n
Without a word the ferret stepped forward. His stick was very much larger than Toad\u2019s.<\/p>\n
Toad looked\u2026<\/p>\n
And looked\u2026<\/p>\n
And then\u2026<\/p>\n
\u2026bolted right back to the river-bank.<\/p>\n
You don\u2019t have to be Shakespeare,\u2019 <\/i>I continued, \u00a0\u2018to spot the difference. The first is succinct and funny and truthful (both about Toad\u2019s character and the power relations between the Toad and the ferrets) and the second is flabby and untruthful. Would Toad back off because the ferret\u2019s stick is larger? What about Toad being physically larger than the ferret (which he is)? What in any case does this say \u2018morally\u2019 about people with larger sticks? <\/i><\/p>\n
I then went on to tackle the deeper thing.<\/p>\n
\u2018For the record,\u2019 <\/i>I wrote, \u00a0I don\u2019t subscribe at all to the theory that \u2018violence in children\u2019s books encourages \u00a0real children to be violent\u2019 In fact part of my problem with dispensing with weapons for \u2018politically correct reasons\u2019 is that it attacks the heart of what I believe stories are actually for and why human beings tell them. Vis to test morality in a safe space, ie you can shoot or even murder people between the pages of a book and no-one actually gets hurt. This is why fairy tales are full of swords and poisonings and tramping people to death\u2019<\/i><\/p>\n
I ranted on for another couple of pages before concluding thus:<\/p>\n
Ps Meanwhile please also purchase large tractor and drive it over me before taking \u2018humbugged\u2019 out of the piece again<\/i>.<\/p>\n
For the record, they took it out three more times and I put it back three more times. This was one of the few \u2018tricky\u2019 words I finally won on.<\/p>\n
But we weren\u2019t done yet. There was also the knotty problem of religion. We weren\u2019t to have any of that either. \u00a0Toad was allowed to shriek and protest as he was dragged away to prison, but he was not allowed to pray. Even if \u2013 or rather particularly because \u2013 those prayers were self-serving and ironic. And that, you see, is about as close as you can get to blasphemy without bumping into a fatwa. Which brings us to the No-Pork Rule. \u00a0In the original, Badger has hams hanging from his rafters. So I hung some there. They came back as \u2018meats\u2019. Why? Because if there are hams in the book we can\u2019t sell it to Muslim countries or even to UK schools with a large number of Muslim or Jewish children. We can\u2019t? No, Nicky, we can\u2019t.<\/p>\n
As it happens, this edition of Wind in the Willow is being sold, predominantly, to schools. It\u2019s an educational text. So what exactly are we saying here? That our profits are more important than teaching a child that different cultures have different ways of doing things and that we need to be respectful of that?<\/p>\n
I began to think it was me down the rabbit hole, that I\u2019d arrived in some parallel universe. But was<\/i> it only me facing these sorts of issues? \u00a0I started to ask around. Had other writers fallen foul of the new Dark Arts of Global Children\u2019s Publishing? Oh \u2013 actually they had. Then why wasn\u2019t anyone talking about it? Because of the gagging orders, of course. Hm. Guess what? There was one in my contract. I quote it verbatim.<\/p>\nClause 21. CONFIDENTIALITY<\/p>\n
The Author shall not disclose, reveal or make public except to his\/her professional advisers any information whatsoever concerning the Work (that\u2019s Wind in the Willows, by the way) or this Agreement, all of which shall be strictly confidential, nor shall the Author make any public statement in connection with the Work or commit any act which might prejudice or damage the reputation of the Publishers or the successful exploitation<\/i> (my italics) of the Work unless otherwise mutually agreed in good faith.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
So how come I\u2019ve just told you what I\u2019ve just told you? Because I haven\u2019t signed this contract, of course, and I don\u2019t intend to. My husband, who is a lawyer, says I may never work again. But then I\u2019m not working much at the moment, at least not for money. And if you pay writers peanuts, or don\u2019t pay them at all, you make pretty powerful monkeys out of them. Besides \u2013 what is this clause about? It\u2019s global corporation speak. It\u2019s the sort of clause you force on someone when there\u2019s a million pounds worth of sensitive commercial information at stake. It is not, in my view, an appropriate clause to put in a contract between consenting artistic collaborators. Not to mention the fact that it would also preclude me (so my lawyer husband confirms) from talking about Wind in the Willows in a school, for instance – with children.