SOAF (Society of Authors, France)

Swansongs by Gwyneth Hughes - Playreading

2010-02-23T05:26:00.000-08:00

Gwyneth Hughes offers you this intriguing play-reading at Carr's Irish Pub, Sunday, 7 March, 7.30 pm
This play will now be performed at 7.30 pm, Sunday, 9 May 2010, same venue

A man's ashes in an urn. His two widows, motivated by greed, pride and resentment. Both women familiar with the theatre world of secrets and deceit. Together in a house on the top of a cliff, surrounded by fog. A dramatic comedy with Stephanie Campion and Susan Laplane, at Carr's,

1 rue Mont Thabor, metro Tuileries.

A Mac/PC Print-on-Demand Service

2010-01-31T09:16:00.000-08:00

Richard Lewis

Here is a website that might be of interest to members.

http://www.blurb.com

It's a print-on-demand service, which offers free page layout and book creation software for Mac and PC. It works very nicely. You download the software for free and take your time creating your book. I've used it to self-publish books of photos and was pleased with the result. There is a text-only format offered at a lower price.

Then, if you play the game their way, you upload your book and offer it for sale at your own price via their site. They take a cut and pay you the difference. You can, however, have them print and send to you, so you can sell from some other place, without giving them a cut. I'm not sure how well the economics of that work out, as the printed books are not really cheap enough to give you a useful margin and you have to factor in shipping. Anyway, it's worth looking at perhaps.

Following the launch of Apple's iPad and the Apple Book Store, I reiterate how important it is for authors and their agents not to give away digital rights in exchange for (increasingly irrelevant) royalty escalators on HB copies etc. Digital rights are the ones most worth fighting for at this stage and into the future.

More local networking in France: Grand Ouest Authors (GOA)

2010-01-23T01:56:00.000-08:00

Steve Mansfield-Devine

Steve Mansfield-Devine reports on yet another networking site in France designed to bring authors together. It is informative and looks like fun.

A new group in North-West France hopes to bring an end to the isolation felt by many English-language book authors living in France. Grand Ouest Authors (GOA) provides a free network for writers in Brittany, Normandy and the Pays de la Loire, and it’s seeking new members who are interested in joining forces to promote themselves and their books.

The GOA website provides a shop window for authors and their books, a group blog, an online shop and a forum to exchange ideas and organise events. The group also plans to have a presence in the real world, with authors collaborating on activities such as group book signings, attendance at cultural events and marketing to local retail outlets.

For more information, go to: www.grandouestauthors.com

'Rural Writers', Survive France

2010-01-18T02:33:00.000-08:00

Nick Inman

Nick Inman announces a new site of service to many of our members.

As part of a project to link up dispersed freelance writers/photographers in France I have started a group called "Rural Writers" on the Survive France networking site:

http://survivefrance.ning.com

I'm not sure what we are going to achieve but I thought it might be a useful first step for us to know of each other's existence and see if there is information we can usefully share. As isolation is a common freelance problem, it may just be useful to have a means of sharing concerns and ideas.

I have deliberately done this outside the framework of the Society of Authors and the NUJ because I know there are many writers who are not members of either organisation but who share similar professional interests. Who knows, perhaps we will attract one or two new people to join the formal structures.

Minutes of First Tuesday, held on 3 November 2009 at Carr’s Irish Pub

2009-11-19T01:19:00.000-08:00

Minutes taken by Pamela Lake

Present:
Gregor Dallas
Pamela Lake
Graham Tullis
John Kirby Abraham
Stanley Lover
Anne Morddel
Paul Francis
Bill Clarance
Annabel Simms

1. Penguin /W.H. Smith 'monopoly'

Gregor reported on the latest developments in the campaign against this monopoly. The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) will discuss the action to be taken at their Annual Delegates’ Meeting (ADM) next week. W.H. Smith’s are, in fact, among the most author friendly bookshops in Paris and Hannah Robin, the store’s Marketing and Events Manager, confirms that the store makes their own selection of travel books. She has offered to arrange a meeting for representatives of SOAF and the NUJ with the Direction.

2. Chat Room/Self Publishing

A number of knowledgeable members have shown interest in a collective approach. Gregor has written to Mark Le Fanu, Secretary General of the Society of Authors in London, about this but has received no reply so we will have to take the initiative.

Anne said there were two issues - a chat room and self publishing.

It was agreed that Graham would register the domain name SOAFrance and also make a recommendation as to whether we set up a web site or a restricted forum.

Stanley suggested that Gregor send out a questionnaire to members asking if they are interested in self-publishing and whether they have already self-published.

John said there were many writers’ groups in Paris who would have useful information available on the subject.

Anne showed the meeting a copy of a helpful book called Le Guide pratique de l’auto-édition, published by Les Editions Universelles at 15€.

Beautiful Soon Enough @ the Village Voice Bookshop, Thursday, 12 November at 7 pm.

2009-11-02T06:59:00.000-08:00

A VILLAGE VOICE BOOKSHOP INVITATION, 6 rue Princesse, 75006 PARIS. All readings at 7 pm sharp.

Margo Berdeshevsky returns to the Village Voice with a new book: Beautiful Soon Enough.

"A thrillingly cutting-edge work of photos and short-stories flowing together into an extended erotic dream that limns the inner lives of women deeply yearning for connection and authenticity. This is a splendid book.." Robert Olen Butler.

"So much verbal beauty, with the eternal quality of the tale or fable."  Marilyn Hacker
A lifelong voyager, Margo Berdeshevsky is currently living in Paris. She will be introduced  by the American poet , Jerome Rothenberg.

Did you put a flower on your calendar for Thursday, 12 November? Hope you can be there.

Beauty is the purgation of superfluities"
— Michelangelo Buonarroti

pls visit my websites: http://www.redroom.com/author/margo-berdeshevsky
http://margoberdeshevsky.blogspot.com/

"Beautiful Soon Enough"(Fiction Collective Two /2009)
http://www.uapress.ua.edu/NewSearch4.cfm?id=136017

Minutes of the Annual General Meeting

2009-10-29T09:40:00.000-07:00

Carr's Pub, 6 October 2009

The meeting was chaired by Gregor Dallas and the minutes were taken by Pamela Lake. Nine members were present. The meeting opened at 6.16 pm.

1. Apologies for absence were received from:

Rod Brockway

Anna Brooke

William Clarance

Alison Culliford

Janet Edsforth Stone

Natasha Edwards

Martin Gregory

Jim Pollard

Noreen Riols

Gill Smith

Emma Vandore

Mark Whitcombe-Power

2. Approval of Minutes of AGM held in October 2008

The minutes were approved, proposed by Gregor Dallas, seconded by Gwyneth Hughes and carried unanimously.

3. Matters arising

(a) Regional committees

Gregor had sent out a circular about SOAF membership. There are approximately 180 members, scattered throughout France. Many of them feel isolated and would like to be able to meet with others. Several of them would be willing to set up committees but at present the only group in existence outside Paris is in Nice. It is run by Carol Howland and is very active. The second largest number of members in France after Nice is in the South-West and Nick Inman would like to set up a group there but it is a huge area and the logistics are difficult.

It was suggested that in Gregor’s next circular, he should suggest the possibility of having a chat room Shelley Power said that we could buy software for such a forum for around £100. Another route would be via the Society of Authors and Gregor said he would write to Mark Le Fanu. Graham Tullis suggested that we could use a chat room that is already hosted and Gregor said that perhaps we could use the Society of Authors web site. Graham said he would also send an email to the Society of Authors.

(b) Blog/web site

Gregor said the blog doesn’t attract many comments although there are a lot of hits and he receives a great many emails from readers of the blog. However, when we had a round table on a definite topic at a First Tuesday meeting, it did generate discussion on the blog. People will react on specific issues.

It was agreed to encourage members via the blog and circular emails. It was suggested that the Society of Authors web site could have a special section on the Paris group. Gregor and Graham will look into this.

The talk on Social Security which had been proposed at the last AGM had not taken place because at least fifty people were needed and there had been insufficient interest. In any case, most members were already settled and there was also plenty of information available on this subject on the web.

Gregor proposed that we consider the subject closed, seconded by Pamela Lake and carried unanimously.

4. W.H. Smith deal with Penguin

Gregor explained this deal, by which Penguin have a monopoly on travel guides on sale in W.H. Smith stores in airports, railway stations and motorway service stations. W.H. Smith in Paris, which is author friendly, has refused to take part in this deal and John Toner has become involved in a campaign to stop it. Moreover, the Guild of British Travel Writers has succeeded in getting W.H. Smith to admit that the deal with Penguin is only an experiment. It was suggested that we could have pickets outside Smiths’ Paris shop to explain the deal to customers.

The Office of Fair Trade, as a result of the Competition Act of 1998, has rarely if never found a monopoly in the book trade. The public are being cheated and authors’ livelihoods are being put at risk. After considerable discussion, it was agreed that Gregor would send the following resolution to Mark Le Fanu, proposed by John Kirby Adams, seconded by Shelley Power and carried unanimously:

The Annual General Meeting of the Society of Authors, Paris, is pleased that the National Union of Journalists is playing an active part in the protest against the deal by W.H. Smith and Penguin on travel books and appreciates the support of members of the National Union of Journalists and SOAF. The meeting regrets that it is the opinion of the Head Office of the Society of Authors ‘that nothing more can be done in the light of legal advice’ which appears to derive from the Competition Act of 1998. The meeting believes that the nature of genuine competition and the problem of monopoly and the distribution of books should be further investigated. We also believe that strong action and protest should be organized against this deal.

5, 6, 7, 8 Setting up authors’ cooperatives, help with authors’ web sites, multi-authors events, subjects for discussion at First Tuesdays

As time was running out, it was agreed to group all these topics under Item 8. It was decided as a first step to send out a circular email appealing for members to volunteer their expertise in various fields - setting up web sites, editing, design, etc.

9. Election of officers

Gregor Dallas, Pamela Lake and Gwyneth Hughes were elected to the committee, proposed by Stanley Lover, seconded by Graham Tullis and carried unanimously. Pamela Lake was re-elected as Secretary, proposed by Graham Tullis, seconded by Gregor Dallas and carried unanimously.

As he had come to the end of his three-year term office as Chairman, Gregor had to stand down. However, as there were no other candidates for the post, according to the statutes, he could be co-opted for another year. Gregor was therefore co-opted as Chairman, proposed by Pamela Lake, seconded by Gwyneth Hughes and carried unanimously.

Gregor proposed that we revise our statutes during the coming year and he will write to Mark Le Fanu.

Any Other Business

Shelley Power said she would try to find out whether the Society of Authors has a committee of authors.

Stanley Lover said he did not think our present meeting place at Carrs’ was satisfactory. It was pointed out that we had tried out a number of locations and Carrs was far and away the best. Put to the vote, five people said they were satisfied with Carrs and two were hot. Three members thought we should look for another location and three thought we should not.

Date of Next AGM

The first Tuesday in October 2010.

The meeting closed at 8.31 pm

Chairman Jim’s blog

2009-10-26T03:34:00.000-07:00

Those of you who like to keep up with the hot news of what is going on with our affiliate, the National Union of Journalists, Paris Branch, will be delighted to know that Branch Chairman Jim Pollard has just started up his own blog, announcing these events as they happen. I have just looked through it and it is surprisingly readable! I recommend it to all members of SOAF.

Jim explains himself in his first entry, of 17 October 2009: ‘I’ve decided a blog may be the easiest way to keep members up to date with what’s going on with NUJ Paris – at least as far as I’m concerned. It will include relevant links to the website and give you all a chance to send feedback and share it with each other. Even if nobody bothers to read it but me, it will mean that I have a chronological record and don’t have to keep trawling past emails ahead of meetings to see what has and hasn’t been done. Hope you find it useful – especially if you can’t make meetings.’

It takes a lot of courage to keep up a blog. Jim Pollard is to be congratulated.

The direct link to the blog is:
http://nujparisblog.notlong.com

Author needed for Les Soeurs Anglaises, Dordogne

2009-10-26T02:38:00.000-07:00

Les Soeurs Anglaises invites one of our authors to oversee a writing course/workshop in the Dordogne next year. The Soeurs Anglaises are an organization running creative and dance workshops, and they would like to add a writing course over a 3-5 day period to their arts programme. Ideally, the workshops take place between April and October 2010. A fee will be paid daily, and food and accommodation will also be provided. All travel expenses are paid and partners are welcome.

The organization’s website is www.lessoeursanglaises.com.

If you are anyone you know might be interested, please contact either Susie Bolton Nash, susie.bolton@homecall.co.uk or Katie Armitage, katie@elliotarmitage.com.

Village Voice Bookshop invitation to Margo Berdeshevsky reading

2009-09-27T11:14:00.002-07:00

Tél. : 01 46 33 36 47
Fax : 01 46 33 27 48
6 rue Princesse
75006 PARIS

Our New Readers' Series: all readings at 7 pm sharp
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 12th
Margo Berdeshevsky
returns to the Village with a new book:
Beautiful Soon Enough
' A thrillingly cutting-edge work of photos and short stories flowing together into an extended erotic dream that limns the inner lives of women deeply yearning for connection and authenticity. This is a splendid book’ Robert Olen Butler.
'So much verbal beauty, with the eternal quality of the tale or fable.'  Marilyn Hacker
A lifelong voyager, Margo Berdeshevsky is currently living in Paris.
Margo Berdeshevsky will be introduced  by the American poet  Jerome Rothenberg.

"Beauty is the purgation of superfluities"
— Michelangelo Buonarroti

please visit my websites:
http://www.redroom.com/author/margo-berdeshevsky
http://margoberdeshevsky.blogspot.com/

Stanley Lover, Chronicles of a Timid Lover

2009-09-13T01:27:00.000-07:00

Review by Pamela Lake

At our last ‘First Tuesday’, on 1st September 2009, Stanley Lover brought in a copy of his memoirs, Chronicles of a Timid Lover, self-published, which we all admired. The minutes of the meeting and the on-going debate on self-publishing are reproduced in several articles below. Here Pamela Lake, our Secretary, reviews the book.

SOAF member, Stanley Lover, has recently self-published his memoirs, Chronicles of a Timid Lover, in an attractively illustrated hardback edition. It is the story of a life filled with rich and varied experiences which began in considerable hardship.

Stanley was born in December 1925 in a basement flat in Blackheath, the youngest of eight children - five boys and three girls - and grew up during the Depression. His father, who drank heavily, earned little and his mother struggled to feed the family but always managed to put a meal on the table - a favourite dish was bubble-and-squeak pie. Life was hard: Stanley’s parents had frequent rows about money, punishments were harsh and the children were beaten with a leather strap or locked in the coal hole if they were naughty. But in spite of this, there were some compensations. Stanley discovered football, which became a lifelong passion, and there were regular trips to the cinema to see cowboy films, musicals and Disney’s Fantasia. Although they were short of cash to buy tickets, he and his brother discovered a way of sneaking in without paying and they also succeeded in seeing X certificate Boris Karloff horror films which were in principle forbidden to children under sixteen.

At the age of only fourteen, in January 1940, Stanley left school and began work, first as a machine hand in the turning shop of Siemens Wireless and Cable Factory in Woolwich and afterwards as a salesman in a Dolcis’ shoe shop. He did fire fighting duty during the Blitz and narrowly escaped death when a cluster of incendiary bombs fell close to his home. His dream was to be an RAF pilot but he was too young, so he became an ATC cadet and learned to fly. In 1944, when he was eighteen, he was at last able to join the RAF and, although the war ended before he saw active service, he received a training which was invaluable during his subsequent studies in Mechanical Engineering.

After his work in the shoe shop, Stanley worked as a technical drawing office junior and later as a draughtsman. It was there that he met Jessie, who was a secretary with the company. They fell in love but there were difficulties - because she was married. When her husband returned from the war he refused to divorce her and became violent. She left him and set up house with Stanley and they had two sons, but it was only after twenty-six years that they were finally able to marry. Sadly, just as they were moving into their first home in 1946, Stanley learned that he had tuberculosis. Streptomycin was still in its infancy and so he spent long months in a sanatorium having the usual treatment at that time for a collapsed lung. During his time in the sanatorium, he discovered a talent for drawing and painting and thought of taking up commercial art as a career rather than mechanical engineering. Eventually he was persuaded that it would be an unwise move as work was hard to come by and instead he qualified as a mechanical engineer.

Stanley’s work as an engineer has taken him to many parts of the world, including Malaysia, Latin America, Africa and China. His experiences negotiating contracts in Peking during the period of Mao’s ‘Great Leap Forward’ make fascinating reading, but during his time there he was also delighted to be able to study the state of Chinese football. For not only has Stanley travelled widely in his capacity as a mechanical engineer; he has been a football referee in many countries. He is passionate about football, has written a number of books on it and is also a keen golfer.

In 1974 Stanley’s first marriage was virtually over and he spent a holiday alone in Tenerife. It was there that he met his adored second wife, Gilberte and he moved to France. They married in 1977 and live in Neuilly where they met Nicolas Sarkozy on a number of occasions when he was Mayor. There is a charming photo in the book of Gilberte with a young-looking Sarkozy in 1992 when he awarded her with a career medal.

Stanley is something of a Renaissance Man. Apart from his passion for sport, he is a gifted painter and sculptor and the cover painting on his book of the West Lake in Hangchow is by him. In his youth he also sang in amateur productions of Iolanthe and The Pirates of Penzance. He loves classical music and regrets that he never studied the piano. In fact, he did begin having lessons as a child in 1941 and the story of them is a poignant moment in the book, which sticks in my mind.

Stanley wanted to learn the piano, but money was a problem until finally he found a Mrs Digby who agreed to give him a one -hour lesson each week for three months for a sum of twenty-five shillings. He practised on the wreck of a piano in his parents’ flat and after six lessons he had made some progress. Mrs Digby said that she would give him a test the next time he came, to see if he was ready to start playing real pieces. He had five days in which to prepare and he worked hard at his exercises. The great day arrived and he set out for his teacher’s house. When he arrived, he saw a gaping void: Mrs Digby’s house and the adjoining terrace houses had been completely destroyed by a bomb. Stanley never played the piano again.

Minutes of SOAF First Tuesday meeting at Carr’s Irish Pub on Tuesday, 1 September, 2009

2009-09-08T03:19:00.000-07:00

Minutes taken by Pamela Lake

Present

Gregor Dallas
Pamela Lake
Gwyneth Hughes
Stanley Lover
Anne Morddel
Jim Pollard
Annabel Simms
Pierre Tran
Emma Vandore

Three subjects were discussed at this meeting. The first was W.H. Smith’s deal by which Penguin Books will become the sole supplier of foreign travel guides in Smith’s airport, motorway and railway station outlets. This is a very worrying development which is harmful to authors and so far the Society of Authors in London has not made any protest. However, John Toner, Freelance Officer of the National Union of Journalists has launched a campaign and has written to the Office of Fair Trade. Gregor has written to him expressing his support.

After a lively discussion, the following decisions were made:

1; Check whether Which has taken the matter up.

2. Find out how John Toner’s protest is progressing via the NUJ

3. Write to Head Office, SoA, London, to ask what they intend to do about the matter

4. Check whether there is a travel writers’ association

5. Consider what other bodies could be consulted - for example, the European Commission on the legality of the W.H. Smith/Penguin deal.

The second subject was who will be chairman of SOAF after Gregor Dallas’s three-year term expires this October. An appeal for candidates was made in Gregor’s August email; so far no one has applied for this exciting, unpaid job. A second appeal will be launched this September.

The third subject discussed was self-publishing. Stanley Lover produced a copy of his memoirs, Chronicles of a Timid Lover, which he has self-published in hardback with the firm M.C.T. Biddles. The book is very well produced - good paper, several pages of photographs and an attractive cover design. Stanley ordered 100 copies, intended for family and friends, and they were delivered within one month at a total cost of £946.81p. He may now consider going into paperback and trying to attract a publisher.

Everyone remarked on the excellent quality of the book which was vastly superior to that of other self-publishing firms members had used. Anne Morddel had used Lulu, but only to train herself, before self-publishing entirely on her own. She said that with Lulu she had had to do all the work herself and that they used poor quality paper.

One of the major drawbacks to self-publishing is that it is virtually impossible to get the national press to review one's book. The general feeling of the meeting was that authors should consider getting together in some kind of consortium and creating a joint publishing venture. It has been done before and could be again.

Mes nerves!

2009-08-24T11:17:00.000-07:00

John Gardner

We published John Gardner's 'The Thief of Time' on 12 June. He has a long career in theatre, radio, television and film -- experiences which brought him into contact with Anne Bancroft, Michelle Lee, Robert Powell, Tony Lobianco and 'the one and only' Franco Zeffirelli. He has won several awards for his work. He once interviewed Sir Richard Attenborough on his relationship with Diana, Princess of Wales; Sir Richard is 'an absolutely charming, totally honest human being.' His experience with French contracts has not been happy. He now lives in the South West of France, where he published The A-Z of Frenchness on his website, www.books4freeonline.com. Here Gardner reviews strange business practices in the film world and bizarre behaviour that make the country a 'writer's paradise'.

France is a funny old place. It boasts about its great literary heritage but if you Google French writers you get a dramatically short list of 26 whereas the same exercise produces a more respectable 93 in the UK.

They have a film industry that turns out literally ten times more films per year than the UK yet produces less gems, pro rata, than the UK. Jean de Florette, Manon des Sources, Les Flics, Un Long Dimanche de Fiançailles, Tell No One compete with British films The Full Monty, Notting Hill, Love Actually, Richard Loncraine’s superb Richard Third, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Train Spotting, Shirley Valentine, Bend it Like Beckham. The language is of course a deciding factor in making a film commercially successful but if the script or talent isn’t there then the language really doesn’t matter. No one will watch it.

I presented a script for a film based in France to a Warner Bros executive in London many years ago. He thought it had potential and carried the script personally to his opposite number in France from whence it disappeared. No number of phone calls, e-mails or letters were ever responded to by the French – ever. (Shockingly bad business manners!) Warners UK were frustrated by the arrogance of their French counterparts but helpless. In a survey of 62 countries judging the confidence of doing business with those countries France sat shamefully at position 61.

I once asked a film producer, given this attitude by the French, how do they manage co-productions. The reply was terse, “The French way or no way!” But despite their strange business practices things do get done and they produce some masterpieces such as, Joyeux Noël. So this is not all bad news for the writer. France is so different, so weird, so utterly bizarre at times that it amazes me other writers have not based very many more stories in France. No matter how creative or ‘off the wall’ you get someone in France will have done even stranger things. It is a paradise for love stories, sci-fi and spy type adventures. All you need do is inject some politics, a good helping of madness and some very sour faced people and it will be believable. I could not make up some of the things I have witnessed here, and who but a Frenchman could write a book entitled, “Les Miserables”?

Who needs James Bond dashing from Moscow to the Caribbean, from Peking to London when France with its huge nuclear industry, its close ties with China, its paranoid fear of Green Peace and a Government of dandies offers incredible scope for writers to cast off the shackles and discover new genres. Neil Gaiman would probably be very happy here!

The Americans tried to capture some of that essence with their French Connection films and were surprisingly successful in creating the atmosphere of bad working conditions, even worse toilets and general bumbling that are such genuine parts of France. Consider a modern version of something much the same with a President living in royal splendour, his private army, The Gendarmes, enjoying a budget that would keep several fair sized countries out of the clutches of the world bank and a police force whose officers share computers that don’t always work in conditions that can only be described, if one is being kind, as squalid. (That particular police station is in Paris) Now add a story so unbelievable, so bizarre involving politicians, whores, the Chinese, large scale money laundering, nuclear secrets and you have something that will be so much tamer than the truth but will make riveting reading or viewing.

France is a writer’s paradise. It is impossible to suffer a ‘block’ while in France. Just go for a walk and watch the madness unfold before your eyes. Take a camera and record the moments because afterwards you won’t be able to believe what you saw. Let me give you a few examples; on a long, straight, very good road, in the middle of the day in perfect weather we witnessed two cars collide head on. No rhyme, no reason just sudden death in the afternoon. I watched a group of French youths play on a beach with a group of Spanish youths. The Spanish boys ran into the sea for some distance and dived under water. A French youth went in about 2 meters from the beach and did the same thing. Result? He buried his head in the sand neatly catching a rock on the way. He was dragged out bleeding and clearly concussed. Obviously he couldn’t work out that if the water is not yet up to your knees it is generally best not to leap in the air and dive in head first. I met a carpenter missing half a finger. I asked him how it happened and he explained how he held a piece of wood in position as he passed it over his table saw. It was blindingly obvious his finger would directly cross the blade. Not to him and he merrily zipped it off. No slip, no accident, a conscious decision. You couldn’t make it up!

Jacque Tati was the master observer of France. He was the ultimate French voyeur and even he, as he said, only scratched the surface of that thing that is France: its follies, insanities and madness. Paris presents itself as a modern city sitting proud on the mainland of Europe. In reality it is an ancient and somewhat smelly sprawl where the buildings are far too big riddled with paranoia, xenophobia, lying and willingness to stab any back just as soon as it is turned. Where else could you get such a heady mix all waiting for a dollop of politics and topped off with a dash of psychobabble? “Mes nerves!”

A seemingly endless trough of irresistible fodder for writers!

SOAF at Shakespeare & Co

2009-07-29T10:08:00.000-07:00

Two of our members are performing readings this month at Shakespeare and Company, 37 rue de la Bûcherie, 5e (opposite Notre Dame), Mo Saint-Michel, 00 33 (0) 1 43 25 40 93, www.shakespeareandcompany.com , which may interest you if you are in or near Paris:

7pm Monday August 3rd: Lucy Wadham, The Secret Life of France

7pm Monday August 10th: Gregor Dallas, Metrostop Paris and ‘Impossible Love: Abelard and Héloise’

7pm Monday August 3rd
----------------------------------------------------------
Tonight Lucy Wadham will read from The Secret Life of France (highly recommended by Shakespeare and Company). This is Lucy’s first work of non-fiction, and is a candid and funny account of her long and tumultuous love affair with France, her adoptive land. At the age of eighteen Wadham ran away from English boys - who she found emotionally immature and sexually unconfident - and into the arms of a Frenchman. She soon discovered that romantic relationships in France were fraught with their own set of problems: not only do the French put women on a pedestal, but both sexes are required to act out the sort of seduction games that disappeared from English society centuries ago. Wadham, who dressed in Doc Martens and baggy jumpers, struggled to fit in ...

