State of the Desk
Summary
Blogger: NiiRole: Senior Editor
Area: Fiction & Poetry
Original Career: Scientist
Editor of the main poetry imprints until 2007, now focussing on fiction. Editor since 2001 » »
Books
As Editor:14-2: twenty eight love poems
Dance the Guns to Silence (with Kadija Sesay)
x-24: unclassified (with Tash Aw) mouthmark series
waterways poetry
lubin & kleyner
As Author:
eyes of a boy, lips of a man (1999)
Of course, I’m calling my new year rant ‘State of the Desk’ as opposed to ‘of the Industry’ or ‘of the Nation’ because I know that all I can control is my desk – and even that is a bit chaotic. But, the topmost thing in my mind does, in fact, relate to the publishing industry: I am often asked if I think e-books will take off. Interesting question, because if I’m being asked about them, they must have taken off to some degree, right? What always strikes me it the context of the question; it is always along the lines of, do you think that e-books will replace printed books? First of all, the question in that context is silly; what do you think we would we do with all the paper books we have already? Which effectively is my answer to the question; I think they will exist side-by-side. But the difficulty of putting that thought across to certain people has got me thinking about Western thought in general – this notion of either/or, this/that, wrong/right, superior/inferior. It seems to me that this is what makes it so difficult for people to adapt or simply to exist in a changing world. When I was growing up in Ghana we had the notion of it is what it is deal with it and, man, it was way less stressful than trying to figure out who was right or wrong – the question is, how do we evolve/adapt to survive/thrive… But let me let that go and turn to Hollywood or rather ‘Disney’ thought, this making of the impossible commonplace. I’m having real issue with it; I am 99% certain that it’s indirectly responsible for all the terrible submissions we’ve been getting – everybody thinks they’re Kim Possible, they can do everything, they can write gold in their sleep – even when they can’t structure a sentence. In the meantime, we have to deal with the overwhelming volume and the good writers don’t get as much of our attention (even when we’re rejecting their manuscripts) as they should. I guess, in fairness, Disney also created Goofy, but nobody seems to want to be goofy…
Regardless, I start the year happy – very happy indeed – because we just got some funding to allow me to employ two of my most respected authors as poetry editors for two of our imprints over the next two years. This will allow me time to do some of the more strategic things that have needed doing for flipped eye for so long, and it will add a nice new flavour to our offerings. I’m hoping to be able to do the same in the US as well soon since we have some fine writers there who could easily make the jump to editing, but, for now, I’ll use the time wisely working on strategic goals, growing our fiction list and liaising with our new rights manager to build some solid bridges worldwide and generate extra income in these tight-belt-times. Also, brilliant, for me, is I made the shortlist for the UK Young Publishing Entrepreneur Award and will be flying to India (sponsored by the British Council) to check out the market there etc. It’s already been fantastic because I’ve met a couple of the other shortlisted candidates and I can see already what more interaction and information sharing at the cutting edge of the publishing industry can do to promote rapid growth and innovation.
So, that’s my State of the Desk address. You can catch me next at Spread the Word‘s Novel Pitch at Stratford Circus on April 25. I’ll be one of four editors (including my own editor at Jonathan Cape) giving hopeful novelists the low down on what works and what doesn’t. Until then, please keep the crap away from my postbox – I only want roses 
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