[Auto-generated transcript. Edits may have been applied for clarity.] Welcome back everybody. My name is Simon Horrigan and I'm head of the English faculty here in Oxford.
And it's a great pleasure for me to introduce this afternoon's session.
And I want to begin by taking the opportunity to thank Bloomsbury Publishing for helping us to run this event without them and their support.
We simply wouldn't be able to be here today, and we hope very much that it's the start of a long term relationship between Oxford,
as we know, the home of fantasy, as we've been hearing this morning,
and Bloomsbury Publishing, who are doing so much to promote new writing in fantasy,
and also the development of the study of fantasy through its scholarly series.
So this afternoon session will run from 140 to 4 4455 with a break in the middle.
And the first part is a chance to hear from editors and publishers at Bloomsbury about the popularity of fantasy literature,
what the market is looking for and where it's heading.
And then the second part, the highlight of our school, where we're thrilled to be hearing from two major writers of fantasy,
Katherine Rundell and Samantha Shannon, both Oxford alumni.
Catherine was at Saint Catherine's and now a member of All Souls,
and has just published the second book in her Impossible Creatures series, The Poisoned King.
If you go to Blackwell's bookshop, you'll see it very visibly in the window on the, uh.
And Samantha Shannon, who also studied English here at Saint Anne's College.
And so I'm first going to hand over to Nigel Newton, the founder and the CEO of Bloomsbury Publishing.
Nigel was born in the US but studied English at Selwyn College, Cambridge.
Founded Bloomsbury in 1986, was the recipient of the London Book Fair's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2020.
He was made a CBE in 2021 for services to publishing, and in 2022 was made president of the Publishers Association.
So please join me in welcoming Nigel. Well, thank you very much, Simon.
And good afternoon, and welcome to the Bloomsbury session, where we're going to tell you how to harness all of that great wisdom from academics
and the authors you'll hear from later to become published authors yourselves,
we hope. I am very excited to be here, because from the minute this idea was proposed to me, I thought, what a great idea!
Look at those two words Oxford and Bloomsbury.
What do they have in common? They are place names.
They are place names that have great resonance because of all of the the greatness that's happened within their neighbourhood.
So when I named, um, Bloomsbury, Bloomsbury in, in I guess about 1985, a year before we launched,
I was trying to channel all the goodwill and the resonance of the many book publishers
who had inhabited Bedford Square in the heart of the London neighbourhood of Bloomsbury.
Not, as you may imagine, a reference to Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.
But at that time, before publishing became as kind of conglomerates as it now is.
Um, most publishers were in this one square.
So in a nutshell, we became we became then our mission from the outset was to publish books of excellence and originality.
And that remains our mission. Um, 40 years later, there is no better place to explore that than here in Oxford,
in this beautiful and literate city with such a mix of highly talented authors, um,
based here, leading academics, ardent readers and intelligent,
curious students at the Oxford Bloomsbury Fantasy Summer school attending um 2 or 3 of the lectures.
Uh, this morning I felt right at home because, as Simon said, um, I also studied English.
It's not, as they try to tell you, a hopeless degree that won't get you a job at Microsoft.
It's the best degree. And keep on studying.
Um, but but I was fascinated by how literary critics come and go.
Uh, in in my day, fr Leavis was the holy Grail.
Um, and I think most of you never heard of him.
But anyway, um, so it is impossible to ignore Oxford's place in the making of the modern fantasy canon.
Um, as we were learning this morning, from Lewis Carroll to Tolkien to Pullman to Bloomsbury, s own authors,
Samantha Shannon and Katherine Rundell, who you will be lucky enough to hear from in great fantasy writing.
Originality and excellence are the watchwords those books that take over your imagination,
building their own profoundly imagined reality that stays vividly with you long after you've finished reading it.
Now, one of my favourite stories from the publishing side of the History of fantasy, um, is that in 1936,
J.R.R. Tolkien submitted The Hobbit for publication to the great publishing house of George Allen and Unwin.
Sir Stanley Unwin paid his ten year old son, Raynor, a few pence to write a report on the manuscript.
Rayner's favourable response prompted Unwin to publish the book, and the rest is history.
I was tickled by the similarity of this story to the origins of Harry Potter.
I took the TypeScript home, which had been given to me with such huge enthusiasm by our children's publishing director, Barrie Cunningham.
I couldn't be bothered to read it to myself and gave it to my then eight year old daughter,
Alice, who came down the stairs an hour later, uh, in a state of, uh, being totally transfixed.
She said it was so much better than anything else I'd shown her.
And on the strength of that, and the unanimous support of my eight colleagues,
led by Barrie Cunningham at the editorial meeting, which I chaired in those days, I authorised an advance of £1,500.
Joe's agent, on the other hand, Christopher Little, played hardball and pushed Barrie up to £2,000.
Bloomsbury itself began as a fantasy, I suppose you could say imagined by me and later my three.
Co-founders. Once I got them on board, all of us avid readers working in other publishing houses and wanting to invent something different.
Together with our authors, we built something real and are now about to celebrate next year, our 40th anniversary of independent publishing.
In an era when all ten of the the largest publishers, as they were in 1986 when we began,
have been taken over by foreign owned media conglomerates, many of them controlled by wealthy, private European families.
Over those years, we published culturally important and best selling books that set in what you might call the fantasy genre,
including authors like Margaret Atwood,
Alan Moore and J.K. Rowling, whose once in a lifetime success changed our world completely and shapes the minds of generations of readers.
And also Susanna Clarke's extraordinarily brilliant Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Madeline Miller's wondrously imagined bestseller Sersi,
rooted in Greek myth following her astonishing The Song of Achilles, which was the toast of book talk,
followed by George Saunders Booker Prize winning Lincoln in the Bard.
What an extraordinary novel of the imagination that is.
And then Sarah Jane Maass,
who wielded her enchanted pen and carved out a whole new genre of romance to see a word invented by Bloomsbury marketing supremo Kathleen Farrar,
with Sarah James setting the world alight with a passion for reading, becoming the best selling author in the world in 2024.
In both the UK and the US as well, which is itself quite extraordinary,
sometimes I have to pinch myself that Harry Potter should have been followed at Bloomsbury by Sarah Jane.
And my debt of gratitude to the Bloomsbury editor in New York,
who noticed Sarah's large online following as a self-published author and got in touch with her after reading the first book, is enormous.
Some of the books I've named just now might not meet your own definition of fantasy.
There are subgenres and books which are fantasy adjacent, if you like, even haunted by the spirits of fantasy.
As publishers, we love books which burst out of their genres to reach the widest possible audience.
As so many of these great works have. This afternoon is about the fantasy of today, not of the past, as you've been hearing this morning.
Commercially, it's a hot area of the market in the UK and internationally.
There isn't a big publisher which hasn't started a new science fiction and fantasy
list since the extraordinary runaway success of the 16 novels of Sarah James.
There is a strong and thriving sense of community and connection among fantasy readers,
where the good side of social media is evidenced in their support for emerging talents and improved representation.
