"Are you rich?" SPOILER: No (Anne Rooney)

 

I'm going to continue the theme started by Dawn yesterday with her excellent post on school visits: being a professional, being paid. This doesn't just affect the authors who are or aren't paid, it affects everyone. It determines who can write and so which books you see on the shelves. It's the elephant in the diversity room, and gets into a lot of other places, too. It's quite a nimble elephant, though a very large one.

For those of you who are not authors but readers, librarians, teachers, parents, here's a brief (simplified) rundown of how authors are paid. There are two basic models. 

The author might be paid a flat fee for a book, in which case they are paid, say, £1200-£3000 depending on the length and complexity of the book (we're talking children's books here). 

Alternatively, they will be paid an advance against royalties. This means that ultimately they will be paid a percentage of the publisher's takings for each copy sold (not a percentage of the cover price). It's likely to be 8-10% maximum, but if there is an illustrator the royalty is split, so each will get 4-5%. If a book sells for £7.99 (call it £8), the publisher's income from the book might be £4 (or a lot less), so 5% is 20p per copy. An advance is an advance payment against royalties. So if an author has an advance of £1200, that covers 6000 copies sold at 20p per copy. Most books never earn out the royalty so the author never gets any more than the advance. If their royalties eventually add up to more £1200, they begin to be paid the extra (this is likely to be years later and can't be depended on). Big names will get a higher advance, but they still won't get more money until the advance has been earned back in book sales. CAVEAT: many publishers sell a lot of books for far less than the cover price. Bulk sales to book clubs, discount shops like Books Etc, are at very low prices and often also pay a lower percentage royalty. 

Incidentally, flat fees and advances have in general not gone up — and indeed have often gone down — since I started writing children's books more than 20 years ago. With publishers I work with continuously, I usually manage to push them to an increase about every five years. The standard fee now for a book I was paid £2000 for in 1999 would be between £1350 and £1750, most likely £1500. (Actual figures, not adjusted for inflation.)

Looking at a recent royalty statement, I see I was paid £5.42 for sales of 250 copies of a book in a 'specials' deal. That's 2p a copy. It's less than I would get if someone borrowed it from a library (about 8p per loan). This is the kind of book a child might read in school, or pick up in the library as it's produced by a big publisher that sells directly into schools and libraries as well as bookshops. The rate can be less than 1p per book when the books are parcelled up with other titles in massive deals to Chinese publishers. Of course there are authors who earn a lot, but they are very few and far between. I know plenty of big-name chidren's authors who have other jobs because you can't raise a family on this level of pay. 

Most children's authors do paid school visits and rely on that income. Many make more from visits than from books. The books support the visit income, not the other way round. That's why it's vital they are paid properly for visits — no income, no more books. It's also why many authors bring their own books to sell: they will get more than 2p a copy if they have bought them at a discount from the publisher. 

What does the writer do for this money? They will do the writing, make revisions in line with the publisher's suggestions, suggest which pictures should be used or drawn, check the pictures, usually twice or more if they are commissioned illustrations, and specify changes as needed, and they will check the final pages (arranged text and pictures), again usually twice. If they are on a royalty contract, they will also be expected to do a lot of free publicity. On a flat-fee contract, they might be expected to do it but probably won't as it won't increase their earnings and takes away the time they could be earning by writing another book. It's arguable whether publicity pays back on a royalty contract — an hour of publicity would have to sell, say, 100 copies to get back £20. Will a blog post that takes an hour to write yield 100 full-price sales? Unlikely. 

Income here is turnover, not earnings. Authors have expenses that aren't paid for by someone else. If you go to work in an office, your employer has paid for the computer and software you use, the heating and electricity in your office, the fast broadband, the phone bill, the stationery. You don't have to spend unpaid hours reading contracts, sending invoices, chasing payment, contacting helplines when stuff doesn't work, ordering things you need. If you have to go on a business trip, you don't have to pay your own train fare. I pay over £1000 a year just in software licences and domain hosting. That has to be paid even if I don't write a single book, as not having them would mean I couldn't write a single book. (Though that doesn't apply to someone starting out, who could write their first book in Open Office. This is because I have established relationships with publishers and work on a lot of books with a very high level of illustration.) 

Looking at 2018-19 as the last normal, pre-pandemic year, my expenses were around £3000 for the year. There is, of course, no sick pay, holiday pay or anything else. Suppose a person wanted to earn the average UK wage of £26,000 pa (Feb 22 figure). They would need a turnover of, say, £29,000. At £2000 a book, that's nearly 15 books a year, more than one a month — one-and-a-half a month if you take out 8 weeks for bank holidays (8 of them), holidays (4 weeks) and a bit of time to have covid. Once you are established, there is a trickle of income from PLR (public lending rights, from library loans) and ALCS (from photocopying) and royalties build up over time if your books earn out. But books also fall out of print and aren't reprinted (no more sales) and library and school copies fall apart and aren't replaced (they buy new books) so you have to keep producing new books. 

This is why there is not much diversity in children's publishing, just as much — if not more — than because of lack of diversity on editorial boards. People who have no independent source of income, or another job, can't afford to be published writers. Most writers start by writing in their spare time, but if you are already working two jobs and perhaps raising children in poverty, where is that 'spare time'? If you are worried about paying the bills, or kids being bullied, or that your flat is damp, no amount of talent will get you the head-space and time you need to perfect and sell a book. And writing the book is only about half the time the book takes (see tasks involved, above). Most professional children's writers I know have an earning partner or a pension or another job. I don't, but that's unusual. 

There is no easy solution to this. It isn't that publishers should just pay more to their authors (though authors should benefit more from the cheap, bulk deals which are drawing sales away from full price books and benefiting only the publisher). Looking at that book I used in the example, that earned £5.41 for 250 discounted sales: the total income to the publisher for that book in all sales is £34,000, of which I have had £1,750, so pretty much the 5% royalty rate. (This one hasn't actually sold many on cheap deals. It's quite a recent book, so discount sales will likely come along later rather than early in its life.) That's for 12,500 copies, so the publisher's takings are about 50% of cover price. It required a photoshoot, had in-house editorial costs, was printed, shipped, stored, had to cover a portion of the overheads for premises, staff, utilities, marketing and so on. The publisher is not raking it in on this title, and I'm not being particularly short-changed. 