Twenty-five years later, having married in a French Catholic church, put her children through the French education system and divorced in a French court of law, Wadham examines the profound and varied differences between the Anglo-Saxon and French worldviews. Using her own experience, as a wife and mother, and later as an investigative journalist for the BBC, Wadham explores French attitudes towards sex, marriage, adultery, money, work, happiness, war and race, and in so doing reveals much about our own priorities and the nature of our identity.

The Secret Life of France challenges our preconceptions and debunks many of the myths - bleak and rosy - on which our view of France rests.

Lucy Wadham was born in London in 1964 and educated at Oxford. She lives in France with her four children. Lost, her first novel, was published in 2000 to great acclaim. Other novels include Castro’s Dream and Greater Love. Visit Lucy's blog at www.secretlifeofrance.com for everything you ever wanted to know about France but were afraid to ask.

7pm Monday August 10th
----------------------------------------------------------
Gregor Dallas (www.gd-frontiers.net) author of Metrostop Paris, will be speaking on ‘The Impossible Love: Abelard and Héloise’, reading extracts from their medieval correspondence.

Dallas’s Metrostop Paris, wrote The Guardian, ‘is actually an entertaining history of ideas masquerading as a travel guide, and, as if parodying the genre, Dallas tells us not only which streets to go down and where to have lunch, but which waitress to fall in love with.’ Dallas told stories around twelve Metrostops in Paris: love stories, birth stories, philosophical stories, battle stories and death stories.

But his talk tonight will focus on the Metrostop that was not included in the book, Metrostop Saint-Michel, heart of the Latin Quarter, where the Latin-speaking clerks of the Church used to congregate, and the home of that love story, perhaps the most famous in the Western world.

We all love love stories, especially the unhappy ones. This is the unhappiest of them all, the Impossible Love – told with the panache of an expert on the subject. As Pope puts in the mouth of Héloise:

‘Not Caesar’s empress would I deign to prove;
No, make me mistress to the man I love;
If there be yet another name more free,
More fond than mistress, make me that to thee!'

But things go desperately wrong…

The French Paper

2009-07-03T02:41:00.000-07:00

Lennox Morrison

The French Paper is a new quality broadsheet, published in English, in France,
aimed at English speaking expats, whether they're resident or are second homers.
It's a monthly publication and the latest issue has just arrived on news stands.
Even if your French is 100 per cent fluent you might be interested to take a look.
More information on www.thefrenchpaper.com

Lennox Morrison
Bespoke Writing Coach
fiction non-fiction journalism
you’ve lived it – now write it
www.bespokewritingcoach.com

The Thief of Time

2009-06-12T02:55:00.000-07:00

John Gardner

John Gardner, travel-writer now living in the South West, explains the reasons he came to France and what he found when he got here. He describes difficulties with English-language newspapers, with publishers and, not least, with his Gallic hosts.

When I started writing way back in nineteen canteen two agents gave me advice. One told me to change my address. ‘Who,’ he asked, ‘has ever heard of a writer coming from Twickenham? Get yourself an address in Hampstead!’ He was serious. The second came from a woman who asked me, ‘Who are your people?’ in a voice that sounded as if she had put her tights on back to front then tried to run up a flight of stairs. When she learned ‘my people’ were not from the Gardner clan that wrote James Bond stories her advice to me was to never contact her again. At which point her tights gave out.

So we came to France to escape the prejudice and the clearly obvious erosion of freedom so prevalent in the U.K. I also managed to convince myself, by a perverse trick of mental dexterity, that I would finish a screenplay I had started years ago which, because of lifestyle and education commitments, I had never finished. In France I continued to work the story but never finished the screenplay because of something quite remarkable: France is an enormous thief of time. Something that takes half an hour in the U.K. can take literally days in France. I fast approached the Monty Python sketch of having to get up before I went to bed in an effort to get anything done. Stirring treacle with string was more productive.

As the days slipped by, almost unnoticed, into weeks and months and finally years I realised what had stopped me from completing my screenplay was the fact that I had to do 101 other things because the French never turned up to do the job. I was lumbered with becoming a jack-of-all-trades just to survive in this most beautiful of countries. The daily stupidity, lying and clear distaste for that thing we Anglo Saxons call work were so obvious it prompted me to write a book about it, that thing I have come to know as, Frenchness.

I’m a Scot which means every day I wake up with three good friends: work ethic, logic and reason. Not so my Gallic hosts. When I started to write, The A-Z of Frenchness, I was amazed at how quickly my original 20,000 words expanded to 65,000 with no effort at all. Duly completed and polished it then did the rounds of agents and publishers. One publisher waxed lyrical about my humour and how much he liked it but would only publish it if I re-wrote it taking out all things critical of the French. Hardly the object of the exercise but that was the general tone from publishers and agents alike. Apparently they are happy to continue the Francophobe myth that, ‘Year in the Somewhere’ myth where old men always smile, yoof work diligently in the fields and all French women are angels - circa 1934.

One publisher wrote to me, ‘… your comments on for example the French resistance to the Nazis is anything but humorous and would be regarded as distinctly offensive.’ I did not write French history I merely recorded the facts, a great many of which, under de Gaulle, were ‘massaged’ to make France more appealing to a post war world. And do I care if the French would be offended by their inglorious past? No. The truth is what it is.

Parisians, like all people in major cities of the world I have been to, can be inviting, humorous and intelligent but in France the conversation follows clearly defined paths: politics, the economy and French ‘personalities’. Step off the path and the resultant confusion is not only bizarre, a word I find myself using with more frequency to describe French thinking patterns, it is also hugely entertaining. France is a country that allows foreigners to live on the surface of its society but it never allows them under the skin. That is for French people only and listening to an outside voice is … well… treasonous but it has been a rich source of material. And for this the French must be thanked. They are highly amusing despite their, ‘torn face’ look. They never fail to bring a smile to my lips, a lift to my step and a small prayer of thanks to my parents for creating me an Anglo Saxon /Celt and not a Gaul.

Determined as I was to plough on I started to write for an English language newspaper but I quickly gave it up as I was only ever paid half of my agreed fee - after several months of badgering. Times, they failed to tell me, were tough and, unfortunately, have gotten tougher.

Publishers are facing tougher monetary times and are therefore, not unnaturally, reluctant to try anything or anyone new. They need copious doses of the same old same old for their businesses to survive while they try to come to terms with the power of the web. Fortunately the Internet now offers every writer the chance of a readership and this will become increasingly more important. We have had the phoney crisis but now the real deal is winging its way to a country near you and this is the very time when new, brave, outspoken voices are needed - the very thing publishing houses avoid like a trip to Mexico.

World Governments, long time opponents of the Internet, have now officially declared their intention and ability to snoop on all and sundry and that can only be for one reason: censorship of ideas. So, if you have anything to say, best do it now before the Orwellian chopper descends and cuts off your right to freedom of communication, which will leave established publishing houses as the ‘official’ State publishers towing whatever line they are told to grasp. Will publishing houses resist? I think not, they want the money. Will there be a rash of new independent publishers? I hope so - for everyone’s sake.

Writer Beware!

2009-06-10T01:16:00.000-07:00

Alison Culliford

British authors are increasingly aware that their rights are not being properly defended and that publishers are not fulfilling their most fundamental duties. Proper defence must surely begin with the authors themselves. Alison Culliford takes a look across the Atlantic to discover an interesting development in the United States.

“Mustn’t grumble,” we are accustomed to saying, but isn’t it about time this wartime attitude had its day? Our US cousins are, as we know, brought up with the right to complain, and British authors could take a leaf from their book at this time when publishers are doing less and less to help authors and expecting us to take on what were their traditional obligations: to sell and promote our books. Americans are also quick to user the power of the net to put things right. Take the Writer Beware site from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA): this organization has created a site and a blog to expose scams and pitfalls that target writers. It is by no means restricted to genre or country and more and more writers are whistle-blowing on it to warn their colleagues of people, companies and practices to avoid. For instance: agents who charge reading fees; publishers who pay royalties on net profit; publishers who make writers responsible for getting their own books into bookstores, or who don’t fulfill their contractual obligations. Have a look: www.sfwa.org. There is stuff to be learnt, and you may feel like contributing. Anyone published in America should also consider joining the American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA), who give free legal advice on US contracts – you don’t have to be a US resident to join.

Common Denominators, by Gwyneth Hughes

2009-05-24T14:35:00.000-07:00

'COMMON DENOMINATORS' by Gwyneth Hughes at Carr's Pub, 1 rue du Mont Thabor, metro Tuileries, on Sunday June 14, at 7:30 pm.

A briefcase full of stolen jewelry is buried in a garden where the protagonists of a new love affair and an old love arffair meet. Secretly, a third couple do everything in their power to retrieve the briefcase. A musical comedy.

A Lively Debate on Self-Publishing and Publishing on Demand (POD)

2009-05-11T00:02:00.000-07:00

SOAF hosted at its ‘First Tuesday’ on 5 May at Carr’s Irish Pub in Paris a lively debate on Self-Publishing and Publishing on Demand. We publish here the minutes, taken by SOAF Secretary, Pamela Lake.

First Tuesday, May 2009. Discussion.

Present:

Gregor Dallas
Pamela Lake
Gwyneth Hughes
Stanley Lover (and his wife)
James Briggs
Margo Berdeshevsky
Paul Francis
Alison Culliford
Pierre Tran
Shelley Power
Annabel Simms
Philippa Scott
Susana Raby

The First Tuesday held at Carr’s Irish Pub on May 5th 2009 took the form of a debate on self-publishing, POD (publication on demand) and e books. Gregor Dallas opened the discussion saying that he was a techno-sceptic and that he felt we lost a great deal if we published our books ourselves. The first things we lose out on by following this route are editing and copy editing; over the last thirty years editors have been increasingly sidelined. Secondly, we lose out on marketing, publicity, distribution and reviews in the press. There has been an enormous increase in the quantity of books published and many of them are rubbish. But people do want high quality work and if we produce it we’ll succeed. He felt it was dangerous to go it alone on self-publishing but perhaps as authors we should get together to self-publish.

Stanley Lover felt that the whole publishing scene has changed over the last twenty years. Because of television and the media, people’s attention span isn’t the same as in the past and one can’t force the public to buy books. Publishers are reluctant to take risks and you have to have a ‘gold-plated’ manuscript for them to accept it. Perhaps books are going out of fashion. More and more people will be reading e books. He argued that people shouldn’t be writing, thinking how much they were going to earn but should write because they have something to say. Stanley said that he had written a memoir which would only be of interest to his family and friends but not to the general public and he was considering self publishing.

Gregor said that it was all very well to say that you shouldn’t think about what you’re going to earn and only about what you have to say, but how do you make a living? Stanley replied ‘You will die a poor man, Gregor.’

Shelley Power said that frequently books that were self-published were books that were of no interest to agents. The problem was how to publicize, distribute and sell them. The author of A Year in the Merde had been fortunate. He self-published his book and went around publicizing and distributing it and it was spotted by a publisher. But this is rare. There is also the problem of storing the books. Richard Binns had self-published but had abandoned it because of this difficulty. Shelley said that Lulu can produce a presentable book but she knew of one instance where such a book only sold a few hundred copies. She pointed out that one was unlikely to be able to sell foreign rights on a self-published book and it would be hard to get reviews in the national press.

Margo Berdeshevksy said that she had self-published in Indonesia and had spent about a year going round publicizing her book of poems in clothing stores where she thought that her work would appeal to customers.

Alison Culliford said that there were companies who would undertake the marketing, publicity and distribution of a self-published book and a new brand of marketing professionals could develop. However, everyone felt that this would come at a high price and there was no guarantee that it would produce high sales. Gwyneth Hughes said that publicity companies charged several thousand pounds to promote a book.

Shelley Power produced an e book for inspection and Stanley Lover maintained that e books were getting better all the time and that if publishers sold an author’s book as an e book they would still pay royalties. He then handed round a copy of The Complete Guide to Self Publishing by Tom and Marion Ross for inspection, together with several examples of self-published books produced by various companies. The presentation of the Lulu book was not very good but Shelley said that Lulu had improved a great deal in the last two years. Stanley recommended looking at the Society of Authors’ Quick Guide to Self-Publishing and at self-publishing web-sites. He also thought that authors should have web-sites and sell their books from there.

Gregor spoke about POD (publication on demand). He felt that any contract for POD should be limited to two years in the first instance and that the author should be paid a fee. Moreover it was essential to make sure that one was still free to sell one’s foreign rights. He has had a book published as POD since 2004 and only twelve copies have been sold. It was very sad that publishers had no interest in back lists and that they only offered POD as a solution. In the end publishers were there to make money with no interest in the author.

In summing up, Gregor repeated that self-publishing could be a route forward if authors joined forces for editing, publicity, etc. However, he felt it was dangerous to go it alone.

Self-Publishing: Is That Where We Are All Heading?

2009-05-01T14:08:00.000-07:00

Nick Inman

Nick Inman has some further thoughts about this difficult issue of self-publishing as opposed to what he calls ‘conventional publishing’. He emphasizes the critical role of the author’s own entrepreneurial skills -- and once more opens up the question of whether we need publishers and agents if they are not promoting our works.

Let me reply both to Carol Howland and to Stanley Lover, both of whom are struggling with the contemporary author’s quandary over self-publishing.

I don't think we should think of authors being self-publishers or not. I suspect that many of us will all become self-publishers in the future -- but not exclusively. When it makes sense (and is possible) to publish a book conventionally that is what we should be doing. But when it makes sense to self-publish, why not? Self-publishing suits: (1) novels that haven't got an obvious appeal; and (2) specialist subjects; (3) subjects of local interest; (4) controversial subjects; (5) memoirs and other very personal texts; (6) re-issuing out-of-print books. I also see it as a way of an author maintaing a power over the presentation of his/her work.

Conventional publishers are not always terribly good at promotion, and some of them are plain appalling when it comes to distribution. The result is that there is no clear division between conventional publishing, with the built-in assumption of being distributed, and self-publishing where at least you know you will have your books sitting in your bedroom.

But what I really want to say is you can turn the self-publishing argument on its head. Rather than being a sad, last-ditch resort, self-publishing can actually be a geneuine opportunity for an author. Distribution, likewise, is both an obstacle and a challenge for an author, depending which way you look at it.

Print on demand is a somewhat different matter, since it takes away the risk: your book can exist on Amazon while it is virtually cost-free to you.

The essential point is that, whether you publish or self-publish, you are faced with the same challenge: to get your book known and to get a buzz going. Now, for some books this is an uphill or impossible struggle. In the case of a first novel or an esoteric subject you may have to be content with the book just being in print. You may have a strong selling point. Then it is up to you -- even if you have a great publishing marketing department behind you.

Two other points:

1) Use what looks like a handicap to your advantage. If your book is only available on the web, that means you can market it to the darkest parts of China and beyond:

2) Don't write off local bookshops. If your book has a strong local appeal you can make a living by distributing it locally. There was someone in The Author a few issues back who was doing just that, taking all the profits, and not just a measly 5 or 10%.

As to practical knowledge, I have this to say (as I have worked in publishing and have self-published):

1) Do it well. You must do everything to distance yourself from vanity publishing. Keep control over the process yourself and set yourself professional standards. Get your MS edited and proofread even if it costs you money. Get a book designer to lay the thing out, improve the photos and do the cover. Get a publisher's cartographer to help you with the maps. Homemade looks homemade. Let professional people advise you -- they may tell you to cut one third of your precious MS but if it makes a better book, just do it. Even if you are doing a hundred copies for friends and family, make it as good as it can be.

2) As for distribution, think creatively and expansively. Your aim is (a) to start an unstoppable stream of publicity via word of mouth and (b) to inspire someone somewhere in the media. You could be just as effective as a professional PR person in a large publishing house. You could do worse than read the Frugal Book Promoter by Carloyn Howard-Johnson, which verges on the outrageous but will give you some good ideas. Think like a journalist and find the angle in your book: all the media-people are looking for a "hook" to build up an article or develop a radio or TV piece. Give them something to latch on to.

Phew! I just felt like saying all that. The common thread in this is that writing is not the end of your involvement in the production process. But that is even true if you are working with a conventional publisher.

Publicity and Distribution for Outsiders

2009-05-01T09:05:00.000-07:00

Carol Howland

Carol Howland, who chairs the Society of Authors, Nice, is the author of several high quality travel books, including Dragons on the Roof: A Year in Vietnam (The Goi, 2008) and Vietnam: Globetrotter Travel Guide (New Holland, 2002). She points out the problems she has encountered in publishing in Vietnam and particularly the built-in barriers to publicity and distribution in the West. This is a warning, she notes, to anyone embarking on a self-publishing venture.

It will be interesting to hear what is discussed at the next First Tuesday in Paris (7 May 2009) on self publishing.

Let me share with you my own experience in a somewhat related domain. My books are published in Vietnam where, although the country has joined the ISBN system, they still haven't got a proper international publishing system up and running. This means that I find myself, in the West, in a situation similar to someone who has self-published. I have to act personally as the distributor of my books! Yes, they can be ordered with a credit card through the publisher's website, but no Western bookshop will do this -- they are used to ordering books, sell or return. Vietnamese publishers only sell books and make them pay for the postage as well. You can understand the problem.

I know that theoretically you can sell books on Amazon, if you use their in-house self-publishing services. So, a friend put one of my books on Amazon's Sell My Stuff site -- with my dubious backing. How, I wondered, is anyone to do a search when they do not know my name? Finding my book on Amazon is surely going to be about as likely as stumbling across one's great aunt's favourite tea set in a shop window ten years after she has died.

My worst fears were confirmed. If I now do an Amazon search on Vietnam, my book doesn't doesn’t appear in the first 30 (!) pages.

So I would be very interested in what self-publishers have to say about distribution and selling their books on anything beyond a local bookshops-round-the-corner basis.

A Response to Dallas

2009-04-30T02:20:00.000-07:00

Nick Inman

Nick Inman reacts to Gregor Dallas’s ‘More on This Electronics Business’ (26 March 2009). He argues that the cause of success or failures of given technologies is often trivial and relies, to a large extent, on immediate profitability. He fears that the book could simply, one day, disappear because of this. He outlines some of the positive features of online technology, worries about the poor quality of research and writing that is appearing on the net. And he believes that the essence of high quality writing is in ‘discernment’. So we come back to the critical role of ‘meticulous, even pedantic editors’ in the publishing process — something that is quite obviously lacking in publishing today. He points out some of the areas of publishing not discussed by Dallas, he thinks we can be more positive about the future of Self-Publishing, and he does not accept Dallas’s proposals regarding legislation. Inman concludes that we ‘need to help each other in promotion and finding new markets,’ and we have to develop a ‘bouquet’ of earnings.

I once wrote an article called ‘Whatever Happened to the Future’, which was similar to Gregor Dallas’s recent ‘More on This Electronics Business’ (SOAF Blog, 26 March 2009). In it, I argued like you that nothing has fundamentally changed since the vision we were sold by Dan Dare, Look & Learn, etc. I further argued that things in some ways have actually deteriorated rather than improved, but that unhappily no one wants to see this (witness automatic telephone-answering). It seems we have concentrated all our resources on trivial amusement – that's what 95% of the internet amounts to. On a more serious side, some good technologies and ideas have become obsolete for the shoddy reason that they are not profitable for large corporations/monopolies to bother with. An example is the BT phonecard: cheaper and easier than a mobile and it works in places not covered by the mobile network.

With technology, the key is knowing how and when to use the tools available. You can, for example, choose to write an old-fashioned letter instead of sending an email. I do both. Anything absolutely essential goes in a letter with a stamp on it and a tracking number. But few people are interested in the idea that simple is sometimes best. Most people would argue that if we can digitalize texts and download them on to a book-like machine it will somehow be better than printing an old fashioned book.

This makes me worry that the book might one day soon have had its day not because there is anything wrong with it but because the world is obsessed with novelty.

So, I’m not sure the book has any right to exist per se; it could just disappear if companies thought the cost/profit ratio no longer worth bothering with. I hope the book will be treasured by the next generation (people who are ‘digitally resident’ resident rather than ‘digitally immigrant’ like you and me). Maybe one day soon no one will want words that they have to pay for in any form.

I'd slightly disagree with you on the use of Google for research (to which I would add Amazon and the anger-rousing Wikipedia). But the essence of what your say is true: it's knowing how to find the particular information you want that counts – how to form the question and how to separate truth from error. You can find very good things online, but you do need to know how to verify their accuracy. In my work with travel guides, for example, I refer to maps all the time but they must be 100% reliable. I am continually buying maps and I always hope to find good, free on-line maps to save me the expense. Most internet maps are rubbish but a few (particularly official municipal street plans) are better than any map you can buy. So there are a few contra-flow cases where the internet scores over paper. But you have to know your stuff to differentiate between good and bad information.

To your thesis of poor research, I would add that there is a worrying tendency by some authors to regard the existence of ‘hard evidence’ in itself as debatable; as if the validity of evidence can vary according to personal taste and prejudice making it not worth the effort of going in search of verifiable facts.

I think the issue boils down to discernment. That is what is lacking these days. When everything is equal – every comment, every word on the web considered of equal weight – we lose our bearings and we dare not judge or promote one thing over another.

It’s especially difficult in the present climate to make the case that something (e.g. the book) is culturally desirable to retain even it if doesn’t turn a profit.

Wearing my heretic's cap, dare I say that there is a hint of a golden age in your article? I wholly agree with you that we need meticulous, even pedantic, editors and that the world doesn’t need literary agents to judge what is good and bad; but I think we need to be wary of the inference that pre-1980s publishing was intrinsically ‘better’. Maybe it was in some ways but we have to start from where we are.

Aren’t we faced with a perennial problem but in a different form: the conflict between creativity (intellectual/artistic worthiness) and market recognition (creativity translated into sales)? Between the publisher's need to make a living and the poet's desire not to languish ignored in a garret? This throws up questions which there are no simple answers. Does society owe anyone and everyone who calls himself a writer a living? Do publishers somehow have a duty to serve society as well as to line their pockets? Do they have to treat authors decently, for the good of the psychic health of humanity? I don’t know that we can ask that of them. And I am not sure that state subsidies for the arts produce good results.

I'm worried about your call for the law to solve the problem; using legislation to bolt the stable door. The campaign to safeguard copyright is a case in point. I’d like to keep control of everything I create and get paid for it while I sleep but in a world of instant global communication, is it really feasible? I suspect we need a new, more sophisticated, less legislative approach to copyright which begins with the recognition that bytes are infinitely copiable and very hard to keep in one place.

Much of what you say has to do with the failings of conglomerate publishers and indeed these are the people who have the money to pay authors a living wage. But there are other kinds of publishers and I don’t think you give enough consideration to them:

1) You dismiss self-publishing too readily as if it were a dead end or mark of failure. I prefer to see it as an option which works very well for a particular kind of book, as long as you go into it with your eyes open. I’ve lots to say on this subject but it’s really a separate issue.

2) You don’t mention small publishers. There are small dynamic, bubbling under, up and coming firms. A publisher friend of mine would argue that this is what capitalism does best: that the company with imagination and little capital will eliminate the slothful unimaginative corporate monster. I don’t say I agree with him but there may be some truth in it and maybe we should all be paying more attention to the emerging players in the market rather than to the dinosaurs.

And (3) you don’t mention bookshops and the effect of supply and demand. It’s easy to write off retail bookselling in an age in which Amazon has demonstrated a new model but this doesn’t mean there is still not a local, consumer power to harnass. All authors should, for instance, be campaigning for competitive bookselling to be reintroduced to Stansted airport where WH Smith has taken over all bookselling outlets and hence reduced the choice of titles on offer. How can we know which books there is demand for if they are not available?

And by the way, I’d differentiate between different kinds of cheap books. I wouldn’t want my books remaindered too quickly but is there anything wrong in people selling secondhand copies? I buy a lot of books secondhand either because the book is out of print or because a new copy is significantly more expensive.

Where does all this leave us?

As authors, we need to be fully informed and to share information between us. Dispersal is the vice of the contemporary age: all the information is available but scattered every which way and we’re all constantly distracted. We need to concentrate our forces and rediscover solidarity and co-operation (which, by definition, authors are usually hopeless at). Mostly we feel separated, isolated, on our own.

We need to help each other to feel confident to challenge and reword each ‘standard contract’; to negotiate each advance upwards; to insist on our rights. We need to drive hard bargains for the good of all. And we need to help each other with promotion and finding new markets etc., to realize the advantages there can be in self-publishing and POD.

In short, we have to brace ourselves for a world which doesn’t look exactly like the old. Authors need to be omnivorous; in the French phrase, we each need to have a ‘bouquet’ of earning opportunities.

Self-publishing: Is that the way ahead for authors?

2009-04-11T02:00:00.000-07:00

Stanley Lover

Who knows what’s best for writers disillusioned by the crumbling edifice of traditional publishing? Is self-publishing an alternative until the emergence of a more solid structure?
Stanley Lover suggests this could be a useful topic for serious debate at SOAF meetings to pool experiences and ideas.

I’m in a quandary; to self-publish or not to self-publish. That is the question.

I doubt if I’m alone. Richard Lewis asserts (blogspots Jan/Feb 09) that authors have to accept that the traditional publishing process is on the rocks and sinking fast, leaving authors floundering in a turbulent sea of doubt and depression.

Our Chairman, Gregor Dallas, agrees up to a point, but am I thinking ‘suicidal’ as he suggests? He sees opportunity in adversity and a return to the old formula but ends with this suicidal thought:

‘Somebody, somewhere, will pick up the tab because those two services, editorial expertise and competent publicity, from a well-financed centre that recruits only the best are essential: the best discerning editors with the best publicity for the best authors. That is the way it has always been. Perhaps this will begin with a 'self-publishing' firm. Perhaps somewhere else.’

