Publishing internationally, digitally and collaboratively with the BookBrunch interviews

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Another trio of interviews for you from BookBrunch, and each one is a real treat for publishing enthusiasts.

First, I caught up with Henry Rosenbloom from Scribe, who was so frustrated with the state of rights sales, he decided to expand his publishing house from down under to the UK. This is one publisher that’s serious about seriously good books!

“Later on in life, I’ve realised that what drives me as a publisher, in a strange kind of way, is the Holocaust. That’s what imprinted on me the seriousness of the world we live in, and how important it was to try to understand history, politics, people, and how to tell the truth. How to ‘comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable’. Books have the power to change people’s lives, and we want to put out books that demand to be published because of their intrinsic significance.”

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BookMachine | The March Wrap

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BookMachine_logoIt’s the time of the month where I round up all the internet’s top publishing stories and stick them in one place on the BookMachine blog for your perusal! Here’s a sneak peek – don’t forget to visit the BookMachine blog for more…

The big news from March in UK publishing is obviously the London Book Fair (LBF). Poland shone at this year’s Market Focus, and the Fair was busier than usual, with six-figure deals struck ahead of time and publishers cheerfully splashing cash as sales rose. This was seen as further evidence of the rise of print, with The Guardian stating that by the end of the month stats showing that print outperformed digital. Yet, despite the recent whopping $65m forward paid for the Obamas’ new book (which hasn’t pleased all and prompted a list of the biggest deals of all time) no single title emerged as this year’s big hitter.

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Much excitement: Boost is featured in the Daily Express

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Very exciting times in the house of Jasmin this morning: I’m dancing around with my very first newspaper clipping!

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The folks over at Daily Express have featured excerpts from Boost in a beautiful half page spread: 10 Unusual Ways to Boost Your Confidence Today! A big huge thanks to the Daily Express and Summersdale Publishers for making this happen.

Here’s a link to the web article as well, for those of you who prefer your news digitally – hope you enjoy! 

A big bunch of BookBrunch interviews

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I’ve been shamefully lax on updating everyone on the latest BookBrunch interviews, which means that I have not one, not two, not even five, but SEVEN interviews for you today!

We’ve also had a big, shiny new BookBrunch website built for us, and best of all it’s got its very own interviews section, so you can go back a read your favourite interviews quickly and easily. 

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Don’t Panic! Fourth self-help book out this summer

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I took my annual pilgrimage to the Summersdale Publishers stand at The London Book Fair – and guess what I found hidden away in the Spring/Summer catalogue:

9781786852038-3-172x225Don’t Panic:
How to calm your anxiety and stay chilled when life gets stressful

Yep, that’s right I’ve got a fourth book coming out with the lovely folk at Summersdale and it’ll be landing on shelves in August! I’ve been busying away on it for the last few weeks and I can’t wait to see it in print.

While I was there, I also spotted copies of Boost, Stress Less and Believe in Yourself – the cherry on top of the awesome publishing cake that is LBF!

BookMachine | A tax on the precariat: what the 2017 budget means for the self-employed in publishing

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BookMachine_logoWhen BookMachine asked for an opinion, I couldn’t not comment. Read the full article here, or grab the snippet below:

Outrage abounds in the wake of Philip Hammond’s 2017 Budget announcement on Wednesday. Amongst other controversial moves, National Insurance (NI) payments on the self-employed have been increased by 2%. But what effect will this raise have on the growing number of self-employed and freelance workers in the publishing industry?

The figures

Let’s start by looking at the cold, hard figures. The 2017 Budget has brought in a 2% rise in NI contributions for the UK’s self-employed workers. The self-employed normally pay one of two different kinds of NI: Class 2, if your profits are £5,965+ per year, and Class 4 if they are £8,060+ per year. Class 4 payments are divided into two categories: 9% on profits of £8,060-£43,000, and 2% on profits over £43,000.

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Back on BookMachine!