The real problem is that they are getting as much for a book as Costa gets for a cup of coffee. We don't value books and we don't value the people that produce them. We can't expect people from under-represented groups, who are often already struggling, to produce all the books we need to have a truly diverse offering, just as a passion project. We need some more creative solution to the problem than publishers and agents specifically inviting people from under-represented groups to submit to them (though that is a good thing, too). To say people feel that 'authors don't look like me' is (while possibly true) to skirt around the real, intractable issue. Writing doesn't pay. To get to the point where it does — or, rather, might — takes a long time and a lot of work. (And even then it can be taken away at a stroke if the type of book you write is no longer fashionable and publishers no longer want it.) Work that has to be subsidised by other work, or a supportive other person. You don't fix the problem of under-representation by making the under-represented people pay for representation. Something else is needed. 

If you're interested in more detail of how authors make a living (or don't), ALCS has produced a series of interviews with writers called 'My Writing Living. I've done one, too, here. 

 Anne Rooney

My course on how to write children's non-fiction, with the Institute of Continuing Education (ICE) at Cambridge University runs from 11 July

Out now: Miles Kelly, Dec 2021

Curious Questions and Answers about Rainforests

Some new year's resolutions for publishing. By Keren David

Over the last year I've heard a lot about how children's publishing is terribly, terribly white and awfully, awfully middle class, and really something should be done. But what? Oh, how difficult it is blah, blah, etc etc.

None of it is enough. None of it addresses the root problems. So, lovely publishers, wonderful agencies, I have some ideas.  I may well have said some of this before. But it needs saying all over again. 

1)  Get out of London. If publishers and agents have all their operations in London, they will only attract employees who can afford to live there. That's a very narrow group.  Move to Manchester. Set up an office in Newcastle. Let your editors work remotely from Swansea, St Ives and Aberdeen. An agent in Middlesborough can Skype an editor in Norwich, it's 2019, guys.

2) In all those places, actively seek talent. Run those creative writing courses than currently make you  vast amounts of money from Londoners,  but run them for half, a quarter of the price you charge at present. Make them available on the internet.  Nurture and encourage writers from all backgrounds. Open your ears to varied voices. Remember that not all readers are white and middle class. 

3) Publish books with diverse covers and diverse characters.  In your efforts to make these books universal, don't lose the authentic voice of the minority author. Don't make minority readers feel shut out of books that are supposedly for and about them. Learn about racism. Learn about tropes. Never fall back on lazy stereotypes. Never lecture your writers about their own cultures.


4) Don't be scared of intersectionality in your books. People have more than one label.

5) Think about how you pay your authors. For many of us, the vagueness of the three tranche system makes life impossible. How can you pay your rent when the money is paid 'on signature' ie six weeks after the author has waited by their letterbox for months, praying that today will bring the document they need to sign to unleash the money;then 'on delivery', ie six weeks after the author has stayed up all night for a week to write the thing for the deadline given in said contract, and 'on publication', which may well get changed by months.  
When I say six weeks, I might sometimes mean six months.. These casual arrangements make it impossible for many of us to be writers without a pretty much full time salary on the side. Writing gets pushed to the margins of our lives. Think about a single mother. How can she pay the rent if you're paying her whenever you fancy.

Which leads me neatly to:

6) Think about who you reward. When you sign a celebrity, someone who may well already be rich, and then make them richer by spending most of your marketing on their ghost-written books, you are not encouraging general reading. Neither are you encouraging talented writers from diverse backgrounds to believe that they can succeed in getting published. You create a model of success that can only be replicated by first becoming a celebrity. Books become off-shoots of a successful brand.Writers migrate to other fields. Quality plummets. Publishing chokes on its own vomit and dies. 

7) See those people who do successful things to encourage diverse writers? People like Leila Rasheed who set up Megaphone, people like David Stevens and Aimee Felone of Knights Of, to take just two examples. Talk to them. Copy them. Back their initiatives. 

8) Employ non-graduates. Employ graduates from new universities. Employ people who went to state schools. Don't allow your HR department to filter out everyone except 'the brightest and the best' before you even see them. Create apprenticeships. Mix up your internal structures. Examine everything you do, and change it. 

9) Spend money on people, not swanky buildings. 

10) Be proud of your authors. Show them off. Interview them, photograph them, film them. The internet is yours to exploit, but you don't seem to want to do that. Make celebrities, don't chase them. And let them be from all those places and classes and races and nationalities and genders and sexualities and bodies and spaces that we don't usually hear from.

And I promise you, it will pay off.

Encouraging More Diverse Books - A Guide to Writing a Character With a Learning Disability

Encouraging More Diverse Books - A  Guide to Writing a Character With a Learning Disability.

                                                           

Writing a character who has a learning disability can be quite intimidating, especially since people in the book industry naturally feel a responsibility not to misrepresent any type of disability and want to feel confident about ensuring the authenticity of their characters.  I hope in this blog to give a few small pointers to help other writers avoid the difficulties and stumbling blocks when writing a diverse book, having written a novel through the voice of a girl with Down syndrome. We need to pave the way for more inclusive books that do not portray characters with a learning disability in a negative way that will impact our understanding of that disability; after all diversity is one of the things that we all have in common.

 Children's books need to highlight the enormous diversity within each disability because any child should not be compared within the spectrum of that disability. We are all individuals with different needs and experiences and that is the same for any child with Down's syndrome or Autism, for example.

Someone with Down's syndrome will have certain physical characteristics in common such as a slant to the eyes and a smaller jaw, which makes their tongues seem slightly too big for their mouth, but they will still have their individual family characteristics and a wide range of abilities within that syndrome. Many people with Down syndrome will go on to hold down responsible jobs, take further education and get married.

