When Geeks inherit the Press

I don't usually review publishers on this blog but why not? An innovative bunch of bibliophiles like AngryRobot are well worth celebrating and with their reader-centred, geeky passion, they are quietly changing the landscape we all write and publish in. Angry Robot is the brainchild of MarcGascoigne, its MD, who on Thursday last regaled LeicesterWriters' Club with tales of life on the inside of the machine. Formerly peddling genre books to 'spotty 14 year old boys' in Warhammer shops, his success in this niche led to the publisher giant HarperCollins approaching Gascoigne in 2009 to 'come do something innovative for us.' It's to his credit he knew exactly what he wanted when that offer came knocking. Angry Robot's mission was to break out of the mould of 'books with spaceships or wizards on the cover', as their mission statement says:

'To the new generations of readers reared on Dr Who and Battlestar Galactica, graphic novels and Gears of War 2, old school can mean staid, stuck in a rut. “Crossover” is increasingly the way forward and you’ll find plenty of it here … if there’s an energy in a book that gets us jumping up and down, we’re all over it.'

So far, so good for sci-fi/fantasy fans – but what about the rest of us? Gascoigne's business plan also intended to shake up the prevailing mode of publishing. 'Corporate monoliths', move over – 'we're hobbyists, fans, geeks, nerds' – the people behind Angry Robots are the readers as much as they are the producers and marketers. For geeks, read 'people with a passion for sharing stories'. They therefore proposed a 'menu of formats' that includes Physical paperbacks, Limited run special editions in leather or hard-covers, eBooks, Downloadable audio and release of the text in all of these formats simultaneously. I lost track of the plot twists he related around ownership and sell-ons with the publishing giants but they still have 'partners' in Faber and RandomHouse and the mission is intact. An example of their reader-friendly approach is their current offer of the Angry Robot Clonefiles programme;

'a growing number of indie book shops in the UK and the US are able to offer their customers both the paperback and eBook version ... for just the price of the paperback. So you can buy the ebooks for yourself and give the paperbacks to your friends and loved ones as presents.'

See? They get that readers enjoy both the physicality of a well-produced paper copy and the convenience of e-readers. And they know that part of the pleasure of reading is sharing stories. This is especially true of the genre they deal with where typical readers get through dozens of books and tweet and blog about them, in between running up costumes for another steampunk convention or trying out the last game. (These are the same fans who kept Dr.Who going through the dark, wasteland years by writing their own fanzines and novelised episodes.)

 

 

 

I have been especially impressed by Angry Robots' canny approach to harnessing their readers' passion for 'finding the good stuff' and passing it on. On their website, they are recruiting a 'RobotArmy' of reviewers and bloggers who can 'Take the Robot's Shilling' and download Advanced Review Copies in exchange for an 'honest review' on sites which have their own established genre audience. (Loving the BattlestarCylon references btw in the red-eyed robot logo.) Recently I watched on Facebook as Rod Duncan's new Steampunk novel, TheBullet-Catcher's Daughter garnered dozens of reviews, interviews and blog tours months before the official launch. Gascoigne told us they only have 5 people working for Angry Robot, yet they have hundreds or possibly thousands of committed fans sifting and promoting 'the good stuff'.

So the occasion for this fascinating industry speaker was a book launch of TheBullet-Catcher's Daughter, a new title by Angry Robot. The event was hosted by Leicester Writers' Club and the author was our own Rod Duncan, a long-standing member, previous crime-novelist and well-respected writing tutor. It drew the crowds who rose to the invitation for Steam-punk fancy dress with a gusto that would have endeared the boys from the BigBang Theory. Marc, who delivered an entertaining history of the new genre ('Steampunk is what happens when Goths discovered brown') turned up in the uniform of a Nerd. The rest of us sported hat-pins, airship goggles and scarlet brocade corsets. As ever, I'm grateful to Ambrose Musiyiwa for his photographs which captured the fun and the readers' rapture at Duncan's taster chapter. We snapped up copies, snaffled cake and not a one of us won't have learnt something about how to keep our readers close in the game of 'pass it on.'

But How do You Make Money?

• Is a writer someone who publishes books? - or someone who works with story and words to help a community explore its identity?
  
• Can an author's on-line writing become more important than their actual books?
  
• could self-publishing - maybe to a niche audiences - play a vital part in building careers of new writers?

These were just some of the questions we tossed around in Damien Walter' fascinating talk, The Entrepreneurial Writer, offered as part of the Writing School's series on New Ways with Writing. Walter is a writer himself - of Weird & Speculative fiction - as well as a Literature Development worker and a professional blogger for The Guardian. So well placed to discuss some emerging trends in the writing economy.

With 1300 Creative Writing graduates emerging every year in the UK - and a similar no. of manuscripts appearing on the slush pile of one publishing house in that time - it may be time to review what exactly does a writer do? One answer could lie in the realm of Social Literature - where writing is about social outcomes rather than producing books. Damien gave us the e.g. of the US best-selling author Dave Eggers who in 2002 founded the 826 Valencia project in San Francisco to raise literacy amongst the Mexican population there. So a writer with a social conscience - but this also helped build his own career and profile. The same can be seen locally with poets like Lydia Towsey and Rob Gee, involved in Bright Sparks and WORD events.

Damien went to to look at the traditional divide between commercial literature and arts-subsidised literature. He told a wonderful story of the best-selling sci-fi author Neal Stephenson attending a writer's convention where another author asked him:
'So where do you teach?'
'I don't teach anywhere.'
(Pause) 'Yes, but what else do you do?'
'I'm ... a writer.'
'Yes, but - what do you DO? How do you make money?'

And so it went on. But Walter suggested that this 'never the twain shall meet' barrier was breaking down. He cited the e.g. of Graham Joyce, a highly successful fantasy author, currently writing screenplays as well as the script for the Doom 4 computer game, yet also lecturing in Creative Writing at Nottingham Trent University and winning literary fiction prizes. Walter believes the traditional market for genre fiction is collapsing with readers demanding more originality and literary technique. Commercial publishers are seeking out graduates of Creative Writing courses and universities are looking for successful commercial authors to staff their courses. Other means of authors making an income may lie with offering workshops or performances.

We turned to the advantages the new social media present for writers. Walter thought this media was changing the writer's role dramatically. It's now possible for authors or poets to go directly to an audience interested in your subject. The best-selling author Neil Gaiman - what is it with these Neil/ Neals? - has 1.5 million followers on Twitter. The 5 nominees for the Hugo Awards this year all had a huge blog following and arguably, their on-line writing is now a much bigger part of their role as writers than producing fiction. But it also sells books to a loyal and enthusiastic audience. Which led us on to the potential for new writers to find a niche audience to self-publish to, breaking ground perhaps before mainstream publishers think about taking them on.

Is that where the future-present of new media is taking us? Who knows? But this course of seminars for writers has given us a chance to take stock of an industry in the throes of enormous change. And like all change, while some time-honoured structures come tumbling down, other opportunities emerge. The The Entrepreneurial Writer, according to Walter, is looking out for these, whilst also opening up to the wider question of what are writers actually for?

See my blogs on the previous talks:

• Your Web-presence as a Writer - Will Buckingham


• Independent Publishing - Ross Bradshaw


• Online Magazines - Farhana Shaikh