I agree with Daisy - surely it's always a balance. Some people might be at one end of the spectrum and some at the other, but even following the basic conventions of fiction-writing is considering your market in a way - even if your market is just a few friends of yours. If you were really writing entirely for yourself - entirely - then it would be more like free-writing or a diary entry.

So there is always a market in mind - whether it's a few intellectual friends, your 9 yr old daughter, the Booker prize judging panel, or Mrs Average who buys her novels in Tesco - in all those situations you are considering how it will come over to someone, and making it work.

Even if you don't think you're considering that, surely you still are if you take on any of the normal conventions - emulating the way most authors use viewpoint, dialogue, description etc.

Deb

this is v interesting - would appreciate it, if you posted the rest of the interview to see the comment in its context.

Horses for courses, is what I would say. I think the comment (as opposed to literary fiction in general) is a little annoyingly up its arse, to be honest. Something of an ivory tower remark.

Emma, as for John Banville's novel being the one that destroys your faith in the Booker, what about Ian McEwan's Amsterdam? That was the one that did it for me. I thought it was the most cynical book I have ever read and I nearly threw it across the room. I was with Will Self when he was fulminating against it.

I am mindful of commerce, to the extent that I want to sell books. Does that influence the way I write my books? I figure the best way to sell books, in the long term, is to make them as good as I possibly can. So I work on them to the best of my abilities. I take the writing very seriously. I try to provide a satisfying read, rather than produce great literature. I hope this doesn't make me an inverted snob. I do know writers like the ones Emma mentioned, in fact I think I know who she has in mind! I hate genre wars.

I suppose what might, ultimately, gall all writers is that their publishing houses are bankrolled by books like celebrity memoirs, or celebrity-branded novels, and cookery books. I went into Waterstones on Picadilly the other week - and the most prominently displayed portraits of famous writers were David Beckham and Sting. Actually, that doesn't upset me. Let them publish those books and make millions with them. Ironically, it's the only way writers like Mr Toibin will continue to be untroubled by thoughts of commerce.

Let them publish those books and make millions with them. Ironically, it's the only way writers like Mr Toibin will continue to be untroubled by thoughts of commerce.

This is the thing that I think people forget. Publishers publish those books to make money, and it's those books (when they get it right) that make it possible to publish everyone else's book, take a small loss on that first novel in the cause of making a small profit on the second. Yes, it's infuriating when they actually make a thumping loss, but that's part of the game. To adapt a well-known phrase only slightly, a publisher's first duty to literature is to stay in business.

Emma

Emma, as for John Banville's novel being the one that destroys your faith in the Booker, what about Ian McEwan's Amsterdam? That was the one that did it for me. I thought it was the most cynical book I have ever read and I nearly threw it across the room. I was with Will Self when he was fulminating against it.

I have to say I rather enjoyed Amsterdam's cynicism. It's a while since I read it, but I seem to remember there's a section where one of the characters is striding about in the Lake District composing some music in his head, which he smugly believes is pure unadulterated genius - but it turns out to be complete crap. That was satirically effective - but undermined I think by something implicit in all McEwan's later work: there is a nagging sense that his elegant and polished prose & confident tackling of the great issues of the day ultimately fails to mask the fact that he is writing complete crap himself. Cliched artifice. He seems to recognise the danger but forgets that it applies to him. His early stuff was so much better.

But - isn't there something rather absurd about having 'faith in the Booker'? This idea that writing is somehow validated by judges awarding a prize for it & patting the author on the back really belongs in the classroom. In any case, if one looks back on the books of the past few decades that really matter and have really stood the test of time, it's clear that very few of them won prizes. And conversely many of the prize-winners have sunk without trace. Literary awards should be banned! As a reader, what I want from a book is that it speaks to me on some level. I don't care who wrote it or whether it's won a prize. That said, I do recognise the marketing value of the thing.

I often think that a longish longlist for a major prize is quite a good Cook's Tour of what's going on with fiction (or whatever) this year. The shortlist is more contentious, and it's very obvious that the winner is the book which that set of judges, on that day, can agree to be the winner, which is not at all necessarily the same thing as the best book, which is always going to be a hugely subjective judgement.

And more broadly, since there are dozens of ways of defining a 'good' book, how on earth, after all, do you set about defining 'best'?

Emma

This idea that writing is somehow validated by judges awarding a prize for it & patting the author on the back really belongs in the classroom. In any case, if one looks back on the books of the past few decades that really matter and have really stood the test of time, it's clear that very few of them won prizes. And conversely many of the prize-winners have sunk without trace. Literary awards should be banned!

No, I think in the wider space of things there is, and always will be, a place for prizes, be it for writing, athletics, art, science, civic awards, OBEs etc... People should have their place in the world recognise with an award.
And as Emma says, it is a snapshot of what is going on in that particular moment in time, regardless of whether they stay the course - Olympic records will be smashed; better books will be written.
The book(s) may be crap, but Prizes are good.


- NaomiM

Yes, well I wasn't entirely serious about banning them of course - but I do think people put too much weight on such things. Human nature, I suppose.

Actually, thinking about it a little more, perhaps one of the reasons that things like the Booker tend (on the whole, with honourable exceptions) to miss the books that are important and do stand the test of time is that those are precisely the books that move the goalposts and push things forward against the tide. And the one thing you don't want when trying to select a worthy winner on the basis of established and valid criteria etc etc is something controversial that comes along and says your criteria are irrelevant and causes divisiveness. That's why things like John Banville's novel wins prizes - the judges know where they are with that kind of novel.