Similarly there are hundreds of nuances within the autistic spectrum, so try to avoid typecasting your character.  Mark Haddon's character, Christopher, in The Curious Incident of the Dog in The Night, illustrates this well. Christopher, who has Asperger’s, is portrayed with subtlety and refinement. He is a gifted fifteen year old mathematician who, Haddon says ‘sees the world in a surprising and revealing way.’ He is not just a boy with Asperger’s syndrome but a boy with a complex character who is not defined by his disability. 

 Make sure your character is simply part of the landscape and focus on their ability and not disability because people with a learning disability are people first. Make it about who they are, what they like or dislike - or what their hobbies are. They are fully rounded individuals and not just a channel to display their disability. As authors we need to bear in mind that it is not the child with a learning disability who prevents themselves being fully included in society; it is the barriers in society that do that.

My character Rosie in Rosie Loves Jack is a typical teenager consumed by her love for Jack and she has the same hopes and aspirations as anyone else. Rose doesn't see her Down's syndrome as a shortcoming and wants to be treated as the equal she is. I avoided stereotyping Rosie by dismissing her Down's syndrome as my starting point, which then meant I avoided any restricting boundaries. 

It is important to avoid using language that creates negative images. The words you use can impact on how a person with disabilities is made to feel. We are people first and foremost, so it is crucial to erase derogatory language from your text.
 Many people would say that the word ‘disabled’ immediately suggests that that person is limited, even though this is often not the case at all, yet it is still an accepted term. 

To help with correct terminology, The Book Trust has printed a list of terms that are preferable. People need to feel included - language is always evolving and it is necessary to keep up with the appropriate terms so as not to alienate those who are different.
 It is very easy to try and rectify your character’s disability by giving them special powers, or making them unrealistically good or bad. In general, this does nothing to help the reader understand disability and can even be detrimental to it. Children are children, disability or not they can be just as naughty or nice!


Billy D in Dead Ends is a perfect example of how to include a character with disabilities without falling into this trap. Billy has Down syndrome, but he is by no means a victim. He is manipulative, irritating and at times, unlikeable, as well as being funny, kind and loveable. Children should be able to see such characters reflecting themselves and the normal ups and downs in their lives.

As an author do not make assumptions about your character. Research is the basis for writing confidently and for ensuring that you are not misrepresenting your character and their disabilities. Research, research, research, even if like me, you have first -hand experience of the disability you are writing about. Mark Haddon famously said that he didn't research at all, but I would strongly advise you not to do that. If you have a grasp of the problems you will free yourself to write with authenticity without your characters becoming typecast, or restricting them in what they can achieve. 

These are just some of the stumbling blocks to to be aware of when writing about disability in children’s books. We have come a long way in the past few years with many new children’s books featuring children with a variety of disabilities, who are simply a part of the story. We still have a long way to go. Hopefully this small guide will give confidence to those who hesitate.  I couldn't put it better than C.S. Lewis to emphasise the importance of why writers need to give a voice to those who cannot speak for themselves because,  'We read to know we are not alone.' 

Mel Darbon

www.meldarbon.com

@DarbonMel

@meldarbon

Black and white pictures - Anne Rooney

Only pink people have anatomy

This will be a short post, or a short grumble, as this issue is taking a lot of my time at the moment.

I write a lot of non-fiction which is illustrated from picture libraries, as well as a lot which is illustrated with commissioned artwork and some that combines the two. At the moment, I'm working on a series that combines the two. The publisher has an aim of at least 25% non-Caucasian people in images and a 50:50 gender split, which is fine. With commissioned illustrations it's easy to achieve, obviously. With images sourced from picture libraries, whether photos or artwork, it's incredibly difficult. The (cheap) picture libraries don't have a good diverse mix of images. It's a little easier with photos, often (but not always), but virtually impossible for anything but the most generic and anodyne illustrations.

For example: search on Shutterstock for 'geologist'. It displays 100 images per page. Not all have people in, but at least half do. Of those, one is clearly female and one is possibly not-Caucasian (but could be Mediterranean or tanned). These are photos. Search for 'baby'; five out of the first 100 are non-Caucasian.

'Baby' is about as generic as you can get. Search toenails (don't — it's not a pretty sight) and they are all on white feet.

 Illustrations are just as bad, with some subjects completely unrepresented by non-white characters. One of the books I'm working on is about the human body and will use vector artwork. Body parts, organs, activities—all seem to be almost exclusively white concerns in picture-library-land. You'd think people of other ethnicities didn't have bones, brains or babies if you went by the pictures you can buy to show these things.

An obvious solution is to be more precise, but that brings up other problems. Specifying 'black' often just brings up black and white images rather than images of black people. 'People of color' delivers images in color with people in. Of course, it should be unnecessary to specify; there should be no massive default to Caucasian. Most alarming of all, 'black' sometimes delivers a completely different type of image. A search for 'black fetus' (sorry, but you have to use American spellings on these sites to get anywhere) brings up foetuses with guns (how is that even a thing?) and miscarried or aborted foetuses. This is truly disturbing and clearly symptomatic of some far deeper malaise than just an absence of diverse photographers or artists putting their material on Shutterstock.

Our budget will go largely on creating images that redress the balance of diversity in the book, making up for the short-fallings of the picture libraries. That's not how it should be. Next time you see a book that doesn't have enough diversity in the photos or library artwork, don't blame the publisher or author—blame the picture libraries.

Anne Rooney
Out now: Dinosaur Atlas
Lonely Planet

A Report from The Golden Anniversary of the FCBG Conference by Chitra Soundar

This year the Federation of Children’s Book Groups are celebrating a big anniversary and I was honoured to be invited to be on a panel with Lantana Publishing who are publishing my next two titles You’re Safe With Me and You’re Snug With Me, both illustrated by the very talented PoonamMistry.

The conference itself runs for three days, each year a different regional group organising it in conjunction with the national committee. I was invited for a panel event on the second day and I was a bit intimidated that we were going to follow James Mayhew and we will be the warm-up act for Jacqueline Wilson, the super-woman of children’s literature, especially writing stories that represent misfits and unique kids, like I was.