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile \u2013 back to Island. The campaign was gathering pace \u2013mainly due to people way smarter at social media than me (thank you, Candy Gourlay, thank you, S F Said). \u00a0Many people donated to the campaign. \u00a0People from the world of children\u2019s books – editors, agents, translators, writers. \u00a0Some I knew. Many I didn\u2019t. Imagine how I felt the day when the legendary writer Geraldine McCaughrean came on board. Swiftly followed by Beverley Naidoo. I felt a message coming. And then there were the librarians, the teachers, the environmentalists (workers, activists, writers, advisors to government); not to mention musicians, composers, theatre-makers, film-makers. And total strangers, people from all over the world (Canada, Belgium, France, The Philippines) they took a punt. Said this book, on this theme, is something we want to read.<\/p>\n
The campaign also caught the eye of Trevor Wilson. Trevor runs an outfit called Author\u2019s Abroad, which pretty much does what it says on the tin. Puts authors into schools (often actually abroad) to fire children\u2019s imagination about books. He also arranges for those books to be sold in schools. And here\u2019s another piece of the changing publishing landscape jigsaw. It\u2019s much cheaper to print now than it ever was. Trevor realised, if he did some publishing himself, \u00a0he could get a cut of the school visit and <\/i>of the books. So he started a small imprint \u2013 Caboodle Books – to do just that. In the first instance he used the back catalogue of writers like Alan Gibbons. And he published notable non-shed-load-of-money fiction such as short stories. Trevor saw the potential for Island at once and offered to put in money to extend the print run. He also started the virtuous circle of school visit planning \u2013 getting the books into the hands of the really important people. Children. At the end of this month I will be in Switzerland for a week. In January \u2013 in the Sudan.<\/p>\n
So I should have been feeling great, right? Everything going swimmingly. But, in the midst of all the pre-publication excitement, I had a Massive Loss of Confidence.<\/p>\n
This happens to writers. Some days we are bullish. We have to be in order to get up and go to our desks and work there in silence for seven hours a day with no-one to praise (or blame\u2026) us but ourselves. Sometimes we are not quite so bullish. The days when, for instance, we remember that conventional publishers can – and do – publish great writers and great stories. And soon Island will be out. There\u2019ll be real books. And real readers. And what if I\u2019ve written a turkey, after all?<\/p>\n
My head is hurting. I can\u2019t work. I take myself off to Waterstones and I\u2019m just sitting there with my cup of tea and Someone Else\u2019s Book (oh blessed relief), when this vandal comes in and starts drawing on the walls. He says his name is Chris and he\u2019s allowed. The pictures are quite good. In fact they\u2019re very good. Which is not surprising on account of the fact that he turns out to be the illustrator Chris Riddell, \u00a0newly appointed UK Children\u2019s Laureate.<\/p>\n
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Anyway, we fall into conversation and Chris asks what I\u2019m currently working on and I tell him about Island<\/i> and also do some DGB (Doom, Gloom and Bitching) about the current state of children\u2019s publishing and he says suddenly \u2013 I\u2019d like to do a few illustrations for your book. And I think, the coffee\u2019s well gone to his head. But the next day, on my Facebook page these appear:<\/p>\n\n
![\"riddell02\"](\"http:\/\/nickysinger.com\/new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Screen-Shot-2015-10-21-at-15.17.35.png\")
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And he\u2019s SERIOUS.<\/p>\n
And I send him the book and a little while later he writes me: Just finished reading your beautiful text and am now rather in love with ‘Island’.<\/i> And after everything that has gone on, you will understand why this makes me cry.<\/p>\n