Book talk has been very important.
Fantasy fans have also led the demand for more beautifully produced physical books handsome, illustrated and collectable.
Bloomsbury itself is launching a dedicated fantasy imprint this autumn called Bloomsbury Archer,
under the direction of our fantasy obsessed publisher Vicki Leach Mateos, who you will be hearing from shortly.
This new imprint will publish books across the full constellation of science fiction and fantasy, and to explain the imprints name Archer.
You may have noticed, um, that Bloomsbury is colophon.
On the side of every book is Diana, the Roman goddess of hunting, with her bow pulled very helpfully back into a B for Bloomsbury.
It's hard to conceive how she could have imagined that all those centuries, millennia before, um, as she hunts for the greatest writers of today.
Not to kill them, of course, but offer them contracts.
We have already heard from a number of academics and specialists in the field today.
Among them that wonderful, uh, talk by Sarah Mugo Rana, uh, an early Bloomsbury archer, uh,
author whose debut fantasy, Dawn of the Firebird will be published by us, uh, and with great pride in December.
I loved her, um, her take on the, uh, the, the non Judeo-Christian traditions of storytelling and fable and fantasy.
This afternoon you will be lucky enough to hear, as Simon has Adam braided from, uh, our own stars.
Samantha Shannon. Um, her among the burning flowers, the latest in her blockbuster Roots of Chaos series,
shot straight to number five in the Sunday Times bestseller list when it was published.
Um, last week. Um, I was fortunate to spend part of the weekend with Samantha Shannon, um, at a literary festival.
Did you know that the Queen of England has her own literary festival called the Queen's Reading Room, and it took place at,
um, Chatsworth House, uh, which was the, um, the marvel for Pemberley in the film, uh, Pride and Prejudice.
So that was all pretty, uh, fantasy level.
And Queen Camilla arrived in a helicopter and, uh, met all the authors.
She's a passionate supporter of reading, uh, and of books.
Um, and and Samantha met her and, um, uh, and then the Queen, who had just been at the state banquet with Trump, flew away again in her helicopter.
What a fantasy.
Samantha's first book, The Bowen Season, was published just as she graduated from Oxford University, where she was Saint Anne's College.
And I think Samantha hadn't even taken her finals yet the first time I met her.
So if that doesn't give aspiring writers in this room hope and encouragement, I don't know what will.
Last year, we rereleased the Bowen Season series, newly edited by Samantha, and the series is going from strength to strength,
with book five out earlier this year and reaching number three in the charts.
Fantasy is also core to our children's and young adults publishing, where genre delineations are blurred, their roots and missed.
Legend and fairy tale, meaning that even books for toddlers are packed with magic.
Which is talking animals and safely scary monsters.
The books we grow up with tend to stay with us throughout our lives.
This afternoon, you will also hear from an author who is unquestionably the most important writer of middle grade fiction of her generation,
whose Impossible Creatures series has been a bestseller around the world,
and who last week was herself being chased around London by a manticore in honour of publication of her new novel, The Poisoned King.
Um, I am speaking, of course, of Katherine Rundell, fellow of Saint Catherine's College, Oxford.
Just to give you further encouragement. The poisoned King went straight to number one, both in the UK and the US, a remarkable achievement.
Fantasy is also now providing rich material for a study,
as this occasion itself is such clear evidence of Bloomsbury s academic publishing division is also leading the way.
Bloomsbury is the most unusual publisher in combining academic and general publishing.
That is our secret weapon, and other people don't do that.
The Bloomsbury Perspectives in Fantasy series was the first scholarly series to focus exclusively on fantasy scholarship.
We expanded our output in fantasy because there was such significant growth in the number of courses
and modules on the study of fantasy and the writing in in the fantasy mode across the globe.
As aspiring writers among you might, uh, know, you must seek out the Writers and Artists Yearbook,
the team from which helped pull together this event with their colleagues from Oxford.
The Writers and Artists Yearbook has been putting writers and publishers together for 120 years now.
So if you're looking for good advice on the writing and publishing process,
please speak to James Reynolds soon and Clare Povey, who are here today, and make sure to buy a copy.
Here is an interesting fact.
Did you know that J.K. Rowling found her literary agent, the aforementioned Christopher Little, through the Writers and Artists Yearbook?
Um, I think she said she, uh, she chose him because she liked his name.
Because it reminded her of Christopher Robin. Jo even wrote the foreword to the 1999 edition of the Writers and Artists Yearbook, in which she said,
nearly three years later and a long way from a Corso, I had almost finished writing Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.
I felt oddly as though I was setting out on a blind date.
As I took a copy of the Writers and Artists Yearbook from the shelf in Edinburgh Central Library.
My friend Paul, who had recommended it, was right and the yearbook answered my every question,
and after I had read and reread the invaluable advice on preparing a manuscript
and noted the time lapse between sending the book and getting a response,
I made two lists, one to publishers and one of authors.
And so it is, with considerably more cheer in my voice than Paul had in his right now.
Tell unpublished authors everywhere, writers and artists, your book.
That's what you need. Um. And I'm running over time.
Would you like me to carry on or shall I? Um.
It is time for the panel now. But this is going to be better than anything they say.
Okay. Um, you, uh, you may be wondering what our predictions are for the fantasy market.
As publishers, we see big brands getting bigger still.
See what I mean? Though? Still with room for growth among debuts.
There will be more cross-pollination and the rise of subgenres, each with their own particular tones, readerships and buying habits.
In terms of national trends.
There are murmurs of a return of dystopia who raw calls for more epic plots and worldbuilding rather than emotionally censored fantasy.
And publishing has long been looking for the next king of horror.
We were expecting high finishes appreciated in physical editions, spreading into other genres also,
and it will be interesting to see how the current market for low cost, self-published,
Amazon driven fantasy develops and whether it continues to feel quite distinct.
We're in the final stretch. Um, in conclusion, I hope you got a lot out of this afternoon.
Whether you are an aspiring author or publisher or academic.
Drawing on my own life experience. It's all about hard work, dedication, luck, and resilience.
I was chatting to an old school friend in America last month who is the head of neurosurgery at the Mayo Clinic in,
uh, in Rochester, and the dean of their three medical schools.
And he said he's now performed 10,000 brain operations, which is quite staggering.
The author, Malcolm Gladwell, talks in his book outliers about the 10,000 hours of practice you have to put in to be good at something from.
Music to art. It sounds a bit frightening, but it works.
Though I'm not sure I can claim to have done 10,000 of anything except possibly eating lunch.
Thank you for a very good lunch.
I'm sure you will all go forth with a little bit of magic sprinkled on you as a result of your decision to attend this perfect fantasy school,
and that some bits of it will stay with you forever and help ease you into your new persona as the next J.R.R. Tolkien.
Thank you. Thank you so much, Nigel, for that wonderful overview of what an amazing list of authors.
So could I invite the panel's come up then, please? And while you're doing that, let me just, uh, just say who will be joining us.
So we have, uh. Zoe Gilbert, Bloomsbury author and academic.