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BookMachine_logoI’m really excited to be able to say I’ve been invited back to resurrect my byline at BookMachine with a monthly publishing wrap. The first month – February – went live today, and you can check it out right here.

This month in publishing, booksellers have taken the spotlight, with Waterstones announcing their first year of profit since the 2008 financial crash. In fact, Bookstore sales rose 2.5% in 2016 and Amazon is determined to get in on the action, with plans to open 10 books and mortar stores across the US by the end of 2017, in a move to “solve digital retail’s biggest design flaw.” They are also rumoured to be scouting for shops in London. However, the footing is not even: Amazon has been given tax cuts while high street stores suffer – though, as the FT points out, UK tax law isn’t actually Amazon’s fault… [READ MORE]

A fortnight of BookBrunch interviews

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It’s been a wildly busy fortnight my end, but in amongst it all I’ve managed to get out the BookBrunch weekly interview as normal, so here’s a pair of publishing chats for you perusal…

On boosting adult literacy with Jo Dawson from Quickreads
“As heavy readers, publishers have trouble imagining what it’s like not to be able to read well. It’s something we all forget about in the industry because we’re in this bubble of people who do read and believe that books are important.”

After the bestseller: an interview with author Kate Hamer
“I just try to focus on what’s going down on the page every day. What will happen will happen, but the page is the one thing I can control.”

Born – Breathing – Bound published in Cadaverine

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cadaverine-Logo-final-01-2.pngUnder what has to be the fastest publication schedule ever, BORN – BREATHING – BOUND was published on The Cadaverine website yesterday. It is available for your perusal absolutely FREE right here: http://www.thecadaverine.com/?p=11401

I’m so thankful to everyone at Cadaverine, particularly the lovely Lenni who discovered my story in the slushpile and suggested some very valuable edits.

I’m also very grateful to everyone who has read and commented so far – you’re feedback has made the last 24-hours really special! Here are some of my favourites:

“What a profound story! I’m so touched, and proud, and sad, and happy, all at once”
Ben, Canada

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BORN – BREATHING – BOUND to be published in Cadaverine

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cadaverine-Logo-final-01-2.pngI am hugely excited to be able to tell you all that my latest short story, BORN – BREATHING – BOUND, has been accepted for publication in The Cadaverine!

I’m so grateful to the fabulous editor Lenni Sanders for finding my little tale in the slushpile and can’t wait to see it on Cadaverine’s pages. Cadaverine is a wonderful, free online magazine of poetry and prose from writers under 30 and I’m really honoured to be featured in its pages. 

More details as and when…

The BookBrunch interview with Vic James, author of Gilded Cage

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This week’s BookBrunch interview is with one of my favourite new authors from the past year, Vic James. If you haven’t got your mitts on a copy of her fantastic debut novel Gilded Cage yet, you absolutely should, and for those of you who need more convincing, here’s an interview with the author herself…

vic-jamesAuthor Vic James is instantly likeable. She’s earnest, friendly and a little bashful, but it soon becomes clear she’s also got a mind like a rapier and a devastatingly on point turn-of-phrase. Her debut novel Gilded Cage, the first book in The Dark Gifts trilogy, garnered over 300,000 readers on Wattpad, sold for a six-figure sum to Pan Macmillan and has been auctioned in six territories and counting. We got together to discuss the real Wattpad society, magical aristocrats, and how fiction can shed light on Britain’s structural inequality.

“People have the idea that Wattpad is this monolithic thing and that people who want to be published authors use it, but that’s not my experience,” James says. Though there are some who use Wattpad to try to “get discovered”, and many of its users are young teenage writers for whom the platform is a learning process, mostly “it’s just there for people to have fun”. Nine in 10 of Wattpad’s 40 million users are just readers, nothing more, many of them from countries with a poor public library system or where they don’t have the money to buy books. It’s huge in the Philippines, for instance.

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BookBrunch | January interview catch up

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For those of you looking for some pleasant reading today, I thoroughly recommend catching up on the last three BookBrunch interviews!