I wonder if the current and uncertain future climate will allow for a renaissance of the old order – in our lifetime. Richard foresees an inevitable shift to electronic books. Whether we like it or not the super brain power and driving energy employed in this medium will surely make it come to pass. It is another route for authors to parade their creative ideas and quality writing.

But, back to my ‘suicidal’ thought. My immediate objective is to self-publish a memoir ‘Chronicles of a Timid Lover’ after two years of pleasure in writing it. It is not intended as a misery memoir. It’s the story of my life - essentially for the information of my family and friends - recording my existence during extraordinary times on this beautiful but troubled world.

I am not a celebrity and have no illusions as to its merit as a mega seller. So, I search not for an agent or a publisher but to encase my story in a quality book which will feel good in a reader’s hands, and be entertaining as well as informative.

My best, perhaps only, solution seems to be self-publishing – not only for my memoir but also for reviving several out-of-print (still relevant) works.

I have studied the excellent Guide to Self-Publishing and Print-on-Demand (POD), published by our own Society of Authors, and absorbed its essential advice on the minefield which awaits uninformed authors. Another source of invaluable information is The Complete Guide to Self-publishing- 4th Edition by Tom & Marilyn Ross, although some of its contents may not be completely abreast of recent technological progress.

I’ve also researched several leading SP providers (LULU, AuthorHouse, Matador, Anthony Rowe, iUniverse, etc., plus Publibook in France). They all offer attractive services, some of which can be taken with a pinch of the proverbial salt. They range from ‘full publishing’ to do-it-yourself Print on Demand, at prices which can be astronomical if the small print is ignored.

What I need is advice from authors who have experience of self-publishing. Do we have any members who are prepared to share their practical knowledge in this field to help novices like me take the best route?

To Chairman Gregor Dallas - May I suggest that the topic of self-publishing be on the agenda at our May meeting in Paris? I can display a few examples of SP books obtained in my research and provide contact info for anyone interested to explore their own needs.

Posted by Stanley Lover (Neuilly-sur-Seine 92) 10 April 2009

Reap what you’re owed

2009-03-30T22:19:00.000-07:00

SOAF member Lennox Morrison writes:

Are you up-to-date with all the sources of income you’re entitled to?

The Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society is that wonderful organisation which collects royalties on our behalf.

I’ve been receiving payments from them for years without up-dating my profile. When I finally checked yesterday I realised that I had still to register my second novel, and also
several magazine articles.

When I called the ALCS to find out more the telephone was answered by a real person who was helpful, friendly and informed. The website I found very easy to use.

The individual payments may seem small but they do add up.

For that ‘fiver down the back-of-the-sofa feeling’, take a look at www.alcs.co.uk.

For expert coaching in fiction, non-fiction and journalism, visit www.bespokewritingcoach.com - you’ve lived it – now write it

'Inside Paris, Outside Paris'

2009-03-30T22:03:00.000-07:00

Annabel Simms

Annabel Simms will be presenting An Hour From Paris, the new edition of her 2002 guide to little-known day trips within an hour of Paris by train, www.anhourfromparis.com

This follows a presentation by Tom Reeves of his new anthology, Paris Insights, www.discoverparis.net/premium

The event begins at 7.30 pm on 8 April at the American Library, 10 rue Général Camou, 75007, tel 01 53 59 12 60, (RER Pont de l'Alma) www.americanlibraryinparis.org

The presentations last for 20 minutes each, followed by questions from the audience. Signed copies of both books will be on sale.

More on This Electronics Business

2009-03-26T23:51:00.000-07:00

Gregor Dallas

Richard Lewis has already made some important comments on the influence of the new technology on the ‘publishing industry’. Effectively, publishing today is disappointing an increasing number of authors. Should we just let these corporations die, since they seem to resemble increasing huge ‘printing machines’, serving no one? Gregor Dallas argues ‘No’: seems is not what is. We would all be the poorer for it. Publishers still have a role to play in the world of books, but they will have to respond better to the needs of authors if they are to survive.

I should like to make a few comments on Richard Lewis's three interesting contributions of January and February: 'This Electronic Business: Are Authors Being Sidelined?', 13 February 2009; 'Plumbers of the Human Condition', 28 January 2009; and 'Desperate Publishers', 16 January 2009. 'Plumbers' is at the heart of the matter, so I shall focus on that. It is all about this current mess in the book world that nobody seems to want to do anything about.

It should concern all authors. But authors appear to be part of the general public paralysis, evident to anybody who bothers to look at the state of the world of books today. That's the essence of the problem: paralysis — general paralysis of thought stretching right through the industry, from the authors, through the agents, the publishers and the distributors — in the face of technological change.

THE CONSTANT: HUMAN CREATIVITY

Now, I am what one may call a 'techno-sceptic'. I shock my friends by telling them that nothing has basically changed on the face of the globe since I was born shortly after the Second World War. I can recall Harold Macmillan (he was once our Prime Minister, you may have forgotten) expressing awe at the change his world had undergone since the days when his parents used to drive him through town in a horse and buggy. Perhaps, I thought, that would happen in my world, too; one day it would come to resemble that of Dan Dare (British space hero, you may remember, of the comic, The Eagle) where we drive around town in helicopters and jet-propelled hovercraft. But that is not what happened. So I now say to my querulous friends: 'Look, we still take the train to the airport, the airport at Heathrow looks exactly the same, the people are somewhat more sloppily dressed; but the South Downs are still there, the street scenes through the Weald villages haven't changed one bit, the tower on Leith Hill is still there, so is the pub at the foot of the hill, and the nice bouncy girl still serves her pints of bitter there: the world hasn't changed one bit!'

'Computers! computers! computers!' cry my querulous friends. 'What about computers?'

'What about these damned computers?' I respond. 'I am a researcher, a historian and an author,' I assure them; 'nothing whatsoever in my trade has changed in the last forty years.' They look at me aghast.

However, I am right. The research hasn't changed. 'But you can get everything on Google, today!' If you haven't read your books properly, double-checked your sources and learnt those sources by heart — something one doesn't emphasize too much these days — you will make serious errors. If all you do is just Google your sources you are in trouble. That is exactly what some journalists in fact do. A serious historian must not. That is why I am worried about standards in journalism today. Google helps you locate sources — some wonderful advances have been made in medieval history, where sourcing is difficult, because of this. Google is also very useful right at the end of the publication process, at the copy-editing stage. My own copy editor, who I really do believe is the best in the world, uses his marvellous command of the English language, his powerful memory and a library of reference works. He types his comments on a manual typewriter with coloured ribbons and has never been near a computer. I use Google to check him, after he has double-checked me.

Rely on Google and you will be landed in a ditch: Google must be limited to the fast reference at the beginning of your research and a fast check at the end of the production of the book. In between, you are still faced with the task Thomas Carlyle had to contend with in the 1830s and 40s: reading, learning and inwardly digesting. So no change in the research.

As for the composition of a good book, it hasn't changed much since the days of Dickens. 'What about the word processor?' Well, what about it? When I started writing professionally I wrote by hand on legal sheets of yellow paper. Very early on I moved on to the typewriter. Then an electric typewriter. Then my first Mac. Over the last two decades I have been changing and upgrading my computer equipment every five years or so. It helps with the editing and has immensely improved the physical appearance of my manuscripts. But the actual work of composition — the climactic pleasure of writing a history book after all those other tasks have been completed — has not changed one iota since I began writing on yellow legal paper when I was still a teenager. So the composition hasn't really changed either.

I suppose there is a danger of overwriting, of correcting and correcting and correcting your writing — because it is so easy to do with a word processor. Lawyers tell me how much they have saved, through their word processors, on secretarial services when preparing their briefs and their conclusions. I myself no longer employ a typist. But there is the downside, too. In my emails I make errors of grammar and spelling that I never made before; and I have made diplomatic blunders when communicating at speed with friends and professionals — the time for reflection has gone. I have since learnt to hold on to an important email for twenty-four hours — as with an old-fashioned letter. None of this, of course, is reflected in my manuscripts, which get the same treatment as they did when I began publishing in the 1970s.

In sum, there seem to be more dangers connected with the new technology — superficial research, and shoddy, unreflective writing — than the advantages — the ease in editing and the prettier final presentation of the manuscript. There is no doubt about it: the quality of writing books has declined rapidly since the introduction of the new technology. I think, however, that this is largely due to the disappearance of editing in the publishing process. And this brings me to an organizational theme which is really at the heart of what Richard Lewis is writing about.

YESTERDAY’S VISION OF THE FUTURE

Since the development of contemporary electronics we have seen the volume of books being published increase rapidly. A new book is published every three-quarters of an hour in the UK. These 'titles', as they say in the trade, are depressingly similar, with publishers, marketers, distributors and literary agents demanding more and more of the same: autobiographical novels, thrillers and, in non-fiction, thriller histories. The number of new books peaked in Britain in 2003, when 131,271 'titles' were published. Since that date total annual output has gradually declined.

What is galling in my own particular field of publishing is the decline in quality history, especially quality European history. A year ago Orion paid out several hundreds of thousands of pounds to cancel its existing contracts for many major works of history. You only have to look at the trade publishers' lists to see that good history is not their priority. (See my articles, 'The World Publishing Blight', and 'History, Publishers and Vandals', in 'Diary', www.gd-frontiers.net.)

So does this spell the beginning of the end? That is, does traditional publishing end here? Preliminary figures suggest that, with the financial crisis, there could be an even sharper decline in the number of books published, accompanied by an increase in the share of the book market by Amazon and other on-line booksellers, and perhaps even an increase in the sale of e-books — pushed by the electronics people since the 1990s. Maybe, in a few years, we will be living in a Dan Dare world of publishing after all, with all our precious thoughts being communicated by electronics. The critical question will be: how the devil do we get paid?

Richard suggests that we authors 'just let the publishing industry die.' After all they seem to be fighting 'for a lost cause, not our interests.' Why don't we perform a modern form of strike by simply bypassing the industry? Richard cites the case of the music industry, where musicians record, market and sell their music themselves. 'I sell my music online and people actually buy it,' reports Richard. 'Generation Y' — which I suppose is the electronic generation — spends 20 per cent of its time on the net and they 'want stuff, 24 hours a day, at a price that's fair.' As a matter of fact, I don't think they want to pay anything at all. So the question remains: how do we make a living?

Richard certainly describes pretty accurately the pastimes of a large part of youth today and, when he transfers this music model to the book world, he is halfway along to describing what is happening. 'Publishers sell books,' he says. 'It's a twentieth century model that is now past its sell-by date. Writers, on the other hand, sell writing.' He is partially right. It is the Bill Gates vision of The Road Ahead (Penguin, 1995).

I have yet to be convinced that such a utopia is possible. And I do not think it is desirable.

And, speaking for the Generation Z (techno-sceptics who can remember Dan Dare), it has all the fragrance of something very old fashioned. We oldies, as the poem goes, invented sex in 1964. Generation Y opened the treasure box with the millennium. Class analysis is quite similar to sex: every generation invents it. Like sex, it actually goes back a few generations. Class analysis is not even of the twentieth century; it belongs to the turn of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth. Publishers, according to Richard, are still able to maintain their hold on writers because they are capitalists who 'own the means of production'. In the music industry, so goes the same argument,musicians have challenged doomed music corporations as workers 'able to control the means of production'. Come off it, Richard! You can't make class — or generational — analyses of either the music or the publishing industries! Recent developments, galvanized by technology, may indeed bring new freedoms to creative people; but they may also be the cause of something more dangerous which we have not yet fully fathomed out.

For we do not know where we are going. All we have to go by, right now, is what we see about us. What I see are a lot of authors living very badly; and, among the very talented musicians I know, especially the younger ones, their situation seems even worse. Let not class analysis stand in our way — historically, class analysis collapsed when that wall came down in 1989.

THE ORGANIZATIONAL REVOLUTION: EDITING

We do not even know if technology is the root cause. In the 1990s — before the dot.com bubble bust — economists, on the basis of a superficial reading of the Austrian economist, Josef Schumpeter, were arguing that the new hi-tech industries were performing the same dynamic role in Western economies as railways had performed in the nineteenth century. They had clearly not studied their history. In one of the most remarkable examples of counterfactual statistical analysis Robert Fogel — he went on to win the Nobel Prize — demonstrated, in Railroads and American Economic Growth (Baltimore, 1964) that American economic growth would have been just as dynamic without railways, in an economy that relied solely on water canals, built across the American continent. The analogy is clear: economic growth in the last forty years might have been achieved without computers. Fogel 's substantial work — he and Douglass North (another Nobel laureate) did the same analysis on American slavery — serves as a mighty caveat to the techno-enthusiasts.

Have another look at what is going on in publishing. The development is essentially, I think, organizational rather than technological. You may want to call it 'capitalist', but I believe it has got more to do with our cultural demands and our own creative egos: everybody wants to publish a book these days, but they are not terribly interested in reading the books of others.

In the old days (fifteen years ago), the publishers were inundated with 'slush piles', including many wonderful manuscripts, which unfortunately they just could not sell — because people were not reading. Now, the statistics suggest that readership has actually remained stable since the 1980s. But I have a hunch that readership is in precipitous decline, for what are people reading? Publishers' lists and bestseller lists reveal the lie: short autobiographical novels, celebrity tales, travel guides and thrillers.

Then the real change took place: in the mid-1980s (before the technological revolution), slush piles were first farmed out to readers (young graduates from Oxford and Cambridge). By the 1990s slush piles were going to the literary agents — who constitute what has essentially become a new industry over the last two decades. The editing process thus shifted from the publishers to the agents.

That was the revolution. Most of these agents were not professional readers: many of them had a background in marketing, in book distribution or other diverse trades which, if they were useful skills for placing a manuscript with a publisher, did not have much to do with editing — that is, discerning the good from the bad and going over manuscripts fastidiously with a pencil. (For the process of the drafting and editing of books in the 1950s see ‘Paris Review Interviews’, on this blog, 23 February 2007.) That shift in the editing process from the publisher to the agent is, I think, at the centre of the problem in the book industry today.

THREE OBSTRUCTIONS TO THE PUBLISHING PROCESS

The system has become obstructed, like a pigsty’s swill drain. To overcome their declining unit margins — in other words, their decline in sales of individual books — publishers have sold out to larger and larger organizations. These are huge corporations, many of which were set up with venture capital. They were managed by people who had little interest in books per se. And that is the situation today: my current boss is a Frenchman who earns most of his income from the aircraft industry. People like this bought into the book trade because publishing books still commands enormous social prestige; I do not agree with Richard that this is 'capitalist' — it is an integral part of our culture.

The editor disappeared. His job went to the agents. His office was replaced by the 'acquisitions editor', who answers to the marketing department. Marketing today has absolute right of veto over all publishing projects and gets some of the highest stipends in the company; again, this is not the ugliness of 'capitalism' — it is the product of declining sales per book. As for publicity, it is run by another of those young Oxford or Cambridge graduates, who works on each book for about a month and then goes on to the next 'title'. Bookshelf life in the stores is limited to a few weeks, even if the book is a bestseller — there are just too many books around to afford more bookshelf life to a 'title'. Within about two years of publication the book is 'out of print', though remaindering no longer exists today: the book is sold off at discount to the many distributing services that hover around the industry, often operating offshore: within the next year the book will be selling for one penny on the internet.

So there is one blockage: today's publishers are more concerned with cornering a 'share of the market' with vast numbers of rapidly changing 'titles'; the editor has gone; they pay little attention to individual books, which have become short-lived commodities within a highly volatile market.

Working one's way up the drain one encounters a second point of blockage: the editing, which has now shifted to the agents' channel. Agents receive on average something like 300 manuscripts every week, they accept around thirty a year, they place perhaps a dozen a year with publishers. Obviously most of these manuscripts are not read; they are sent through a team of young readers who tick boxes on forms and send out ready-made letters to prospective authors. This is not in any sense a creative form of editing, nor does it guarantee the selection of the best books.

The drain-cleaner's drill brush works its way further and further up until it encounters the biggest sludge blockage of them all: the author. He, or she, is absolutely paralysed with fear.

It is at this critical juncture in the pipe — the very point of creativity — that we discover how slight is the influence of the Great Electronic Revolution; how little the Bill Gates vision of the world actually affects the imagination, the process of inventive thought, the source of cultural attitudes, the heart of historical change; how much Robert Fogel's economic model governs growth and technological innovation.

Men could have learnt to fly in the Renaissance, but they didn't. Men could have used gunpowder to blow each other up in the first millennium, but they didn't.

The power to inspire, to evoke awe, to excite our passions, to imitate God (the essence, surely, of the 'charismatic' personality) and to produce beauty has nothing to do with technology; it has everything to do with the composition of books, even history books, even biology texts — on, for example, the life of snails by the shores of Greenland. It has everything to do with historical evolution because it is born out of this same human creativity. The problem is that our very creativity has become a source of blockage in the publishing process today.

We are adaptable creatures. We work our way out of economic recessions and depressions, we survive wars, we rebuild our homes after ecological disasters. Since the beginning of historical time men have been forecasting the end of the world, but it hasn't come yet. There will always be books.

MODISH PUBLISHERS VS. CONSTANT AUTHORS — AND THEIR FEARS

I insisted earlier in this article how little the creative process of research and writing has changed over the last half century. What has changed, as I hope I have demonstrated in the second part of the article, is the organization of creative work: the way we communicate our ideas, how we get them published. A tension has developed between the process and the organization and this, I believe, is the source of a great fear that has developed among authors.

In our hearts, we know that the process of creation has not changed in us, but we think that it ought to have changed. We are bombarded with messages about how fast the world is changing and we think that if, as Aristotle would have done, we write down a creative thought on a scrap of old parchment, we are doing something a bit old fashioned. Especially if we then simply think about it for the next six months. We have a fear of being exposed.

Have you come across agents who tell you that most of their clients produce a book every year, or every other year? Don't believe them. I was so convinced this was not true that I conducted a little research on authors listed by a few famous agents. Sure enough, I found what I was looking for: most authors take four, five or six years to complete a book. They probably feel ashamed of the fact, though they shouldn't. I am sure that most of them overrun their contracts — publishers want War and Peace written within two years, and limited to 100,000 words. I stick to Tolstoy, but my querulous friends tell me that this, in the 'current state of affairs', is being totally unrealistic. I reply with what I have just said: the creative process hasn't changed since the days of Tolstoy, it is only in the way it is all organized that has altered.

Here we come to the crux of the matter. Don't imagine that all these changes are due to 'capitalism'. But I do agree with Richard Lewis that many in the publishing industry are facing annihilation — because they refuse to recognize the truth: that their creative authors do not change with the market, the technology or the wind of fashion. The danger is that if publishers do disappear life will become materially very difficult for us. That 20 per cent which wants our books and music free will grow to 30 or 40 per cent, or more.

Gradually, authors will come to the conclusion that publishers who have no editors, whose publicity programme is limited to a couple of months, who offer a shelf-life of six months and put books out of print — without remaindering — within two years, serve no purpose to authors who spend four, five or six years researching and writing their books. Such publishers are, as the expression goes, simply printing machines. And slowly authors will come to the conclusion that agents who farm out manuscripts to young graduates and reply by form letter, are not people respectable authors want to deal with. These agents and publishers will disappear.

But where will the authors go? Self-published on the net? Or by print, at one's own expense? That's suicide. True, there are the exceptions, like the mega-seller, William P. Young's The Shack, which was sold out of the author's garage with a publicity budget of $300. But the mega-sellers will remain what they always have been, the chance in a million and nothing to count on.

Publishers need authors. Authors, I am afraid, also need — and will always need — publishers. If the system is to last, publishers will be obliged, for their own survival, to provide the two services absolutely essential for an author's success: editorial expertise and competent publicity. There will have to be a return, in some way or another, to the old system, the proven system, the system that is compatible with the old creative process. Trade publishers have been distancing themselves from that creative process; but they cannot, in the long run, survive without it — if they try to, their days, as Richard Lewis points out, are numbered and nobody will regret their passing. Somebody, somewhere, will pick up the tab because those two services, editorial expertise and competent publicity, from a well-financed centre that recruits only the best are essential: the best discerning editors with the best publicity for the best authors. That is the way it has always been. Perhaps this will begin with a 'self-publishing' firm. Perhaps somewhere else.

Marketers will have to learn to bend to editorial authority once more. They have had their turn in the public eye and they have manifestly failed. All they have been able to do is flood the market with 'titles', unreadable thin volumes that have displaced everything worth looking at and made bookstores some of the most depressing places on earth. No wonder readers are turning to Amazon. The game is monopoly, the search by the big corporations for their 'share of the market': 'how many of our ‘titles’ can we force into the big bookstores and supermarkets?' Monopolies, in history, have never lasted. Worse, they are playing a game of censorship. I have mentioned the case of Orion's cancelling of history. I know of cases of the most brilliant, necessary works not being published because some fool in the marketing department does not think this book is 'marketable'. But the marketers can't market. The average sale for each 'title' has now dropped to around a thousand. At the same time, the level of censorship is reaching levels that would have made members of the Soviet Politburo blush. History has never been kind with the censors.

The current fear among authors is perfectly understandable: not only is their fundamental, age-old talent as creators being denied them; many of them are facing censorship by men and women who have shown little interest in books, just the 'titles' and the 'share of the market'. Nothing is more terrifying than dictatorship by the mediocre. But do not worry, this situation will not last; it cannot last.

PARALYSIS

Richard, at the conclusion of his last article (‘This Electronic Business’, 13 February 2009), after noting how important it is to hold on to our 'digital rights' and deploring the effects of 'discounted sales through the physical book trade', asked, 'Does anybody have any thoughts about this except me?' He waited a fortnight and then sent in his own unhappy comment: 'Clearly not.' There was actually one other comment, from an American organization calling itself 'Boing Boing'. The comment referred to a recent conference on ‘Tools for Change for Publishing' and if you snap on its website you get a graph of 'Hard data on ebook piracy versus sales', which should be interesting, given Richard's comments. But it is utterly incomprehensible: the axes have no labels, the colour keys are not explained, and there is no demonstrable correlation between the variables, whatever they are. This is exactly the kind of shoddy presentation one has come to expect from e-publications, outside editorial control and centralized, publishers' publicity. Quod erat demonstrandum!

So is the silence that Richard has encountered. Readers generally do not comment on blogs, websites, articles that flit across the cyber-space or on books that appear in our rooms with the flick of a finger or are gone with the snap of another. Why expend any energy on such ephemeral objects as these? Again, the gap separating the utopian electronic dream of inter-active democratic literature and the empty silence of the reality is enormous — and has been ever since these technologies were set up. It is doubtful that the gap will ever be filled because they do not inspire that ancient source of creativity in us. University professors find electronic exchanges useful — which is why the net was initially set up. Pornographers ply their trade without penalty. E-mails have replaced letters, though the composition of a sincere letter remains much the same as it ever was. But is the book on the way out? I doubt it; and it is hardly what we want.

The silence extends right across the trade: none of the main participants want to commit themselves to a model of the future — not the booksellers, not the publishers, not the agents, not the main bodies that represent authors, and certainly not the authors themselves. But it is clear that if authors continue to remain mum they will find themselves further marginalized; their intermediaries will do the organizing for them, and that will not be done in their interests. This is already happening.

WHAT IS TO BE DONE?

In a circular that I emailed to SOAF members last December I noted the points that authors need to address themselves to if they want to improve the imbalances now evident in the publishing industry:

 the pricing and discounting of books,
 the remaindering of books (without going through the formal procedures of remaindering),
 the sale of new and second-hand books on the internet (for as low as one penny),
 the rapid emptying of stock by publishers,
 and a scandalous indifference by some of the major publishers to the maintenance of their backlists. Backlists are what most authors employ to build up their careers.

No, we don't want publishers to disappear. But we do want them to take account of authors' needs and stop talking about the 'best deal': the 'best deal' is for them and not for us. Publishers are not delivering on the two services vital to us: editing and publicity.

In the end I think this is going to involve the action of the law. Publishers will not act on this voluntarily: they did away with the Net Book Agreement in the 1990s and eventually were hoisted with their own petard. When Harold Macmillan, a publisher, abolished Retail Price Maintenance in the early 60s it was said that 'books are different'. Books are different; they are not mere commodities. Each one has to be treated individually, marketed individually, regarded on its merits and only its merits; I am tempted to say that 'books are human beings,' because in many cases, a whole life has gone in to creating it. That life must be respected.

One may start with a reconsideration of copyright. Copyright respects the life behind the book. But the last copyright law in Britain dates from 1988, before the new technologies really got going. The author's copyright should take into account these new technologies.

Yes, we will always be writing books. But we want to live well, too. That is up to each one of us and no one else.

Gregor Dallas
HYPERLINK http://www.gd-frontiers.net

Writing Course in Paris: The Faber Academy

2009-02-17T06:41:00.000-08:00

SOAF member Jim Pollard writes:

Jill Dawson, one the best novelists around right now - and a good friend of mine - is running a Faber Academy fiction writing course here in Paris from Thursday 12th March - Sunday 15th March 2009 at the Shakespeare and Company bookshop. The title is What to do when you are stuck? Or Starting Afresh, and the guest tutor is Louise Doughty.

Don't take my word for it about Jill. Read the reviews of her new book The Great Lover.

More on Jill at:
http://www.jilldawson.co.uk/news.html

More on the course (which I must admit is not cheap) at:
http://www.faber.co.uk/article/2009/1/faber-academy-paris-march09

This Electronic Business: Are Authors Being Sidelined? By Richard Lewis

2009-02-13T03:54:00.000-08:00

Richard Lewis has some further thoughts, and information, about where authors may be going with the spread of electronic commerce. He asks, how are authors going to cope with this? So far, they don’t seem to be doing much.

e-books : Plan B

There is an interesting article in the Financial Times (11 Feb 2009), which offers a coda to my last post. Here are some highlights -- the figures refer to the US market:

'Amazon may well be on the way to creating a USD 1 billion a year electronic books business by as early as 2010, but publishers are ... fearful of a disastrous cannibalization of the USD 25 billion books market ...
'It is a scene replayed throughout the media landscape: traditional companies dragging their heels to meet the demands of younger consumers keen on spending more time on digital devices ...'

