Cattle gazing, Ewe teasing and Book selling at the Royal highland show '12

Cattle Gazing, Ewe teasing and lots of Book selling (at the Royal Highland Show) on Flickr.

'The buffalo ate my homework, Miss,' moaned an eight year old.

'What do you mean?' boomed his teacher.

'It looked hungry, so I offered my en-cy-clo-pe-di-ya.'

Years later, he would die in his own plane crash; but he was the only one his classmates would remember as the kindest boy in class who fed his cattle books.

* * *

I spent this past weekend selling books at Publishing Scotland's stall in the Royal Highland Show 2012, Europe's largest agricultural show held in Ingliston each year at the draw of June. We were stall 837, in the corner between Silver Pride Jewellary and a pianist and organ seller who provided complete 10 hour live musical entertainment with his symphony and orchestra each day. This was the first time that Scotland's trade association for publishers decided to enter the trade fair as an exhibitor, to spread awareness about Scottish publishing, Scottish books and the importance of such a trade and knowledge resource at hand. The point was not necessarily commercial hard-sell, but a PR initiative, we were oriented. (For purely commercial activities Publishing Scotland already had a big presence at the Edinburgh International Book Festival in August each year, where the point is hard selling, and buyers overwhelming).

Footfalls at the Highland shop nevertheless increased by the day, as did sales pick up from a lean Thursday up into a frenzied Sunday. Katie's Ferm and Katie's Moose (Waverly) were probably top favourites on the books' list, nudged closely by Maisie's Activity Book for children and Animal Farm (the Scottish alphabet) as well as books on learning Gaelic, and books about the local wild and managing the native pinewood revealing a hitherto hidden demand for books by the Forest Commission. In between shifts, one experienced attractions like cooking demonstrations including by celebrities like Nick Nairn, horse racing, show jumps, sheep shearing, tug of wars, fleece shows, poultry paegants and caraways.

Love's Labour Gained?

We are sitting in a course, reevaluating our career paths (if we had already begun one), understanding the trends, and looking into the future with a wizened gaze, scouring The Bookseller  with a lofty  advantage over those without a degree in publishing. They could be law students, confused little undergraduates, postgraduates or even doctoral students in search of a living. We got there first! This is an entertaining time to be in the industry we are told. We should savour the fear of loss, the hell of rejection. At every turning point is another turning point.

Marion Sinclair repeated that the walls have been breached. The media knows its un-limits. We are living in a time when information is staring each other in clouds, and we are misting over with fondness, fear and even preparation. The vision of gentlemanly publishing is over. Long lunches a rarity, and digitisation has changed complete processes, and the publishing workflow, bottom up. Relationships with authors have changed. Bookselling has changed. Nobody visits high street bookstores in as many numbers as they did in the past. Browse became an online experience, done in the multiple windows of phones, tablets and computers. Authors are no more linear, and writing has been coined 'content', be it books, ebooks, apps or mobile entertainment. Transmedia rights,  are being talked about in every rung of industry, and so is convergence and every other C in the alphabet. (Collaboration, especially). 

The Annual Toast!  image courtesy Ellen Cheng 2012

Collaboration begins with deep knowledge and effort while digitisation penetrates the globe differently. 

If Amazon is awe shaking, so is the volume of books being bought per minute on it. Marion Sinclair, the chief executive of Publishing Scotland talked about the good shades of grey as much as the worse, and said that if Amazon is commodifying books, it has also evangelized bookbuying, and one might think, reading has become a compulsive activity in zones powered by e-commerce. Will high street bookselling die? Chances are they won't, voiced literary agent and Portfolio careerist Bob McDewitt who himself came with a pot load of experience in bookselling, literary agenting and looking after the annual Dundee Prize. Katy Holmes talked about the traditional markets she catered to, who she was confident would never convert to digital or apps anytime soon. A publisher with immense sales and marketing experience, she has witnessed both the pre-internet and post Amazon days of the industry in the US and now in UK.