Looking back to the New Year, Suzanne Baboneau, Managing Director of Adult Publishing at Simon & Schuster, discusses what lies ahead in publishing.

Then bestselling novelist Chibundu Onuzo talks about her new novel, Welcome to Lagos.

And finally Sophie O’Neill, Managing Director at Inpress chats about the rise of the independent publisher and the value of poetry.

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BOOST hits the shelves in 3 days time

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Happy New Year everybody! Here’s to 2017 bringing all the positivity this world so badly needs – on the note of which…

I have a new book coming out!

That’s right, in just 3 days’ time on Thursday 12th January BOOST: SUPERCHARGE YOUR CONFIDENCE will officially be hitting the shelves.

And, if you can’t wait till Thursday, you can pre-order a copy from various excellent bookstores including:
Waterstones: https://www.waterstones.com/…/jasmin-kirkbride/9781849539777
Foyles: http://www.foyles.co.uk/…/boost-supercharge-your-confidence…
Blackwell’s: http://bookshop.blackwell.co.uk/…/Boost-by-Ja…/9781849539777
Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Boost-Supercharge-Co…/…/ref=sr_1_4…

The release has somewhat snuck up on me, but I have to thank Summersdale Publishers and their amazing design team, who’ve made this book so absolutely gorgeous and positive with its fabulous rocket theme.

Hoping that all your personal rockets of hopes and wishes come true in the year ahead!

BookBrunch | Last interviews of 2016 & my very first PODCAST!

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Season’s greetings, friends! And boy, what a ride 2016 has been! Here’s hoping that 2017 brings more peace and sanity into the world – and for all of you much prosperity and some grand adventures.

christmas-card-from-jasmin

Just because the season of of gifts and feasts is upon us, doesn’t mean I’ve been slowing down on the old journalism front though. Very excitingly, I can now reveal my first ever podcast: The BookBrunch Yearly Wrap 2016 Podcast, brought to you for FREE! That’s right, you can listen in for absolutely no money as some of the publishing industry’s top voices talk about their feelings on 2016 and their predictions for the year to come. The only reasonable excuse for not listening is if you have eaten so much you’re plastered to the couch.

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Now listed on Byte the Book

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logoIn a rather lovely turn of events, I have been listed on Byte the Book’s Hub for publishing professionals. You can check out my profile right here.

Returning the favour, I thought I’d give Byte the Book a big shout out. They’re a fab networking event for everyone in the publishing industry and beyond, bringing together engaging, lovely folk from across the creative sectors. Yes, writers, that includes you!

They have monthly events with panels on industry issues and it’s worth becoming a member just to attend them all for free, let alone for the other great benefits like free entry to Bologna, LBF and Frankfurt.

I’ve been a member for two and a half years now and it’s become one of my go-to events for keeping up with publishing and staying connected to my industry friends. For more information, check out the Byte the Book website.

BookBrunch | The weekly interview with Ed Marino, Executive Chairman, codeMantra

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team-member1For this week’s BookBrunch interview, I spoke with Ed Marino, Executive Chairman and codeMantra about publishing’s very technological future and the benefits of real collaboration. For the full article, visit the BookBrunch website, or get started with the excerpt below…

There have been a lot of claims over the past year that digital sales are down and print is on the rise, but according to Ed Marino, Chief Executive and part-owner of service provider codeMantra, publishing’s phase of uncertainty is far from over. In our trans-Atlantic chat, we discuss the definition of true collaboration, the role of service providers in the industry, and our very technological future.

Marino came on board with codeMantra in February 2014, after he and a group of colleagues acquired the business. In his classic US accent, Marino describes it as “a technology-enabled services company” that offers content production and software platform services to major publishers, primarily in the STM and Academic space.