So I was proud to collect my badge which said speaker. And then I realised I knew quite a lot of people there, either because I’ve met them before at various school events or friends on Twitter or Facebook. 

We setup our presentation with the help of Stewart Jordan, the amazing theatre manager.

Our panel was made up of three women – Alice Curry, founder and publisher at Lantana Publishing, Mehrdokht Amini illustrator of two beautiful books with Lantana Publishing and yours truly, writer of You’re Safe With Me.

We discussed how books can span from local to global and the other way round and what does that mean to Mehrdokht and me as creators. We discussed how sometimes tensions will arise between commercial appeal in the western markets vs. the authenticity of the content. We also discussed how Alice makes choices for her list – which story, which culture and the creators.

The audience was made up of librarians, teachers and people who love books and they not only listened to us tell our stories, they laughed in the right places too.

They also had a hall full of publishers showcasing their books and I was proud to be on three tables – OtterBarry Books, MMS Publishing and Bounce representing all my books. There was also Brenda’s Bookshop and I got to sign advance copies of You’re Safe With Me. The illustrations by Poonam Mistry were a big hit and everyone could see how excited I was about the book.

It was my first FCBG conference and it was fun to be there on their Golden Anniversary. I got to listen to Dame Jacqueline Wilson speak and it was wonderful listening to the master. I got to meet so many other authors, friends from twitter and wonderful people of the book world. And yes there was cake!

Find out more about FCBG here: http://www.fcbg.org.uk/ and find out about their conference here - http://www.fcbg.org.uk/conference/

---

Chitra Soundar is the author of over 30 books for children. Find out more about You’re Safe With Me and all her new books at www.chitrasoundar.com and follow her on twitter @csoundar

Not just black and white - Anne Rooney

Photo: DIAC Images

Increasing diversity in children's books is harder than it looks. It's not just a matter of a diverse range of writers and illustrators creating a diverse range of characters. For one thing, not all books even have characters. That's a recipe (or a partial one) for increasing diversity in fiction. But even then, it's only one end of the line. We need to take a step back and look at the whole publishing picture.

Of course it's vital to encourage people from a diverse range of backgrounds to consider that they could be writers, illustrators or editors, and to encourage publishers to employ editors and commission authors from a more diverse mix of backgrounds. That's clearly a good start, but we all know editors don't get to choose which books are published or promoted - that decision lies largely with sales and marketing. Has anyone looked at diversity in sales and marketing? And the sales and marketing people talk to booksellers and distributors. What's the mix there, with the people who are deciding which books will get into shops? If sales and marketing aren't allowing the commissioning of diverse books, or aren't putting publicity budget behind them, the efforts of writers, illustrators and editors is not enough. Witness the recent argument about whether Marvel Comics has annoyed, alienated or bored its audience by extending its mix of characters. Everyone has to be on board for it to work.

In fiction, it's quite easy to include a diverse mix of characters in illustrations. In non-fiction, it can be much harder because the illustrations are often photos. And photos aren't taken specifically for the book - they are bought from picture libraries. It is very, very difficult to find photos in picture libraries that show a diverse mix of children or adults doing specific activities. If you need children climbing a mountain or mending a bicycle, the vast majority of photos are of white, able-bodied children. I just searched a picture library one of my publishers uses a lot for 'children climbing a mountain' and of the 96 images on the first page, there were only two non-white children, one in a photo with two white children and the other alone. The one with the white children wasn't playing and was facing away from the camera; the white children were in the front of the picture, climbing. It's like this at every turn - easy to find generic children-in-a-playground or children-in-a-family but very difficult to find the sort of photo most books actually need. If the photos aren't there, we can't use them.

Lots of publishers use the cheapest picture libraries, such as Shutterstock and iStock. These don't use professional photographers. Anyone can submit photos and receive a (very) small payment when they are used. There are separate issues with the undermining of professional photography, but they do provide a way for photographers of any background to make their pictures commercially available. We don't have to wait for social change that enables a wider range of people to become professional photographers, which is just as well as it will be a long wait.


Anne Rooney
Latest books:

Diverse Names by Keren David

We’d reached the Q&A part of the school visit, the bit where they usually ask how long it takes to write a book, whether you’d ever thought of making it into a film, and how much money you get paid.

Not this boy. ‘Miss!’ he said, ‘Will you put my name in your book?’

It was the third conversation I’d had about naming characters in a week. The first two were at the YAshot event, a day-long celebration of Young Adult fiction, organised by author Alexia Casale in association with Hillingdon libraries and featuring more than 70 YA and MG authors, a gloriously interesting day of debate and discussion, socialising and eating cake. 

My panel was asked how we went about naming characters, and we talked about finding the ‘right’ name and making sure one character’s name doesn’t clash with another, asking friends and Twitter for help, sometimes changing names at the end of the writing process.

I talked about a problem I’d had writing my latest book, This is Not a Love Story. One character, Theo, is a north London Jewish boy of 16 with many similar friends. My son is a nearly-16-year-old north London Jewish boy, who could easily be Theo's friend. So in naming Theo, his brothers and his friends I was careful to avoid the names of my son’s friends. Unfortunately he has many friends. Luckily, many of them are named Zachary. Or Zak. Or Zach. 

Names were also touched on during a panel on diversity.  Lucy Ivison, who co-wrote Lobsters, a brilliantly funny and authentic teen romance talked about how one of her teen beta readers advised against making the ‘best friend’ character Asian, even though he’d been based on a real friend who really was Asian. It would be ‘cringey’, like a ‘CBeebies show', said the girl.

I tend to think that there’s nothing wrong with the tiniest bit of cringiness, if it gives your book an authentic flavour and reflects a multicultural society. Giving characters diverse names is a way of doing that.  Why does a group of friends need to be called Jessica, Charlotte and Oliver? What changes if you call them Laban, Hakim and Ayaan? 

