Bio: Editor of the main poetry imprints until 2007, now focussing on fiction. Editor since 2001
Posts by niiayikwei:
- Remain a dreamer: remember that you started publishing because you wanted to see something different out there, hold on to that vision and use that as fuel to carry on through the tough times… because they are coming. I started flipped eye publishing because I thought there were many good writers not being published, but – more importantly – I believed that perhaps one of the reasons that poetry enjoys such poor sales is that poetry books are over-priced. Remembering my motives has been a guide for every major strategic decision we have taken as a company – even when the margins have been challenging.
»» - Ask, ask and learn fast: It is no coincidence that the average business has a shorter lifespan than a cheap breast implant; in spite of all my research I ended up spending more in the first year-and-a-half of flipped eye publishing than I did in the three succeeding years when we published more books. That’s an indication of just how steep the learning curve can be so be prepared to ask designers, printers, distributors, retailers, how things work and the best way to make your budget stretch to meet your objectives.
» - Pull a good team around you: I believe I have two of the best young poetry editors in the world (in Niall O’Sullivan and Jacob Sam-La Rose) working with me right now – their ears are well-tuned, they have an eye for technique, flippers in the waters of history and fingers on the throb of contemporary culture – they go the extra mile for me and I go the extra mile for them. They also have a myriad of skills beyond editing so it feels like I have a team of seven for the price of two. Side-by-side with them and the best freelancers available, I know we can move mountains of books.
» - Get what you can for free: I remember paying £150 to have a barcode generated in 2001 – that was just a cost component in the production of a single title; now, if we work in house, we can have 50 copies of a title produced from scratch with that budget. We generate barcodes for free online with the fantastic online engine at tux.org, we get free fonts from emerging designers at fontspace.com and give them credit. And, in the downturn we are focussing on using what we already have – producing new formats e.g. audio and e-books from content that we already have. It is no fluke that we’ve had less than £55,000 in Arts Council funding in the 10 years we have been running.
» - Fix up, look sharp: When we started flipped eye publishing, I sat down with a graphic designer and we spoke about the importance of creating iconic looks. It took four books before we came up with the recognisable format we use for our full poetry collections, but by the time we started the mouthmark series, we had imprint identity down to a fine art. The point is, if the books look professionally produced, people take them more seriously as literature – and as fine art! Some of my proudest moments have been at the Brooklyn Book Festival where customers have stopped at our table to buy a whole series because they like the look of our books. Who said poetry can’t be sexy?
» - A little madness goes a long way: We are a weird little ideas factory at flipped eye mind central. We spoke about full show-choir street advertising in the days before Glee; we let loose pages of poetry fly in the streets of East London; we celebrated our 10,000th book sold with a wild wild party; we set up guerrilla stages on the streets of Brooklyn to appear in the New York Times; we launched our own jazz band to celebrate our eighth anniversary at the Southbank Centre; we wrote lyrics and music for a song called ‘Poetry’; we had an official wine sponsor. And – let’s be frank – who sells full collections of poetry for £5.99 in the UK? But that’s who we are.
» - Be adventurous and conservative: When we said we were going to start a pamphlet series (mouthmark series) which was specifically a mentoring and development series for poets with a performance background we were really pushing boundaries; now, after tall-lighthouse’s fantastic pilot series with Roddy Lumsden, there is Faber New Poets. Even more satisfying, four of the ten-title mouthmark series have sold in excess of 500 copies and we’ve won a few awards for it too. But, just because you produce great books doesn’t mean you will sell hundreds of copies. Many a small press has drowned because they took a wild punt on one title. To sell that many books with a small-press budget you need your authors to support your marketing efforts, and, as much as I love them, authors will let you down. So, will Waterstone’s buyers who chat at parties and then don’t respond to your follow up e-mails. Be adventurous in what you publish; be conservative in your sales projections – however be flexible enough to respond if sales go through the roof.
» - Don’t underestimate the value of relationships: One of the things that really helped establish us and get certain authors on board was that we were stocked in Borders in at least six cities most of the time. That came out of my organising a monthly poetry open mike reading for Borders Charing Cross for many years, and, subsequently, a buyer (Caroline Mileham) championing our work. For banking, HSBC have waived several charges for us over the years simply because we communicate with them. Small things, but in publishing, every little helps. Of course, Borders later folded with unpaid invoices from us, but, hey, you can’t always win!
» - Never lose your faith in your ability to identify talent: If you lose it, retire. Of course, there are basic standards – a writer must be able to spell, pass basic grammar tests and structure a story. But publishers’ choices are made on something that can’t be measured by simple grammar; their perceptions of talent and potential. Without faith in your own weird and wonderful tastes and predilections, your effort is really not worth the weight of a dream.