Who's chairing this panel? Vicki Leach Mateos, who's Bloomsbury Publishing director and a specialist in fantasy fiction.
Lucy Strong, who's the Bloomsbury Academic editor for literary studies and creative writing.
And Rebecca McNally, Bloomsbury Publishing director and editor in chief for children's.
Over to you. Hello, everybody.
Thank you for coming. Uh, I hope you can hear it's a little flying in here.
If you can't keep wave close. We will be crossing the line.
Thank you. I will try to be as interesting as Nigel in the time we have left.
I'm sorry. Gilbert. I am an, uh, author of fiction that sort of glides between fantasy genres.
I'm sorry, but I'm here to introduce, uh,
publishing directors and commissioning editors who can tell you all about the state of fantasy and hopefully what they're looking for.
Uh, so briefly to introduce Vicky Leach, Mattel's publishing director at Bloomsbury, is building a list of speculative fiction across sci fi, fantasy,
horror, folklore, mythology and magical realism and is founding the publishing house, his first science fiction and fantasy imprint, as we've heard.
Very exciting. A bookseller rising star in 2022, Vicky has published over 20 Sunday Times bestsellers and prior to joining Bloomsbury,
shepherded Harper Voyager onto an imprint of the year in 2023 as editorial director and Bloomsbury Art Archer is being launched by Vicky this month.
Very first dedicated science fiction and fantasy.
This very excited Lucy Strong is senior commissioning editor of literary studies and creative writing, siblings, Bree's academic publishing division.
She's published critical and scholarly books on genres ranging from fantasy and science fiction to horror and crime studies,
as well as that intersection with creative writing.
She's worked with authors and editors from across the academic landscape, most recently with series editors Dimitri Fahmy,
Matthew Sangster, and Brian Astbury on the Perspectives on Fantasy series A Fantasy File.
Since she could read, Lucy has been lucky enough to edit books on worldbuilding, writing, fantasy fiction, the history of the genre,
and also how sci fi and fantasy writers can have an impact on real world disaster planning and prevention.
And Rebecca McNally is publishing director and editor in chief at Bloomsbury Children's Books.
Rebecca leads the children's trade publishing division of Bloomsbury, which she joined over a decade ago,
having previously held roles at Macmillan Children's Books and Puffin.
Her career has been influenced by having a librarian mum and by many amazing role models in children's publishing.
She believes that great children's books make you keep your eyes and mind wide open until the very best antidote to cynicism.
Cheers to that. Bloomsbury one Children's Publisher of the year at the 2024 British Book Awards,
and they publish best selling and award winning books for all ages, from pre-school to young adult.
So thank you all for being here.
And before we dive into the nitty gritty, I wondered if you'd each give me a sentence on which aspect of fantasy you personally find most interesting.
And I'm going to pass this like. That's a big question.
Um, I think close up. I won't get any closer.
I just I'm going to anyway. Um, I think the fact that it can just open your eyes, I think fantasy can.
It's what Emily Dickinson says. Tell the truth, but tell it slant.
You can talk about so much in our world. How it can be changed, how it can be bettered.
Um, and just that's probably for me what I find the most fascinating about it.
I think. Um, I think about this with two hats.
One hat is the necessary commercial hat of a publisher.
And what really excites me is having a brilliant fantasy book that I think will sell lots and lots of copies.
And then alongside that,
there's the magical power that book will have to shape a child's imagination to give them the tools to travel through the world,
to see opportunities for resilience and hope where it may not naturally be there.
So I think about both those things when I'm reading books to acquire and the books that I've read and shaped me.
Um, obviously dragons are the best thing about fantasy.
Quite apart from that, I think one of the things I love about it most as a genre is that it feels like a community genre.
Um, it feels like, uh, a space where people enjoy it, that people enjoy together.
There's a reason people learn Klingon and Elvish.
Um, and I think it's because it's about creating a setting that you can share.
And it's about radical empathy. It's about creating secondary spaces in order to create new realities with each other.
Um, I think that's the reason that one of the many reasons why fan fiction and cons and cosplay, uh, hallmarks of this genre and less so in crime.
I hate to think of what fine cosplay looks like. Um.
Uh, yeah, I think it's about community. Um, and I think that's maybe my special thing about it.
Thank you. And thank you all. Uh, so what do we mean when we talk about fantasy?
It's a huge question and it has so many subgenres, but I suppose specifically from a publishing perspective.
Could you talk a little bit about how we do differentiate these stories, and also make sure that we find the right audiences for them?
Do you want to start you kind of from the fiction side of things and me?
Yeah, I got this. Um, every subgenre from sort of cosy to steampunk and so on, demand something different of its readers and asks different questions.
And I think approaching it from a publisher's perspective is often about, uh,
trying to anticipate what a reader wants and what a reader is hoping to get and
what's lacking in the market in terms of those demands and those questions.
Um, are you looking to the future? Are you looking to the past or element of the past and how?
Um, so I think particularly when I'm looking at what trends are coming and what elements and subgenres of fantasy are coming?
Um, I'm trying to anticipate sometimes what swinging, what direction we're swinging in from,
say, cosy to romantic, say from high fantasy over to science fiction and back again.
You know, what are the responses? What are the demands on the reader?
Um, so I'm sort of I'm thinking in that sense intuitively, um, as a publisher rather than necessarily aesthetically about summaries and subgenres.
Um, I find this question actually very difficult because I had this revelation about 20 years ago when we were pitching to an author.
Uh, we were trying to buy that really, really brilliant book. And I went into it thinking, I'm not really a fantasy reader.
Um, and then I looked back at all the books I had read as a child and loved so ardently as a child,
and realised, I think, that children's books are more flexitarian when it comes to fantasy.
And I think children are often broader and more open in their reading habits and less genre specific.
The trade itself, commercially, is a little bit allergic to genre words, particularly science fiction.
You have to be very careful with that word. Um, and I think fantasy is a really, really broad category.
And what it means to me is that there is an element of another world that may mirror us, but it could be coming into us.
We could be in another world. It's a way of exploring ideas and experiencing things that perhaps are beyond the everyday reality you live.
Um, and expanding your mind and imagination.
I don't think there's anything more specific to it than that for me.
Um, just thinking about, uh, fancy scholarship and kind of what we were trying to do with the books that we publish.
Fantasy has always been in flux. It's always changed.
It's reshaped itself. It's reshaped itself. It's drawn on fairytales and folklore, um, and expanded and changed in new ways.
So. Well, I'm really excited about certainly in the scholarship field is, uh,
what are the parameters of fantasy meaning not just in terms of genre, but in terms of what does a fantasy text look like?
And how can a fantasy text be fan fiction?
Can it be a daddy campaign that someone's written?
Um, well. And so that's I think what I think is really exciting.
It's not just about literature anymore. It straddles all sorts of mediums.
Um, and what are the possibilities of it? What can fantasy, um, tell us about, uh, world?
What can fantasy tell us and genre tell us about, um, you know, classifications and things like that.
