Thanks Emily.

Seeya

Luv

Davy
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Myrtle - it was really to do with what was in the house. But it was wrong, I accept that now.

That's good, Roger. Have a nice cuppa and a little sleep.

Chicken ramen, or other variations of what my children call 'soupy noodles' is my hangover food - strangely pure, but with the carbohydrate you crave.

Emma

Roger, your hangover is probably gone by now, but I find nothing beats 65 cups of tea and several burgers.

<Added>

I should say 'found'. Those days are gone. I haven't been pissed since September. Unlike Naomi, though, I've loved every minute! (Back to Alan Carr here, God rest his brainwashing soul.)

Wandering off thread

Casey
Thanks for bringing this to my attention. Worth considering and I'd not heard of it.
Kat

Speaking as a buyer of fiction, I have found the MNW series somewhat uninspiring. My wife and I regularly spend £40-50 a month on books. We are both avid readers. But the MNW series has left us cold. It all seems a bit Emperor's new clothes'ish. It will be interesting to see how the imprint does now that the first flush of interest has passed. It's raised a few eyebrows but it's hardly set the literary or mainstream publishing world alight.

Roger - can I ask a few questions? I was looking at the MNW website and thought some of the books looked interesting and I was thinking about ordering a couple when I realised they are all hardback and 12.99. That is just too much for me and I don't even like hardbacks anyway as they are awkward to read. Is there some reason why this is the case?

The other thing was the press coverage seemed scattered. Do the MNW books get as reviewed do you think? Because the combination of the expensive hardback and lack of coverage seems like a tricky combination for me. Was is the strategy for getting the books out there and known and - more importantly - bought? Will they all come out as paperbacks eventually? I do hope so.

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Sorry - what is the strategy...

Good point, snowbell.

I think the MNW marketing strategy has been a mistake. It seems to be based on the idea that people will buy new writers just because they are new writers. Now I am prepared to pay 12.99 for a hardback if I get my money's worth. But why should I pay that amount for just another new writer when I could pay 8.99 for a debut novel from Random House in paperback. Similarly, MNW's marketing strategy seems to stop at the M25. Here up North MNW has a low to non-existent profile.

Not an impressive start. What's the betting MNW gets dissolved back into Macmillan within two years?

I wasn't meaning that as a criticism, because I may have got that wrong about the hardback thing - which was why I was asking Roger about whether they are all coming out in paperback. Surely the hardback market isn't huge, is it? But, as I said, I don't really know about these things - just a personal preference there. I really like the idea of MNW, especially if it releases the publisher to take a few more risks on different kinds of things, but if you don't get an advance, the exposure is surely quite important and I just wondered at the lack of reviews on the site - but maybe they haven't put them all up.

Roger can correct me, but I think the point about the books being hardback with ribbon and all is to show that this is serious fictin which the publisher's taking seriously: in this country paperbacks are largely still seen as the cheap-and-cheerful/budget/commercial option, and that's exactly the impression MNW wanted to avoid. There's also the idea that these are collectible: these are authors who will become big names, and in the old days would have been published in the normal way by publisher who knew they'd make a loss, but were supporting an author who would make it big on the third book, say. They're not allowed to do that now, but it's the raison d'être of MNW. It's not a coincidence that in the book trade one of MNWs biggest supporters is Goldsboro Books, who specialise in signed first editions for the prestige (and not automatically literary) market. I should imagine there's not a lot of money spare for promotion, which is inevitable but a pity, though they garnered an impressive amount of media coverage at the launch. I'd love to see a smart dump-bin of all the titles lined up, as they did with the Penguin 70s. But getting that kind of position in the book chains costs a fortune.

Emma

<Added>

Roger - no disrespect intended to your big, beautiful trade paperback for A Gentle Axe. I was thinking of the public's impression of your average mass-market paperback on the supermarket shelf.

Actually I don't much like hardbacks, to be honest - and am far happier with Roger's lovely paperback! I'm just a budget option, cheap-and-cheerful kind of gal!!



A
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It's great, isn't it!

Another trouble is that general/literary pbs don't get reviewed (I think this is less true in the genres), which I'm sure is partly why MNW have dones as they did.

One has to remember that publishers are always thinking just as much about the signals they're sending out to the media and book journalists, and thence to the booktrade, as they are about what the reader-buyer will ultimately think. When publishers talk about 'customers', they're talking about the fiction buyers of the big chains, about the reviewer in The Bookseller and Publishing News, about the most important indies, about the wholesalers. They'll be saying to the fiction buyer of Blackwells, 'See, it's hardback because we're really going for the broadsheet book page coverage; you know that's expensive, so that just shows you how sure we are it's going to do well, so order lots...' and trying to transmit that faith to the bookseller.

Emma

Just to try and answer the hardback paperback issue - as Emma says, they were trying to create books had some quality and durability, and even collectibility. One of their biggest customers were the libraries, who loved the production of the books. Anyhow. The hardbacks are actually small format hardback - in fact the pages are the same size as a mass market paperback, so that they can switch to soft cover without the need (or expense) for resetting. So they are not exactly big unwieldy books.

You can get them cheaper on amazon - they were discounted 40% I think.

As for reviews, well, you know, it's hard getting reviewed. And again as Emma says, some (non-genre) reviewers won't look at paperback originals. Everyone competes and no one can take it for granted that you will get the main feature in the TLS, or that the reviewer will love your book. The books are sent out and... you know, if you're there the same week as the latest Ian McEwan you might not make the cut.

Personally, I think have some interesting books and authors coming up, but that's me. I accept that the choices may not be to everyone's taste. That's the publisher's prerogative - to choose from the pool of manuscripts available to him/her the ones s/he wants to publish. As Emma said, this is just one publisher's attempt to discover some new authors and widen the pool of talent available.

North of M25 thing I can't comment on, except I got one of my best press reviews in the Glasgow Herald. Internet reviews have been quite good, and there are really no geographical boundaries there. Every publisher works on a tight budget and the big money gets spent on the big names.

I probably haven't answered everyone's questions but I've just got back from a weekend away and my head's spinning.

Hell, the technical stuff is way over my head - I just try to write books I'd like to read (which are few and far between, so I accept I'm an acquired taste!) and which are easier for people to handle, thus my paperback preference. I'm not sure I care much about the other stuff.

A
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