I'm at the end of writing a book with (for various reasons) little physical description of the characters, I’m pondering the effect of changing a few names. What if Becky becomes Destiny? What if Arthur turns into Abdul? How will readers imagine that character? What assumptions will they make about them?

‘Maybe,’ I said to the boy in the Q&A. ‘Give your name to the librarian and she’ll email me, and I’ll try and find you a place in my book.’  Three others in the group wanted to do the same. ‘Please Miss,’ one said. ‘I never see my name in books.’ 

So, I have a list of names to try and get into my  books of the future. And here they are: Ehtesham, Ali,Tasnim, Minha, Nivethaa.  

Megaphone: make your voice heard! By Leila Rasheed

Megaphone: type loud!

I am very grateful to Liz Kessler for letting me have her ABBA space to tell you all about a new writer development scheme aimed at increasing diversity in children’s literature: Megaphone.

For those of you who don’t know me, I’m the author of Chips, Beans and Limousines, and I also teach Writing for Children and Young People on the University of Warwick's MA in Writing. The initial idea for Megaphone came out of an idea I had two years ago, after reading Walter Dean Myers’ excellent article: Where are the people of color in children’s books?


 What he said echoed my own experience as a British Asian reader and writer of children’s fiction. I had of course been thinking about these issues previously, but his article made me see that I really had to try and do something to make a positive difference to children’s literature, which I love so much.

 Fast forward two years, and I am delighted to say that I’ve received funding, from Arts Council England and The Publishers’ Association, to run a new, and I believe unique, writer development scheme called Megaphone, which supports minority ethnic writers as they write their first novel for children or teenagers. There are five places on the scheme, and applications are being accepted now, until 24th December 2015.

Megaphone is aimed at writers who have never had a book for children or teenagers published before (they may have had writing for adults published). They must be from an ethnic minority, resident in England and over 18 years old.

So what does it involve? Well, if you are offered a place, you’ll be expected to write a novel for children or teenagers, between April 2016 and April 2017. But don’t worry – you won’t be alone as you turn your ideas into a fully-fledged book. There will be support in the form of one-to-one feedback on your manuscript. Drawing on my experience working with creative writing students up to MFA level, I will help writers focus on and draw out the story they really want to tell. In no way does this mean I ‘tell you what to write’! My role is as a skilled and experienced beta-reader, someone who can look at your manuscript with fresh eyes that have read a lot of children’s and YA books (as a manuscript editor for Writers’ Workshop, as a bookseller for Waterstone's, as a student of children’s literature, as a creative writing tutor, as an author myself) and help you discover ways through writing problems.

 As well as one to one support during the writing process, the scheme includes masterclasses with award-winning and best-selling authors – Catherine Johnson, Alex Wheatle MBE, Candy Gourlay, Lee Weatherley, Sarwat Chadda. Between them they have a huge range of skills and experience in writing successfully for different age ranges and in different genres – all of which can feed your own writing knowledge.

There will also be two masterclasses focused on working with agents and publishers: one with Julia Churchill, Literary Agent at AM Heath, (who represents, among many others, Sarah Crossan, Julie Bertagna and Jo Nadin) and one with a children’s publisher or editor.

When I was planning Megaphone, I decided I wanted to have publishers and editors involved right from the start. I felt that was the best way of ensuring that the books written during the scheme would have a really good chance of making it to publication and to children’s bookshelves. The result is an absolutely stellar line-up of editors, who have volunteered to help select applications and also to read the completed manuscripts and offer feedback on them at the end of the scheme. Anyone who has ever sent a manuscript to a slush pile knows how hard it can be to get feedback from an editor; well, the best editors working in children’s publishing today are offering a fast-track to their desks through Megaphone, and they are offering it because they know how important it is for children’s literature to reflect the diverse world we live in.

 Your completed novel will be read and commented on by at least one of the following: Venetia Gosling of Pan Macmillan (whose list includes Chris Riddell, Frank Cottrell-Boyce and Rainbow Rowell), Jane Griffiths of Simon and Schuster UK (recently double-shortlisted as an editor for the Branford Boase award), Rachel Mann of Simon and Schuster UK, (who has worked with Michael Morpurgo and Darren Shan among others) Shannon Cullen of Penguin Random House (who has a long history of working for diversity in children’s literature, including helping to set up the Commonword Prize for Diversity in children’s writing), Karen Ball and Katherine Agar of Hachette, (who have a huge amount of experience with commissioning and developing series from traditional and non-traditional authors), Kirsten Armstrong of Penguin Random House and Samantha Smith of Scholastic UK.

 There will also be a showcase event at the end of the scheme, and a short, professionally-made film will feature the writers on the scheme reading from their completed manuscripts (just a short extract, to whet the appetite!) so that their unique voices have the very best chance of being heard by publishers. Hence the name: Megaphone!

We are also looking at other ways of adding value to the scheme, for example by involving schools, organising Twitter chats, etc. The cost for the scheme is £300; however there is funding available to cover this, for those who are in financial need. No-one will be unable to take part in the scheme simply because they cannot afford it.

The masterclasses for Megaphone all take place in central Birmingham, in Writing West Midlands’ offices. This means that you would have to spend just eight Saturdays between April 2016 and April 2017, in Birmingham. The transport links are excellent and as a city we’ve come a long way since the 1980s (if you measure progress by the availability of proper coffee – I confess I do, a bit :-) ). Seriously, though – we are a young, culturally and ethnically diverse city and thus the perfect host for a unique scheme like Megaphone.

So please, spread the word – we are accepting applications until the 24th of December. I believe this is a great opportunity for new writers to get a head start and for us all to benefit from a more diverse children's literature world.

For full details and to apply, see the website: www.megaphonewrite.com . Applicants should be 1) from an ethnic minority 2) resident in England 3) not have had a novel for children or teenagers previously published. Follow us at @MegaphoneWrite on Twitter.

Thank you, Malorie! by Keren David

Today is the last day of Malorie Blackman’s reign as Children’s Laureate, and what a glorious two years it has been.