So that for me is what I'm kind of I see fancy as very kind of mutable, but also exciting as well.
Thank you.
I think this idea of fluidity and flux in fancy and definitions is perfectly welcome to all of us who are interested in writing this kind of material.
Uh, so I'm going to jump onto craft and finding these stories now and ask you what attracts you to a fantasy story again as,
uh, from a publishing perspective? So what's a key list of things you keep an eye out for?
I suppose, when receiving new submissions. Um, again, talking from the academic side of things.
Um, I think what we found really exciting with the books that we've been publishing is, um, how there's a perception of fancy.
I think that it's very much defined by the juggernauts, you know, the Tolkiens, the Lewis's, the US and Aquinas.
Um, I'm also I've been fantastic in championing fantasy. Um, and sort of being somewhat the originators of it.
What I love is that ability to find nuance and how, um, digging into fantasy scholarship can really bring out new voices.
Um, for example, we've got a book in our series on William Hope Hodgson,
who was quite influential in terms of weird fiction, um, but completely eclipsed by the likes of Lovecraft.
So what I'm really excited about is that ability to, um, make a picture that's much more richer than I think it's initially perceived to be.
Um, so that, for me, is what I, what really attracts me in terms of fantasy scholarship.
Um, yeah, I'd say that's what I think you. Um.
I think it's slightly different for children's and young adult um, and young adult publishing, which is the top end of what I do.
It's it's much closer. There's a lot of market overlap with what Vicky does.
Um, and for me, and with current trends, that tends to be really strongly character led.
It needs to feel like you have a protagonist who whose central dilemma and journey you are instantly and powerfully engaged with.
Um, and that can be complex, wonderful, immensely imaginative world building around it.
But most why a fantasy that really catches light is character first.
Um, in middle grade and at the younger end of things.
I think the most important thing is that your fantasy world and characters feel real,
that they are vividly imagined, that they are immediate, that you can smell things, you can taste things.
You you can feel that you are there with whoever.
The avatar for you as a reader is in the story.
Um, um, you don't need a map to find your way through it.
You don't need to spend a long time familiarising yourself with the rules of the world.
That should happen naturally. As a writer, you need to build out those rules and really understand them.
You need your maps. You need to have it all worked out, and you can work that out as you go and go back and infill.
But it doesn't all need to be there on the page, because we need to be able to take it for granted as a reader.
I think the feasts a better end middle grade fantasy. They so like Red bull, Red bull.
Um, yeah. I think when I, uh, it's hard to say.
I don't know the character in the setting. Um, I do those things are really important.
I suppose what distinguishes really good fantasy from really great fantasy for me, um, is writing that feels like it has,
uh, maybe not an objective, but a perspective of a viewpoint, um, a direction where I can see the,
the world building from the magical system through to the protagonists arc are all
tied together to tell the reader something really new or something really familiar,
or something really true about the author's experience or about the world that we're in today.
Um, and I think when that comes through and it doesn't necessarily need to be explicitly placed within the pitch from an agent,
but when that comes through really clearly, um,
be it in the first paragraph or in the kind of blurb or in the synopsis,
I'm properly hooked because I can work with a debut author as long as there's a spark there and obviously talent in writing,
I can work to refine something.
We can bring out something great, but the idea of being able to communicate something true about the world that we live in,
about their perspective on lived experience through unreality, is so beguiling to me.
I think that is at the heart of like, wanting to travel as part of a loving fantasy, of wanting to explore, wanting to go somewhere new,
be it in the past, be in your own life, in your own mythologies, or somewhere entirely separate to your own experience.
Thank you very much. And I suppose to expand a little bit on that question and turn it towards people who might be aspiring to get published.
What advice would you give to authors hoping to break through in this enormous genre?
And maybe we could talk a little bit about how one finds one's niche if those niches are still there.
We talked a bit about fluidity, and if this magical thing, the USP exists and what that should look like, but all in any advice would be fantastic.
You have heaps of stuff. Yeah. Um, I mean, so I do a lot of, um, editing of creative writing books as well as kind of fantasy scholarship as well.
Um, and just thinking about the things that come up again and again.
Um, there is so much focus, certainly in fantasy on worldbuilding.
Um, and for me, the well, I can probably recommend a few books, actually.
Um, there's a few on the on the desk out there if you want to go and check them out, but, um, uh,
one the book by Jeff VanderMeer, it's not one of ours, but it's really, really in-depth, um, on every aspect of fantasy writing.
And there's a great, um, section on worldbuilding in that.
Um, but also, I think, um, the stuff that comes up a lot is research,
research in terms of being able to be respectful of other cultures that you might that might inspire you,
but also it can help to know how the world works, how things work before you try and tackle it yourself.
You know, if you're writing a feudal system, for example, go and figure out how it works.
Um, so things like that. Um, and also for me, it's that thing where it doesn't look like a monolith.
Its culture is rich and varied. And if you're seeing, uh, if you're seeing a world where everyone looks the same and acts the same,
let's look at Tolkiens orcs that there's meant to be free in this world, yet they're all evil.
Um, so I think it's that ability to, yes, state what the standard status quo is, but then figure out what the violations are afterwards,
because it's that ability to have a world that feels rich because that nothing is consistent.
Be consistent in your inconsistency when it comes to to writing.
That, I think, is what not having not written or having not, um, edited, uh, fiction.
Nice. But having edited a lot of work on creative writing. Those are kind of things that stand out for me, certainly on one aspect of writing fantasy.
Um. How many of you are righteous?
Hello. And how many of you are righteous for children or young people?
That's really helpful to know. Actually, we've got a very writerly audience.
Um, I, I think a really key starting point for you is to, of course, you have absorbed all the influences of everything you have ever read, right?
They're all they're churning away in your creative soul and spirit.
Um, it can be tempting to look at the market, and it is important,
particularly if you are writing for an audience that is not you, although you are always part of your audience.
It's really important to to have a sense of what else they're reading.
But I would be wary of being too led by trends or too led by what is selling now,
or what Vicky or I have told you, we think might be coming through in the next couple of years,
because the most important thing for all of you is to figure out what is your unique story to tell, what is authentically,
truly the book of your heart that you must write, that you are driven to tell whether there's a publisher who wants it or not.
Because that truly is the mark of a really, really true writer.
You are driven to it. You can't not do it. Finding a publisher is a really hard thing.
And for a lot of people I know, it feels like that's the the end of everything, the realisation of a dream.
But actually that's also in itself the beginning of a journey and a journey that can be a really bumpy one, with lots of ups and downs on the road.
Its its own hero's quest, with lots and lots of challenges along the way.
And I think you need to be really resilient to do any of it.
I have huge admiration for writers, but doing it because it's your passion is the most important thing, and that's all I think I can tell you.
It's really hard going after such good advice, but I think if I can just add on to Rebecca's, it's one finished book.
Yeah. Um, and to have lots of ideas. So I think while it's wonderful to have a brilliant book coming to your inbox,
it's even better when you meet an author and you find out that this might be one of their hearts books, but it's not their only book.