Simon & Schuster CEO Caroyln Reidy:

'The biggest challenge for us is [that] consumers expect things like digital content to be free. There isn't a model yet.
'More troubling, perhaps, is a concern that [amazon's e-book reader] Kindle's runaway success could fortify amazon.com as the book publishing sector's Apple, whose iTunes service and iPod model holds a veritable chokehold on the music business ...'

HarperCollins CEO Brian Murray sees digital sales climbing from 1% of total currently to 5-7% over five years:

'Whether it's Apple or Sony, we'd like to see as many entities [sic] come in to build this market.'

I find Reidy's comment dismaying -- "There isn't a model yet." If our publishers are sitting around waiting for someone else to invent a business model, rest assured they -- and we -- will be sidelined economically in the model that eventually does emerge.

Clearly, paper books and e-books are going to coexist for quite some time before digital finally takes over. At the very least, authors should now be doggedly holding on to their digital rights when negotiating contracts. That way, for a time, writers can enjoy the best of both worlds, allowing their publishers to build an audience for their books and then offering the digital version direct. That would seem to offer some small recompense for the hit we are taking on discounted sales through the physical book trade.

Does anyone have any thoughts about this except me? ...

The Blare of Blair

2009-01-29T12:47:00.000-08:00

This is an exciting book on a story about which we still do not know the end. Was it a genuine step forward by an authentic Christian world statesman, or was it all just 'spin'? Sophie Loussouarn has interviewed all the actors.

TONY BLAIR’S POLITICAL ODYSSEY

by Sophie Loussouarn

Now that the lights are going out all over Britain in these months of Brown twilight, Blair gleams like a star in the East. This book deals with his decade at Downing Street from a French angle. The man of destiny certainly appealed to French personalities as varied as Nicolas Sarkozy and his rival, Ségolène Royal -- they even used him as a model for their own campaigns.

He was born in Edinburgh in 1953, got an education at the Scottish boarding-school Fettes and went on to study law at St John’s College, Oxford. That, at least, is the official version. In fact he was more interested, at Oxford, in drama and rock’n roll than in either law or politics. However, he eventually joined the Labour Party and became an MP at the sprightly age of 30. Immediately he was recognized as one of the party’s rising stars: the advocate of the modernization of ‘Old Labour’, the party of arrogant dogmatists.

When he arrived in the United States he was excited by the look of the Democratic Party and and was especially inspired by Bill Clinton’s manner of running politics. So, not surprisingly, after the death of John Smith, a Labour traditionalist, he won the leadership contest as the man of ‘New Labour’, a viable choice for voters. He was the most charismatic figure in British politics. He knocked Clause 4 out of the Labour Party Constitution: the boldness of his action attracted a whole body of voters, ranging over a broad spectrum of Middle England and young professionals -- Thatcher’s electorate.

After 18 years of Conservative rule, the Labour Party won a landslide victory in 1997, making Tony Blair the youngest British Prime Minister since 1812. He was cheered when he arrived at Number Ten with his family. It was the dawn of a new era: Blairite Britain was young and trendy. Blair launched ground breaking constitutional reforms, such as Scottish and Welsh devolution and the reform of the House of Lords in order to rebrand Britain. Blair’s economic policy never questioned the Thatcher legacy and bolstered sustainable growth, encouraging enterprise and innovation. He severed the Labour Party’s traditional links with the trade unions and came closer to the world of business and finance. Blair’s foreign policy was interventionist, sometimes messianic, in Sierra Leone and in Kosovo. These very positive actions were based on religious convictions.

Trouble began for him after 9/11, when he began supporting Bush and his crusade against terrorism -- a novel form of the so-called ‘special relationship’ with the United States. Blair’s decision to back G.W. Bush’s military intervention in Iraq was to be considered a stain on his premiership; it did prevent him from achieving his social reforms in health and education.

His grandest achievement was probably the peace settlement in Northern Ireland, along with the apparent success of his economic policies. In fact, it is too early to say what his eventual legacy will be. He is the first Labour Prime Minister to succeed in winning three successive elections. He will, one imagines, be remembered for the ‘Third Way’ and for establishing Labour as the dominant party at the turn of the Millennium. He was, nevertheless, forced out of office in 2007 amidst a storm of controversy.

Plumbers of the human condition by Richard Lewis

2009-01-28T14:46:00.002-08:00

Why not just let the publishing industry die? Richard Lewis argues that these people are fighting for a lost cause, not our interests. For us creators, he notes, the current crisis opens a window of worldwide opportunity, there for anyone with the courage and the imagination to grasp it.

We should strike. It's as simple as that. But not any old how: strike smarter. Pickets are so last century. Show up for work as usual, just bypass the industry. Writers have historically allowed themselves to be swindled by the notion that giving away their rights and margins to a morass of middle-men confers status and prestige; that in effect you are not really a writer until someone else publishes your work. How did that happen? Partly because capitalists owned the means of production and distribution, but also because writers fancied themselves as being a cut above lowly trade. It's very powerful still and if it continues it will be entirely facilitated by our own vanity. Blogging has democratised publishing to some extent (I have written about this before) but is still considered to be "amateur" writing. We still judge the merit of a writer by his publishing house and not by his writing. This is not going to change overnight. But it will change. And possibly sooner than we think.

CASE STUDY
Look at what has happened in the music industry. Technological advances have made it successively easier for musicians of all varieties to firstly record and produce their music themselves and, more recently, to market and sell their music themselves. Home recording is now accessible to anyone with a computer (ie everyone) and indeed Apple's Garageband recording software comes bundled free on any Mac. The internet — and specifically the "Web 2.0" social networking phenomenon that includes myspace and facebook — has made it possible to market worldwide for free. Lastly, the MP3 file format has hit the tipping point in terms of consumer acceptance, thanks to the iPod, meaning that a musician can feasibly offer this 100%-profit format and expect to get sales, instead of shipping costly CDs.

The music industry behemoths fought this tooth and nail. They are fighting a losing battle. However, musicians embraced it. Of course they did. Because finally the workers were able to control the means of production and distribution. Of the last ten music purchases I made, half were from "unsigned" artists that I admired, from whom I bought directly. I knew what I was buying, I was able to listen to it online via myspace and I was perfectly satisfied with the "quality" of what I was buying. It was cheaper than buying it in the shops and I even got a feel-good buzz, knowing that the musician was taking all the profits from the sale. Now, just how well are the retail purveyors of CDs doing? Very badly is the answer.

Web 2.0 allows artists of all kinds to build an audience, which they may then choose to sell to. And it works. I have been surprised and delighted at just how easily it has worked for me. I sell my music online and people actually buy it. People I don't know. Orders come in from the US, Europe, Latin America ... This means — in music at least — that the barrier has come down in consumer perception and "unsigned" artists are now no longer automatically rejected as being somehow below-par. This is such an important step.

The oldest of Generation Y are now just approaching 30. This means pretty much anyone under 30 now has a hard time remembering the days before the internet, the days before blogs, the days, even, before facebook. They are connected, they spend 20% and upwards of their time on the net (according to Martin Sorrel at WPP), they want stuff now, 24 hours a day, at a price that's fair, they are resistant to marketing hype and big corporations and they trust online sources as more authentic.

Right, now back to the writing industry (which for some reason is known as the publishing industry):

Publishers sell books. It's a 20th centurty model that is now past its sell-by date. Writers, on the other hand, sell writing. Amazon's "Kindle" electronic reader has been a big success, prompting a slew of imitations from rival companies, which will bring the price down and encourage adoption, which will beget further innovation and so-on ... until we get to the iBook.

This is for us, I think. Anyone who thinks this isn't going to happen has their head in the sand. Instead of moaning about the increasingly punitive (read desperate) deals we get through the trade, we need to let it die and instead be proactive and instrumental in wresting our business back. And, as I said right at the inception of SOAF, this means writers need to come down off their high falutin horses and manage their business. Like plumbers. We are plumbers, in fact — of the human condition. People are moaning about recession as though it will kill us all. Get a grip. We are at the very beginning of a fantastic opportunity. If we don't occupy our territory this time, someone else will take it. Again.

Desperate Publishers, 2009

2009-01-16T09:50:00.001-08:00

Richard Lewis

I know the UK has a recession on and all — and I know the pound isn't what it was — but do publishers now need £540 so badly that they'll sell at any price?

I just had an offer from one of my publishers to sell 500 copies of a book (cover price 6.99) to Borders for 1.20 a copy. "It would really only work if you accept 10% of net receipts, rather than the standard royalty. Would you be happy with £60?"

Booksellers should just let their customers upload their own books, filled with pictures of their cat, or their arse, plus poems about same. Then writers and publishers could all get back to going down the pub. It would be a weight off all of our shoulders. Come on YouDoggerel.com, do us all a favour!

I offered to loan my publisher the £540 if it was urgent. So far no response. I hope this doesn't mean they've gone bankrupt since they sent the e-mail.

The British In France

2008-10-05T07:46:00.000-07:00

Visitors and Residents since the Revolution

Leaving war years aside, there are more British now in France than ever before. And they tend to be markedly different in several ways to their predecessors. Many live in rural departments, regions that in the nineteenth and much of the twentieth centuries were virtually unknown to all but the most adventurous travellers. Usually they are more than willing to mix with their French neighbours. To the British of the past, France - and Paris especially - was exotic, offering freedom from the weight of moral and social propriety at home. As a breed, however, they kept their distance; in fact, an eminent Victorian historian declared that it was only when he was abroad that an Englishman could be seen as ‘nakedly and undisguisedly English’.

If, to the French, the British often exhibited a displeasing self-satisfaction, they were, or were reputed to be, wealthy. Certainly that was true of the proverbial and eccentric milords of the earlier nineteenth century, in Paris for the gambling and sex, a category most vividly exemplified in the Seymour-Conways, marquesses of Hertford. It was less true of the many visitors, who for reasons of health, flocked to Pau and to the spas of the Pyrenees and the Auvergne. And it was not true at all of the financial refugees notoriously to be found in Boulogne and elsewhere along the Channel coast who were in flight from creditors in Britain. As it happened, the lower cost of living in France also encouraged migration on the part of many people who were reasonably well-off.

This book studies the economic and political background. It deals too with the influence, social and demographic, of the different forms of transport that evolved, from sail and steam ships to railways, automobiles and aircraft. Textbooks and archival records are important, as are periodicals such as Blackwood’s Magazine Above all, however, the book is based on contemporary travel books, memoirs, letters and journals. There is Mary Berry, confidant of Horace Walpole, in Paris during the Peace of Amiens, seeking old friends who may have escaped the guillotine. There is Richard Burton describing his childhood among the British community at Tours, John Stuart Mill who is buried at Avignon, and Robert Louis Stevenson. Prosper Mérimée, amusing and perceptive, views the British on the Côte d’Azur and the incongruous architecture they favoured. Twentieth-century accounts are often shadowed by war. Letters in the Imperial War Museum describe the reaction of British soldiers billeted on French families in Picardy, and there are stories of life under Vichy and the Occupation.

Two collateral groups of people warrant particular attention. One is the Americans, often living in close touch with the British, and in a position to comment acutely on how they contrasted with the French. The other is the Anglo-French business families, their fortunes frequently derived from wine or textile manufacture. The Sisleys are one example. Another is the Waddingtons, a family that provided a French prime minister who was educated at Rugby and gained a rowing blue at Cambridge.

Peter Thorold, The British in France: Visitors and Residents since the Revolution (Continuum Books, 10 October 2008)

A Little Hour from Paris

2008-09-13T07:16:00.000-07:00

The fully revised and updated second edition of SOAF member Annabel Simms's An Hour from Paris will be launched in Paris at 7.30 pm on 9 October 2008 at WH Smith, 248, rue de Rivoli, 75001 Paris, tel 01 4477 8899.

The book describes 20 day trips to the most interesting, beautiful and littl-known places in the countryside around Paris, an hour or less away by train. More details on www.anhourfromparis.com and www.whsmith.fr/evenementsE.htm

Website designers

2008-08-06T01:13:00.000-07:00

After the long process of requesting estimates from both sides of the Channel, I finally found a team to produce www.bespokewritingcoach.com, writes SOAF member Lennox Morrison.

For those embarking on the same quest, here are my ten top tips:

1. Ask to see a portfolio and check each website carefully. I saw beautiful sites where links failed to work or text and pictures had gone askew.
2. I also saw very attractive sites which I assumed to be all the own work of the web designer. On further questioning it emerged that the client had incurred additional costs for a graphic designer. These costs were not included in the price I was quoted.
3. Some designers use kits like Mr Site. If that’s the case then it should be reflected in their fees.
4. Other designers produce very acceptable sites – until you realise that they all look the same.
5. Music and movement may make your site look lively. Or they can be very irritating. They also cost more.
6. If you’re brave enough to d-i-y then www.2createawebsite.com offers
straightforward advice.
7. Is your designer likely to go trekking in the Andes? While you could always hire someone else to update your site it might be more reassuring to have continuity.
8. A site that you can update yourself is likely to cost more than a static one. If you choose a static site then ask carefully about the charge for updates. Some designers insist on charging a full hour for the smallest change. Others are more flexible.
9. I chose a graphic designer who works in tandem with a website designer. This had the huge advantage, and added value, of two experts working together. I’m delighted with the result and wholeheartedly recommend
The Artitechs. www.the-artitechs.co.uk
10. For more recommendations, and further advice, see the Members Area on www.societyofauthors.org

Disenfranchised British Citizens and the Foreign Office

2008-06-25T03:53:00.000-07:00

I enclose a correspondence I have just had with some of my political friends. It was generated from a very interesting dinner we had last night in Paris. The main subject of our many conversations was the absolutely scandalous disenfranchisement of British citizens living in the EU – but not in Little England. As you can see, the Foreign Office slogan is ‘If we can’t find you we can’t help you.’ When registering, answer this: ‘GIVE US BACK OUR NATIVE BRITISH CITIZENS’ RIGHT TO VOTE, YOU ROBBERS!!’ Britain has the worst voting rights record in Europe.

Hello Gregor,
My wife Sioned said that she'd promised at last night's dinner to forward you the message below from the British Consulate concerning registration of British citizens abroad.
Muriel Langle who passed on this message on behalf of the Consulate is secretary of the British Community Committee (BCC)which operates under the logo "britishinfrance" (www.britishinfrance.com),as an umbrella organisation representing many Loi 1901 British Associations in France.This is an example of how effective it can be in informing the British community at large.If you have a look at their web site you could find it of value for your Society of English Language Authors to join (annual fee Euro 20 if you fit the qualification criteria)for more visibility within the British community.You can contact Muriel for further details.
BCiP is already a member association, by the way.
Best regards,
Rod Harper

--- On Tue, 6/24/08, Muriel Langle <mlangle@club-internet.fr> wrote:

From: Muriel Langle <mlangle@club-internet.fr>
Subject: Registration of British Citizens abroad
To: "LANGLE M." <mlangle@club-internet.fr>
Date: Tuesday, June 24, 2008, 3:23 PM

The Consulate has asked for the following information to be
circulated:

The Foreign Office's on-line registration for British citizens resident or on holiday overseas is now up and running. This is designed to help British citizens in any kind of emergency or catastrophe such as, for example, the various natural disasters that have occurred in some parts of the world recently. The FCO slogan is "If we can't find you, we can't help you".

Visit www.fco.gov.uk/travel. Click on LOCATE. An information page including an on-line registration form is displayed.

This service is available for expatriate British citizens resident abroad, as well as British travellers temporarily abroad e.g. on holiday or for work.

Once registered, it is easy to keep your details up to date (change of address, etc.)

Will you please pass this information on to any other British nationals you are in contact with.

Best wishes,
Muriel

AngloINFO keeps ahead of the times

2008-06-24T02:21:00.000-07:00

Since its original launch eight years ago, AngloINFO is now benefiting from the most dramatic redesign in its history. As from the 27th May 2008 the AngloINFO site will have a new look.

The redesign is a response to the ever-growing amount of information the AngloINFO group websites deliver to their users. Each day we provide more and more content to our users – the challenge is making that content accessible to everyone.

To satisfy that need, the new-look sites feature a set of common navigation elements that make it straightforward to get from any one part of the site to any other. AngloINFO has so much to offer and it's important that we communicate that to everyone using the sites. The new features do a great job of telling people about the whole range of things we provide for free, from the directory of locally-relevant businesses and the reference library of INFOrmation Pages to the discussions, classifieds and the all-important guide to what's on in the region.

The new design provides a platform for plenty of new functionality, to be added over the coming months. Literally everything has been re-written, providing the base for the next phase of development as we continue with our strategy of offering more and more to our users and to our customers. Some new tools are already in place – including a massively-enhanced search function – but you can expect to see plenty of others as 2008 continues.

AngloINFO Paris-Ile de France now looks better, works better – and it's faster too. We are really excited with the changes and can’t wait to share the new features as they come online.

We are sure that the changes will bring about enhances usage and even greater benefit and return to all our customers and users.

Karen Dys
Director
AngloINFO Paris
06 33 83 62 32

Invitation to Book Party 28th June 2008

2008-06-23T08:41:00.000-07:00

The paperback edition of SOAF member Ian Walthew's 'A Place in My Country: In Search of a Rural Dream' was published in May 2008 by Phoenix.

On Saturday 28th June, 2008, The Abbey Bookshop, 29 rue de la Parcheminerie, 75005 Paris (Metro: St Michel/Cluny la Sorbonne) is hosting a party themed 'A Taste of the Country' where Ian will be signing copies of his book; more importantly wine will be flowing, served with cheeses and saucissons from where Ian lives in the Auvergne. SOAF members are welcome but are kindly requested to drop an email to info@ianwalthew.com ASAP if they intend to come, and indicating any guests they are bringing with them.

On Monday 30th June, Ian will be doing an evening reading at Shakespeare & Co.

All SOAF members are also welcome to come along.

Ian's book is perhaps best captured by some of the reviews he has received.

PRAISE FOR 'A PLACE IN MY COUNTRY'
(Weidenfeld & Nicolson, hardcover July 2007; Phoenix paperback May 1, 2008)

'Stressed city couple seeks slower life in Cotswolds idyll'. The premise is so familiar there's even a predictably technical term for it: 'downshifting'. Yet it's hard to think in those terms about A Place in My Country, given the care with which Ian Walthew has skirted all the sprung traps of nostalgia and sentiment…Avoiding the usual bland elegy for the rustic and redemptive, his book is a valuable memoir, both personal and social, a meditation on belonging in one of many Englands.’
The Observer

'Far from being an idealistic paen to the English countryside, the book becomes a hard-edged and moving account of life rural Britain today.'
Sunday Times

'a poignant portrait of country life....the book could have been a rollicking, laugh-a-minute riff on ignorant townies having to ask what exactly a heifer is. There are certainly some fine comic episodes.. but it quickly turns into something more sombre - and more interesting...His beautifully written book is an elegy for an England that is dying, or at least in terminal decline.'
Daily Telegraph

‘compelling and often deeply moving… Walthew’s own struggle with age-old issues of identity, friendship, community and a place to call home are fresh, sympathetic and never trying…a page-turner’
Hugh-Fearnley Whittingstall

‘an affecting and inspiring memoir. What sets it apart from others of its ilk is the author’s enviable immunity to cliché and his determination to love his homeland better than he used to. His elegiac account of relearning how to be an Englishman should be required reading for anyone who claims to know or love this country.’
Financial Times

‘Funny, touching and ultimately very moving, this is a beautiful, unsentimental account of a personal loss that is reflected in the rapidly changing texture of life in rural England.’
Sunday Telegraph

‘Even peripheral characters…really come to life; as does the beauty of the Cotswolds and the harsh realities it conceals. A Place in My Country is an edifying consideration of the English countryside, its rich history and its attempt to adapt in today’s world’
Times Literary Supplement

‘I have been reading about the British countryside all my life but this is the first post-modern take on a national asset so routinely taken for granted. Author Ian Walthew takes a 12-inch plough to the cosy complacency that so many apply to the subject and reveals that 21st century rural life is not a place for the genteel - in a corner of Gloucestershire most commonly viewed by outsiders from their 4x4s as they hurry to overpriced weekend retreats, he finds a farming heartbeat that is proud and defiant, defended by a cast of characters that outshine The Archers. A revelation of a book.’
Tim Butcher, Author of Blood River: A Journey to Africa's Broken Heart
(Galaxy Book of the Year 2008, 3rd Prize Winner)

‘A riveting read....a warning to newcomers about the dangers of upsetting village hierarchies and sensibilities'
Country Life

‘One of “The Top Ten Summer Holiday Books You Must Own”
Mail on Sunday

Reporting from Palestine 1943-44 by Barbara Board, edited by Jacqueline Karp.

2008-06-21T11:08:00.000-07:00

Barbara Board (1915-1986) was a rare woman foreign correspondent, from the age of 20 she reported from Sudan, Egypt and the Middle East.  Newsgirl in Palestine was published in 1937, her Newsgirl in Egypt followed in 1938. She was later expelled from Egypt. This – her third book – was stopped because of Government war censorship then post-war paper shortages, and has lain forgotten until now.  Reporting from Palestine was written from the front line of the conflict between Jews and Arabs, Zionists and non-Zionists and Jews and the British Mandate Government. Barbara Board was there when the bombs went off, reporting mainly for the Daily Mirror.

Barbara Board interviewed everyone she could find – supporters and opponents of the Jewish underground armies, Arab landlords and peasants, Armenian and Christian minorities, refugees and British servicemen. Reporting from Palestine is a period piece, written at the time and representing the views of people at the time, without the dubious benefit of hindsight. The book is edited for the modern reader by Jacqueline Karp.

Reporting from Palestine is available to order from bookshops, or by secure credit card on www.fiveleaves.co.uk 978-1905512324, 288 pages, £9.99

Five Leaves Publications PO Box 8786 Nottingham NG1 9AW

French Sécu, French Taxes

2008-06-04T03:49:00.000-07:00

Some time ago I offered to try to help Gregor clarify the complex French tax and social security systems for the benefit of SOAF members. How do English people who move to France become registered fiscally and with the health service (and obtain that necessary Carte Vitale?) The report which follows covers my own findings and conclusions and please bear in mind that I am a literary agent and not a lawyer or accountant!

A person who moves to France and acquires a principal residence here, who works here, either freelance or in employment, will probably have to register as a tax payer here and will need to register with the Secu for health care. A salaried employee will possibly be given help and advice by their employer, as after all the employer has to pay contributions on their behalf, so they should be able to register with the CPAM and obtain their Carte Vitale without problems.

It is the freelance person, the position of most writers, who has a more difficult time.
The self-employed freelance writer cannot register with the CPAM. Nor can they expect help from the NHS in the UK – I think this is a good place to mention that the E106 health entitlement certificate available to EEC citizens is only intended for short visits, holidays. The E121 is available to an EEC citizen who is sent to work here, in another country, by their employer, say a British company. It is therefore for someone seconded to work in a different EEC country, a migrant worker! So where do you go?

AGESSA is the organisation for creative people, for writers and artists among others.
They have a very good web site, and I am pasting below the link to the page for authors
http://www.agessa.org/getpage.asp?NUM=6&RUB_CODE=14&RUBCODEPREC=3

But the web site is in French. To apply, there are forms to be filled in and details of income to be attached and they will assess whether the applicant actually qualifies.
Should the applicant not qualify, then there is another organisation for professions liberales, CAMPLP for people who live in the country, “en province”:
http://www.plp.le-rsi.fr/
And there is its counterpart for people who live in the Paris region, the CAMPLIF
http://www.secuartsgraphiquesetplastiques.org/site/organismes/o_08.html
Again, these sites are in French. But AGESSA and CAMPL would be the organisations to approach.

In my experience, and I have heard the same from others, the easy way to deal with registering as a taxpayer is to seek the help of an official at your local tax office. In my case, this person completed the form with me the first year and I have been able to complete them on my own ever since.

My own situation is that I work for my own, British company and as a director of that company, it is deemed appropriate that my personal fiscal domicile remains in the UK.
Nevertheless, in that position and given that my principal residence is in Paris, I am still obliged to file a normal annual tax declaration in France to which I attach the form 2047-K which is the declaration of earnings abroad, but in terms of the double-taxation agreement between the UK and France, I am exonerated from paying tax over here.
Since Taxe d’Habitation (and the television licence fee) are both linked to the tax declaration, your Taxe d’Habitation will be assessed, expensively, as a residence secondaire if you do not file a tax declaration here.

After the age of 65, an individual may become registered with the CPAM and obtain the precious Carte Vitale by arrangement with the NHS in the UK. The application is made through the NHS as part of the agreement between EEC countries, where the UK agrees to reimburse France for the cost of this health care. The individual will then be asked to declare, annually, that their situation has not changed and show proof that they are in receipt of a UK pension. The advantage is that since one no longer contributes to the NHS after official pension age, even if one continues to work, one does not have to pay French “cotisations”.

I have been given the name of a firm of American/French accountants who would be able to explain the system in detail in English. It might be a good idea to ask this firm to send someone to address a meeting – which could be written up and sent to members who cannot attend in person. I have not yet approached them so have no idea what the fee would be, but the cost would have to be divided between members who would like this advice, so please indicate your interest to Gregor.

Shelley Power
3 June 2008

Website Designer in Paris

2008-04-16T01:24:00.000-07:00

I'm on the hunt for a good website designer in Paris. English or French speaking. If you have someone to recommend please email me at lennox.morrison@gmail.com

Purloined books: Amazon, salmon and la Poste

2008-04-12T16:02:00.000-07:00

I recently ordered some books from Amazon.co.uk which never arrived. This is the fifth time that books sent from England have not been delivered to me in France. They were not all Amazon packages - one was a birthday present, one an Amazon marketplace purchase forwarded to me by my mother, another two deliveries of books that I had written.

Now I have moved house there is no possibility that anyone could reach into my letterbox and steal the books from there, and I suspect the postal service (I also once saw a documentary about just how much theft there is from within the French postal service). A friend of mine also had some smoked salmon and children's clothes disappear into thin air after being posted from England.

