Welsh and English-language Publishers from Wales on the International Scene

The Croatian essayist Dubravka Ugresic, in “Eco Among the Nudists” (Thank You for Not Reading) describes a scene on her local beach a few years ago, when all the sunbathers are sheltering under the same novel. She reflects, ‘The phenomenon of the bestseller is a projection of the collective longing for one book, the book of books, for a substitute Bible… [this longing is] deeply anti-intellectual… the bestseller is a space of ritualised collective innocence (we enjoy something which everyone enjoys). The bestseller offers a closed system of simple values and even simpler knowledge.’

Ugresic’s particular international bestseller author that year was Umberto Eco. But her comment can easily be adapted today to Dan Brown. The next Dan Brown was what most publishers seemed to be after at the 2004 Frankfurt bookfair. They all had a vaguely-articulated longing for something similar: no one knew what the next Dan Brown might look like but they would all recognise it when they saw it. We – representatives of Parthian, a small, English-language Welsh publisher, were trying to sell in advance our new novel, The Colour of a Dog Running Away by Richard Gwyn. We were trying to sell it as “the new Dan Brown” – and it did share some characteristics: part thriller, a preoccupation with an obscure Catholic cult, Catharism. But we went home with no deals. Despite having being established 11 years, and having a good list of around 12 English titles a year, with a strong element of literary fiction, and despite having had a foreign rights agent working for us for 18 months, we had not managed to sell one title.

Five months later with the publication of The Dog in May this year, two things had changed. We started promoting it in the UK as the new Shadow of the Wind, a book totally dissimilar, being set in the Franco era and being a story of childhood, but sharing a Barcelona setting. We knew this would tap into current publicity around the Catalan book’s choice on the primetime TV Richard and Judy Bookclub. And then it was read and picked up by Scott Pack, an extremely influential and controversial figure in the British book trade – central buyer for Waterstones, and our book was awarded an A* grading, a guide to Waterstones’ managers which guaranteed bulk orders throughout the UK, inclusion in promotional offers, heavy publicity and prominent face-up, front-of-store display in the shops. The book was visible throughout the UK. We started getting serious broadsheet reviews –again, UK-wide coverage followed by international trade publication coverage guaranteeing more visibility, and at last, sales. Within six months of the publication date we had sold 5000 copies (our usual print-runs are 1500) and by the end of the summer we had sold rights in four countries, including the USA. This year’s Frankfurt proved a hotbed of appointments, dispatched readings copies and hopefully more firm deals.

The opening quotation describes an international phenomenon, a world-wide “collective longing” for a book. Traditionally, as a small independent publisher, we have struggled even to get noticed by bookchains and the media within the UK, within a bookmarket producing 100,000 titles a year, never mind the world market. Some Welsh publishers are happy to consolidate their sales within a small home-market producing 159 literary titles in English and a total of 652 Welsh-interest English books. The A* UK-wide grading that Waterstones awarded The Dog was unprecedented for a Welsh book. We can afford to try and be ambitious, because our primary market in theory extends to the English-reading people of the world. This is not a luxury shared by a minority-language literature such as Welsh, who in 2004 published 56 literary titles out of 583 general Welsh-language titles, produced within an overall market in both English and Welsh of 1235 titles published for the Welsh market. The warmth of reception for our novel The Dog at 2005’s Frankfurt Book Fair, compared to the previous year, is due to one key factor: UK publicity. We have the luxury of aspiring to achieve this directly. For our Welsh-language colleagues, an international profile in rights terms would usually be gained using the stepping-stone of an English translation, usually via an English publisher. An alternative option would be to bypass the UK altogether by building networks with other small or minority-language literatures.

In theory, Parthian has a much greater direct international potential than Welsh-language publishers. But the poverty we share with them currently outweighs most of the advantages the English language conveys on us. We are all small – like us they have around 5 or less full-time staff working on book publishing. They are cash-strapped, time poor, have no dedicated rights staff and are historically subsidy-dependent. They –like us - are extremely grateful for the opportunities for the networking, translation contacts and rights promotion that literary exchange bodies like Welsh Literature Abroad provides. We all struggle to garner the publicity that supports word-of-mouth success and to offer the advances that keep our best authors committed to their publishers (although this is gradually changing with various new schemes that have come in the wake of new political commitment at National Assembly government level).