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BookBrunch | The Weekly Interview with Ella Kahn and Bryony Woods of Diamond Kahn & Woods Literary Agency

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This week for the BookBrunch interview, I got together with Ella Kahn and Bryony Woods of the Diamond, Kahn & Woods Literary Agency to discuss this year’s Trailblazer Award success and the future of agenting. For the full article, head over to BookBrunch, or read the snippet below:

As the deadline approaches for this year’s Trailblazers Awards, run by the London Book Fair (LBF) in partnership with the Society of Young Publishers (SYP) and BookBrunch, we catch up with two of last year’s winners, Ella Kahn and Bryony Woods, of Diamond Kahn & Woods Literary Agency. They discussed how the award has affected business for the better, why they made the decision to set up their own agency, and what the future holds.

In the four years since Diamond Kahn & Woods got started, the agency has accrued 50 clients and placed over 40 books, managed between Woods, Kahn and their colleague Elinor Cooper, who joined in April last year.

However, the agency was conceived long before this, when Woods and Kahn met during their Publishing MA at UCL in 2009-2010. “As friends, we had always known we both wanted to go into agenting, and joked about setting up our own agency together one day in the distant future, when we were both eminent agents with big lists of clients and grey hair,” Woods explains.

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BookBrunch | Training and skill drain: affecting productivity in publishing

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bbtwitter_400x400Having heard some pretty serious stats about training given to newbie publishers lately, I felt inspired to write a piece about the Autumn Statement, productivity, and the shift in attitude towards training and skill-building support that needs to happen in publishing. The full article is also FREE to read over on BookBrunch. Here’s a snippet:

Training and skill drain: affecting productivity in publishing

Research shows that publishers are failing to invest in the skills they need

In his Autumn Statement last week, Chancellor Philip Hammond brought attention to Britain’s sub-par productivity. Our output per unit of input lags 30% behind other economies such as the US and Germany: in the time it takes a German worker to make £1.35, a British worker will make only £1.

Hammond’s remedy involves a £23bn National Productivity Investment Fund, which will be used for the most part to invest in infrastructure such as roads and affordable housing. However, fixing productivity involves more than this kind of investment. As Katie Allen pointed out in the Guardian over the weekend, “when it comes to appearing to be doing something about the productivity puzzle it is far easier to talk about roads than the thorny issue of Britain’s addiction to low-paid, low-skilled work”. This is an issue that comes down to attitude.

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Three weeks, three conferences, three million thoughts

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The past three weeks have seen me write up reports on three stellar publishing conferences: the London Book Fair’s “Building Inclusivity in Publishing” conference; The Literary Consultancy (TLC)’s “What’s Your Story?” symposium; and the Society of Young Publisher (SYP)’s annual Autumn conference, this year on the theme of “Making a Bestseller.” Here’s some write ups – the SYP one is even FREE to read!

Words are no longer enough: inclusivity gets gritty
“A theme that became clear early on in the day was that the industry has been treating diversity and inclusivity as if they are optional, which for those they are excluding they are not. ‘We’re not here to talk about diversity in publishing, we’re here to talk about humanity,’ said Crystal Mahey-Morgan, one of the keynote speakers and founder of OWN IT! Publishing. ‘We’ve got so caught up in the box ticking and PC conversations, we’ve forgotten why inclusivity is so important…'”

TLC symposium: ‘What’s your story’ in the digital age
“We have to be careful as an industry about whom these laws of literary merit exclude. Now and in the past, writers of colour have often experienced difficulty being recognised in the literary world. ‘The idea that literary value is a liberal, free world isn’t true,’ said Cook. ‘Literary values are created in a process, and it is a process that has been party to brutal exclusion. We are talking about a system of violence. There is a certain kind of violence in this world and if you try to pretend that there isn’t, you misunderstand it.'”

SYP conference 2016: redefining successful books – FREE to view
“Having to point out that long-term sales and profits are just as valid as short-term ones seems to me to be a symptom of an industry increasingly concerned with short-term goals. The question I was left with is not what makes a bestseller, but whether, by its standard definition, a bestseller is an inherently good thing.”

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