I wonder if any other members have had books lost/stolen by the postal service, and got any compensation from La Poste or Amazon (even if it is not their fault - they have not even replied to my email about it). I am considering reporting this to the police. Obviously it is much better to support a local bookseller, but in this case I needed the books fast and two of them would have had to be ordered.

Alison Culliford

Jacqueline Karp, ed., Reporting from Palestine 1943-44

2008-04-10T00:30:00.000-07:00

Reporting from Palestine 1943-44 by Barbara Board, edited by SOAF member Jacqueline Karp, is just out with Five Leaves Publications (£9.99). This is a mother-and-daughter effort, with Jacqueline editing and publishing a manuscript of her mother's she found under the bed when her mother died. Barbara Board was a Middle East reporter for the Daily Sketch and the Daily Mirror between 1936 and 1946. She lived in Palestine from 1940-1946. This book, her third, was withdrawn from publication by Michael Joseph because of the post-war paper shortage... and quickly became out of date. Now her description of daily life and her meetings with people of all religious and political groups are more than topical again. And she has a knack of asking questions we are still asking today. Jacqueline has spent many months researching the background to the book and went last November to Israel and the occupied territories to meet up with descendants of people her mother talked to. Jacqueline will be at the May 27th NUJ Paris branch meeting to talk about her book.

WWII Pilots: a book, an appeal

2008-03-14T16:52:00.000-07:00

I am in touch with someone who is writing a book about WWII pilots - more a photographic work than an essay.

He is photographing them as they are now and presenting them in a 'before and after' format - young man in uniform standing next to his aircraft etc. He is also recording the interviews on video.

The written format is similar to an obit., but with an emphasis on their wartime experiences.

He has photographed Brits, Aussies, South Africans, a Czech general and a couple of Germans including a general who is the highest scoring fighter pilot still alive.

However, he has no Frenchmen on his list.

I wonder if I could appeal to members of SOAF and ask if anyone knows any Frenchmen (or Belgians) who flew in the war?

If they do, could they kindly write to John Bradley at infoATdontmovetofrance.co.uk ? (not forgetting to replace AT with @).

(SOAF members may also find his website of interest!)

Paris Writers' Workshop

2008-03-07T11:07:00.000-08:00

The Paris Writers Workshop, France's oldest continuing creative writing event, is proud to present its twentieth season, July 1-11 in Paris, France, with an expanded ten-day program of Master Classes, Workshops, readings, signings, and meetings with major agents and publishers.

Master Classes will be devoted to The Novel, Creative Non-Fiction,and Screenplay, and five-day workshops include:The Spirit of Place, Awakening Creativity,Writing the Personal Essay, Fiction, Poetry, Literary Translation,and Writing About Art.

Three-day courses cover the art and craft of Crime, Fantasy, and Romance Fiction, Celebrity Biography and Journalism, Travel Writing, Business and Fund-Raising Writing, and How to Get Published.

Among our sidebar events are daily readings and performances, Literary Walks, art shows and a Surrealist Dinner.

This year's faculty includes Nuala O'Faolain, Nahid Rachlin, Vijay Seshadri, Cole Swensen, Catherine Texier, Susan Tiberghien, Ann Snodgrass, Patrick McGilligan, Kevin Jackson and Karen Weir-Jimerson.

Two special guests this year are Jonathan Lloyd, CEO of the world-wide Curtis Brown Literary Agency, and Patrick Janson-Smith, London-based agent and former publisher of Doubleday/Transworld. Both will be available for individual consultations.

From our location in the heart of historic Montparnasse, you can develop or perfect your literary skills in the very steps of Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Edith Wharton and James Joyce, and meet other writers in the spirit of creative collaboration which has always been an integral part of the Paris literary experience. For more information on classes, and registration, see our website at: www.pariswritersworkshop.org or email: pww@wice-paris.org

THE PARIS PRIZE FOR FICTION :Judge: Matt Thorne

We are pleased to announce the inauguration of an annual Paris Writers Workshop Prize for fiction.
The prize, of five thousand US dollars, $5,000, will be awarded for a novel or collection of short stories in English by a writer who has not previously been published in book form. (Appearance of an extract in a magazine, anthology etc does not constitute prior publication.)

Authors are asked to submit the following:
* An extract from the work of no more than 1000 words.
* A synopsis of no more than one typed page outlining the scope of the work.
* A covering letter of no more than one typed page, giving some personal information.
* A reading fee of 30 per submission (reduced to 20 for applicants enrolled in the workshop.)
* Multiple submissions are permitted, but a reading fee is required for each.
The deadline for submissions is 30th April. Results will be announced and the presentation made at the closing dinner on 11th July, 2008.

Matt Thorne is the author of Tourist (1998), Eight Minutes Idle (Encore Prize, 1999), Dreaming of Strangers (2000), Pictures of You (2001), Child Star (2003) and Cherry (2004 Booker Prize longlist), Matt also penned three children's books, co-edited All Hail the New Puritans and Croatian Nights, and is working on a critical study of the musician Prince.

For more information: www.pariswritersworkshop.org or email: pww@wice-paris.org

Monitoring for fiction writers

2008-02-29T04:52:00.000-08:00

A new UK-based monitoring scheme - Gold Dust - is offering what, in my
experience, all fiction writers really want: quality one-to-one
contact with an established writer in a similar field whose work they
admire. Admission to the scheme is not guaranteed and it costs but
knowing several of the people involved I think you'll get good value
for money. There's more information on the NUJ website at http://
www.nujcec.org/paris/spip.php?article43.

Jim Pollard, NUJ Paris branch secretary

Writing for social change

2008-02-29T04:37:00.000-08:00

In my travels over the years as a writer and editor for the United Nations and other international bodies, I have been continually approached with similar questions. People of all ages and from all continents have stopped me at one point or another and have said, “ I want to contribute. I believe I have things to say that could be useful and should be heard, ideas that could promote social change, that could provide new solutions in the field of human rights, or on refugee issues, on poverty reduction, or on ecology. I know what I want to say, but I don’t know how to start; I’m not sure I can express myself; maybe my ideas are not as original as I would like to think. I need someone to help me begin, a coach, another writer, someone with whom I can discuss the project and begin to see it come to life, someone who has done this before, who has had the need to write for change, and has done it, and has been published.”

If this sounds like you, you are certainly not alone, and you won’t know whether you can put pen to paper and produce meaningful change unless you try it. But it can be daunting and it can be particularly difficult to start.

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'First Tuesdays': Women and Men

2007-12-25T09:21:00.000-08:00

It is Christmas Day and I am sitting here in a colourfully decorated Paris flat where we are stuffing a goose and preparing what is looking more and more like a typically English Christmas dinner -- I am told that are we even going to be listening to the Queen’s speech. Christmas: the day of ‘love, life and light’. Or so it is supposed to be.

Christmas is not always the easiest of seasons for us authors. We work alone, our sales are usually awful and there are those horrible displays of tasteless ‘titles’ in the bookstores which correspond to the retailers’ ideas of what people ought to be buying. And then there are those events in our lives. I myself, as Emma Vandore in her characteristically humorous article -- reproduced below -- pointed out, have recently been through ‘one of those life-changing moments that hurts’. There are, unhappily, an enormous number of us authors who have been through that, too. We frequently write about it in our books because it makes high, real-life drama. And I openly talk about it, even at our ‘First Tuesdays’ -- because it is a subject that moves creative spirits.

But why is it that most of the people who attend ‘First Tuesdays’ are women? Now, I founded SOAF, this blog and ‘First Tuesdays’ as ‘a forum of discussion, debate, networking, and the sharing of ideas and problems’ - that’s my formula. I had no idea that most of the time I would be talking to, and writing to, just women: ‘Dallas’s harem’ as Emma calls it. What’s happening? Men rarely write to me. Few of them turn up at ‘First Tuesdays’. I suppose I should simply bask in the delight and say no more. But, in the first place, the idea of a harem hardly fits my own life style -- even after that life-changing moment -- and secondly because I really would like more men to be actively participating in the life of SOAF. Indeed, I will let you into a secret: since my divorce I have been campaigning for the redevelopment of friendship among men which I would say, since my father’s day, has been sadly in decline. ‘Monsieur, aimez-vous les hommes?’ asked a lady of her neighbour at one dinner I recently attended. ‘Non,’ he abruptly replied. ‘A quoi ça sert?’ What?? Fifty per cent of the population? And what about his own son? I not only believe that male friendships would be of great value on this friendless planet; I also am convinced that they would improve the relationships between women and men, which are fraught with destructive instincts in today’s liberated -- libertine? -- world. I will come back to that point in a moment.

The advantages that male friendship bring to the world came home to me at last December’s ‘First Tuesday’ when I was sitting next to -- can you believe this? -- a man. He was a quiet gentlemen, but you could tell he concealed an immense culture. ‘What can we talk about?’ I asked him and I posed him a few questions about his childhood: a history of north-eastern Europe emerged, of migration, of bombardment -- you name it. That is what male friendship serves: human memory -- an invaluable commodity for us writers, a sweet gift to bring to the relationship between men and women.

And I have to say that I am the last person in the world to cultivate a harem! ‘J’aime le libertinage, car il me semble le signe d’une société très rassurée.’ No, those are not the words of Marivaux -- though they could have been. It is a phrase that drops from the thin red lips of Carla Bruni, who I am told is a friend of the new President of the Republic. She’s no fool this Carla. Notice, she does not speak of ‘promiscuity’ or ‘sexual liberation’; it is ‘libertinage’, such a literary term, so wholly eighteenth century. Libertinage produced the light-hearted plays of Marivaux, but it ended in the revolting works of the Marquis de Sade. I know, there are still a few soixante-huitards knocking around who cling to the idea that Sade was some kind of genius. There was certainly style to his form of sadism, which is sorely lacking in the modern-day versions. Except, of course, Fellini -- and particularly La Dolce Vita, for which Alberto Bruni Tedeschi, Carla’s father, was one of the screenwriters. As I recall, the film concluded with a suicide. Plenty of people subscribe to the Gospel of Carla. But they are wrong, aren’t they? Libertinage may be fun for a moment, an eloquent play of words, but it always leads to a game. Finally sex becomes an instrument of power, a heavy arm of war. That’s no good for the weak, the poor, the sick, the depressed, the struggling, the family, the children or the disabled.

Come on men! Play your part! You are all cordially invited to the next ‘First Tuesday’, on 8 January 2008, at 6.30 pm. I wish you all a merry Christmas and the best, most creative and happiest year that you have ever known.

SOAF First Tuesday, November

2007-12-08T10:31:00.000-08:00

‘Gregor, why is it only women who attend your First Tuesdays,’ asked Shelley. Or was in Annabel? Or possibly Pamela? Dallas grinned and flashed one of his winning smiles, both eyes twinkling -- and the evening had only just begun.

The Society Of Authors France, you see, is Gregor’s baby: born out of one of those life-changing moments that hurts. On SOAF‘s blogpage, just above the item, ‘About Me,’ Dallas claims he set up the French-based organisation as a ‘professional tool for members of the Society of Authors, France: a forum of discussion, debate, networking, and the sharing of ideas and problems.’ It is all that. But Dallas admits that it has also turned out to be about women, because one of the curious features that has developed at ‘First Tuesdays’ in Paris is that ladies are the principal participants.

The women who arrived last November at the 11th arrondissement’s literary café L’Ogre à Plumes -- nicknamed as the evening developed as 'the Dallas harem' -- agreed unanimously that the reason there were no men besides Gregor is because women authors are better and more adventurous communicators. Men like to hide in their cave, you see. And ponder. First Tuesdays, by contrast, is all about exchanging thoughts, ideas, emotion and information. Conversation in November began with Sexus Politicus: the breed of men who combine politics with women who aren’t their wives. Fodder for many a Parisian authors’ book, not least my own. When we’d exhausted sex (as a topic of conversation), SOAF turned to weightier matters: literary agents. Dallas remarked that choosing an agent was about as difficult as choosing a wife. Shelley proposed a joint collaboration -- compiling advice for SOAF members bien sûr.

In need of sustenance, Dallas and his harem headed down the road to SOAF’s regular Tuesday haunt, Aux Tables de la Fontaine. The door barely had time to shut out the winter chill before Gregor’s twinkling eye turned its attention to the gay waiter. And suddenly our glasses were full. Again. The wine and the conversation were flowing; A group of writers were in a Paris café: clear philosophy territory. Gregor pursued Sartre's line that a conversation with a woman is more interesting than with a man. ‘With a man, after two minutes of chatter everything is predictable and you know where the conversation will be in thirty minutes; with a woman, whatever her age or her appearance, it is always a trip into unexplored territory -- you never know where you are heading,’ he said, eyes still sparkling. A man who knows how to put his philosophy to work: ‘Gregor Dallas -- you are flirting with every woman here,’ chorused his harem, before bursting into laughter.

Emma Vandore
Author of Schizophrénie française: Ségo, Sarko, Jacque et Moi (Paris: Jean-Claude Gawsewitch, 2007)
Blog: http://anglosaxonne.blogspot.com

A Gruesome Window Display

2007-11-24T05:24:00.000-08:00

Rats...Rats dancing in a circle, rats holding a lump of cheese in their paws, bleached skeletons of rats and twenty sewer rats that were caught in Les Halles in 1925 suspended on meat hooks. If you enjoy discovering nineteenth century Parisian curiosities , it’s worth taking a look at the shop of Julien Aurouze at 8, rue des Halles near Châtelet. Ets Aurouze are the ultimate specialists in pest control and whether you have a problem with rats, mice, pigeons, cockroaches, wasps, slugs, moles or whatever, they will find a solution. But although their web site is ultra modern, their macabre window full of dusty stuffed rodents seems to have scarcely changed since they first opened in 1872 and it attracts a crowd of fascinated passers-by. Scattered amongst the rats and mice are the various products destined to destroy them with dramatic names like Pate du Diable and also something called Viperyl ‘pour éloigner les serpents.’ In a second window there is a collection of small furry animals which are presumably considered to be pests - one of them is certainly snarling ferociously - and glass cases containing some extremely nasty looking insects including an enormous cockroach. If you are sufficiently interested, you can even buy a book called Mémoires d’un rat des Halles!

Pamela Lake

SOAF & NUJ-Paris: On Working Together

2007-10-03T21:55:00.000-07:00

In the absence of SOAF secretary Richard Poupart, our chair Gregor Dallas asked me to take the minutes at last night's very successful AGM. I imagine he asked me because as well as being a member of the SOAF, I am secretary of the Paris branch of the National Union of Journalists. I saw his request as yet another example of the way the two trade unions, SOA and the NUJ, have successfully worked together here in France.

Although SOAF members last night voted 'nem com' to allow this association to continue to blossom, I was surprised to learn that this had not been the view of some members in the south who, at their meeting in Nice last month, voted against any association.

Gregor tells me that pressures of time prevented a full discussion in Nice so it is not clear on what basis this decision was taken. But as a long-standing member of both organisations and, along with Gregor, one of the prime movers of our association, I am at a loss to understand it. The liaison is so obviously beneficial to us all.

Perhaps it was based on misconceptions about the NUJ or the nature of our relationship with it. If this is the case, please do let me know and, as Paris NUJ secretary, I'll try to elucidate. I'm happy to do that by email, phone or here on the blog. If there are more material concerns, this blog is the best place to discuss them. Let's talk. It's the best way to clear up confusion.

Jim Pollard

Soliloquy, Solitude and SOAF

2007-07-11T07:09:00.000-07:00

by Richard Lewis

In 2007 we are not short of soliloquy. Indeed, nor are we ever far from it. The mainstreaming of the internet, along with the facility it has given us for instant, worldwide self-publication, has meant that in a few short years, a whole generation has come of age never knowing the hubristic pain of the rejection slip. Never more will your voice -- your unique and special voice -- be censored, patronised or rejected. Unless you live in China, you do have a voice. You can make it heard. You think it, you type it and, in the blinking of an ftp protocol transfer, it is published. Published! In a few short hours your novel, poem, rant, libel or ill-advised bitch about a pop-star you’ve never met is spidered, crawled, indexed, googled and cached. Which means it never really goes away. It remains, preserved for posterity, somewhere on those giant servers, for all to see.

Theoretically. I mean, people still have to want to read it. The proliferation on the web of self-published writing, or “content” as it is now called, has meant the division between the elite, published auteurs and the great unwashed is gone forever. It has been a great leveller and this has given many pompous print media folk the willies. A year or so ago, when newspaper bosses started cacking it that the bloggers would take over and they’d all be out of a job, many papers launched blog sites of their own, where readers could post comments. How democratic. Sometimes, humiliatingly for the hack concerned, and entertainingly for the reader, the IT salesman on his coffee break did a far better job of analysing the day’s events than the journalist. But more often than not these events were often lost amid the excess. Almost invariably, these “comments” were just the self-validatory ejaculations of the erstwhile voiceless asserting themselves. The name of the Guardian’s own site, “Comment is free”, was a comment in itself. Of course it is free. Who would want to pay for all this surplus verbiage?

The mechanics of the blog software are brutal too. Is there anything more lonely than stumbling by accident upon the blog of an unknown and coming face to face with that neatly type-set page of bons mots, each with the date and time of posting, each with the blistering footnote: “Comments: 0”?

Well, yes, actually there is. They’re calling it “Twittervision”. For those of you who haven’t discovered this yet, the address is www.twittervision.com and its model is very simple. With space limited to a couple of lines, you post your thoughts to the site, from a mobile phone or wherever, and they are displayed for [almost] long enough to be read. The site shows a map of the world. It leaps from country to country as little speech bubbles pop up , containing the passing thoughts of the masses, in real time. It could be a masterpiece of installation art, a moving collage of juxtaposed haiku. A searing comment on the human condition. If it is none of the former, I suspect it is nonetheless very much the latter. Here are some posts I picked at random:

At working waiting for my lunch to be delivered. BTW, LOST was awesome last night! 01:17 PM April 12, 2007

Just made Guacamole and grabbed a beer to sit down and watch LOST 09:50 PM April 11, 2007

I’m bored. Wasting time on Youtube 10:54 PM April 10, 2007

Listening to MetroBuzz. trying to decide what candlelight vigil to go to the 7 or 9 one. or both, if i can handle it. umm about 2 hours ago

Just saw gas for over $3 a gallon. Dang it was doing so good for a while. about 2 hours ago

The early adopters of internet technology told us it would bring us together. There is some truth in that. But increasingly, whenever I venture out onto it, I am struck by how terribly lonely everyone still is. The internet, in the main, is making it ever easier to document those plaintive cries into the wind: is anybody out there? We paper authors, of course, already have an efficient way to find out that no one is reading us. But the royalty statement is mercifully infrequent. I’m not sure I could handle the sales figures in real-time.

Which brings me to my point, to which all the above excess verbiage is a laboured preamble. Some months ago, dear Gregor wrote me a personal note to say thank you for commenting on one of his blog posts and asking me, somewhat plaintively I sensed, whether I might like to write something for the site. I had remarked that perhaps the reason so few of us are engaging with the SOAF blog is that it is quite hard to do so. Perhaps, given my comment, my post could be about the relevance of the blog format for what we are trying to achieve, Gregor suggested.

So here’s what I think. The blog is a format for loners. And Gregor is trying to build a community. This is frustrating for him. At present he alone can post and we have to make a decision to navigate to the site, read the post, which he has had to write, and then comment on it. Which is laborious and we are lazy. Added to which, we cannot post ourselves. This actually presents an obstacle to the dialogue Gregor is trying to achieve.

That’s why I think there is a better solution. Yahoo Groups, for example, offers a free way to create a multi-way dialogue. You join the group once, that’s it. A moderator either lets you in or doesn’t, so we could limit membership to SoA/NUJ adherents if we wanted. You post by e-mailing to the group’s address. Your comment is then aggregated automatically by Yahoo Groups to all members, who can elect to receive real-time e-mails, or a daily digest, or just look at the postings on the site, where they are stored. It is as intrusive or discreet as you want it to be. I like this and I think it’s a good way to build an online community. And so I hereby vote that someone else sets it up.

NUJ-Paris celebrates 200 members, 20 June (PARTY!)

2007-06-12T06:56:00.001-07:00

Just a reminder about the forthcoming 'bash' to mark the Paris NUJ branch hitting the 200 member mark. The landmark will be celebrated in true Paris fashion with good food, fine wine, genial company and, the highlight of the evening, NO speech from chair Jeff Apter.
It's so tempting that the NUJ's general secretary Jeremy Dear has already signed up and he lives in London. Put you name down with Diana Smith at diana@gsmith.com.fr today.
Friends, family and – especially - journalists who are not NUJ members are all welcome. Members of SOAF, as NUJ affiliates, are also invited
Date: Tues 26 June
Time: apero at 8pm (The event will be preceded at 6.30pm with a short branch meeting at 6.30pm.)
Venue: Le Trumilou restaurant, 84 Quai de l’Hôtel de Ville, Paris 4e.
Nearest Metro: Hôtel de Ville.
Price: 27€

The €27 menu comprises: Apéritif: kir ---
Friton d'Auvergne (Terrine de porc)
Ou Mousse de légumes
---
Poulet à l'estragon
Ou Poisson du jour
(vegetarian option possible)
---
Moelleux au chocolat
Ou Tarte aux fruits de saison
---
I bouteille de vin pour 3 personnes
Coffee
---
Contact Diana Smith at diana@gsmith.com.fr with your choice of menu.
- -
Jim Pollard,
Secretary, Paris NUJ
Paris website: http://www.nujparis.org.uk
Email: nujparis@wanadoo.fr

Emma Vandore's Schizophrénie française

2007-06-12T02:55:00.000-07:00

Writing my first book, Schizophrenie Francaise - Sego, Sarko, Jacques et moi, has been a bit like having a baby. I resisted the idea of conceiving for a long time, and gave in after a lot of persuasion and encouragement. After several botched starts, my baby began to take shape. Bringing him into this world cost me a number of sleepless nights, a little nausea, combined with some moments of sheer delight. In the process, I made sacrifices, neglected my friends, and also put on a fair amount of weight. My next project will be shedding those excess kilos.

The book, published by Jean-Claude Gawsewitch Editeur, is a personal account of three years discovering the Byzantine world of French politics. Until the presidential campaign began to heat up, I was often the only Anglo-Saxon around.

While there are many more experienced and highly respected American and British journalists in Paris, most of them are too busy chasing the lady made famous by having the world’s first face-transplant or writing articles about Parisien dog poo to turn up at political speeches or the parliament, especially when they can watch them events on television or lift copy from the news-wires. Nor can many of them afford to board the French equivalent of Air Force One and follow Chirac and his ministers around the globe as his valiant efforts to persuade Vietnamese and Chinese students of the benefits of learning French has limited interest to readers outside of France. Until very recently, I worked for the only major international news agency not to have a French service, meaning I had the honour and privilege of being one of the few non-French journalists skulking in the corridors of power.

During the referendum campaign for the doomed European constitution, I discovered that my non-Frenchness is often sharply felt. While I would often forget my nationality as I got on with doing my job, the moment I open my mouth and my accent slips out, florescent lights start flashing on my forehead which read: ‘NOT FRENCH: PROBABLY ANGLO-SAXON.’ For most French people, the flashing soon becomes a sort of exotic accessory, like French ladies’ scarves are for British people. But in nationalistic world of French politics, the light never stops blinking.

My problem, being a Scot, is that the epithet ‘Anglo’ was never going to do down very well. Let’s get things straight. I am not an Anglo-Saxon. I am Scottish, or if you prefer, British. Even at a stretch European. But there is no Angle or Saxon blood running through my veins, both being largely illiterate tribes from Germany who died out about 1,000 years ago.

The French appetite for blaming Anglo-Saxons for all the ills of globalisation that threaten the French way of life led to many amusing – in hindsight – clashes. In London, I debated with Tony Blair and Dominique de Villepin the merits British cuisine. In Gleneagles, I convinced one of Chirac’s officials to taste the Scottish delicacy haggis. In the Salle des Fetes of the Elysée palace, Jacques Chirac fondly related a trip around Scotland as a young hitch-hiker.

‘Here is a book that all the presidential candidates should read,’ said Paris Match the day my book was published March 29. ‘Emma Vandore is one of the rare correspondents in Paris to cover directly all the political events she recounts,’ said Liberation. ‘This book covers political and societal events,’ said Les Echos. ‘But her take on France, sometimes between the lines, should be read by all French people who are prepared to abandon for a brief moment their sensitivity.’

My tales of the campaign trail continued on my blog http://anglosaxonne.blogspot.com. My next task, whilst loosing the weight, is translating all of this into something that an English-speaking publisher might be interested in. Any advice would be greatly appreciated

Le Pavé d'Orsay

2007-06-12T02:23:00.000-07:00

The place is an art gallery/café, there'll be a new exhibit up, good music, SHORT readings, wine and a semblance of food, and time to talk before and after and, with some gentleness, during... It’s the first time I’ll be reading from the new novel. Hope to see you there (or elsewhere, before the summer?).

Le Pavé d’Orsay Presents

An evening of readings and music

Wine and Buffet
8 p.m. Wednesday, June 20th 2007
48 rue de Lille 75007 Paris
Metro Rue du Bac / RER Musée d’Orsay
(Directly behind the Musée d’Orsay )

With:

Adrian Mathews Vivienne Vermes Reine Arcache Melvin Tom O’Brien

Josh Levine (keyboards) Christian Thompson (guitar)

Adrian Mathews read English at Cambridge before becoming a lecturer at London University’s British Institute in Paris. During this period, he published a critical study of 19th-century literature, “Romantics and Victorians.” His first novel, “The Hat of Victor Noir,” appeared in 1996. This was followed by “Vienna Blood,” which won the Crime Writers Silver Dagger Award. His latest book, “The Apothecary’s House,” was published last year to great critical acclaim. Alan Sillitoe called it “gripping, intriguing, and satisfying . . . a wonderful novel.” It has already been translated into several languages and is currently being adapted for the screen. Adrian is now at work on a new novel with a North American setting.