- Never lose your faith in your ability to identify talent: If you lose it, retire. Of course, there are basic standards – a writer must be able to spell, pass basic grammar tests and structure a story. But publishers’ choices are made on something that can’t be measured by simple grammar; their perceptions of talent and potential. Without faith in your own weird and wonderful tastes and predilections, your effort is really not worth the weight of a dream.
New + Preview + Other (Stuff)
July 2nd, 2011Nine Ways To Get To Ten
May 31st, 2011Just so you don’t think we’re greedy, we sent this out to news people but they weren’t interested. Maybe it’s because we’re only 10, or maybe it’s because we’re not connected enough. The important thing is we’re still here. I also wanted to add that one of the small publishers we admire is BOA Editions in the US, who recently turned 35 (another great press, Peepal Tree in the UK turned 25); BOA got coverage on Publisher’s Weekly – I’m sure we will when we’re that old.
Anyway, here are a few tips for those who aspire to a life in small press publishing…
Ask, ask and learn fast: It is no coincidence that the average business has a shorter lifespan than a cheap breast implant; in spite of all my research I ended up spending more in the first year and a half of flipped eye publishing than I did in the three succeeding years when we published more books. That’s an indication of just how steep the learning curve can be so be prepared to ask designers, printers, distributors, retailers, how things work and the best way to make your budget stretch to meet your objectives.
Pull a good team around you: I believe I have two of the best young poetry editors in the world working for me right now – they go the extra mile for me and I go the extra mile for them. They also have a myriad of skills beyond editing so it feels like I have a team of seven for the price of two. Side-by-side with them and the best freelancers available, I know we can move mountains of books.
Get what you can for free: I remember paying GBP 150 to have a barcode generated in 2001 – that was just a cost component in the production of a single title; now, if we work in house, we can have 50 copies of a title produced from scratch with that budget. We generate barcodes for free online with the fantastic online engine at tux.org, we get free fonts from emerging designers at fontspace.com and give them credit. And, in the downturn we are focussing on using what we already have – producing new formats e.g. audio and e-books from content that we already have. It is no fluke that we’ve had less than GBP 55,000 in Arts Council funding in the 10 years we have been running.
Fix up, look sharp: When we started flipped eye publishing, I sat down with a graphic designer and we spoke about the importance of creating iconic looks. It took four books before we came up with the recognisable format we use for our full poetry collections, but by the time we started the mouthmark series, we had imprint identity down to a fine art. The point is, if the books look professionally produced, people take them more seriously as literature – and as fine art! Some of my proudest moments have been at the Brooklyn Book Festival where customers have stopped at our table to buy a whole series because they like the look of our books. Who said poetry can’t be sexy?
A little madness goes a long way: We are a weird little ideas factory at flipped eye mind central. We spoke about full show choir street advertising in the days before Glee; we let loose pages of poetry fly in the streets of East London; we celebrated our 10,000th book sold with a wild wild party; we set up guerrilla stages on the streets of Brooklyn to appear in the New York Times; we launched our own jazz band to celebrate our eighth anniversary at the Southbank Centre; we wrote lyrics and music for a song called ‘Poetry’; we had an official wine sponsor. And – let’s be frank – who sells full collections of poetry for GBP 5.99? But that’s who we are.
Be adventurous and conservative: When we said we were going to start a pamphlet series which was specifically a mentoring and development series for poets with a performance background we were really pushing boundaries, now, after tall-lighthouse’s fantastic series with Roddy Lumsden, there is Faber New Poets. Even more satisfying, four of the ten-title series have sold in excess of 500 copies. But, just because you produce great books doesn’t mean you will sell hundreds of copies. Many a small press has drowned because they took a wild punt on one title. To sell that many books with a small-press budget you need your authors to support your marketing efforts, and, as much as I love them, authors will let you down. So, will Waterstone’s buyers who chat at parties and then don’t respond to your follow up e-mails. Be adventurous in what you publish, be conservative in your sales projections; however be flexible enough to respond if sales go through the roof.
Don’t underestimate the value of relationships: One of the things that really helped establish us and get certain authors on board was that we were stocked in Borders in at least six cities most of the time. That came out of my organising a monthly poetry open mike reading for Borders Charing Cross for many years, and, subsequently, a buyer (Caroline Mileham) championing our work. For banking, HSBC have waived several charges for us over the years simply because we communicate with them. Small things, but in publishing, every little helps. Of course, Borders later folded with unpaid invoices from us, but, hey, you can’t always win!