She’s brought fantastic energy, humour and a massive load of good sense to the job, standing up for diversity in children’s fiction, promoting young adult fiction and  urging adults to respect children and teenagers' taste in reading.  

She set up the hugely popular Young Adult Lit Convention, spoke up for libraries, and initiated Project Remix, a chance for young writers to be inspired by classic fiction to create their own work.

She’s been to countless schools, and my son’s was one of them. He came home brimming over with enthusiasm for ‘this brilliant woman who was so interesting and had some great stories.’   I heard Malorie speak at STREAM, a great event held at Streatham and Clapham School, where she drew a big audience. Her story of being discouraged by a narrow-minded teacher, but succeeding anyway was completely inspiring  - all around me I could see teenagers given hope and determination to make the most of their futures.

During her two year term as Laureate  some people seemed determined to misunderstand her, seeing controversy in her common sense, and she attracted some wrong-headed and unpleasant criticism.  But every insult was balanced by a massive amount of air-punching and head-nodding by authors, librarians and many more, whenever she gave an interview or made a speech.

My favourite Malorie moments included the interview when she stood up for popular teenage fiction, like Twilight, saying: ‘My strategy is to say to a child 'if you love vampire stories then have you thought about Frankenstein?'

"You don't say that the only good books were written 50 years ago.

"It's like saying a book should be worthy - 'I deem this worthy and this is not worthy.'

"You mustn't be prescriptive because it closes down a lot of reading.’

And I cheered every time she pointed out the need for more diversity in children’s literature, including the interview with Sky News  when she called for more black characters in children’s books, saying: ‘ I think there is a very significant message that goes out when you cannot see yourself at all in the books you are reading.I think it is saying 'well, you may be here, but do you really belong?' 

I know that Malorie’s wisdom bolstered my confidence as I worked on my book, This is Not a Love Story  and I am sure I am not the only one. 

One thing I’ve noticed during Malorie’s laureateship is that authors have grown in confidence about doing things for themselves, and not waiting for the book festivals and reviewers to notice them. Emma Pass and Kerry Drewery’s UKYAX events, and Alexia Casale’s up-coming UKYAShot have taken on Malorie’s mission to spread the word about YA fiction at bookshops and libraries. Malorie may not be Laureate any more, but the seeds sown will flourish. 

 So, I’d like to say a huge thank you to Malorie and I’m sure I speak for most of the British children’s book world. And the best of luck to your successor - they've got a hard act to follow! 

PS. Completely unrelated, but as part of the Crouch End Festival, Karen McCombie and I will be chatting at Pickled Pepper Books, Middle Lane, London N8 tomorrow, June 9 at 7pm. Admission is free, it would be lovely to see you there. 

At the Finchley Lit Fest by Savita Kalhan

It was a glorious Saturday morning with sunshine and late May warmth, and I was all set for my little event in North Finchley Waterstones. The event was organised by Finchley Literary Festival, just one of the many events over the course of five days.

I was expecting to stand at a table with two other authors and a pile of our books in the hope that people would see us and take pity on us and come over and chat. I’m sure every writer I know has been in that particular situation, and sometimes it can be surprising in a good way, and other times it can just be very awkward and demoralising.

As I left the house, the skies darkened and it began to spit, lightly at first, and then it gradually became heavier. Out came the brolly, the mild expletives, and the not so mild expletives. I managed to get to the shop without resembling a drowned rat only because my kind husband dropped me directly outside it.

Inside the shop, I met the authors who were going to be joining me – The Brixton Bard, Alex Wheatle, author of Liccle Bit, and local author Ellie Danes, author of Shine Izzy Shine. So even if the event ended up being just us chatting and occasionally talking to someone who took pity on us, at least it would be fun.

What I hadn’t realised was that the organisers had decided to make the event more of an event. Within minutes they were setting up chairs for the audience. Audience? Yes, it was to be a mainly seated event so we could talk about ourselves, our books, and do a reading, and take questions.

Wow. I hadn’t been expecting that, and I wasn’t at all sure if we would get much of an audience. But we did. It turned out to be a great event. Lots of people came, and not because the heavens had opened up at just the right time, lots of kids came too and asked questions. And to top it all the audience was as diverse as the three authors.

So a big thank you to Finchley Lit Fest!

I know literary festivals are run in many places, but generally you only hear of the big ones, like Hay, Edinburgh, Bath etc. The local libraries played a big part in the Finchley Lit Fest, hosting talks and workshops, and debates. Buzz, the local cafe hosted an evening of poetry reading, and a guided walk around Finchley itself revealed its literary landmarks and its links to writers from Charles Dickens, Keats and Will Self. Finchley’s green spaces provided the back-drop to an inspirational writing/reading walk.

It would be great to see more festivals like this utilising all the available local resources. Like the local library, it promotes all the many aspects of books, writing and reading, and it draws people together, gets children and teenagers involved in a lively interactive way. What better way to promote reading!

Savita's website

Twitter @savitakalhan

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Choice and Libraries: If You Can't Buy it, Borrow It! by Savita Kalhan

In my blog for An Awfully Big Blog Adventure back in December, I shared a list of some of my favourite teen and young adults books that I'd read in 2014. You can read that blog here - Favourite Teen/YA reads of 2014. Commenting on the blog, David Thorpe asked me an interesting question – why were those books in particular on my favourite reads of the year? His question made me wonder if there was something that linked the books, a shared theme, a particular voice, or a genre. I looked at the list and at first thought: no, the books are all very different. Some of them were written in the first person present, others in the third person past; some had a male POV, others a female. Many of them were set in different parts of the world, or in an alternative world, or in a different time.

All the books in my list are richly diverse in terms of when and where they are set. Most of them are set in different countries, from Denmark to Ireland, Germany to the USA, and  I think that’s part of their lure for me. Many of the books are set in a different time or era: from the 19^th Century to a version of the future, or even a parallel time.