Born and raised in Manila, Reine Arcache Melvin is the author of “A Normal Life and Other Stories,” which was awarded a National Book Award for fiction. The French translation, “Une vie normale” (Esprit des Peninsules, Paris) was enthusiastically reviewed in Libération, Le Canard Enchainé, Journal du Dimanche and elsewhere. Her short stories have also won prizes and appeared in numerous literary reviews and anthologies in the United States, France and Asia. She has read extensively at American and Asian literary festivals and has been justly described as “a superlative writer of short fiction.” She has co-edited literary reviews in New York and Paris and is currently nearing completion of a novel.

Vivienne Vermes, born in London, has made Paris her home for more than 20 years. She has to date published three collections of her poetry, and her short fiction has appeared in, among others, “New Writing Nine” (Vintage/British Council), “Paris-Atlantic” and The Mail on Sunday. She has also participated in various international literary festivals and run several British Council-sponsored writing workshops. Vivienne has recently recorded a CD of her own poetry and is writing a novel. She also works as a stage actress and voice-over artist.

Tom O’Brien grew up in Ireland and London. In the 1970s, he was founder/editor of the Irish literary quarterly, “Graphein,” which published early work by Neil Jordan, Desmond Hogan, Matthew Sweeney and others. His own poetry and short fiction have appeared in publications in Ireland and Britain. In France, he has taken part in poetry readings and also co-edited issues of Pharos, the literary magazine founded by American writer Alice Notley and her late husband, the much-missed British poet Douglas Oliver. Tom O’Brien has staged a number of plays and dramatic monologues in Paris. A radio drama by him is presently under consideration at the BBC, and he is currently working on his first novel.

Christian Thompson studied music in Southern California, where he grew up. He worked as sideman and band-leader both there and later in New York. He has performed with The Temptations, The Drifters, the Steve Allen Big Band, Charles Rutherford and others. Since moving to Paris, Christian has been playing jazz and R&B at various clubs and venues in the city.

Jazz pianist, Joshua Levine, studied under Bruce Barth in his native New York. Following his move to Paris in 2001, Josh began appearing at the Chez Haynes Jazz Club, as well as the Swann Bar and the Café Universel. He has frequently worked with singer Keri Chryst and has recently embarked on a musical partnership with guitarist Christian Thompson.

'First Tuesdays', SOAF's Monthly Encounter, Starts 1st May

2007-04-12T08:52:00.000-07:00

After a visit this week to L’Ogre à Plumes we decided to set up ‘First Tuesdays’ at this delightful café-theatre in the historic Onzième Arrondissement of Paris. All SOAF members are warmly invited to come along, the First Tuesday of every month to taste the good drinks, have a meal if they like, mix with some of the best English-speaking authors in France, meet journalists, agents and people in the media -- and generally have a good time. This monthly event starts on May Day, 1st May, 6.30-8.30 pm, a good time as any to celebrate with a drink. Send me an email, gregor.dallas@wanadoo.fr , if you are coming so that we can plan on numbers.

Alison Culliford, author of The Fun Seeker’s Paris, has sent us the following report.

SOAF Chairman.

First Tuesdays at L’Ogre à Plumes

It was a search for lardons late at night that led me to be walking down rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud, to spot the Ogre à Plumes with its candlelit tables and cosy armchairs, and to have the eureka moment: “A perfect place for the ‘happy hour’ Gregor was talking about!”

This literary café is the real thing, better than the ‘Best Literary Cafés’ I recommend in my book! It’s run by three young actors who had worked together doing book readings for a publisher. Yves, Sophie and Viginie dreamed of having their own café-library where they could organise such events and the dream has come true. They formed an association, took over the former Pravda bar, made it look like a bookworm’s den with music stands, chessboards, prams hanging from the ceiling and books and photographs all over the walls and also kitted out the downstairs “lair” with antiques cinema seats – it now serves as a theatre and for readings. Decent (and often interesting) wine by the glass starts at €2.80, a Leffe costs €3 and there are tartines, assiettes and a plat du jour on offer (though no pressure to eat). What I personally love about it is that the owners’ own books are in the bookcases, making it more like a shared flat than a bar.

After testing it out and being equally seduced by its charms, Gregor Dallas, Lennox Morrison, Jim Pollard and I got together to set the date for the inaugural FIRST TUESDAY: 1st May is the date when SOAF members are invited to come and have a drink together 6.30-8.30pm at the Ogre à Plumes, 49-51 rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud, (we’ll be in the Left Hand side of the building), Paris 11th. , tel 01.48.06.64.39, www.logreaplumes.com, Mº Parmentier or Goncourt.

Please let Gregor (gregor.dallas@wanadoo.fr) know if you are planning to come to the 1st May drink so we can give the café some idea of numbers. AC

AngloINFO and SOAF

2007-04-04T05:04:00.000-07:00

I have received the following posting from Karen Dys, Director of AngloINFO Paris. This information will be of interest to all SOAF members in the process of publishing a book and wanting to promote it in France. The English reading public in France is vast and growing. There are probably now over a million British residents in the country and around 300,000 English speakers in the Paris region alone. No serious British author living in France should ignore this market. AngloINFO strikes me as providing authors with a very useful means of gaining access to it.

SOAF Chairman

AngloINFO

AngloINFO Paris is a franchise of AngloINFO, the world’s largest internet-based source of information for Anglophone expatriates. More information regarding AngloINFO can be found on http://www.angloinfo.net/ and on http://www.angloinfo.com/ . Page view statistics can be found on http://paris.angloinfo.com/sales/ .

AngloINFO is owned and run by Karen Dys and her husband, Geoffrey; they are aided by a sales team and an editorial assistant. All the information on AngloINFO Paris is available for free to our users and we attempt to ensure that the information is correct and accurate.

AngloINFO Paris sells advertising to businesses/associations/individuals interested in reaching the Anglophone population of Paris and the Île de France. AngloINFO Paris is involved in many different ways within the Anglophone community. We are members of the Franco-British Chamber of Commerce and Industry, we support the English Language Schools Association and we are involved in the promotion of parent support groups, sporting and cultural organisations

World Radio Paris

This is not to be confused with Paris Live Radio. World Radio Paris is a community radio station in partnership with the BBC and NPR, and is based at the American University, Paris. Anglophones of every type are welcome to contact the Programme Director to record broadcast content.

David Blanc is the Programme Director. See website www.worldradioparis.org

Ways in which authors can promote themselves among users of AngloINFO Paris

Several advertising options exist. Contact Karen Dys for more information. We undertake to feed SOAF information regarding events in and around Paris that could be of interest to English-speaking authors residing in France.

Karen Dys
Director, AngloINFO Paris
http://www.angloinfo.com
Tel: +33 (0) 3 44 74 97 87
Fax: +33 (0) 3 44 57 80 89

Author seeks authors

2007-03-19T08:52:00.000-07:00

A posting I have just received:--

Author Seeking Creative People to Have Their Homes Photographed For A Book

London-based journalist Francesca Gavin is coming to Paris 28 March - 3 April to look for homes to feature in her forthcoming book. She says:

‘The book looks at how creative people reflect what they do on their home and work spaces and are inspired by what is around them. I’m looking for studios, apartments and homes of the artists, designers, directors, stylists, artists, musicians, curators, novelists and innovators that are pushing the boundaries of contemporary culture.

‘I’m looking for homes that reflect creative lives, the constant influx of information and inspiration. Places that are a bit rough around the edges, a bit more inventive and spontaneous. Interiors filled with post-modern pop collectibles, vintage junk finds, toy collections, contemporary art resting in bookshelves and crammed onto walls, odd objects, handmade stuff, etc. Places that are an antidote to the sterility of minimalism. There is an element of creative excess here. I’m including houses in London, Paris, New York, Berlin, Barcelona and California.’

If you or anyone you know might fit the bill, please contact:

Francesca Gavin at francescagavin@aol.com or fgavin@gmail.com

The Acknowledgements Page

2007-03-16T06:49:00.000-07:00

Have you ever opened a book and wondered why its first two or three pages are filled with names that you have never heard of and whom you have no interest in knowing anyway? It seems to be happening to me increasingly frequently and, frankly, I find it rather annoying. What used to be inserted into the Preface is now regularly separated into a section called ‘Acknowledgements’ that now regularly runs to several precious pages, better employed in improving your love scene or, if you are a historian like me, analysing that critical turn in diplomacy that brought the world to the brink of war. I’ve come to call ‘Acknowledgements’ the ‘Cocktail Party List’ and I skip over it as fast as my fingers can run.

Who are these people in ‘Acknowledgements’ and why are they there? Honestly, did Professor Henry Higgins of Hereford and Hampshire University really contribute to an improvement in your style? Queen Elizabeth II came down personally from her chambers to open for you the gate to the Royal Archives?

Only yesterday I heard on Radio 4 a British author complaining about this very problem. Then across the Atlantic came the voice of an American author whose most recent novel contains four pages of ‘Acknowledgements’! He claimed that writing today is becoming a much more ‘collective enterprise’. I just don’t believe this. It is simply not possible to write a novel collectively. I am not even convinced that is possible to write good history collectively, though it has been tried many times with the usual deplorable results. The radio interview went on to debate the issue of collective contributions to the new type of ‘creative works’ that publishers are supposed to be offering us. It is a prime example, in my view, of what Sartre used to call mauvaise foi, ‘bad faith’. Such works do not exist.

What is actually happening? There seem to be two factors at work here. One is the increasing influence of Marketing Departments over the actual process of writing. The other is the growing disinclination of authors to do their own research.

The first is probably the most important. Authors are having an increasingly difficult time being recognized by the public. We live in the lottery age of the mega-sale, where one author in a million gathers in all the stakes while the rest politely starve. The economics behind this was described by Tim Hely-Hutchinson in a recent issue of The Author. It was interesting to note how the article, which showed little concern for the creative side of producing books, failed to elicit a single response from member authors of the SOA. As Hely-Hutchinson pointed out, the mega-seller is a fact of life today, though not one that authors could in any way welcome.

The response of authors is to be found not in editorials or in published correspondence but, first and foremost, in the Acknowledgements pages. Here we discover their desperate attempts to hook their relatively unknown names to some celebrity -- in ways that are sometimes comic. Did he shake hands with a Mega-author three years ago? We’ll slip his name in. Catch a smile from one of yesterday’s film stars? We’ll pop her in, too. Talk to the mayor of Timbuktoo during a recent holiday in the sandy Sahara? He certainly deserves a mention. Academics have their own star system which can be easily deciphered from the Acknowledgements pages -- sometimes even longer than the endless Endnotes. It was the academics who set the trend, now being imitated by novelists, travel-writers, fashion purveyors and how-toers.

Why do they do this? Because the Marketing Departments, along with the Media, now scan ‘Acknowledgements’ for a possible story, a bit of publicity, an edge on a rival author; it is one of the major topics of conversation in their canteens and coffee-shops; they build in their minds networks of partnerships and relationships more complicated than the Hapsburg marital system at the height of the Holy Roman Empire. That’s the way Marketing Departments operate: they love the social web implied in Acknowledgements because it corresponds to their own world. A long Acknowledgements list is the Author’s bow of allegiance to the marketing powers-that-be.

But it is more than that. Everybody enjoys contact with a creative person. It is elevating, ennobling; it fills that hollow spot one sometimes feels in oneself. But such relationships quickly become perverse in the Mega-sale world -- where the Mega-author is not necessarily the most creative spirit in the world’s assembly of authors. False hierarchies are thus created by the Marketing network. And these rapidly turn exploitative.

It was, again, the Academics who started the process off. The Master would be surrounded by a team of Research Assistants -- some of whom were more creative than the Master himself. How easy it was for the Master to enter into his footnotes books he had never read and documents, in strange foreign languages, he had never consulted -- especially after around 1970 when Publishers urged the authors of those biographies to make their footnotes as numerous as possible. Ah, those eighty-page bibliographies! Who compiled them? Worse was to come when the Master discovered that his Research Assistants could write… Ah, those pages on the subject’s complicated ancestry! Who wrote them? I don’t mind admitting that a long Acknowledgements section creates in me the wicked suspicion that someone else wrote the book. It began, as I said, with the Academics. Now it has spilled over into the world of Fiction…

An editor friend of mine told me of a famous Mega-author who would send into his publishers ‘notes’ which a team of editors painfully transformed into a book. Did these poor sub-editors turn up in the Acknowledgements section? This Mega-author never had one. Ghost-writing is a laudable profession, its texts preferable to the gibberish most politicians would churn out if left alone. Do the people who perform this fine trade turn up in Acknowledgements? It’s rare. Acknowledgements are used, rather, pour brouiller les pistes.

So I hate these Acknowledgements pages: they are dangerous because they hand over too much to the Marketing Departments, they are misleading because they don’t give primacy to the people who really have contributed to the work: they are just plain perverse. Cut out Acknowledgements, I say. If you really have people who have helped you along that lonely, difficult creative path, then express an authentic ‘thank you’ at the end of your Preface where their names will dance -- for an eternity -- to the music of your own words. Thanking should be an act of grace.

What do you think?

SOAF Update

2007-03-06T02:28:00.000-08:00

Here is a summary of what we are currently arranging for SOAF. We encourage you to make comments and suggestions.

1. We have now established an affiliation with the National Union of Journalists, Paris on the basis of four main points: (a) The NUJ Paris news letter will be sent out to SOAF members prior to the monthly business meeting of NUJ Paris on the last Tuesday of every month at the Bourse du Travail, on the north side of the Place de la République, Paris, followed by a dinner; all members are welcome to attend these monthly meetings as well as the dinner (and very congenial it is, too, where you can meet the best British freelancers in Paris); (b) NUJ Paris has access to the SOAF blogspot -- www.soafrance.blogspot.com ; (c) SOAF and NUJ Paris will combine to provide information to their members on the French Sécurité Sociale; (d) SOAF and NUJ Paris will combine in the organization of various social and cultural activities.
At the NUJ Paris meeting of 27 February 2007 it was decided to establish a Working Party of three SOAF members and three NUJ Paris members to investigate other possible areas of affiliation. If you would like to be a member of this Working Party, do let us know.
Do let us have your comments and suggestions on this.

2. We are working on an affiliation with AngloINFO, a Paris-based British organisation that advertises and collects information on English-speaking cultural activities in France. AngloINFO works closely with English-speaking universities, university departments and colleges in France. It has access to information concerning the latest developments in the huge English-speaking communities that we have seen established in France over the last few years. One of the areas where AngloINFO will be of great interest to SOAF members is book promotion. Watch this blog for further developments.
And naturally your comments are appreciated.

3. As announced in earlier postings, we are working with ADECRI, the international affiliate of the French social security system, to set up a joint SOAF-NUJ meeting in Paris where a presentation will be made in English on the French Sécu.

4. We are investigating the possibility of establishing a monthly SOAF Happy Hour in Paris. If any of you know of a good pub or wine bar in town that you think we ought to consider do let us know now. We are thinking of the first Thursday of every month. Nothing replaces physical contact between members: it is the best way to exchange ideas, talk about books, the problems we encounter in producing them, how to promote them and generally just to get to know each other. We encourage members in other regions of France to set up their own Happy Hour. This could be done through the Networking List.
Send us your suggestions.

5. An updated Networking List will be forwarded to you shortly. NEW MEMBERS OF SOAF: For your name to be added to this list, we do need your formal permission, which must be emailed to Gregor Dallas -- available in all correspondence you have had with me, as well as in my email circulars sent out from head office, Society of Authors, London.
Any comments?

6. We have to start thinking about the organisation of our next annual meeting in Autumn 2007. Some have recommended that this coincide with a local literary festival, while others hold that literary festivals are not terribly interesting -- to the point that were we to organise a meeting at such a festival this would be a reason for members not attending. Do give us your opinion.
As venue we are considering some place outside Paris. I have received several recommendations that it be held in or near Nice. We certainly have a large number of members in this part of France.
Do let us know where you would like the meeting to take place, whether it should be coordinated with some other event and, if possible, suggest us an actual location.

Paris Review Interviews

2007-02-23T06:58:00.000-08:00

I have just sent off to the publishers another book manuscript, short this time. Several pots of Angst have been poured into it, especially over these last few days. Will it stick? Has it got ‘juice’ as Hemingway put it? And, above all, will my relations with my publishers remain tolerably good? Every writer knows that the organization of an efficient, harmonious publishing team is one of the key elements to a book’s success. And every writer also knows that publishing houses today are no longer what they were even five years ago.

With all this swirling about in my head I have been in sore need of a tranquillizer, and here it is: The Paris Review Interviews, vol. I (ed. Philip Gourevitch, Edinburgh: Canongate, 2007). You’ve guessed it -- my interest was piqued by its title. I have never before read The Paris Review, which comes out of New York. What I first wanted to know was how a bunch of Anglo-Saxon writers living in Paris managed to clock up such astounding successes.

Well, there is not as much as a paragraph in this 500-page volume on the subject. Many of the writers interviewed -- they are largely American -- have not as much as visited our sweet capital of France. What references there are to Paris are mostly slighting. Dame Rebecca West came over to film one of her novels; she was ‘so horrified by the cheap food’ served up on her post-war plate. The interviewer asks Hemingway if, in Paris in the 1920s, he had any sense of ‘group feeling’ with other writers and artists; the old man of the sea starkly replies: ‘No. There was no group feeling’ -- an answer any reader of Hemingway’s unashamedly self-centred Movable Feast could have foreseen. Saul Bellow, who I don’t think ever stayed in France, spends a page debunking ideas à la Sartre and à la Camus (a popular pastime in our turn-of-a-millennium world that I find verges on a philistine anti-intellectualism).

Yet there was a Parisian origin to the Review. It was founded in the 1950s by a group of Americans who living in France because it was cheap. Within a short space of time they were famous authors, many of them making their fortunes out of just one or two books; they all returned home to be closer to their mass audiences.

These interviews are wonderful. Every author -- every SOAF member -- ought to have a copy by his or her bedside. It is the sort of thing you can peruse at three in the morning and suddenly bump into an author with the same problem that is keeping you awake. In this first volume we find Hemingway confessing that he re-wrote the last page of A Farewell to Arms thirty-nine times. ‘I can’t write five words but that I change seven’ says Dorothy Parker. ‘What would you say is the source of most of your work?’ she is asked. ‘Need of money, dear.’ Truman Capote writes his first two drafts in longhand pencil and then types his third on yellow paper, puts it away for a couple of months, then starts the whole process over again; his final version is typed on white paper. T.S. Eliot’s Waste Land is apparently only a fragment of a much larger poem that Ezra Pound cut to pieces; the original colossus has been lost (‘I sold it to John Quinn’). Jorge Luis Borges is another indefatigable reviser, though ‘when a man reaches a certain age, he has found his real tone,’ and the obsessive corrections are no longer needed. Rebecca West tells us that she ‘fiddles away’ at a lot of drafts as ‘I think D.H. Lawrence did.’

Now that is exactly what I want to hear when, apprehensively, I am about to launch into the third revision of my own manuscript. Can you teach somebody how to write a book? Opinion is fairly divided here. Kurt Vonnegut, after sounding off his sceptical remarks, tells us that ‘in a creative writing class of twenty people anywhere in this country [the US], six students will be startlingly talented. Two of those might actually publish something by and by.’ James M. Cain, on the other hand, dismisses the whole how-to business as the ‘bunkum and stinkum of college creative writing’ -- the only thing you can do, he claims, for somebody who wants to write a book is buy him a typewriter (for today’s budding authors, an expensive computer). Saul Bellow, who provides the most fascinating of all the interviews, describes how the whole creative process goes back to ‘a primitive prompter or commentator within.’ He reviews his life as being largely an attempt ‘to get nearer to that primitive commentator… He won’t talk until the situation’s right’; you have to prepare the ground for him. Hemingway is typically much more down to earth. ‘The best kind of writing,’ he says, ‘is when you are in love.’

My head drops to the pillow; I ask myself, ‘Well that’s just lovely, now what about the editor?’ There is an interview in here of the former editor-in-chief at Simon and Schuster and later at Knopf, Robert Gottlieb, who is a real dream. He reads books, you see. ‘I was about forty years old,’ he reports, ‘when I had an amazing revelation -- this is going to sound dumb -- it suddenly came to me that not every person in the world assumed, without thinking about it, that reading was the most important thing in life.’ Gottlieb doesn’t like writing, he doesn’t like it at all -- ‘it’s very, very hard, and I just don’t like the activity,’ whilst reading, it ‘is like breathing.’ ‘Bob is the best-read person I’ve ever met,’ says the deputy editor of The New Yorker, Charles McGrath. ‘He is a marvellous reader and surrenders completely to a text,’ says the Nobel Prize winner, Toni Morrison. Gottlieb explains what surrendering to a text actually means: ‘You must not allow yourself to want the writer to write a certain kind of book.’ This is perhaps the biggest challenge of them all for an editor, who naturally has his own ideas of what a book ought to be. But surrender he must. Gottlieb remembers the struggle he had with himself to get inside Joseph Heller’s Something Happened. Gottlieb wanted it completely rewritten; Heller said he could only write it once. Heller won his point and it went on to become one of Gottlieb’s favourite books.

Which is not to suggest that Gottlieb is an easy editor. He has, apparently, a terrible temper; he is not interested at all in lunches -- ‘We have, basically, no social relationship whatsoever,’ says Robert Caro, who has been a colleague as well as an author at Knopf; he can be a tyrant over revisions. A whole chapter, some fifty or sixty pages, was cut out of Heller’s Catch 22. Chaim Potok dropped three hundred pages from The Chosen. Most extraordinary of all is the story behind Caro’s The Power Broker. The delivered manuscript was over a million words long; in the 1960s it was technologically impossible to produce such a book between two covers. So three hundred thousand words had to be cut -- the equivalent of a 500-page book. Caro used to come round to the Knopf offices every morning and day by day, for one whole year, editor Gottlieb and author Caro laboured away at the manuscript. ‘Late in the afternoon when I left,’ says Caro, ‘there was a line of people outside his office, waiting for him.’

Gottlieb got into the dangerous business of suggesting book ideas to authors. It was he who recommended the idea of Wanderings to Chaim Potok; it was he who got Antonia Fraser to write about the six wives of Henry VIII; it was he who persuaded John Cheever to put together his lovely collection of short stories. Where many editors would come a cropper by trying to impose their own ideas on the author, Gottlieb -- because he read and was so familiar with the author’s work -- could soar forward in the sort of happy partnership that would push those books into the skies of success.

Gottlieb retired from his editing a decade ago. Most of the writers I have mentioned are no longer with us. ‘Publishing has changed in many ways and one of them is that these days many editors don’t edit,’ says Gottlieb in his interview of 1994. ‘There are editors now who basically make deals.’ In the year 2007 many editors no longer call themselves editors -- that job has been farmed out to some poorly paid assistant. Many editors today no longer even use the term ‘books’; their deals are only in ‘titles’.

As I wrap my third draft up in brown paper I wonder to myself who is actually going to read this. What control does an author still retain of his text? No, I won’t send it by email; it will be delivered in this crispy brown paper -- editorial comments can be made, with a pencil, in the MS’s margins. If nice Mr Gottlieb were to give me a call I would be all ears open. But today I do not even know from where, or how, that call will come. That’s publishing today and for most authors it’s mighty worrisome.

Now place the problem in a wider context, our context. Could one imagine such a venture as The Paris Review in Paris today? In the first place, Paris is no longer cheap so one is unlikely to capture such a glamorous clientele as that of the 1950s. Yet I am convinced that the quality of our SOAF members is every bit as high as that of the Anglo-American community in France half a century ago; it is possibly, given the wicked rules of selection these days, even higher. Second, we are more dispersed than those Americans were -- though these interviews demonstrate that there was not really much sense of community even then. Third, there is the problem of cost. The cost of setting up such a review would be prohibitive and an efficient system of distribution would be virtually unattainable. One would have to turn to the new technologies.

But, wait a minute, isn’t that what we are doing right now? The ‘Paris Review’ of 2007 is called The SOAF Blogspot.

Tell us what you think.

Google Blogger is out of Beta

2007-02-23T05:55:00.000-08:00

Just to let you know that Google's blog service is out of its 'beta' test phase and has now been upgraded. Apparently it now has all sorts of new bells and whistles so we will have to see how it goes.

Wicked Wikipedia

2007-02-01T02:16:00.000-08:00

Many authors now do their research online. Many journalists rely on information they pick up online. But perhaps we all ought to be a bit careful. How does one control the kind of abuse Dawn Cooper describes below? :

Wikipedia Online Encyclopaedia

Help or Hindrance?

If you want information these days the buzz word is ‘Google’. Apparently the Internet is there to provide you with searches online from the comfort of your own computer. If you are searching for information the maxim seems to be it ‘will be here and it will be right’. Wrong.

Let me explain: I and my four trustees act as the literary executor of a well-known author’s estate. We have the facts and we have no need to make assumptions; we are aware of the fabrication of family tales and we can and have been able to correct these and help all those interested in the said author’s life and works. Since the latter has all been catalogued we are confident that we can provide a full, complete and correct answer to any query.

The trustees decided to place information about our author on Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia. No sooner had we put up our entry than it was removed and another entry replaced it with all the wrong information lifted from a website that we had been taking a great deal of precious time trying to correct as much misinformation was appearing. So we corrected it by blanking the whole entry and starting again; our purpose in blanking the whole page was to conform to Wikipedia’s own request that everything on the site should be verifiable. The information we provided was just that. The other party changed back any alteration we made. Wikipedia called us vandals for blanking the page. Wikipedia were told who we were and refused to allow reversion to our original correct entry.In addition to people altering our submissions they were also re-writing the entry explanations in what can only be described as execrable English.

While this was going on the said parties were e-mailing us privately and their remarks did little add to our conclusion that we were dealing with aliens whose educational reach extended to little more than the oft repeated four letter word and incipient threats.

Wikipedia replied that we could only change what was incorrect, but since by now the whole entry was incorrect we began again! We felt we had not just a right but a responsibility to our author to put the correct information ‘out there’. Wikipedia again said we were vandals for blanking the page. But since it is obvious that even verifiable entries could be changed by anyone then exactly of what use is an entry in Wikipedia?