Best way for a noob to understand publishing? WORK IN A BOOKSTORE! I would second that. And even though my experience was limited to some six months with an online ecommerce book retailer, there were so many opportunities to talk to authors, publishers, wholesalers and customers over a wide range of issues, and above all, it helped me understand better the real market for books! 

Like many of my peers, I would love stay on and fork a bit of a future in London, a city teeming with life, much like Mumbai or Glasgow. Plus, skills acquired in the trade, are often specific to  its cultural environment, and would take years of practice and nuance before they could become truly transferable across contexts. But, the good news might just be in the adage of, once a publisher, always a publisher! It is an industry after all, that sees one of the highest retention levels and lowest attrition rates.

With so much e-buzz, and appventuring everywhere, were our skills going to fade into obsolescence? No, opine many. At least not in an eighty years. And after that, nobody wants to live.

Yes, I left my devices homes that night, because yes there was a need for a technology upgrade, but no, it's not the biggest lesson I took (despite creating a travel app for the iPad as my final project) from being in the company of these professional academics and academic professionals over the past nine months. ( Yes, 'labour-ious' to lavish all metaphors in a trade with a long skewed sex ratio! And, you can actually prove this when you count the number of boys in all the 'publicity' departments of UK's publishing). Reality considered, I learned how to package and sell content all over again. It was a pleasure, relief and a turning point, participating in the final publishing showcase at the end of a taught postgraduate masters at the Stirling Center for International Publishing and Communication this year, and on their '30th birthday'!

To view the entire set on slide show, click here.

Publishing Scotland Conference 2012

Edinburgh, 27 February, 2012 - As part of the group from Stirling International Center for Publishing and Communication, I attended my first business conference in Scotland at the Royal College of Physicians, which was also the first time that Publishing Scotland opened its doors to publishing Students, thus bringing down the average age of the conference-attendee by a couple of decades at least, joked a member. The CEO Marion Sinclair's welcome address made it clear at the outset that 'the walls had been breached', and disintermediation was a clear concern for the present and future. Subsequent speakers' presentations were filled with running metaphors of marriage (wedding cake, pre nuptials, divorce etc.), but there was moderate positive feeling in the air for *what was to come* with book buying, book selling, and book publishing. 

With my classmates images courtsey Publishing Scotland
Photographer: Sandy Young

With Printers' Exhibits during lunchtime
Photographer: Sandy Young

I particularly enjoyed the keyote address by Mr. Alan Clements, Director of content, STV who mentioned the lack of communication between Scottish book publishers and producers resulting in the lack of quality local ideas to improve Scottish programming at STV as he analysed the pressing trend to homogenize Scottish identity in the sea of mainstream English programming and future gazed into what lay ahead for media and the culture. Steve Bohme from Book Marketing Limited enchanted everyone with his allusions to confetti in explaining the key retail market trends and increasing relationship between book buyers, book sellers and book publishers. The talk by David Walters of Nielsen further addressed the overall decline in all genres in the Scottish book market in 2011. Jon Reed, offered his social media marketing expertise, even if he came down as a bit of a repetition from the slides of our regular classroom sessions (his miles-wide internet presence to thank!), as he waned on about harnessing our social media impact in the usual ways. There was an immensely uplifting talk about Metadata,  a panel that brought together leaders of small publishing enterprises showcasing the very small scale (size) of Scottish publishing. Representation from the Society of Authors brought to the fore nightmare stories about agents and publishers and the surge of hope that e-publishing brought for authors. An interesting segment by two Edinburgh and Glasgow libraries' direction of/partnership with cultural festivals, and their ambitions of a library imprint, emphasized their growing importance in the publishing value chain, offering much fodder for thought as well. 

All in all, a very insightful daylong session, that as some argued, begged for some London perspective also. The panel discussion on Apps, entrepreneurship and the new Scottish publishing was useful, but a lot more could have been talked about the digital format of the book.