It's not their art book. Foster lots of ideas.
Put books away. Maybe after you finish writing them and challenge yourself to do something completely different.
Um. Try to. Yeah. Love your reader.
Um. And know what they like, but try different things as well.
So have lots of ideas and and. Yeah. Really? Can't say enough.
Finish the book. Okay. Thank you all very much.
I think, uh, I want to turn back to worldbuilding for a little while,
and I know we've talked about the balance in some areas of of this genre where it's not just about the worldbuilding and character matters,
and also some great advice from your books about, uh, being consistent in your inconsistency.
And I guess that's an interesting way into thinking about world building, that it's not just about, uh, drawing on fantastical ideas or tropes.
And we know there are an awful lot of familiar fantasy tropes out there as well.
But for you, kind of what matters most when it comes to world building.
Is it those details we talked about, things you can smell?
Is it being original and avoiding the dragons? I'm sure not.
You from your points of view? Um, yeah.
What feels essential?
And if we include within worldbuilding not just those details, but characters, hierarchies, all the rest of it, that would be great.
Um, I say, uh, thank you.
Not cherry picking. Um, I think you touched on it earlier.
And I think while you don't have to be incredibly precision, uh, perfect, uh,
consistent throughout every bit of your worldbuilding, at least to begin with.
Um, it's making sure that there is a correlation and that you're not just, uh, falling prey to what could sometimes be,
um, quite lazy cherry picking from different cultures or from different time periods.
It's interrogating yourself. And while you make decisions that you make, um, as part of your worldbuilding as well, um,
and being your own harshest critic, when you do make decisions to write outside of your own lived experience,
which is something that, you know, I think everyone should be able to do,
but be your first critic and be open to criticism if that is something that you're doing.
So, um, yeah. So build build from research and try not to cherry pick if you can.
I think that's really helpful, actually, because I think that willingness to interrogate your own work and your assumptions is really important.
And when world building, if obviously because you've got everything in your head already,
it might be helpful to give your book to someone else to read so they can tell you honestly what is missing.
And that actually, a number of times as an editor, I've been really delighted,
as I'm sure Vicky has to find that questions I've asked have led us on an amazing journey that's really transformed the book.
Um, and I, I think sort of that openness to questioning and learning to question interrogate yourself is really important.
I am really. Cautious about well building,
because I think it's very important in books for children that you're not overloading your reader with
information that they have to take on board before they can get into the story and the adventure,
whatever that story is. So it has to be invisible.
It's the architecture that's there. Um, but you don't see it.
Um, and I suppose there are many great examples of that, and I think it'd be really interesting.
I don't know if Katherine Rundell might talk a little bit about that later or Sam, um,
because they're both completely genius at it and do it in a way that feels effortless.
Um, but it is important. No one is going to be creating something that is completely unique because we're all creatures of the culture we live in.
Um, I don't expect uniqueness, but I do expect real signs of individuality and originality in there.
Um, and I would hope that you will have the ability to do that.
Um, I just thought it might be helpful to round off with something that I hear a lot from
creative writing instructors when they're talking to their students about world building,
is that you can make yourself think you're writing when you're not.
You're just world building and you're procrastinating. So it's that, um, kind of be conscious of just how much of the world the story needs.
Um, so let the story lead you in terms of what information about that world you need to know.
So, you know, if you've got a scene where the character is using money, you probably should have an idea of what the money is.
But you don't need to know the banking system and the, you know, that kind of thing.
So it's it's huge.
The story, the world of the story, the lens of the story in the characters to kind of guide you on what information you need to know before you write.
Um, again, coming from creative writing instructors, not not from my, my, my knowledge there, but that comes up a lot as well,
because it can be so easy to be sidetracked from story and writing and finishing,
um, by things like world building, which feels productive when maybe it's not.
Can I have something? I think, um, I often, uh, tell authors, I think saying leave it off the page is a really good piece of advice.
I often tell others if they're stuck,
or if they are overloading the manuscript with too much exposition to put that energy into a world building document,
because this is incredibly useful for copy editors and editors later.
Um, and it can be a really useful tool in terms of getting over blocks as well.
If you're finding it really difficult to sit down and write that day, then do write how banking system works and divide you know,
what the fashions are and how they've changed in the last decade since, you know, the last one dropped or whatever it is.
Um, I think that can be a really productive way of moving forward with your writing and leaving it off the page,
but having it that as a reference if you need it, or if an editor needs to. Thank you all.
Fantastic advice. Uh, we're going to have time shortly for questions from the audience.
So I'm just going to give you a moment to think about what questions you might have.
And I have one final one for you guys, which is really looking at fantasy fiction as a whole and asking why you think it has such lasting power
and what it is these stories say about life and human experience that has given it this kind of longevity.
I think we've talked a bit about the fluidity of fantasy as a genre, but also the changing relationship with, uh, scholarship, for example.
It's it's going to be around for a long time, and it's certainly alive and kicking today.
So that sort of persistence that it has and what it's doing for us, I'd love to hear a little bit about what you think about that.
I'll let you guys go first. Okay.
I'm so sorry. Was that what we think? Where we think it's going? Yeah.
Why? You think it was this last impulse? Yeah. Um.
I think fantasy has this amazing ability to capture something about the here and now and to isolate an idea or perspective, um,
and gives the author the opportunity to kind of deliver it with a with a cluster of, uh,
crystalline clarity, um, while also sugaring that pill with adventure and hoards of gold.
Um, I think it's the perfect balance, joy and interrogation.
Um, and I don't think we've ever needed that more than we need both those things now.
Um, so I think. Yeah. Escape and questioning.
Um. I was thinking about this and thinking about again, thinking about children's books specifically.
Um. Um, fantasy has been a hugely important part of children's books as a, as an area of publishing since the very beginning.
If you ignore sort of really obvious morality stories and instructive stories, um, and.
It. It does evolve over time. But I think, you know, if you look back, think about in Nesbit, think about Alan Garner, Susan Cooper.
Think about Harry Potter. Think about Katherine Rundell.
The books we're reading now, consistently.
Fantasy is a tool. It gives children a world that actually empowers them and gives them agency that they don't have in their real lives.
Um, and it gives them it takes them seriously as moral entities.
And you see that in Catherine Rendell's newest book, most powerfully,
where there's a girl who sees a profound injustice being perpetrated and realises that she has to do something about it.
Um, and I think that's an incredibly important message for children, um, particularly in the world that they live in,
where they are fed lies and untruths, where they're trying to navigate.
Adults they can trust and adults they can't.
Um. And fantasy consistently has engaged with these subjects in a way that's really powerful and takes children seriously.
So I think that's why it's such an enduring form for children.
Um, I think it was Tolkien that said fantasy is a human right.
Um, and I think when I think of that quote, I think of the fact that when you fantasy, very broadly speaking,
is on a global scale, you'll get writers who are creating worlds, they're creating religions, they're creating reality.