Someone even added to the entry that our author had been involved in the world of sewers some hundred years before his birth! As far as our feelings for Wikipedia go it sums up our frustrations entirely.

There has been considerable correspondence in the Guardian about Wikipedia and its facility in allowing self imposed editors to change work on line without first proving their credibility to do so. This is an important issue as any mistake on Wikipedia goes worldwide. Does anyone know a way out of this twenty first century labyrinth of madness?

Dawn Cooper

dfpcantab@yahoo.co.uk

Richard Lewis et son Destin Cabotin

2007-01-19T09:22:00.000-08:00

SOAF member, writer-journalist Richard Lewis will be doing what he does best on Friday 26th January: playing the accordion. Only a Brit would be arrogant enough to bring an accordion to Paris and make the locals listen, but there you go. Accompanying him will be some non-SOAF members on cello, guitar, theremin and bass.

Le Press Café, 89 rue Montmartre, Paris 2e. Friday 26 January. From 19h. 100% free from reading or literary discussion. May contain waltz.

Radio Interviews

2007-01-18T07:15:00.000-08:00

My telephone went off at four o’clock yesterday afternoon, a friendly American voice came down the line and, all of a sudden, I was speaking to over a million people, having their breakfast or setting off to work -- coast to American coast.

I had of course been forewarned, just a week before. What do you do when faced with a radio interview? In the past I used to diligently prepare myself: make sure I had all the facts at my fingertips, rehearse the principle themes in my bathtub and generally make myself neurotic so that by the time the microphone was placed in front of me I was a nervous wreck. With experience I have learnt this is not the way to proceed. But nor is the opposite extreme: to do no preparation at all. People are in fact very dishonest about what they do before an interview. The professionals always say they prepare nothing. You know damned well they are lying. Broadcasters have said this to me. I go into their studios only to discover that they are reading from a text, which gives them barely the time to caste a pleading eye up at me.

The answer, of course, is to meet that happy medium which makes you feel comfortable. Some have to prepare like mad, even learn their parts by rote. If you are one of them you are not in bad company. Charles de Gaulle, for example, was one of those professionals who said he never prepared. ‘Paris! Paris brisé, Paris outragé, Paris martyrisé, mais Paris libéré!…’ ‘Vive la Québec libre…’ ‘Je vous ai compris…’, etc. De Gaulle always said that he invented all this on the spur of the moment, in front of the microphone. This was total nonsense. The General had a very good memory and he always wrote his interventions, even his press conferences, down the night before. Churchill, after an unhappy experience in the House of Commons when he stopped in mid-sentence and sat down, red-faced and utterly paralysed, never after 1906 made a public pronouncement without written notes in his hand: even when standing on the top of a car you would notice in the newsreels that he was fumbling around with his notes. Some people need those props, and you are not the smaller for it.

The Blair spin? Not prepared? Don’t you believe it. Every turn of the phrase has been studied beforehand by teams of speechwriters. Sometimes, one is tempted to say that our Prime Minister is over-prepared.

Only experience can tell you what level of preparation is right for you. A beginner has to find this out for himself; my recommendation is to prepare a series of bullet points and stuff them in your pocket. You probably won’t refer to them. But a wave of panic is not uncommon and it is nice to know they are there… Broadcasters are always understanding.

We live in the high-tech era of electronic mail. Ask your producer in advance of the programme if you can field questions on their site immediately after the programme; this could appreciably influence your impact on those listeners who matter most to you: the ones who will buy your books and speak of you at their next dinner party.

How did my interview go? I hadn’t talked about my last published book in months, so I re-read it, jotting down bullet points as I went. When the telephone rang I was sitting at my horseshoe desk with those notes in front of me. But I only once referred to them. I had a fun hour with over a million Americans.

What are your recommendations for radio or television interviews? Tell us about your experiences.

Cross-Channel Travel

2007-01-18T07:12:00.000-08:00

I have been absent for a short while in England. What is remarkable is that if I do not add posts to our blog, nobody else will. Really! I think we could all profit from a bit more participation.

But here is another subject for you to consider. What is the best way to organise your trips from where you live in France to England? If you live in the centre of Paris there is not much that will beat the Eurostar to Waterloo Station and the centre of London. I sometimes myself take day trips to see an editor, put an agent back on track or have a short interview. You are two and a half hours from London by train and then, for example, it is only ten minutes by taxi to the BBC studios at Millbank.

But Eurostar is quite expensive. I haven’t done it, but I imagine Ryanair from provincial France to provincial England is probably cheaper. The problem I have with airlines is that they never take me to where I want to go. And there is an awful lot of carrying of bags. Far better to throw all the equipment in the back of a car and drive to the nearest ferry.

Now that is cheap. My last trip to England cost me, with the car € 118, with the car, round-trip Dieppe-Newhaven. The problem was with the winter storms: a delay on the out-trip and a cancellation on the return. On the out-trip I eventually got aboard ship at midnight and took a cabin -- a spacious place with five bunk beds, a shower and basin, all for € 30. Switch out the lights and you will sleep for four hours, cradled by the sway of the boat and a slight creaking sound that will make you dream of sailing on a nineteenth-century schooner with one of Daphne du Maurier’s heroines lying next to you. Make sure your car is loaded with petrol. At night you have to go into the centre of Dieppe or, on the Newhaven side, down an unsigned alley by the docks -- and it will cost you 20 per cent more to fill up your tank in England.

A Newhaven landing in the light of day always brings the amusement of the first roundabout and the first English road signs. The French, and not a few English, stick to the right and then scud down the blind alley that takes you into a railway siding.

Those storms were impressive. The new ferries must be equipped with stabilisers for you barely sense the waves, save the large odd swell that smashes all the cafeteria cutlery -- you’d have thought they would be prepared for it. From starboard you can watch the ships go by, sending their white, luminous spray high into the winter’s sky. What memories in that cross-Channel voyage! Vera Brittan recalled crossing the Channel to England one spring day in 1917 after a dreadful tour of nursing duty; her boat passed a transport heading for France, the ‘men all waved to us and cheered.’ Benjamin Haydon, a painter, was among the first Englishmen to cross the Channel after the announcement, in April 1814, of Napoleon’s abdication. ‘You seem to be going, as it were, beyond yourself,’ wrote Haydon philosophically. ‘I am not ashamed to confess, that I looked earnestly at the hills which rose before me, to discover something French about them.’ To his disappointment, they seemed rather English; but he found the people exotic. If you have a memory like mine, which goes back a few hundred years, you will always spy something awe-inspiring in that cross-Channel voyage -- I do not know any other trip in the world quite like it.

What are your thoughts? And what is the cheapest, most efficient way of getting to England?

Agent in Paris

2006-12-28T02:38:00.000-08:00

Shelley Power, literary agent, writes to SOAF: ‘I am an English literary agent who happens to work from Paris rather than from London. My details can be found at the end of this message and as you may tell from the Ltd, the agency is an English company, banking in London. I am not a French agent and in fact I make regular trips to London to visit authors and publishers… Anglophone writers who live in France would have the advantage with me of being able to work with someone on the same soil who is also involved in London publishing. I have only a small client list, do all my own reading and am able to offer personal attention. [Prospective authors] should bear in mind that the fact that a project is set in France, does not make me a more likely agent than someone in London since I have to sell to the same British publishers… I am interested in good fiction, literary and commercial, though not science fiction, fantasy and horror, with one exception, vampire chick-lit, a curious sub-genre following in the footsteps of "Buffy"… I am interested in non-fiction, though not academic books - members could ask me in a short email whether their subject is of interest to me. I only deal with adult books. I do not take on poetry or plays or original tv/film scripts.’

Shelley Power Literary Agency Ltd
13, rue du Pré Saint Gervais
75019 Paris, France

shelley.power@wanadoo.fr
Tel: +33 (0)1 42 38 36 49
Fax: +33 (0)1 40 40 70 08

An Author's Christmas

2006-12-24T04:59:00.000-08:00

Even for pagans Christmas was a season of lights and of hope. Those of us who have published this last year a blockbuster to great acclaim will have no problem calling out the cymbals, cornets and sackbuts -- a celebration we should all be happy to share. There are others whom we may call the expectant, and for them the message of hope is only too real: a life’s work near completion, a labour of love coming out next year, a research project finally ready for the press, or simply an enchanted poem that’s just waiting to be read. Their glasses of red claret will glow with special warmth on this day. Then there are the rest of us who perhaps published last year, or the previous year, three years or five years ago -- disappointed people for whom today’s band doesn’t quite seem to hit the high note expected. Do they now turn away, hide themselves in an unlit nook, and not really enjoy the music? Well, Christmas was never meant to be blind joy. The original story, don’t forget, is that of a family which finds no place in the inn. But, all the same, it remains a story of hope and of mission.

The basic thought behind SOAF is that authors’ lives are not easy in a world of fast talk and mass media. Working in France carries its peculiar challenges. Because we live abroad we see things that people who stay at home do not. Our books cross frontiers. Our voices, wherever we stand in the publishing cycle at year’s end, add special value to the culture of our time. That is why we all celebrate Christmas today.

French 'Sécu' in English

2006-12-19T00:43:00.000-08:00

Last Wednesday my studies of the final painful hours of Oscar Wilde’s life in Paris were interrupted by a telephone call from a lady so cheerful that she could have raised Lazarus from the dead. She was calling from a Paris office of the French Sécu -- the French national health insurance system.

Up until then my quest for a clear, user-friendly explanation of how it all works, presentable to SOAF, had come up against a series of obstacles, not least of which proved to be AGESSA, the health security organisation designed specifically for professional authors in France. To my question as to whether somebody in his association could explain to a nice group of British authors the Man From AGESSA bluntly answered: ‘We don’t give explanations.’ There followed a pregnant silence. Then: ‘Just send your members in to open up their dossiers and we will do what is necessary.’ I was about to ask why they should bother to open those enigmatic, multi-coloured dossiers when a prolonged expiring sound -- like Oscar’s death rattle -- came down the phone line: I had, apparently, not completed this year’s ‘blue form’ correctly. The ‘blue form’ is the thing you fill out each year to reveal the riches earned from your latest bestsellers. Obviously I had caught AGESSA at a sore moment and I turned elsewhere.

The call I got on Wednesday was in response to a letter I had sent to the Department of International Relations at the national headquarters of the Sécurité Sociale, which sits in Paris's Twelfth Arrondissement. I had not expected an answer and was surprised at the wealth of information this lovely person passed on to me. I am now convinced that SOAF’s request last October for a presentation on the Sécu will be realised some time in the New Year -- well, let’s say, around March.

Among the useful bits of information I received are two websites, both available in English, that present in a clear, Cartesian fashion, a history and the Sécu 's general workings -- including organigrams of rather fantastic design. Like Britain’s NHS, the French Sécu is a religious system born out of the aftermath of the Second World War, which excites emotions of varying intensities. But it also offers some very real services. The first site, www.adecri.org , was set up by an association that is specifically designed for foreigners; ADECRI has apparently a full-time time team of experts whom I am quite sure will respond to our requests -- you can of course contact them directly through this site.

The second site, www.protectionsocialefrancaise.org , was also created by ADECRI and it outlines the history of the Sécu, its benefits, its mutuelles and the way it is organised locally. I find it a little weak on authors’ problems. But as a general introduction to the system it would be hard to better. From the site you can download a 55-page booklet, The French Social Protection System. It’s the best piece of literature I have yet come across on the operations of the French Sécu.

Naturally, we will continue in our quest for clear guides on the Sécu. In the meantime, I do encourage you all to consult these two sites. If you have any suggestions or information to share with us, do let us know.

A Christmas Carol

2006-12-12T02:08:00.000-08:00

Whether you are one who celebrates in late December a Winter Festival, a Festival of Lights or a genuine Christmas you almost certainly -- as an expat in France -- have a nostalgia for English carolling. What better place to hear those ancient songs than at Saint George’s, just off the Arc de Triomphe on the corner of Avenue Iéna and Rue Auguste Vacquerie. Peter Hicks directs the choir there. A stirring, yet somewhat pensive sound. Not ten minutes walk from the Champs Elysées lies this welcome corner of England. Saint George’s carol service will be held next Sunday, 17 December, at 6.30 pm. Hot wine is served afterwards. I wouldn’t miss the event for anything in the world.

I often, in fact, attend Sunday service at Saint George’s to hear the sermons of the Revs. David Houghton and Bernard Sixtus; the singing of hymns which I learned in childhood; and those soaring harmonies of Peter’s choir. Lunch is usually served afterwards. Many a British author -- young and old -- has sat at that merry table. For more information tap into www.stgeorgesparis.com

The NUJ Wishes You a Merry Christmas

2006-12-12T02:03:00.000-08:00

You seek good company, fine jokes and somebody to prop up your glass after midnight? They’re all there in the Paris branch of the National Union of Journalists. Last Friday, 8 December, I attended their Christmas Party at ‘Le Grand Bleu’ by the Bastille and didn’t get home until five (am). Jeff Apter chaired a most businesslike business meeting that addressed itself to the problems that matter. There followed a grand banquet with over sixty talkers at table. Was that a Russian sauce they spread on the mutton chops? Whatever, it made the conversation glow. The surprise came with Jim Pollard's cabaret that followed: an astonishing display of musical talent from the best word-mongers in town -- pop, country and a second Liza Minelli. That’s no exaggeration. Then the drinks and the dreamy chatter. On Friday night I discovered a delightful, sweet, gallant and creative people -- people who are going to help us further the civilised aims of SOAF. Just watch this blog!

And for more on the NUJ in Paris tap into http://www.nujparis.org.uk .

Watch Out! You're Googled!

2006-12-11T13:05:00.000-08:00

In the age of Google all authors are much more widely traceable on the web, even if they are hiding out in deepest France. There was a very funny article in the International Herald Tribune about being an author, in this case living in Berlin, and 'Being Googled' in advance by people the author would come into contact with. Worth a read for anyone who posts material on the web about themselves.
The article was titled Paying a Price for Googleability and the full article can be found at http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/12/04/opinion/edstein.php

Agent's Advice to British Authors in France

2006-12-07T03:01:00.000-08:00

Dawn Cooper forwards me the following interesting item :

A few weeks ago I visited Paris to talk to my literary agent. An agent whose family have operated from the same office and with the same vast knowledge of French and worldwide publishing for over one hundred years.

Our conversation covered the Frankfurt Book fair – ‘a great disappointment’ to my agent, who felt that no one there was interested in publishing good, readable books, but only in making money. To his dismay he sees bookshelves full of look-alike plots and bad English. The idea of ‘pile ‘em high and sell ’em cheap’ is not quite there but talent and good writing is not going to be in the ascendancy.

His advice to English writers living in France was that, in his experience, French publishing houses would not publish anything that has not already been published in the writer’s own first language. His advice is to accept that UK publishing houses are not the preserve of gentlemen publishers any longer and if you want your book published here then you have to look, for now, to the small but elite publishers in the USA or university publishing houses who are prepared to take the risk to publish in English first. This may account for the number of foreign writers receiving French literary prizes.

Dawn Cooper

dfpcantab@yahoo.co.uk

Secretary of SOAF

2006-12-04T06:38:00.000-08:00

Last week I was in the craggy heights of Lower Normandy, known as La Suisse Normande, to inspect the fortified medieval town of Domfront where there had been a tragic siege back in 1574 -- a subject that I am currently writing about. In the local café I met Richard and Dawn Poupart, who represent all I have come to expect of British authors living in France: you couldn’t find a more British couple in Sussex, yet they are well integrated in the local life that they lead in this part of Normandy, and they are absolutely charming. Dawn is a first-rate literary biographer and we discussed the many editors and publishers we discovered we had in common. Richard, I was pleased to find out, knows a good deal more about computers than I. It was the sort of meeting that we at SOAF encourage.

Richard has very kindly volunteered to act as Secretary at SOAF, an offer which, on behalf of our members, I immediately accepted -- much I must say to my relief. Collating membership lists, maintaining correspondence and keeping our new Blog up to date is quite a task. I imagine we are all grateful for Richard’s help. On occasions he will be contacting you directly.

An updated Networking List should be out to you shortly, thanks to Richard’s aid. We are also actively seeking a qualified speaker who can address our members on the French Sécu, as well as answer your questions. Keep you eyes on this Blog.

France Translates English Works

2006-11-23T03:23:00.000-08:00

An interesting article in Tuesday's International Herald Tribune began as follows:

In France, literary honors are going to foreigners

By Alan Riding

French authors can hardly be faulted for not being productive: over the past two months, they have published no fewer than 475 new novels. Yet despite all this creative energy, probably the most striking feature of this autumn's literary season is that of six coveted book prizes, four went to novels written in French by non-French authors.

The article goes on to explore why it is so few French authors are translated into English, and so many English authors are translated into French. A number of theories are advanced as to why this, one being that "the strong narrative content of much American and British fiction may well account for its popularity in France".

While "American and British novelists fare well here, the number of living French writers who have had a major international impact of late is exactly one: Michel Houellebecq, whose books include, under their English titles, "The Elementary Particles," "Platform" and "The Possibility of an Island." For Savigneau, (Editor's note: literary critic at Le Monde) there is an explanation. "It's good to have someone who tells stories," she said.

You can find the full article at http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/11/20/style/frenchlit.php

A blog team

2006-11-20T03:55:00.000-08:00

As you can see from the way in which this blog is developing, some members of SOAF have proposed posts which I have immediately published. It is obviously a way forward: you have an idea or information that you would like to share with other authors, you publish it on our blog and -- with a bit of British luck -- you will generate comments from others who share enlightened views like your own.

It is possible to set up what is known as a ‘Team Blog’ -- and this is what I would like to do with our SOAF blog. Members of the team (basically an ‘editorial board’) would be able to create their own postings without going through ‘Comments’ or having to email me.

Question: Would you like to be on the team? Do you have any other thoughts on the editing of the SOAF blog?

Computer advice needed

2006-11-20T03:52:00.000-08:00

Blogging may be new to you. It is also new to me. As a matter of fact, it is new to most people. No computer store, indeed nobody I know in the Paris region -- let alone my own sweet zone out here on the frontiers of Normandy and Isle de France -- is able to give me advice on the technical aspects of blogging. It does seem to me that we have a serious problem with ‘search engines’ such as with our host, Google, or with Orange. Why is it that when I type in http://soafrance.blogspot.com I am told no such site exists? Orange recommends me to try ‘souffrance’ in the place of ‘soafrance’. ‘La souffrance! Divin remède à nos impuretés,’ assured Monsieur Baudelaire. Nice joke, but we don’t want to be its victim.

Question: Can you, or do you know anybody, who can give me regular technical advice on the running of this blog?

Play Bac Presse

2006-11-18T08:37:00.000-08:00

Another member has sent me the following posting:

Play Bac Presse are the most successful publisher of children's daily newspapers. What's more, they are a French company and are planning to create an e-newspaper in the USA. This might be a good time for SOAF members who write for children to get in touch with Play Bac Presse and see what opportunties exist for feature writing.
Does an opportunity exist for a SOAF member in France to create a childrens e-newspaper, modelled on the Play Bac Presse, for the large anglophone community in France?

For more information see below:

US: Children's Internet publication prepares for launch
Daily children's newspapers seem to be popping up across the globe, most recently in Bolivia and soon in Mexico, Panama, and Ecuador. Now, Play Bac Presse, the French publisher of the most successful children's dailies to date, plan to launch a new kids paper directed at 8-10-year-olds in the United States.

Play Bac is working with 5W Mignon-Media, based in New York City, to create My Daily 10 e-newspaper in November of this year. The paper focuses on the 8-10-year-old market because by that age children are interested in reading and are beginning to read well. Because advertising is often touchy in children's markets, My Daily 10 will be dependent on subscriptions and may open the paper up to sponsors in the future.

The decision to launch an online children's paper comes after Play Bac's failed attempt for an United States children's newspaper last year. For 5 months Play Bac worked with the Miami Herald to distribute three children's dailies for ages 7, 10, and 13. The papers received a positive reaction from kids, parents, and teachers. However, because only 20% of the households in the area chosen had kids in the correct demographic the papers ceased printing after only 5 months.

The new My Daily 10 hopes to not just write simple news stories, but articles appealing to kids. Also, because the average 10-year-old's attention span is about 10 minutes, that's how long it will take to read the newspaper. My Daily 10 is working on attracting an audience through Internet and e-mail adds and has also started a blog to educate parents and teachers.

This move to the internet reflects similar changes in Canada's free youth magazine Dose and the shocking move of the US' Elle Girl from print soley to the internet.

Source: Editor & Publisher

Literary Discussion on the Internet

2006-11-17T01:26:00.000-08:00

A member of SOAF has forwarded the following post. Let me once more emphasise how keen we are to receive postings from members.

For UK authors in France living far from hubs of literary activity - cities full of busily lunching agents, publishers and authors; readings and literary parties - it's easy to feel isolated from English-language literary discussion. Even for those of us in Paris, we are not woven into the fabric of the London literary scene.
Happily the internet provides a host of free radio programmes about books and writing, also available as downloadable podcasts.
One SOAF member sent me the details of the four programmes she always checks-out to see what is on, three being specialist book shows, the fourth being a show that regularly features in-depth interviews of up to an hour with writers that rarely give interviews.
Her list, all available for free at the podcast directory within itunes, is as follows:
KCRW's Bookworm: Half-hour shows interviewing a different writer each week. The show from 09/11 is an interview with Zadie Smith. The presenter sounds like he is emerging from a very heavy night c. 1971 but he has an impeccable guest list and few writers turn down his invitations to appear.
NPR: Books: National Public Radio (the excellent BBC of the USA and funded by voluntary subscriptions) has a one hour show on books each Sunday. Normally made up of 5-6 segments, last Sunday's show featured a book about William James, Antonia Fraser's new bio on Louis XIV; a new quotation collection; a novel from Tillie Olsen; Allende Reimangines Life of Conquistador 'Ines' and Mandela's authorized biography
The Book Show: From ABC (Australia's BBC) an excellent 40 minute daily show (Monday-Friday - oh that the BBC would do that) on books and writing. Yesterday's show was about the short story now, and Ramona Koval's guests are often American, British and Commonwealth writers as well as Australian.
Open Source: also available at www.radioopensource.org these 50 minute week day shows, out of Boston, have to be about the most compelling radio on current affairs and ideas. Public intellectualism is alive and well in the USA and the presenter, Christopher Lydon often touches on books and writing. He recently had a terrific one hour interview with Philip Roth and a show on the Great American Novel (further to the recent NYT poll on this subject) and what it might look like in 2030.
Question: Which other podcasts or on-line radio shows about books and writing, in French or English from anywhere in the world, do you listen to, and can you post your recommendations as a comment to this thread?

Christmas Party, 8 December, Paris

2006-11-16T08:24:00.000-08:00

Jim Pollard, Secretary of the Paris branch of the National Union of Journalists, has very kindly extended an invitation to all members of SOAF, on Friday evening, 8 December, at La Grande Bleu, near the Bastille.

Jim, who is also a member of SOAF, writes:

I would like formally on behalf of the NUJ Paris branch to invite the Society of Authors (France) to our Christmas Party. It would be great if you and some colleagues could come and take a table or two. I already know that we have at least half a dozen members in common so there should be some other familiar faces there too.

The event is very informal. About 50 of our 200 members usually attend. There's the usual drink and food plus a hastily improvised cabaret featuring some of the branch which should be entertaining. As I said, very informal. The menu is yet to be finalised but will be around 22-23 Euros including some wine payable on the night.

The event takes place at La Grande Bleu, Port de l'Arsenal, Boulevard de Bastille 75012 Paris on 8 December. Nearest metro: Bastille. We have a quick meeting at 6.30 - which you're also very welcome to attend if you wish - followed by the dinner itself at about 8.

This sounds like a lot of fun. And, of course, it will be a means of establishing further contacts. If you are interested in attending, please write to Jim Pollard directly at nujparis@wanadoo.fr

Several of you are also members of the NUJ, a noble association with which we obviously share many an aim. I am currently investigating, with Jim, specific areas of common interest that SOAF may have with the NUJ, Paris. If any of you have any thoughts or recommendations about this please comment below. The web site of the Paris NUJ is http://www.nujparis.org.uk . Keep an eye on our blog for developments.

Bulletin Board

2006-11-16T08:18:00.000-08:00

I am setting up a Bulletin Board for odd items that could be of interest to you. It is, of course, open to your own contributions.

The most recent development is that membership of SOAF has almost doubled in the last two week.

But let’s not just sit there, satisfied. The participation of each one of you is absolutely vital for our success -- which is your success. One posting on this blog that I would like to see expand is Profiles. Tell us what you do, what you write, and what you would like to do; there will be some people out there who will be willing to help you. The more people who write up a profile, the more people will consult it -- and that can only do us all good. If we get enough profiles we could set up a special page devoted to them

Another area that I encourage you all to look into concerns Regional Meetings. Most of you do not live in the Paris Region. Several of you have written to me saying you feel a little ‘out on a limb’. With our Networking List and this blog there is no longer any reason for any of you to feel like that. But I do believe that more intitiatives at the regional level could be helpful.

Welcome: A Blog for the Professional Author

2006-10-24T10:05:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the SOAF blogspot.

SOAF, the Society of Authors, France, is the French regional forum of the Society of Authors, London (see www.societyofauthors.org )

The term "blog" is a contraction of "Web log." "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog. A blog is a website where entries are made in journal style and displayed in a reverse chronological order. So if you want to follow our postings in the order in which they were entered -- and generally in their order of importance -- you should scroll down to the bottom of this page and read upwards, posting by posting.

A ‘posting’ is a specific topic for dialogue, initially described by the editor and open to commentary. If you wish to make a comment, click on the letter box after ‘COMMENTS’ and follow the simple directions.

In the last couple of years blogging has become an increasingly significant means of communication in business, government and politics. We believe it has enormous potential as an instrument by which you, as an author, can communicate your thoughts and promote your books among the people who matter to you. We urge all members of SOAF to participate in this blog, for we think it could be of great significance in your professional future.

Check in whenever you like to see new postings, and most importantly to email posting ideas to our Chairman, Gregor Dallas.