So anyway. He draws 20 illustrations. He designs a beautiful polar bear face cover. And now you see \u00a0– in marketing terms – my ante just raised quite a bit. \u00a0Suddenly this quiet, challenging, literary, non-Boys Own Adventure book by some totally non-brandable author has the imprimatur of one of the most influential people in Kids literature right now. And everything\u2019s getting a little noisier. Not to mention the fact that Chris has decided to donate any proceeds due to him to Greenpeace. And Greenpeace swings behind the project. And they have clout and reach and plenty of people who care about the Arctic and plenty of people who understand that children need to have a voice, have to be involved in the debate. It is, after all, their future we are currently trashing. So more word gets out. Our initial print run of 3000 is extended, within a week, to 5,000. I get a call from Italy about Italian rights. I get a mail about Japanese rights. A mainstream London publisher invites me in for a \u2018no-agenda\u2019 conversation. The wheels are turning, the supermarket is almost in business. So I\u2019m happy, right? I\u2019d do it all again?<\/p>\n
No. I wouldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
Of course, I\u2019m grateful. Of course I\u2019m thrilled about what\u2019s happening for the book. But crowdfunding is not a sustainable model for a writer. The money pledged came initially from my family and friends. There is a limit as to how many times they will be prepared to pay \u00a330 for \u00a36.99 paperback. And a limit to how often I would be prepared to ask. But much more than this, the campaign sucked away 9 months of my life. During that time, other than Wind in the Willows, I did no writing. I am a writer. If I don\u2019t write, I die a little.<\/p>\n
Besides the model is also not sustainable for other writers. Not for first-time writers, not for writers of other quiet books who don\u2019t happen to have my sort of track-record, not for writers without the serendipitous luck I had on this campaign. \u00a0So if I was waving a wand for the future of powerful, meaningful stories for young people over what would I wave it?<\/p>\n
I\u2019d wave it over a Farmer\u2019s Market model of publishing. I\u2019d hope for an imprint \u2013 for argument\u2019s sake I\u2019m going to call it Quiet Books \u2013 where, if \u00a0you were an imaginative, hopeful child (or the parent of such a child) it would be your go-to publisher because you\u2019d know that, in the pages of a Quiet Book you\u2019d always find a powerful, meaningful story. And yes, A Quiet Book might not look as shiny as its supermarket cousin, it might even have a little challenging dirt on it. But hopefully, that dirt would signify the passion of the person who\u2019d created it. And yes, you might have to pay a little more for your Quiet Book but, hopefully, you\u2019d be prepared to do that, in order to bring home something you knew would nourish your family. \u00a0As for the writers \u2013 I hope they (we) would come from all over the world to stand proud on your Quiet BookShelves. I hope we\u2019d bring you stories to touch the deep places in you, stories which would linger, stories which would make you wonder at and question the world we live in. And yes, we the writers, might have to deal with smaller print-runs and even less money. But, you know what, we\u2019d have something we prize more. Ursula Le Guin\u2019s freedom.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Nicky Singer \u00a0\u00a0\u00a013\/11\/2015<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(first given as a speech to the IBBY Conference, London \u00a014th November 2015) Today I\u2019m going to do something rather un-British. I\u2019m going to talk about money. Not the sort most writers earn \u2013 that would clearly be a pretty short speech \u2013 but the swing from editorial to marketing power that I\u2019ve witnessed in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[17],"tags":[22,23],"class_list":{"0":"post-778","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-articles","7":"tag-ibby","8":"tag-talk","9":"entry","10":"has-post-thumbnail"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5JE8T-cy","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nickysinger.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nickysinger.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nickysinger.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nickysinger.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nickysinger.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=778"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"http:\/\/nickysinger.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/778\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":791,"href":"http:\/\/nickysinger.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/778\/revisions\/791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nickysinger.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nickysinger.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nickysinger.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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