How matter works within that reality. And so that that they're they're building worlds and they're creating walls,
but they're also mapping and showing us how the world can be otherwise and how it can be changed and how oppressive regimes,
for example, can be completely destroyed.
Um, thinking like looking at, um, RF Collins Babel, for example, we were talking earlier, she disables his empire in the in the space of her book.
And I think what other than a speculative mode, can you do something like that?
Um, so I think it's, it's because it's global, because the stakes are higher,
because the worlds are always in peril, or the country or the way of life is always in parallel.
There's this ability to completely rip up the rulebook and do something different and show how it can be,
how the world can be otherwise, while still very much paying homage to the world the way it is.
So for me, that's why I think fantasy constantly, um, in people's in, in much it's in people's imagination.
It's what's so popular. I think it's the fact that it's a human right.
And world building is is important,
and it can just change the way we think of things and maybe give us a roadmap for how we might change things in the future.
Thank you. I don't think I've ever felt quite so excited about fantasy itself.
States. Descriptions. Wonderful.
I'm gonna ask you one last question before we turn to audience questions, which is possibly the most difficult and possibly the most important.
Which is do you have any predictions? And are you anticipating any particular challenges or excitements?
Uh, ahead. Uh, just in terms of, like, academia and what I'm seeing.
Um, as I said, uh, what the fancy text looks like.
Um, exploring things like that. Um, digging into people whose work has kind of been marginalised for now.
I think that is really exciting for me. Um, and yeah, just looking at the possibilities of fantasy and as you mentioned earlier in the bio, um,
we've got a book that's exploring how fantasy writers and sci fi writers are working with governments,
um, and the military to kind of scenario model disasters.
Because when you're in fantasy, in these very imaginative genres, you're thinking about how the world could be different.
If you change that one thing, what would result in that? So it's a cause and effect mentality.
Um, and these fancy and sci fi writers, we're working with people who are actually able to think about,
well, if this went wrong in this, as in, in our community here, how do we deal with it?
It's worst case scenario modelling and how you deal with it.
So I think fantasy has the ability,
just that really imaginative way of thinking has the ability to give you give back to the world and change how it how it can maybe move forward.
So distracted by that. Yeah. Um, I'm not sure if you are all aware of the really,
really serious challenges that we face in the kind of reading for pleasure space for children at the moment.
It's very, very significant. Less than a third of children now report reading for pleasure on a regular basis.
Over 800 libraries have closed over the past. I think it's ten years.
Um. What else? 1 in 7 primary schools doesn't have a dedicated library or library space.
And there is a real challenge for us as a culture around the value we place on books and reading.
And alongside that, I think the value we place on childhood itself.
Um, as publishers, we are all working incredibly hard to address that.
Um, and one of the things, one of the things we've seen as a sort of really significant decline in immersive reading.
So kids, uh, reading very similar books when they're 11, 12 as they were when they were seven, eight.
Um, there was a in that a really brilliant shift towards graphic novels and illustrated books.
And I think you'll see that developing more in the children's fantasy space.
There's going to be a lot more illustration and lots of shorter books to try and adapt what we publish to that challenged immersive attention span.
Um, and obviously that challenge is coming some from some very obvious other places,
the digital culture that is absorbing our children's eyeballs and brains.
Um, so I think we are reacting as fast as we can to that.
And you will see short, snappy fantasy in a way that hasn't been the trend over the past sort of ten, 15 years.
Um, I think that there is a lot of focus as well on action in story, um,
sort of very immediate narrative and keeping the pages turning as quickly as possible.
So that's definitely a trend. And, and things we are actively looking for.
It's really interesting that there has been a,
a brilliant sort of increase in representation in the first year of voices, particularly in young adult.
It is really sort of slower coming through in middle grade.
I would love to see. Thinking back to the conversation with Sarah Mobile earlier,
I would love to see more children's publishing coming from diverse voices and exploring imaginative worlds
that are beyond that traditional sort of Judeo-Christian narrative structure that we all know so well.
Um, so lots of change to come and lots of work for all of us to do,
to make sure that reading and stories remain essential to, uh, our kind of culture and our childhood.
Um, I'll speak commercially because I am really happy not to know what's coming in terms of creative and artistic expression and fantasy.
Um, but I think commercially, uh, looking at, uh, romance to see and, um,
the splintering and breaking apart of genres as kind of readers crossover from one space to another.
I see more portmanteau as more of our future. Um, I see, uh, the mixing of different genres, genres.
It's now been over 12 years since George R.R. Martin laid siege to HBO and made, um, you know, fantasy feel like quite a mainstream experience.
Um, even one kind of on a par with big sports events that you throw watch together.
Um, I think before that, for some years it felt a little bit out in the deserts, um, in quite a journey way.
Um, uh, it felt like something that belonged to people on the outskirts of mainstream culture.
So that's that's ending.
And as it moves closer to the mainstream, I do think that we'll see people kind of question and come at it from different perspectives.
And I think we'll see, um, the merging of different genres and therefore maybe the breaking apart of what we think of as fantasy,
as a monolith with the, uh, Tolkien or Mount Fuji, Tolkien as Mount Fuji through Canon Fuji.
Um, so I see a real blend of blending in the future, probably, um, commercially speaking.
And I get really excited by that,
because I think from the meeting of all these different spaces and disciplines will come something quite new and hopefully new voices and.
Thank you all so much. We now have about 15 minutes, uh, for audience questions.
Are we having a roving mike? Fantastic.
So please stick your hand in here and someone will come with the mic.
Uh, we could start here. Hi.
Um, thank you so much. It was a fantastic panel.
Um, so in my day job, I'm a magazine editor, and I know that whenever I get an article across my desk, it often comes out completely new.
Probably about 1000 words shorter. So I was just wondering, um, when you guys have books come onto your table?
Um, how much do they transform, and in which ways do you kind of see them transform during the editing process?
Probably going to be a very different process and very difficult. Thank you.
So different for every book. I'm sorry. That's not good. Um.
Good answer. Um, uh, often I get, uh, asked by prospective authors, you know,
does a book have to be a certain length to which I'm able to say no, I think Rebecca might have a different answer.
Um, for kids books, but I think, um, classically, what happens is that we bring out the main characters story a little more clearly.
I think it's a it's a tendency that these things live in the author's mind.
Um, and some stuff that maybe seems obvious to the author needs to be further onto the page.
Um, I think again, that's true of the world building.
I think that's true very rarely when I ask the question of why does something occur in a world because it's not on the page.
Does the author not have an answer ready for it?
It's all in their head. So I think generally the process of editing is a bringing down from the author's mind and a
meeting on the page that is a little bit closer to where the reader will experience the story.
Um, but it's rarely like as simple as cutting words, um, or adding them.
Yeah, I think, as Vicky says, editing is infinitely variable because it's never the same from author to author.
And as an editor, you often are quite able to, um, to evolve your style slightly depending who you're working with.
So, uh, um, and it can take time to go that relationship and it may evolve over a long working relationship too.