Some of the books are fairy tale like. The Hob and the Deerman reads like a wonderful fairy tale and reminds me of all the fairy stories I read as a child. I would happily invite a Hob to come and share my home. Jonathan Stroud’s Lockwood and Co, is set in London – but although the places in the book may be familiar to a Londoner, it’s not quite like the London we know. It’s beset by ghosts and ghouls that only children have the ability to see and deal with. So, when darkness falls, the adults lock their doors, leaving the child agents to do their work.

It was just as I finished reading Out of the Easy by Ruta Sepetys at Christmas, that I realised there was a common thread between all the books in my list. Out of the Easy is the story of Josie, the daughter of a prostitute in New Orleans in the 1950’s. It’s a book that I would definitely include in my list of favourite teen/YA reads of 2014.

It is the fact that they are set in a different time and place and sometimes in a different world which sets these books apart, and I think that’s what I love about them. All the writers beautifully evoke their setting, so that by the time you’ve finished their book you come away feeling as though you really know that place.

It’s not only the variety of world settings or time they’re set in that set these books apart for me, but also the variety in the lives of the characters. In both of Tanya Landman’s books, Buffalo Soldier and Apache, the main characters are girls: one is a black slave and the other is an orphaned Apache. If I had a teenage daughter, I would be recommending them to her. (Luckily I have nieces to whom I can recommend books!) But my teen son has no problem with books where the main character is a girl, and is interested in reading both.

The choice available in many bookshops these days does not fully reflect the diversity and richness of teen and young adult fiction. Although bookshops have more space devoted to teen/YA fiction, a lot of that space is still devoted to genre fiction, or to the bigger well-known authors. It would be great to see much more diversity on their shelves too. Most main libraries stock far more richly diverse fiction, although, sadly, smaller local libraries are seeing their stocks dwindle, in some cases (as here in Barnet) being purposely run down by councils prior to being closed or scaled down. Yes, you can still request a book from another library, and in some libraries they will order it for you if it’s not in any of the borough’s libraries. But most of these libraries are now run by volunteers or library assistants, and this is true of virtually all of Barnet’s libraries, and whilst they are good, a qualified librarian’s skills and guidance are not available to kids looking for help. As a child and a teenager, Wycombe Library had a brilliantly stocked library, fantastic librarians, and the choice of children’s books was astounding – I should know as I read practically every book in there!

Here’s an unashamed plug for libraries - it’s National Libraries Day on February 7^th. Events are happening in libraries across the country from Friday 6^th into the following week. If you have a minute, check out the link here to see what’s going on in your local library.


Here’s the hashtag for National Libraries Day on Twitter #NLD15
Or share a library #shelfie
Follow @NatLibrariesDay on Twitter and you’ll know what’s going on.

So the books are there – if you can find them or have been made aware of them. I’m hoping 2015 will be even more richly diverse in teen and young adult literature. I’m sure I’ve missed a few great reads in 2014, so please feel free to leave your recommendations in the comments. And I’d love to hear what makes a book stand out for you.

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The same or different? (Anne Rooney)

This post was going to be called "Gargoyle blindness", but you'll have to wait for that one, because I left my camera in my college office with all the photos on it. Instead, I'm picking up on Keren David's excellent and thought-provoking post of yesterday.

Keren said that she felt unrepresented in books when she was a child because there were no Jewish characters. I wholly respect that position, and don't want to excuse the publishing industry, the non-Jewish community, or anyone else. But I want to make a slightly different point - don't all children feel isolated and alienated? And isn't that one of the reasons we read? Reading helps us to find a community of made-up people we can feel like, that make us say, 'oh, yes, it's just like that!'

I was not black, or gay or Jewish or disabled or a member of any other group that is/has been under-represented in children's books. But children will always find something to pick on in others (and themselves). I was bullied for - I don't even know what. Being different. But we're all different. We just don't all have a nameable 'different' group. I suppose I could say that I did see children like me in books because there are books about children who feel different. There are a lot of them. Which might give us a clue: all (almost all?) children feel different, excluded, isolated, not like everyone else. Of course, if you also belong to an ethnic minority or under-represented group, you probably feel even more different, as you have the Keren-flavour of difference as well as the universal, existential difference.

Perhaps there are two distinct kinds of children's books. (OK, there are lots of kinds - but this is one way of dividing them.) There are books about a single protagonist and how they are different and suffer/triumph as a result. These are books like Peter Rabbit and Eleanor and Park, Twocan Toucan and The Little Princess, Heidi, Elmer and The Bunker Diaries. (There's a good exam question in that - how are Elmer and The Bunker Diaries alike?) Then there are the stories that offer a gallery of characters and invite readers to identify with one of them. A gazillion Enid Blyton books, and any number of multi-authored My Little Alien Unicorn Space Fighter series are the most obvious examples. But there are more thoughtful books, too - The Silver Sword, for one. And there are books that pretend to be the second and are actually the first, like Little Women - because is there anyone who preferred another character over Jo? (Doesn't just choosing to read the book align you with her?) Or Harry Potter, which pretends to be the first type but over the course of the series becomes the second type.

The different functions and appeals of the two types are too complex to consider here, but the first deals most thoroughly with the feeling of being different and becoming comfortable with it, discovering one's own strengths and weaknesses. The second is more concerned with fitting in - with seeing there are other people like you that fit comfortably into a group, and little differences are not a barrier to acceptance. I think, perhaps, it's the second type that in particular needs to be careful to represent as many different types of child as possible as they are the books that invite children to pick the character like them to follow through the story.

Is there a division between children along these lines - preferring one type of book over the other? I'd be interested to hear in the comments which you preferred. I overwhelmingly preferred (and prefer) the first. I had no time for Famous Five, Malory Towers or any of that. The Little Unicorn, The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, Mrs Pepperpot and Dr Dolittle were my favourites.

Confession time. My favourite book, when I was five, was Little Black Sambo. That's an unacceptable book now, of course. But I didn't know it was unacceptable (and indeed it wasn't in the 1960s), and I can remember why I liked it. The boy was so cool. He could outwit tigers! I can remember the first reading, when I was so upset that he lost his colourful clothes - and then it was all OK. He had the life I wanted (including good weather and blue trousers) - he defeated the bullies and, in true fairytale style, ate them so that they were definitely gone.

