AS much as I like creaking old Jambos, I refuse to belittle this column by passing comment on Martin Geissler’s shirt. Surely in these modern, thrusting and intellectually virile days we are above mocking a decent man’s couture. You may well think that he shops in TK Maxx in Meadowbank, but I will not be casting aspersions – people in glass houses should never throw stones.
It has been a week of many words, most of them passing benign judgement on the new BBC Scotland channel, which got off to a professional start. Almost universally, the commentariat slavered about the new-look Nine O’ Clock news, some sharpened knives to settle old scores, whilst others shamelessly auditioned in print, hoping that their metaphors might catch the passing eyes of a junior researcher. I ran in a very different direction and headed for the other major cultural event of the week – the Scottish Book Trade Conference 2019 – an annual gathering of those that work at the cutting-edge of bookselling.
One thing that is blindingly obvious at modern conferences is that the person making the most money is the manufacturers of canvas tote bags, they have become such a signifier of our time that no festival is complete without eco-friendly carrier bags and a zany slogan. If only Dundee still had its jute mills they could be punting canvas bags to the swelling number of new Scottish publishers.
It has been another good year for Scottish publishing. Margins remain tight, but 16.3 million books were sold in Scotland in 2018 and spending on books has increased by 2.5%, marginally higher than for the rest of the UK. What is much more significant is the number of new entrants into the Scottish book publishing industry, many of them micro-businesses, niche publishers and specialised operators, the majority established by young women.
It is impossible to second guess how these new companies will fare in a fearsomely complicated market but most others sectors in Scotland’s economy would welcome such an enthusiastic start-up culture.
The annual jamboree was framed by big speakers. The opening keynote was delivered by James Daunt, the managing director of Waterstones and the closing sessions were led by Brexit Remainer Gina Miller, and First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, whose reputation as a book lover and an advocate of female entrepreneurship made her a popular choice to motivate the departing delegates.
Since I have had a mild joke at the expenses of Martin Geissler’s first-night shirt, gender balance insists that I mention the First Minister’s delightful crew-neck ensemble, which was vaguely like Falkirk's away top from the mid-80s.
Beyond the podium it is the new vitality of Scottish publishing that is so impressive. Publishing in Scotland was once associated with genteel Edinburgh and the kind of social snobbery that Twitter-rapporteur the Newtown Flaneur would relish.
Not now. While the old ways still linger, a hurricane of fresh air has swept through publishing: Charco Press specialises in Latin American writing; Fledgling Press’s focus is new writers, Knight Riders blaze a trail for next generation gay writers, and Little Door from Argyll and Bute is busy re-imagining children’s books.
The success story of Scotland’s Tartan Noir crime writers is already well known, and whilst there is more to come from crime and police procedural, Scotland is increasingly home to genre-busting forms too. The energetic 404 Ink defies classification. Its anthology Nasty Women was the top selling book at last year’s Edinburgh Festival.
The air of optimism was inevitably framed by a sobering market realism and the gorilla in the room is inevitably Amazon, the US behemoth that has disrupted the ways books are bought, sold and even published.
The challenges are not simply that Amazon delivers directly to homes, undermining the very idea of going into a book-shop. What is less well known to the consumer is the dark sorcery Amazon holds over book pricing. Its heartless algorithms force prices down through the floor, irrespective of the cost of production of a book or its potential lifespan, and so leaves small publishers and authors impoverished in its wake.
Walking away is hardly an option, Amazon sells 15.6m hardbacks per annum, dwarfing even the biggest chain-stores.
Each month, Scotland publishes more than 200 new books. Many get lost in the forest of things, their prices manipulated downwards by an American conglomerate, but others find readers far from home. A few books were mentioned as exemplars of what small publishers aspire to.
Graeme Macrae Burnet’s Booker shortlisted His Bloody Project, published by Saraband, is the story of a crofter’s son facing the gallows after confessing to a triple murder.
It demonstrates two things: how hybrid genres – history meets crime – can freshen a publisher’s catalogue and how the latent power of the awards system brings curious readers to new publishers.
Helen Fitzgerald’s The Cry was often mentioned to illustrate the value of television as a promotional vehicle, and Birlinn’s commitment to republishing the works of Muriel Spark as a towering example of how a publisher and the public realm can work together to widen access to great works.
Amazon’s malign pricing system and the thorny issue of returning unsold books to publishers threatened to cast a dark pall over the day but the self-confidence in the room was contagious.
There is still a powerful desire and a level-headed romance about publishing books. I sensed a defiance in the room too, that no matter what constraints the vagaries of the book distribution market place on Scottish publishing, they will be resisted. We cannot yet be sure about if this is a generation’s optimism or the first days of a better nation.
Scotland has a healthy and diverse bookshop sector too. Most bookshops, especially the local independents, have come to understand is that they are something more than simply a place to buy books.
Many have diversified into gifts, into collectibles or offer the services of a cafe-bar. The very best have built up a new kind of cultural emporium, where authors visit, musicians perform and festivals gestate.
It goes beyond new ways of surviving the challenges of publishing: the local bookshop is now a bellwether of a thriving small town, and the key to rekindling deserted high streets. Bookshops have become a symbol of imaginative survival in the era of disruptive consumerism.
One fact that was nearly lost in the enthusiasm was the parlous rates of pay that most Scottish authors live on. A recent survey claims that the vast majority of indigenous authors with books currently on sale in Scotland earn around £10,000 per annum, well below the minimum wage.
The consequences worry me, the barriers to new talent, to diverse talent and to new writers from Scotland’s socially deprived communities is already too high. Such a low income threshold suggests that professional authorship is for the well-heeled, the independently wealthy or the academic who can write within the context of funded research.
This more than anything is why the relative success of young Scottish men like Chris McQueer and Darren McGarvey is so important.
They deserve success in their own terms but they do a vital public service too – holding out a beacon of possibility to people in Scotland whose background or social isolation means that they are least likely to earn a living from writing.
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