My Running Credentials
May 3rd, 2011Now, I don’t want anyone to get excited. I am not in line for mayor, major, senator, sanitary agent, vice president or head of taste; I am just planning on running. After fourteen years of not really doing any distance running, I am returning to the roads, hills, paths, streams and hillocks to raise money towards the Venture Award, which we (at flipped eye) officially launch this week. Why running? I hear you ask. Well, I’ve done it before and it gives tangible targets, people can come and check on me if they wish etc. etc. plus most conventional funders don’t like to fund competitions. At a time when getting funding is challenging we didn’t want to wait for someone else’s signature before launching what we feel is an essential award. To prove that I can actually run and to give me some targets to work towards, I’m posting below the splits from my Rotterdam Marathon outing in 1997 – no joke! I’m close to 40 now so those are some tight figures to try to go for – even though I’m only starting with short distances for now (beginning with the Clapham Common 5K on Sunday July 3, 2011)
Now for the serious business. I have set up a page for all of you dying to sponsor me at: http://www.kapipal.com/runningforventure – and, of course, if you want to run and direct people to sponsor the award too you’re very welcome…
There’s a widget below that shows you how terrible I am at raising funds. Have pity for I can be quite pithy and surely that counts for something!
Funding and its discontents
April 7th, 2011In the interest of economics, this will be a short blog. It’s now been a few weeks since the Arts Council decisions on its cuts came through and – understandably – there is a lot of reaction still churning in the ether. I have been very close to much of the talk because, primarily, of the roles I play as board member/trustee of the Poetry Book Society and the Arvon Foundation. I also run flipped eye publishing and we have relied on funding in the past – and probably will require funding again in the future. Regardless, I have to say that I feel a lot of the talk about cut funding misses the point; just because an organisation is cut from the regularly funded organisation (RFO) list does not mean that it will not be funded if it makes an application and can justify its need for funding based on the impact of its projected activities. Being cut from the RFO list, to my mind, is simply a way for the Arts Council nudge organisations into rethinking and reevaluating the roles they play in contributing to the wealth of arts the public can enjoy; what real benefits they offer.
Our own approach at flipped eye (and also with the African Writers’ Evening, which I also coordinate) is to remove the notion of funding from our planning in times of uncertaintly and try to think of how we might be able to sustain ourselves without funding. In line with that, we didn’t apply for funding; instead, we have begun to convert our existing titles to digital formats (something we should have started a while ago), further streamlined our production process to cut costs, and all our fine editors (including me) are working for free while we develop the next generation of extraordinary writers. It’s a huge cut, but we did it ourselves, we expected it and therefore we can live with it. Later, when the dust has settled, we can go back to the Arts Council and perhaps other funders and show them the very real progress we’ve made and how much more just a little investment in our projects can yield. If they say no, we will continue to work in our small way; we will not be in danger of closure because our whole future is based on the hope that funding will come.
Funding’s discontents, or rather non-RFO’s discontents have largely come to see funding as their right and that is no way to run an organisation. You have to work for funding; if you are funded and wish to remain so, you have to be at the very least more dynamic than non-funded organisations, and in truth you should be pushing the boundaries continually to seek more ways in which to enrich the public’s experience of the arts. I can’t say that for many of the RFOs – both those that survived (some organisations survived in spite of being ‘static’ simply because they have become to big to cut. What sweet irony!) and those that were cut – from the Arts Council’s portfolio, so I fully understand and sympathise with the position the Arts Council is in.
So, what am I saying? Nobody deserves funding; it’s something you have to prove yourself/ your organisation worthy of. As PBS board member, I believe that dialogue is the right direction as the PBS can not fulfil its potential with no funding; as a new board member, I intend to play my part by working from within to make the PBS the impactful, dynamic, indeed revolutionary body that it can be. Speaking from the flipped eye headquarters (which is now my living room) I say to all the organisations that fell on the knife, don’t just moan about being cut, start a revolution in your organisation and apply for funding annually or per-project like us – the normal folk.
FridayFours
December 10th, 2010We’ve been asked a few times what our #FridayFours tag on twitter is so I’m just putting this post up to provide a readily accessible reference. : #FridayFours is simply the selection of a book to sell for £4 on a Friday (post included); it’s our way of saying thanks to our current readers and – of course – a way to encourage people who haven’t read one of our books to try one at a low price point. While we have started the trend, we believe every publisher can afford to and should do something similar. In my recent article for Wasafiri, I spoke of my admiration for Allen Lane of Penguin, stating:
I wanted to build a company that put effort into pricing books as low as possible so that a greater percentage of disposable income brackets could access them. Not surprisingly, I am a great admirer of Allen Lane, the originator of the Penguin paperbacks initiative in the 1930s who believed that there was a ‘vast reading public for intelligent books at a low price’ and priced the books the same as a pack of cigarettes. Using that price benchmark, it is easy to see why so many publishers have been struggling to sell books in recent years. A pack of twenty cigarettes costs £5.85; the average paperback costs £7.99–8.99.
#FridayFours falls in with my keenness to get books to readers for as low a price as possible. So, in the words of Rakim, now you know who to put your money on go out there and grab a #FridayFours book…