From here on in it's over to you, Gregor and me, the members of the SOA, France, to make this blogspot work for us. If you don't play you don't win, so please, try and participate as much as you can.

Signing in

In order to make your first comment you will need to sign in as a ‘blogger’. The system does not accept anonymous comments.

You want to make your first comment. You click on ‘Comments’. A simple worksheet will appear on your screen. Type in your comment, followed by your Society of Authors membership number. You could even paste in a new posting that you would like to recommend. Below this comment you will be asked to type in Username and Password. Since you have not yet chosen one, go down to the question ‘No blogger account?’ and click on ‘Sign up here’. You get a second worksheet on your screen. Type in your User Name (no spaces), your Password, your Display Name (this will normally be the same as your User Name), and your E-mail (this will not appear on the Blog, and nobody on the Blog, including the Chairman, has access to it). Then click on ‘Continue’. Check the text of your Comment, and your membership number. Then click on ‘Login and Publish’. Your first comment has just been published on the SOAF Blog!

For subsequent comments: Click on ‘Comments’. Type in your comment (or paste). Below the comment, in the spaces provided, type in your User Name and Password. Click on ‘Login and Publish’. Your comment is now published.

I am leaving for England for a week. What a pleasure it shall be if, on my return, I find a series of comments from the members of SOAF. You are the people who create our new French community of British authors!

If you are not a member of our parent organisation, the Society of Authors, 84 Drayton Gardens, London SW10 9SB, see www.societyofauthors.org

Responsible participation and respect for other members

We expect this blog to initiate original and robust debate. Please remember, however, that its success depends on your respect for the persons and reputations of all those involved. Some blogs have floundered because of slanderous remarks made by participants.

Gregor will do his best to vet incoming comments to assure high standards of dialogue. But each participant is legally responsible for his remarks, which is why we are obliged to ask you to identify yourself by email and SOA membership number. Non-members are welcome to participate, but we highly recommend membership (see www.societyofauthors.org)

Question: How do you think we can best assure high standards of dialogue? Is there a conflict here between the maintenance of high standards and the privacy of participants -- and their right to free expression? If so, how do we resolve this?

SOAF Organisation

2006-10-24T10:00:00.000-07:00

Not many of us have the time nor the willingness for a complex organisation, and after all we are all already paid up members of the SOA with its own conditions of membership which we adhere to.

Gregor is proposing the following simple structure:

An annual National Chairperson who will be responsible for maintaining www.soafrance.blogspot.com and chairing the annual meeting.
Regional chairpersons responsible for a) gathering data on Anglophone clubs, associations and bookshops within their region b) organising regional meetings, Paris being one of those regions. Volunteers are welcome.
A secretary for any SOAF meeting, be it regional, annual or Parisian who would volunteer at the beginning of any SOAF meeting to take notes for that one meeting and write a posting that the Chairperson can publish on our blog. (Ian notes: ‘On the occasion of the first meeting we didn't appoint a note take until two thirds of the way through our meeting so please forgive me if these early reports are a little sketchy - I rely on participants to fill in the gaps by making comments on this blog’.) WE DO NEED SOMEBODY TO VOLUNTEER AS SECRETARY OF SOAF. If you are interested do contact us through the comment section below this posting or email Gregor directly.

For ease of planning, our 'year' would start 01/01/07 and the regional and national chairs would be one year roles, voted on by the people attending the annual meeting. (For all intents and purposes our first meeting in October 06 was our 2006 annual meeting and although we didn't have an official vote, I think it was clear everyone was happy for Gregor to carry it forward in 2007. So for the sake of simplicity and in honor of Gregor's efforts to get this venture off the ground, it is proposed that Gregor is the national chair for 2007.

At the annual meeting people could nominate themselves to be the chairpersons (regional or national) for the next year, and there would be a vote. There would be no constitution precluding the chairpersons being re-elected for another term, and no limit on the number of terms the chairs could be held by the same person.

Question: Do you have any comments on this as a way of organising SOAF?

Profiles

2006-10-24T09:56:00.001-07:00

I have included my own profile in the blog (though I am not entirely satisfied with the way this is currently set up). Why not send us yours? After all, the whole purpose of this blog is to promote your books and to help you find an efficient means of promoting them in the future. Depending on your response, we could devote, perhaps, one month to each person who would be willing to provide us a profile in depth. Tell us what you think.

Question: Do you think presenting profiles on this blog is a good idea? If so, how would you like this to be done? If not, give us your reasons.

Links

2006-10-24T09:56:00.000-07:00

I have created a number of links on the SOAF blog.

Question: If you know of any useful writing related sites that you can recommend and which we can include on our section of links, please make a comment below with the url of the link and a few words about why you think we should link to them.

Next Annual Meeting -- A Literary Festival?

2006-10-24T09:27:00.000-07:00

Where and when should we have our next annual meeting (assuming hopefully more frequent regional and Parisian meetings)?

Should it be in Paris given how many of the members don't live in Paris?

Could it be turned into a weekend event; a mixture of speakers, readings, discussion about writing and issues facing writers in France, and of course socialising? Could we pull in speakers from the SOA in London?

Is there someone who would like to take charge of organising an annual event?

During our October meeting it was suggested that our annual meeting could take place alongside a literary festival somewhere in France where many members lived. Lennox Morrison, the Scottish novelist, has looked into the matter of festivals and this is what she writes (24 October):

The biggest festival is the Salon du Livre in Paris. Next year it runs from 23rd to 27th March with the theme of India. There's a further general book festival in Nice in June or July with more than 200 authors and various events including cafes litteraires. Smaller general book festivals take place round the country, for instance, the Foire du Livre at Brive-la-Gaillarde which in 2006 is from 3rd to 5th November. Specialised festivals include: children's and youth fiction at Seine-Saint-Denis and at Boulogne; cartoon books (BDs) at Angouleme, Paris and Saint-Malo; thrillers at Montigny-les-Cormeilles; crime at Le Mans; Breton lit in Brittany; roman noir at Frontignan la Peyrade -- by their very nature these festivals a bit to specialised for us. My attention was caught, however, by the Salon du Livre Insulaire which is held on the l'île d'Ouessant , Finistere at the end of August. They seem mainly interested in islanders within the French speaking world although they also include all the islands of the Med, many of which are of course not within la francophonie. They don't mention the UK. Perhaps an off-shore meeting is a little too adventurous? However, if there's a clutch of Society of Authors members in this area then the festival organisers might welcome participation from British islanders? Another festival with a difference is the Etonnants Voyageurs Festival International du Livre et du Film in Saint-Malo. Created in 1990, the festival is based around the idea of writers going out into the world with a sense of discovery; a sense of elsewhere. In this spirit it sometimes exports itself abroad, for instance, to Dublin, where the emphasis is on rencontres with writers in the host country. This year's festival will take place between 26th and 28th May in Saint-Malo and the theme is World Cities, including, of course, London. For a flavour of this festival take a peek at www.etonnants-voyageurs.net/ Since our aim was to consider a meeting outside Paris I would suggest that either the general festival in Nice or the Etonnants Voyageurs festival in Saint-Malo might be worth a closer look. I do, however, remember Lucy Wadham's comment about the dreariness of a book festival she attended. An alternative to arranging a meeting parallel to a book festival would be to identify a cluster of Society of Authors members outside Paris. The Languedoc? Normandy? We could then find out whether there was an English language bookseller who might be interested in hearing from us. Shakespeare & Co. felt like the ideal meeting place in Paris and the restaurant next door was superb. However, if we ever had difficulty finding a suitable date for Shakespeare & Co. then the Maison des Ecrivains on the rue de Verneuil in the Seventh has very grand premises with a relaxed cafe-restaurant in the courtyard and one of their missions is to be friendly to foreign writers.

Question: What are your suggestions for next year’s meeting? Do share with us your ideas of venues and dates.

Paris Meetings

2006-10-24T09:26:00.000-07:00

How often do Parisian members of SOAF?

Question: Is there anyone who wants to take responsibility for organising meetings and agreeing their frequency for Paris-based members? Given that Gregor is not far from Paris should it be him or should he retain an overall national role?

Post your comments here please.

Regional Meetings

2006-10-24T09:25:00.000-07:00

It is clear that a number of people were unable to attend due to distance from Paris.

Question: are there any people out there interested in organising regional meetings? If so please post a comment here and Gregor will write a posting on you and how to get in touch with you. No doubt regional groups will arrange their own frequency of meetings.

http://soafrance.blogspot.com

2006-10-24T09:22:00.000-07:00

It was agreed that this blog should be set up as a first step to provide an online meeting place for SOAF members. Members can suggest to the chairman of SOAF ideas for postings or even send him already written postings that he can then post at www.soafrance.blogspot.com

It's all about participation - your ideas for events, activities, issues to be raised and published as postings and most importantly your comments on the postings.

Next steps for SOAF

2006-10-24T09:18:00.000-07:00

Gregor was keen to impress upon us that we had built some momentum simply by having such a well attended first meeting, but ongoing participation was the key.

A number of issues were discussed, but if you have an idea as to what SOAF could do please post a comment here.

Further separate postings have been made on what we did agree and there is a posting on how SOAF should be organised.

Health and the Business of Living in France

2006-10-24T08:58:00.000-07:00

This was an area of wide-interest to a large number of members, primarily involving various ‘caisses’ and other agents of the French helath system as well as other social and pension organisations; what were the terms, conditions, advantages and disadvantages of joining AGESSA, which manages social security for authors in France.

We here publish Gregor’s preliminary notes on the subject:

Sécurité sociale
The French equivalent of the National Health Service is a system of obligatory health insurance. Anybody living in France, by law, has to belong to it -- though, in fact, there are fairly large swathes of the population that don’t. I personally would recommend it.
To join up you have to do it through your profession -- which strikes most foreigners as most peculiar (I think it harkens back to the Ancien Régime where a man’s position was determined by his état or his ‘status’ in the social order of things).
At any rate, if you are a teacher, you register via the National Education system. If you are a worker you’ll probably do it through your Syndicat. If you’re a plumber you’ll go through representatives of what are known as the Petits et Moyens Enterprises (PME). And if you are an independent writer…
Well there is an organisation known as AGESSA, l’Association pour la Gestion de la Sécurité Sociale des Auteurs which sits at 21, bis, rue de Bruxelles, in the 9e arrond. (01 48 78 25 00)
AGESSA is not what they call a caisse de sécurité sociale -- that is it not an organisation that will pay for your health problems. But they do give you good advice and I have found them quite user-friendly. They could put you in touch with the myriad caisses that actually pay out the sums when you have a problem.
-- What you will probably go through is a Social Security organisation in your own department -- it may be Paris, or in my case it is the department of the Eure -- that is known as the CPAM -- Caisse Primaire d’Assurance Maladie.
-- The CPAM won’t cover you 100 per cent., in fact, sometimes far from that. To top up the payments you need a mutuelle, which is again organised by profession.
--I belong to a mutuelle called the MNLPC, the Mutuelle Nationale de la Presse, du Livre et de la Communication -- which strikes me as a very political organisation and some of my friends have said it is too expensive, though its payments strike me as generous.

Of all the issues of the evening it was the AGESSA issue that was certainly one of the ones that grabbed many members’ attention. I fear we failed to even establish if ANY ONE of us was a member and if so why, and we left none the wiser as to what we needed to be doing as authors if our writing income was either our primary or secondary source of income.

There was no one present who could, and nor was it the environment to present a clear and comprehensive presentation on AGESSA, although a journalist/historical novelist present did report that the NUJ (who have a Paris branch) was endeavouring to understand and explain to their members the obligations and benefits of joining (or otherwise).

Alison Culliford has kindly offered to look into this matter, feed information to Gregor and hopefully we can soon expect a clear and user-friendly explanation of AGESSA and our obligations or otherwise to join it.

Key issues touched upon was the relevance annual earnings in a world where authors can receive a large advance and then very little for the coming years, and as a result what would be the costs of joining, the monthly payments, for authors in perhaps a 'quiet year'?

The AGESSA issue is definitely one that concerns a lot of members and we hope that this blog and future meetings will provide some clarity.

Question: What comments do you have to make concerning the Social Security system in France? Do you have information to share with us?

The meeting did not have time to cover other aspects of the business of living in France, such as dealing with France’s complicated legal system.

Question: Do you have any comments about the practical side of living in France that you would like to share with us?

Translation and the French Book Industry

2006-10-24T08:54:00.000-07:00

Opinion seemed to be divided between a number of participants on the ease or otherwise of getting one's work published in France in French.

Authors present who had had their work published in French had all had their foreign rights sold by their UK agent or by their agent's foreign rights colleague or collaborator.

As for translators, it was reported that French publishers prefer to work with their own translators, something of a risk if you are not happy with the outcome, but seemingly unavoidable.

But there was also a positive sentiment that the French book market was in fact extremely open to foreign works, indeed the average French bookstore will have a far wider collection of non-French writers available in French than your average Waterstones in England. And this was not just something that applied to mass market paper backs, but a far wider range of writers.

But finding translators one's self with the aim of getting the work into French before selling into the French publishing houses (almost exclusively a world that operates entirely without agents) was going to be expensive (someone quoted around 120 euros per 1,000 words) and equally was not going to satisfy their requirements to work with their own translators.

This all said, some words of hope.

One member spoke of a new agent, Ana Jarota, who was actively looking to set herself up as an agent in France, and even had her email address.

QUESTION: IF YOU ARE THAT SOFA MEMBER PLEASE POST A COMMENT WITH ANA'S EMAIL CONTACT AND SOME MORE INFORMATION ABOUT HER.

Other members spoke of AX, La Nouvelle Agence and Andrew Nurnberg all as having a useful potential role to play in this area.

QUESTION: IF YOU WERE ONE OF THE MEMBERS WHO HAS MORE INFORMATION ON EITHER OF THESE PEOPLE OR AGENCIES PLEASE POST A COMMENT BELOW AND LET US KNOW MORE.

There was an interesting conversation about writing in French, how that affected form and style, and what opportunities that offered. Indeed one biographer present had been unable to sell her book to a UK publisher but managed to find a French publisher provided she wrote it in French, which, with some corrective help, she is doing.

Selling Books in France

2006-10-24T08:51:00.000-07:00

Gregor's opening comments indicated that could be as many as 800,000 Brits living in France, and if we are to include the wider English-reading community there is no doubt that a country the size of France presents significant opportunities for selling our books: we're here, we're local and there is huge demand from English speaking associations and bookshops for speakers and authors that wouldn't normally go outside the UK.

It was agreed that the members would, by department and ideally by region, collect and share via this blog a list of English-language 'circuits' that authors could go on to promote their books to the English community in France, a very large percentage of which do not live in Paris.

QUESTION: WILL YOU VOLUNTEER TO COLLATE DETAILS OF ENGLISH-LANGUAGE BOOKSHOPS, CLUBS AND ASSOCIATIONS IN YOUR DEPARTMENT AND GIVE THEM TO OUR CHAIRMAN, GREGOR DALLAS WHO CAN THEN PUBLISH THEM AS POSTS ON THIS WEB SITE? VOLUNTEERS ARE REQUESTED FROM EVERY CORNER OF FRANCE, ESPECIALLY IN THOSE AREAS WITH LARGE CONCENTRATIONS OF ANGLOPHONE READERS.

If you have any suggestions or ideas as to exactly what sort of information we should be gathering please post a comment here.

QUESTION: WE ARE ALSO LOOKING FOR A VOLUNTEER TO COLLATE ALL THIS INFORMATION, POSSIBLY IN AN EXCEL FILE FORMAT AND KEEP IT UPDATED. WOULD YOU BE INTERESTED IN DOING THIS, AND IF SO PLEASE MAKE A POST HERE?

We did not have time to discuss promoting our books (if published in French) here in France but if you have experience of this please make a comment here.

There were some ideas from Gregor he had at local Midathèques and other local French associations as forums for public speaking and even a possible revenue source.

Gregor notes: I am building up information on my own local Médiathèque, which I am sure is similar to those elsewhere in France. I will post what I think will be of interest to other members.

Question: Is there anyone out there who has information on a French public speaking agency?

From the pulpit

2006-10-24T08:16:00.000-07:00

After the initial introductions, Gregor then explained to the meeting why he, as a British author living in France, had called the meeting and provided his personal view of the current situation in publishing.

Essentially, Gregor has the impression that readership is in decline and that this has created both cultural and material problems which authors have to face. He also suggested that living outside the UK, while an advantage in many ways, also presented certain dangers for authors.

These are Gregor’s own notes for his introductory remarks, though he warns that what he actually said did not perfectly correspond to what he had in his notes:

FROM THE PULPIT
by Gregor Dallas

Let me start, from the Pulpit, by tossing you a few statistics. ‘There are statistics, and there are statistics,’ Mark Twain said a long time ago.
-- The official number of Brits now living in France is 400,000 [in fact, 550,000 (24/10/06)]. The true figure could well be over double that -- so there could be close on a million of us Brits residing permanently in the hexagon, as the Cartesian French like to call their country.
-- Now I thought I had better confirm this this with the British Embassy. The British Embassy put me through to the British Council... So I haven’t been able to confirm these figures at the Embassy.
-- But what I do know for sure is that there are
-- 131 members of the Society of Authors living in France
-- and -- what I discovered only a fortnight ago -- only 74 of them can receive e-mail… So I haven’t been able to get in touch with almost half the total… Which is a Very Sad Thing.
I am sure that there are well over 200 British authors living in France. Perhaps something like a thousand or more.
Whether 200 or a thousand, what a history we have! With DH Lawrence, George Orwell, Graham Greene, Anthony Burgess and others as our forebears we have a pretty fine pedigree, don’t we. And as British authors living abroad we can even lay claim to be the driving force in British literature -- the contemporary equivalents of Heinrich Heine in German literature.
So it is a pity we are not yet all in touch because I have a hunch we have a number of stimulating things in common that we can most usefully discuss together.
And problems we also have. I do believe we are facing today a kind of material as well as cultural crisis in writing and publishing that hasn’t been known since the printing of the Gutenberg Bible.
And the problem is this: a precipitous decline in readership since about the 1980s. I think we’ve got to remember that all the particular problems that we are about to cover come back to that single fact -- the decline in readership. Ultimately, the problems we have with agents, with publishers, book distributors, even the tie-in TV people and the movie makers are due to that one problem -- the decline in readership.
The material problems created by this decline are basically the issues that we’re going to cover in this agenda. But I think it is worth keeping in the back of our minds -- as we talk -- cultural problems that I imagine worry quite a lot of us as authors -- and I’ll just give you two recent examples which illustrate what I am thinking about:
1) The first example of the cultural problem is this speech, which I am sure you have all heard about, that the Pope made last month in Regensburg, Germany. It was a speech that addressed an issue that has been discussed in many church circles (and not just Roman Catholic) -- the issue of faith and reason. And it is interesting that the Pope, in this speech, was advocating reason founded on a wide, philosophical base and not on the narrower empirical, purely scientific kind. You know, the speech reminded me, most irreverently, of Allen Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind -- which dominated cocktail party talk in the 1980s -- and which focused on the development in the States of a singular, one-dimensional way of thinking and a sort of spiritual rootlessness that had grown out of a narrow reading of books, or no reading at all.
So what happens? The media, when presented with the Pope’s speech, hooks on to a two-line quotation from a learned 14th-century Byzantine emperor, Manuel II (Paleologus), who was tackling the problem of faith based not on reason but on violence -- and specifically the problem of the violence of Muslim forces surrounding Constantinople in the 1390s. [Ref.: Professor Theodore Khoury of Münster]
The current Muslim populations, we’ve seen, rise up with incredible violence on the basis of hearsay revolving around this two-line quote.
But what troubled me here was not so much the Muslim reaction (I haven’t read the Muslim press), but rather the reactions of our own media in the West… the majority of which obviously had not read the speech. It’s as if the text of the speech were an total irrelevance.
There was one commentator on the French radio I heard who said that the Pope’s error was that he was out of touch with his times, that his learned talk was based on a civilisation of the text, whereas we live today in a new civilisation of the image and the symbol. I should imagine that most of you British authors here this evening are men and women of the civilisation of the text, and not of the symbol -- whatever that civilisation may be.
What is really worrying is that the French commentator may be right: perhaps a new kind of functionally illiterate civilisation is underfoot.
2) My second example of the kind of cultural problems we are facing today is a report that has just been released in London concerning map-reading skills. Over a third of British adults under the age of 35 cannot read a map. The study gives the example of the M-4 motorway being mistaken for the River Avon by a large proportion of those being tested.
I’m a historian, as I said. History is based on maps. You can’t talk about wars, or systems of peace, or international, or even national relations without studying the maps. History makes no sense without maps. So we may conclude that for a third of British adults under 35 history makes no sense: I am ready to believe that -- it’s reflected in the book sales, isn’t it.
And here we are not even dealing with the reading of texts, but the reading of symbols -- source of this new apparent civilisation.
Those two examples -- the selection of a two-line quote from a speech that has not been read, and the widespread inability to read maps -- epitomise for me the kind of cultural problems that have arisen out of this precipitous decline in reading over the last twenty or thirty years.
That’s all I’ll say for now on these important cultural problems. What about the material problems?
Let me just suggest by way of an introduction -- before we open up to the floor and the discussion -- that it seems to me that each professional sector of what we call the book trade is closing into itself as this crisis deepens -- the agents, the editors, the marketeers, the book distributors and somewhere out at the end of the line, the authors. Each one of these sectors seem to me to be retreating into its shell, despite loud professions to the contrary. The proof of this comes in particular from the distribution sector, which is now openly stating that they stand for profit and don’t owe the author anything.
There is a lot of finger-pointing going on at the moment -- with the author generally having the finger pointed at him (or her).
-- ‘Go and get a day job,’ say the professionals from the other sectors of the trade -- though their own day jobs rely entirely on authors.
There is much blame spreading around -- with the author being blamed most of all.
The irony of the situation is that as readership declines the number of books published increases… 130 or 140,000 new books were published in Britain last year -- one new book every forty-five minutes; we now have the technology for ‘print on demand’: you know, a dozen sales for each ‘title’ (they’re not known as ‘books’ anymore in the trade).
A struggling Ottakars bookstore chain has been absorbed by a struggling Waterstones book chain: we now be-knighted a struggling monopoly in the distribution of books. And that could well bring about a decline in the number of books published… Perhaps that is a Good Thing. But who is going to do the selection? If you think things are vicious today, just wait for tomorrow.
*****
Those few comments, I hope, give you an idea of why I called this meeting. For I fear that in living outside Britain we could be making ourselves vulnerable to certain unfair practices within a suffering British book trade.
I don’t mean to sound unnecessarily alarmist, for I think there are a number of things that authors can do. And we’re, after all, the ones with the real talent: I’ve already seen from your e-mails that there is a lot of talent in this room.
But it’s terribly important that we know where we can get aid, how we choose our agents, how we can best communicate with our publishers (on the other side of the Channel), and how to make sure that our works are distributed to the people who are interested in them.

There was some disagreement over Gregor’s analysis of readership and a general feeling that the electronic age provided many more content platforms to write for; one member noted that the electronic arena was essentially a text based medium.

As for living in France, most opinion was of the view that living in France was perhaps an advantage rather than a disadvantage, provided one had a good UK agent.

Members noted that the days of long lunches with editors and publishers were pretty much over; that communications between these disinter mediation were brief and often electronic anyway; that a call from sunny France or gay Paris was a more door-opening and engaging conversation than calls from the vast majority of their UK clients.

Geographically one Scottish member pointed out the challenges (or rather non-challenges) for members in France were no different to those in Scotland or the West Country. Indeed, another member reminded us that should meetings be required in an industry now no longer known for its love of meetings with writers, that now more than ever the difficulty, speed and cost of coming to the UK are lower than ever.

There seemed to be a strong general consensus that living in France offered more opportunities than challenges, and that the same could be said of the multi-platform electronic age we have arrived in.

Gregor broadly agrees with the idea that living in France brings many advantages to an author. But on the issue of readership the statistics say many things. He maintains that the cultural problems he raised are real enough, notwithstanding the opportunities created by new technologies. He is planning to write an article on the subject which will be posted on this blog.

Question: How do you react to Gregor’s introductory comments and the discussion that followed? What information do you have on readership? Do you think it is an advantage or a disadvantage to live in France? Are the reactions expressed here only valid for those who live close to an airport or to Eurostar?

SOAF's First Annual Meeting, Paris, 6 October 2006

2006-10-24T07:36:00.000-07:00

On Friday, 6 October 2006, the first annual meeting of the Society of Authors, France (SOAF) was held at the famous English-speaking bookstore, Shakespeare and Company, in Paris. The meeting was organised and convened by the British historian, Gregor Dallas.

The name, SOAF: During the course of the meeting it was suggested that ‘SOFA’, the ‘Society of French Authors’ would make a good acronym to describe members of the Society of Authors in France. Gregor later expressed concern that SOFA did not accurately describe what we were and, furthermore, ‘that such a change in name could cost us affiliation with the Society of Authors in London.’ There is also the matter of registering the organisation as a personne morale in France -- a clear affiliation indicated in the name eases this problem. So Gregor has recommended that we call ourselves ‘SOAF, the Society of Authors, France’

Similarly, our blogspot is to be called http://soafrance.blogspot.com

The meeting was attended by 21 writers from all over France and even one from Germany. According to Gregor Dallas the SOA has 141 members resident in France, though only 74 of them can be contacted by email.

It was suggested that Gregor write a written report of our meeting and send it to the SOA in London and ask them to send out the report to those not online (or willing to provide the SOA with their email address) and alert them to the existence of http://soafrance.blogspot.com

The meeting formally began with each member presenting himself with his name, his residence, and what they wrote. These introductions revealed a wide range of writers, including ghost writing, memoirs, biography, travel writing, children’s writers, novelists, and academic non-fiction as well as narrative non-fiction.

A Networking List, which gave name, residence, email and field of work was passed around for those who wanted to register in it. An amended version of this was forwarded to the SOA, London, on 17 October, to be circulated to all members resident in France. A further version, including additions, will be forwarded to members in November.

Question: Do you approve of the name ‘SOAF’? Do you have any other suggestions? Do you have any comments about the Networking List?