So it may be at the beginning that you feel like you really, as an editor,
need to show that you've done your homework and you'll write like a 20 page editorial letter and sort of send a manuscript which has many,
many notes to show that you really have been paying attention to this book and exactly sort of the positives as well as the, the difficult questions.
Um, and that can evolve to after a first draft, you have a conversation and then the author goes off to rewrite on the basis of a conversation.
It really changes. And that trust is essential.
And a book can evolve very significantly.
It's more likely that a massive evolution will happen on the second or third book on a contract,
because generally the first book on the contract is the one that you've read to acquire it, and you will still expect to do some editorial work on it.
You will still, and sometimes you'll want to feed that in as part of the negotiation as well,
because you don't want the author to to land thinking, oh gosh, I'm a genius.
It's done. You need to know that that the openness to that work is there.
But books do change a lot in the editorial process.
And that's where also the questions of luck, the serendipity of your book landing on the right desk at the right time.
It may it that that book is making a connection with the editor.
That means they want to engage with and they're excited by it.
It's not competing with something very similar or has a similar theme that they already have on their list.
There's so many. There's so much kind of good fortune that is essential to the publishing process, to.
I don't think my side of things is that pertinent here,
but the I think one thing about and publishing is that you get to send out your audience before you put the book out, because you get peer review.
You get the insight of people like series editors. Um, so in that regard, things change, but only really only for the better,
because you get a wonderful amount of insight into one, um, on one particular work.
But I think it's more kind of the fiction side of things that was being talked about better, but that's fine.
Thank you. Um, I'm really curious about how much you're able to be very deliberate versus responsive in what you publish.
So I imagine you will have like, ideas of what you want to put out into the world.
Do you then sort of need to wait for that to cross your desk?
You able to go to authors and be like the dude who went to the Gwen and was like, can I can you write a young adult series for me, please?
Now we have to say, what does that process look like in terms of creating something?
Oh, it's a bit of both. I do sometimes I'm not averse to stalking of an author saying like, can I have this?
Can have this. I think you do a great job of this. Um, but often it is about identifying gaps in the market and then lying in wait, frustratingly.
Um, sometimes you're able to do, um, IP intellectual property.
Um, it's not so much something I've done, um, much of in the past, uh, which would be kind of,
uh, setting out and finding an author and then setting them the task.
Right. Something sort of to spec. So that does exist. And there are some very successful publishers, particularly for ebooks who work on that model.
Um, but I think in the more traditional vein, it is a case of trying to anticipate where the market goes and then sort of
lying in wait for a book that probably won't be exactly what you're looking for,
but will be hopefully just what you need. Um, so I think it's a little bit of that with just a nice bit of, uh, poaching and stalking as well.
Um, sprinkled in there commercially, um, aggressive behaviours to.
Yeah, I think it works both ways. And in children's publishing, um,
we are often thinking really hard about audiences and who is and isn't being served by something that's successful at the moment.
So you might see something that's really brilliant and successful for that.
That's predominantly for a girl audience. And you'd be like, where's the one for boys?
And you might therefore go away and try and sort of find the right person to write that for you and approach them.
Or you might even try to develop a concept that you go to an author with.
Any author approaching with something like that needs to have the experience, and you need to know that they can deliver it.
Um, and there have been points in my career, a long, long time ago where we unashamedly, unashamedly did what we called parallel concept development.
Um, so, for example, when Vicky mentioned him earlier, the great Brian Jakes Red Wolf series was at its peak.
We were like, we need a mice in skirts, um, and, and develop something with an author that was deliberately shorter and younger but was talking mice.
There wasn't an abbey, there were some Chris and I think I think you're kind of spotting a gap in the market, something that isn't being served.
But there's something already that works, and I think there is less of that.
We're much more scrupulous now, perhaps, than we once were.
Um, and I think another thing that has changed in children's publishing is the role of the author themselves as promoters of their work.
And so also 20, 25 years ago, there were quite a lot of packages who would come up with a concept only IP,
um, have a have a team of authors writing for them,
and it would be published under a made up author name, and a lot of series would be incredibly successful in that space.
There's much less of that kind of thing now, partly because we ask our authors to be in schools a lot of the time,
to be standing up in front of groups of children and being advocates for their books and exciting readers about them,
and that has unexpectedly become part of the job.
Um, so I think that is also something to bear in mind when thinking about children's publishing.
It's not like an absolutely essential thing,
but it is really helpful if you are able to sort of talk about your books eloquently and excitingly to young audiences.
Sorry. I'm gonna think there's an exciting, um, underlying thing there.
That's true in trade publishing as well, that the authors role.
You know, that we often ask me to step forward in a way that we that wasn't as crucial.
And maybe in a time before social media and a time before, you know, multi stock tools.
Sorry, Samantha. It's here in the room. Um, but I wonder if as I and as, um, author authorship sort of starts to seemingly recede, um, in importance,
the parallel of that is kind of the clear importance that authors have in the minds of readers.
You only have to look at signing queues to see the truth of that.
Um, and that's something that maybe haven't those those two things haven't maybe been put together in my mind before,
um, but felt very present in you speaking. That was that an epiphany moment?
Yeah. Financing. Um, I can aggressively go after an idea that I want.
Which is the great thing about academic publishing. You can see where are the courses, what are the what are the ideas and trends coalescing around?
Um, so you can be and thankfully, academics have their interests and research fields on their bios, on their university website.
So I can literally trawl the internet and find people to, to write things.
And, um, so for me, I was really excited when I came up with the brainwave that, um, because brains has a big,
big series called Cultural Histories, which basically traces a topic across the whole of human history.
Um, and I realised there wasn't anything on monsters, so I basically went after people who were kind of researching and writing about monsters,
which there are a lot of went down a rabbit hole into cryptozoology and looking at like, did Bigfoot exist?
But yeah, so I can very much aggressively go after an idea and then find someone to pair up with that.
And I normally get to say, you're the expert, I want to work on this.
How would you do it? And I kind of said it like it's a fun thing for them to work out.
So very, very different from you. I don't have to be as patient.
I can very much be women. Yes. I need to be very alert to trends, um, and see who's doing what.
And so I comb, like, journals and things like that to see what the what.
The new trends are so very different I think in that. Okay. Thank you.
I think we can never have too many books about talking mice.
So Lucy might want to commission someone. Yeah. Uh, we have time for another question.
Um, so we actually have a lot of online questions.
So I try to condense several topics and I guess like the why a lot of questions,
very specific questions about how to proceed if people want to publish has
been looking for what are the trends which are especially attractive nowadays.
But I guess that also taps into another series of questions where people ask about the broader landscape of fantasy writing,
which is not reflected by bestselling books,
and sort of also your ideas on kind of why certain trends are so irresistible and which trends are in the media to turn down for a book?
Um, I don't know if it makes sense, but, uh, that's a lot to encapsulate.
And one question so immediate knows obviously there.
There are things that would be very challenging to publish in a children's book.
Um, so you have to be sure that the the content is appropriate for the audience.
Um, we very straightforwardly don't put much swearing in books for 8 to 11 year olds.