We are all – Welsh and non-Welsh-language publishers - committed to the writers of Wales. And although we may vary from publisher to publisher in the degree of our commitment to the Welsh language, or to political nationalism, we are, unlike the bigger London publishers with their much bigger advances and publicity budgets, committed to Welsh culture and to giving something back to Wales. Parthian, like our Welsh-language colleagues such as Y Lolfa, are committed to nurturing writers who want to reflect their experiences of contemporary Wales. This is where the politics comes in. This is not to say that we are not pleased to find a Welsh author who wants to write about Barcelona. Its subject of an international city that is a major holiday destination for trendy young people, was one of the major reasons for The Colour of a Dog Running Away’s success. We will also be launching in the Spring of 2006 a new series of translations and titles by foreign authors. These titles, however, will only ever be around 16% of our output, and we do have to test the market yet. Less than 4% of books published in the UK market are translations. Our bread and butter are our Welsh authors; they reflect Wales; that is reflected in our subject matter. As our foreign rights agent said recently, “Parthian’s authors – Tristan Hughes with his lyrical north Wales landscapes and deep history; Jo Mazelis with her small seaside town cameos and her fairytale motifs; Rachel Trezise with her black humour and gritty realism… they have a wonderful style; what we are trying to sell is great quality literature, but yes, they are local stories. It may be that foreign publishers see them as too Welsh, too local.” While ironically for some authors, using the Welsh language can free them from a concern with a Welsh setting and characters, on the whole a commitment to our own experience is what defines our output, for Welsh-language and English-language publishers alike. And readers of our best-selling title, Work, Sex and Rugby have confirmed that they like it because they are reading about themselves, and they can’t find that experience in the mainstream.

We are not narrow: we are keen to promote the experiences of others, the settings; the cultural differences, the enrichment that other languages can offer us – even in translation. So we are interested in buying as well as selling within the international arena. Welsh-language publisher Y Lolfa recently explored plans for buying four thrillers based on the new East European cities. English-language publisher Seren was looking into a big series from Lithuania. Our two foreign Spring titles will be from the Catalan, and Nebraskan English. But Parthian happens to be at a buoyant stage, enabled to buy rights following good rights sales and by a benevolent funding body that will cover the production costs of foreign titles. We managed to get a translation grant from Institut Ramon Llull, and this relationship has encouraged us to buy a second Catalan title for 2007. It is no coincidence that the countries I am mentioning have minority literatures: Welsh-language publishers in particular would rather invest in cultures that have things in common with bilingual Wales.Y Lolfa, on the other hand, abandoned their plans for translating thrillers because they found the differences too great: Czech politics and culture was too far a jump; they found the style too literary, too dark for the tastes of their readers. They were worried about production costs. Seren’s European grant fell through so the Lithuanian titles were put on hold. It may be that we still need a bit of spoonfeeding: shortcuts to aid funding of translations from foreign institutions; help with production costs; advice on how to market translations in our home market. This is because of our size and impoverishment rather than a lack of interest or broad horizons.

We need help with orientation within a huge market: getting to know various publishers and their personal tastes and quirks takes time, money and a commitment on both sides. In order to promote that elusive potential bestseller, we need to have a feeling for what might be big in the coming season. To avoid Dubravka Ugresic’s ‘ritualised collective innocence’, we need to learn the international hooks and author models – not necessarily bestselling ones – that will strike a chord with particular foreign publishers. Our satellite estate novel Playing Mercy may be sold as “something like Altman’s Short Cuts film”. Jo Mazelis’ short stories seem to be popular in Denmark: we need to know why and play on this in other northern European countries. We need to know what publisher in what country likes Graham Swift’s work and whether they might see the similarities that we do between him and Tristan Hughes’ interest in place and history. We need hooks; we need contacts, we need to build up detailed knowledge. Hopefully sessions like the 2005 Inizjamed Malta Symposium will provide some shortcuts.

Gwen Davies, Parthian

www.parthianbooks.co.uk