How was Sambo different? Because he wasn't a tiger, and tigers were in charge. Not because he was black. How was he like me? He was bullied by people who weren't like him (people who were tigers, but hey, it counts).

There were no black children in my school until a year or so later (this was rural Hampshire), but I can remember that him being black didn't affect my identification with him - he just lived in a country where people were black. (Sri Lanka, as it happens - Little Black Sambo is Tamil.) Now, the Mumbo/Jumbo thing bothered me, but not because I had heard of mumbo-jumbo as I hadn't. But I thought if his mum was called Mum[bo] his dad should be called Dad[bo] or something similar. And Jumbo was the name of an elephant, which his dad clearly wasn't. I rationalised that the local word for 'Dad' must be 'Jum'. And then that was OK. (I was familiar with different languages as my parents spoke in French when they didn't want me to understand what they were saying.)

No chance: I had to wear Hansel-and-Gretel shoes
- those shoes that show kids being abandoned
in the forest on the poster. Great. That makes
you keen to go shoe-shopping.

The point was that I could empathise with Sambo because he was a child in a spot of bother. Quite a big spot of bother, actually, with those predatory tigers. It was *just* like being bullied at my primary school. 'If you don't give me your apple/pencil/scarf...' Little Black Sambo was a child like me. Except that he lived somewhere warm and got to eat butter made out of melted tigers. How amazing was that? And those shoes! I wanted shoes like his.

In some of my other favourite books, the characters weren't even human. I could empathise with Moomins - no problem there. Or animals. I could read those stupid stories set in boarding schools, even though I knew no one who had ever been to a boarding school, even though I didn't really like them. I read books about boys. None of it mattered, because I was reading books for the bits that are the same no matter who you are, the bits that are part of the human condition - and that included the existential angst of realising that no one is like you. But on the other hand people (or moomins) can look very different and be just like you.

I read books about people who were not superficially like me and found comfort in the characters being like me at a deeper level. Which is not to say we don't need more diversity in children's books, or that we shouldn't endeavour to show children of all types. But what I think is most iniquitous is when books show children (or adults) of a particular group or type in a consistently bad light (or only one type - white, pretty, athletic - in good positions). When all the Jewish characters are like Fagin, or all the fat girls in boarding school stories are stupid, or all the ginger kids are freaks, that's bad. Because we see past superficial differences unless they come to stand for something. So while in one way there were no children like me in the books I read, in another way there were a lot of children like me because they were humans (well, living beings) and they were individuals.

But I couldn't outwit tigers.




Anne Rooney
aka Stroppy Author
Latest book (probably) A Bird in the Hand, Readzone, 2014

Black and White and Everything In Between by Savita Kalhan

According to a study by the Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin, of the 3,200 children’s books published in 2013 in the US, just 93 were about black people. The UK fares little better by all accounts.

Leila Rasheed has blogged about the importance of non-issue based children’s books featuring children from ethnic backgrounds, and why she finds it hard to write about non-white characters.  http://leilarasheeddotcom.wordpress.com/2014/03/20/permission-to-write-my-experience-of-being-a-british-asian-reader-and-writer-of-childrens-books/

Tanya Byrne has written about this on the Guardian books blog where she calls for more books featuring children of colour. https://href.li/?http://www.theguardian.com/childrens-books-site/2014/mar/20/tanya-byrne-top-10-black-characters-in-childrens-books?CMP=twt_gu

The dearth of non-white characters was raised by Dean Myers, in his article: Where are the People of Colour in Children’s Books. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/opinion/sunday/where-are-the-people-of-color-in-childrens-books.html?_r=1

And then again by his son Christopher Myers in The Apartheid of Children. https://href.li/?http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/opinion/sunday/the-apartheid-of-childrens-literature.html

There is now an increasing debate and demand for more diversity in children’s literature to reflect our increasingly multi-ethnic and multi cultural society.

Almost thirty years ago Verna Wilkins set up Tamarind Press in an attempt to redress the lack of books with children from non-white backgrounds being published in the children’s market. But ‘mainstream’ publishers have yet to catch up, and there is clearly still a huge lack of such books.

As a British Asian, who is 100% Indian in terms of heritage, but who is essentially more British than Indian, and as a big reader during my childhood, it was always a surprise when I found a book about a child who shared my skin colour. A nice surprise. Yes, often those kids were beset by problems such as racial abuse and stereotyping, but that wasn’t a problem for me because growing up in the UK at the time did in fact necessarily involve having to face those issues to a greater or lesser degree.

What bothers me now is the fact that, as all of the above authors have pointed out, there are still very few books that feature children of colour, whether or not they are issue-based or are 'normal' non-issue based stories .

Children are growing up in a society which is far more culturally mixed and diverse. But, for today's children, not much has changed from when I grew up, in terms of seeing and reading about a diverse range of children like themselves and their friends in literature.

That’s a problem.

I completely agree with Malorie when she talks about diversity of multi-cultural voices in children’s literature being of paramount importance, not least because it would promote awareness and understanding, and tolerance.

On a personal level, as a writer, I have written books featuring all white characters. People have often said that The Long Weekend could have been written by a white Anglo-Saxon. That’s fine. I find it quite amusing. It’s my fully Indian name on the spine. In another novel, Amnesia, the main character is an English boy, but his best friend is Indian and his girlfriend is half Italian. The book I have just completed is about an Asian girl and features predominately Asian characters of different backgrounds. I don’t feel that because I’m Asian I have to write about Asian characters all the time, or that I should feel obliged to.

What’s important in children’s literature is that a diversity of characters in terms of ethnicity and culture is depicted, and that their voices are heard, and that a child is no longer surprised when they find more than one book featuring someone of their ethnicity, culture or colour. Sadly, that’s not happening yet.

 www.savitakalhan.com

The Long Weekend Book Trailer

Twitter @savitakalhan