Um, we're quite cautious about really extreme violence.
Um, so that's that's an immediate.
No, I think also someone who it there's a fine line because I understand that you want to show that you have researched the market,
but telling me exactly where your book sits in the market actually isn't your job.
That's my job to work out. Um.
And it doesn't mean I won't read it. But it's it's a little irritant.
Um, I, I think I think it is interesting as well.
That sort of. Yes, there are the best sellers.
And as you say, there are an awful lot of books, books that are published.
So as we said earlier, we have reached that point on their journey, but that don't sell very well.
And that's really difficult for everybody. But they might find their audience at some point.
When we commit to a book, we're committing to the life of the book, and it will have many formats and hopefully a long life.
Um. But.
I, I don't know, I mean, the process of getting published.
I would say it is invaluable to you.
Nigel may not appreciate me saying that, but to have an agent who is in your corner and representing your interests and your agent will,
if you pick the right person, they will give you straight direct advice.
They will be with you for your career, and they are there to work for you and to serve your interests.
A publisher we are brilliant, right?
We're great at what we do, but we're there to make sure we want to have long creative relationships with our authors.
But we also are driven by that commercial imperative, too.
And I can't pretend we're not. We need the books to sell us because that's what makes them commercially viable.
Um, and it's one of the difficult things that we don't maybe talk about very much when we're having these conversations.
It really matters that I and my sales team and my marketing team feel that we can sell your book,
and if we don't feel that and we're not the best publisher for it.
So I think that answer will differ for every publisher,
because every publisher approaches books in their own particular way and has a different approach.
Some publishers and some imprints, some fancy imprints of massive um,
and we'll take many books that fall within the same subgenre and in the same style,
and they will put them out, and they have a dedicated group of readers who buy everything and want to read the same thing over and over again.
Um, I think that's not really the Bloomsbury way, typically.
Um, particularly speaking, my lesson in business, um, it's a case of making sure that every book complements well, competes as well.
Um, so the quickest and easiest turn downs are when something sits very close to something.
I've already decided I'm going to be championing, something I've already committed to and pledged to.
Um, and I think in some ways, those are the best faith notes that I can give, because they aren't necessarily even an indictment on the book itself.
But, uh, testament to the commitment I've already made to the authors that I've already taken on board.
Um, I think trends come and go. Uh, there's a lot of noise about what I see, and quite rightly so, because the numbers are really big.
Um, so that kind of erotically emotionally driven, um, fantasy.
But if you look at number, there's a number one to number ten.
If you look at number 52, number 70, you'll find that from the in Martin.
Um, and one of the ones that people, you know, people say, oh, where's epic fantasy?
But you'll find, uh, the darks and the epics and the highs still churning away at that level.
Um, I think there's a lot of room for things that don't fall into those two camps.
Um, so I suppose in terms of trends. Yeah.
Just to echo what's been said before, write your own story.
Um, you're the one that's gonna have to live with it for many, many years. Um, but you must like it.
Um. And, uh. Yeah. Thank you so much for your talk.
Um, my questions kind of has been touched on a little bit by Nigel.
With the rise of social media and online platforms, authors now have a direct connection to their readers.
Um, how is this affected? Bloomsbury approach to marketing, discovering new content and building over brands?
Because, as mentioned by Nigel, has a big influence on with TikTok.
Um, those platforms. Thank you. Did you?
Yes. How how has social media affected our brand building?
Yes, it it's like building up the awful brands. How are you finding new talon's finding under represented voices?
Well, it's been the most amazing creative tool for us, actually.
I mean,
we have a fantastic social media team who market our books completely brilliantly and who seem to pour ever more extraordinary creativity into it.
So we have a Bloomsbury creative circle, which is not authors.
It's all sort of big readers and influencers, and we do a lot of events with them,
and they work with us to promote our books, and that's a really amazing thing.
It's also brilliant to see the organic viral trends that build that.
However hard you try as a publisher to influence, you actually can't.
Um, I know Nigel mentioned earlier the sort of huge success of Madeline Miller from our adult list,
which was very she'd always been a highly regarded and really wonderful and very strong selling author,
but this kind of extraordinary rise in her sales that happened very organically through Booktok.
Um, and Sarah J. Moss, too. So it's an amazing tool and a wonderful opportunity.
Um, at the same time, if it's not as an author, if it's not your natural space, don't go there.
Um, because you need to be willing to commit to it.
You need to be willing to take the [INAUDIBLE] because there will be some coming back.
It's not. Not always friendly. Um, so. So approach it carefully.
But if it if it feels comfortable to you, if you want to commit to it, you will find a community there that will support you.
And that's a brilliant thing. Um, and in terms of finding authors, um, through social media, we haven't done so much of that on the children's side.
Um, I mean, Nigel mentioned that Sarah Jo Marks, at the beginning of her career,
sort of self-published on a digital platform early versions of what became her Throne of Glass books.
Um, but that's not quite the same.
Um, I'm not sure whether you've found authors that way.
Um, yeah. I think firstly, any publisher tells you that you need to be on social medias doing it.
And so that's that. I think, as Rebecca says, if it's not your strengths, like let the writing lead the way.
Um, I've not found authors that way.
I think authors tend to find readers that way, not necessarily publishers.
Um, I do love to see the meandering ways in which, particularly TikTok, um, manages to evade all commercial, uh, wrangling.
Um, and I think that's magic. Genuinely.
There's a genuine conversation between people, and, um, I don't know how to act too much, but it can feel quite democratising as well.
Um, I think it can go both ways, though, and I think it's interesting that what these algorithms exclude as well.
Um, and I think we should be really mindful of that, um, because they're not benign and they're not neutral.
Um, and they are self-perpetuating too.
Um, and what is visible and what isn't visible is often genuinely being controlled.
Um, so all of which is to say, uh, I think just to leap off on the search point,
obviously issues and originator of the romance genre, but also a really fun one,
a current trend that I've been seeing a lot of and that is dominating the chance of authors who write in self-published spaces and then seek,
uh, representation of it, often from me. Um, and then, uh, that book is then packaged and sent out to publishers,
particularly publishers who don't have a long history of publishing in the fantasy space and who are
emboldened by that take following or by that momentum that the self publishing machine can sometimes bring?
Um, that's not so much what we've done a lot of, at least maybe not, because it's not sometimes really quite fiction.
Um, but speaking personally because it doesn't leave much room for an editor.
So if in a case of touching it as little as possible and letting it get out there as quickly as possible.
Um, but that's an interesting trend that I have seen.
And again, there is a democratising element of that as well, because it does cut out that traditional,
uh, publishing process of querying and waiting and, and that slightly frustrating dance between parties.
Um, so I'm interested to see where that goes.
Um, and I think a lot of that is driven by by social media, social media and academics sometimes not that well, that's probably makes you.
Okay. Well, thank you all. Thank you for questions. I'm afraid we are out of time.
So let's just say a very big thank you to Vicki Richmond, Tess Rebecca McNerney, and Lucy Strong.
Thanks so much for your insights today.