It needn't even be a cultural-political issue - on the whole controversy is good, I'm sure the Man Corp. don't care if people start arguing about whether Whatever should have won - they'd much rather they argued furiously than were indifferent. It can simply be that almost by definition, the more boundaries a book pushes, the more varied the response to it will be, from passion to total don't-get-it, and that will include the responses across a panel of judges. So if the first necessity is to agree, then the odder books will always stand a less good chance.

Emma

To adapt a well-known phrase only slightly, a publisher's first duty to literature is to stay in business.

I know what you mean, but given the stuff some of them put ot - the celebrity memoirs, etc- it's a bit like saying a greengrocer's first duty to carrots is to stay in business.

I think what I'm saying is that duty to literature sounds very high-minded, but when you look at how books are sold the words piling high and selling cheap spring to mind.

Apropos, last Friday I was persuaded to buy the Evening Standard because it came with a free Nicci French thriller - quite good, as it happened - and I wondered briefly how that fits into the profit and loss equation, just as I do every time I see a newly-published book marked down or part of a three-for-two deal. Who benefits most, publisher, writers or newspaper editor? Put it another way, 'Handy dandy, which is the Justice and which the Thief?

To adapt a well-known phrase only slightly, a publisher's first duty to literature is to stay in business.

I know what you mean, but given the poor quality of some of the products, the celebrity novels, etc, 'duty to literature' hardly applies. It makes more sense to say a greengrocer's first duty to carrots is to stay in business. Depends on the quality of the carrots.

I think what I'm saying is that duty to literature sounds very worthy, but when you look at how books are marketed the words piling high and selling cheap spring to mind. In my case, unless I have time to read sizeable chunks in the bookshop I'd rather go to the library or wait until they appear in charity shops. Buying dodgy carrots once can put you off buying carrots generally.

Apropos, last Friday I was persuaded to buy the Evening Standard because it came with a free Nicci French thriller - quite good, as it happened - and I wondered briefly how that fits into the profit and loss equation, just as I do every time I see a newly-published book marked down or sold as part of a three-for-two deal. It hardly inspires confidence in publishers to see how 'loss leaders' applies as much to books as to baked beans. Who benefits most, publishers, writers or newspaper editors? Put it another way, 'Handy dandy, which is the Justice and which the Thief? I'm fairly sure we can exclude the writer.

Sheila

I write literary fiction. If there's a writer on this board who has achieved HALF (or even a quarter?) of what Banville and McEwan has achieved, I'll be willing to listen further. Both are great writers - it's so easy to criticise, but harder to actually go out there and do what these writers have been doing for years. I think people should perhaps show more respect to those who spend their time writing and actually getting books published and read (something that can't be said for most of the members on this site). As for Toibin's comment, maybe he didn't put it well, but as usual people are jumping to unfounded conclusions without considering the context of the interview. All he is saying is that one shouldn't be thinking about sales and marketing - the agent should do that and the writer should be left to get on with what they're good at - using their imagination to produce fine writing. There's nothing pretentious about this thoughtful and incisive comment.

You're right, taveller, writers who managed to get published deserve respect, especially if their writing has won awards, but then they fall foul of the usual British sport of kicking people when they are up.
As for Banville, even he, in the form of his alter-ego, Black, has dissed his own writing, and readily admits that his Man Booker prize winning novel was written in 'Booker format'. As RJH says "the judges know where they are with that kind of novel" simply because it was very cynically written with them in mind.


- NaomiM

<Added>

- whether that is good or bad, I really don't have a view on it. However, Louise Doughty is one of this year's Man Booker judges and she is now blogging on My Telegraph, so it will be interesting to read her take on the prize if and when she gets round to blogging about it.

The only McEwan I've read is Atonement, which I thought was deeply wonderful and deeply flawed. Haven't read any Banville, but then I'm not interested in keeping up with this decade's flavour in lit fic, whatever it is, any more than I am with this week's fashions in frocks. I'm reading Julian Barnes' Arthur and George because it's real-people historical fiction and his project in writing it was the exact opposite of mine, so that's interesting stuff for my PhD. Certainly I wouldn't buy something purely because it had been anywhere near a prize (though of course, hypocritically, I hope others buy TMOL because it has, and the Amazon stats, if you can call them that, show that people do look prize listees up).

BTW, it wasn't me who lost faith in the Booker (I rarely know who's won the Booker, let alone whether it was the right decision or not) it was my editor, but then she's won the John Llewelyn Rhys and Somerset Maugham awards herself, among others, and is on the current Orange shortlist, so presumably she has some faith in prizes in general. Or maybe not - I've never thought to ask.

Emma

<Added>

Going back to the original question, this was my blog-take on how thinking about the book trade and commercial side of things can really screw up your writerly instincts:

http://emmadarwin.typepad.com/thisitchofwriting/2007/09/the-market-for-.html

Not only do some people manage to get books published but writing is more or less an adjunct to an already flourishing career:

Here's an article and discussion about how Jordan's novel, 'Crystal' is outselling the Booker Prize list of authors. It's called 'The Death of the Reader:

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/09/the_death_of_the_reader.html


Sheila