Maria Savva's Blog - Posts Tagged "key-note"
Notes from The Literary Consultancy's conference 2013 - Writing in a Digital Age: Audrey Niffenegger
I attended The Literary Consultancy's conference at the weekend and really enjoyed it.
In the coming weeks I am going to be sharing some of the highlights of the conference with you, and also my thoughts on the event.
I'm hoping the series of blogs will be useful to writers and readers.
*******************************************************************************************
The first speaker at the event was Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveler's Wife.
I found her speech interesting and inspirational.
Audrey is a visual artist as well as a writer. She said most people's reactions in the publishing industry to the way the digital age is developing is "jumpy and alarmed".
The backdrop for her speech were various slides based on the history of typography and how the letters of the alphabet developed over the years and in different languages. I think she said the pictures were from Meggs' History of Graphic Design.
Audrey Niffenegger was trained as a visual artist and she said that the way she thinks of a book is in terms of putting images and words together. She was 40 when she wrote her first novel.
When she trained as an artist, she said it was all about expressing ideas, not going with the flow, not following trends, breaking new ground. She was inspired by Aubrey Beardley.
In Niffenegger's last two years at art school she wrote a book that was mostly pictures with a bit of text, The Adventuress. When she graduated she tried to get it published but it was rejected because it was too original and different. She went on to show it at an art gallery and sold a few copies.
14 years later she wrote another illustrated book, The Three Incestuous Sisters and sold only a few copies. In the process of doing that, she got involved with other people doing conceptual books. She and a group of other book artists, papermakers, and designers founded a new book arts centre, the Columbia College Chicago Center for Book and Paper Arts. The idea was to tie in art with computer, sound, film, video, interdisciplinary arts.
Tn 1994 they started offering classes and a couple of years later graduate dregrees (MFAs Master of Fine Arts). Many of the students were graphic designers. The idea behind the book art centre was to allow students to do what they want.
While working there as an assistant director, she was in charge of writing the catalogues describing the classes and she wanted to find ways of making the descriptions of the classes more interesting, so she started writing them more creatively and this made her mind think differently. It was around that time she started writing The Time Traveler's Wife.
The idea behind that novel, for her, developed by asking questions. She began to find that her own reality worked its way into the fiction, for example one of the characters in the book is a paper-making artist.
When she sent the manuscript out, it was rejected more than thirty times. Then an independent press picked it up and published it. At the time, that independent press MacAdam/Cage only had 14 employees. The novel has since sold 7 million copies and has been translated into many different languages, and of course there is now a film.
She found that the success of that book allowed her the freedom to experiment with other publishing. Her first book picture book, that had been initially rejected, was then picked up by Abrams and has sold well.
Audrey stated that the reach she now has, due to the success of that one book, has created opportunity. Her current project is a fairy tale that has been made into a ballet, Raven Girl.
The whole nature of publishing has changed since she first published The Time Traveller's Wife. She explained how when she signed the contract, the concept of e-book rights wasn't even considered, so she found she still owned all the rights. She didn't publish it in e-book for quite a while, wanting to wait for the right moment.
A great influence on Audrey has been her agent, Joe Regal. In 2011, he started a company called Zola Books, named for the writer Émile Zola. Audrey helped Joe set up the company. The idea behind it is that e-books could and should be better. The idea is also to bring the community together through social networking and partnering with independent bookshops and authors.
For The Time Traveller's Wife e-book, she is writing a sequel to go with it.
Audrey says that things that succeed are: "Useful, beautiful, friendly, and make themselves available to you." These are the ideas behind book production on Zola Books. She mentioned that there is an idea to make e-books available on 5 devices so that you can register on the site and move your e-book to any of your reading devices.
She believes that distribution is the most important thing when it comes to e-books.
She recommended a book, "The Gift" which is a study of creativity.
She says that she believes creativity has to be somewhere people can interact with it. She pointed at fan fiction as one of the most active ways this is happening lately, with readers becoming writers and back again.
In her book that is now a ballet, she has an idea to include sound and animation that would be an extension of the text. Although, she did say that she finds it distracting to listen to music with lyrics when she's writing. I do too. I know that there are some writers that can write and listen to songs at the same time, though.
Audrey's experience in the publishing industry is a good example of how much has changed, and at quite a rapid rate, over the past twenty years or so. What Audrey's students were once doing in the paper arts centre is now being done on computers and in digital form for e-books. Despite all the changes, she says that in the publishing world everyone depends on everyone else, and she doesn't see e-books as a challenge to paperbacks.
Audrey's speech affirmed to me some things that I already knew about the publishing world and writers in general, but it was good to hear it from a multi-million bestselling author. She has her feet firmly on the ground even after all her success, and I believe that is because she had to work hard to become successful and didn't quit.
**************************************************************************************
In the coming weeks I am going to be sharing some of the highlights of the conference with you, and also my thoughts on the event.
I'm hoping the series of blogs will be useful to writers and readers.
*******************************************************************************************
The first speaker at the event was Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveler's Wife.
I found her speech interesting and inspirational.
Audrey is a visual artist as well as a writer. She said most people's reactions in the publishing industry to the way the digital age is developing is "jumpy and alarmed".
The backdrop for her speech were various slides based on the history of typography and how the letters of the alphabet developed over the years and in different languages. I think she said the pictures were from Meggs' History of Graphic Design.
Audrey Niffenegger was trained as a visual artist and she said that the way she thinks of a book is in terms of putting images and words together. She was 40 when she wrote her first novel.
When she trained as an artist, she said it was all about expressing ideas, not going with the flow, not following trends, breaking new ground. She was inspired by Aubrey Beardley.
In Niffenegger's last two years at art school she wrote a book that was mostly pictures with a bit of text, The Adventuress. When she graduated she tried to get it published but it was rejected because it was too original and different. She went on to show it at an art gallery and sold a few copies.
14 years later she wrote another illustrated book, The Three Incestuous Sisters and sold only a few copies. In the process of doing that, she got involved with other people doing conceptual books. She and a group of other book artists, papermakers, and designers founded a new book arts centre, the Columbia College Chicago Center for Book and Paper Arts. The idea was to tie in art with computer, sound, film, video, interdisciplinary arts.
Tn 1994 they started offering classes and a couple of years later graduate dregrees (MFAs Master of Fine Arts). Many of the students were graphic designers. The idea behind the book art centre was to allow students to do what they want.
While working there as an assistant director, she was in charge of writing the catalogues describing the classes and she wanted to find ways of making the descriptions of the classes more interesting, so she started writing them more creatively and this made her mind think differently. It was around that time she started writing The Time Traveler's Wife.
The idea behind that novel, for her, developed by asking questions. She began to find that her own reality worked its way into the fiction, for example one of the characters in the book is a paper-making artist.
When she sent the manuscript out, it was rejected more than thirty times. Then an independent press picked it up and published it. At the time, that independent press MacAdam/Cage only had 14 employees. The novel has since sold 7 million copies and has been translated into many different languages, and of course there is now a film.
She found that the success of that book allowed her the freedom to experiment with other publishing. Her first book picture book, that had been initially rejected, was then picked up by Abrams and has sold well.
Audrey stated that the reach she now has, due to the success of that one book, has created opportunity. Her current project is a fairy tale that has been made into a ballet, Raven Girl.
The whole nature of publishing has changed since she first published The Time Traveller's Wife. She explained how when she signed the contract, the concept of e-book rights wasn't even considered, so she found she still owned all the rights. She didn't publish it in e-book for quite a while, wanting to wait for the right moment.
A great influence on Audrey has been her agent, Joe Regal. In 2011, he started a company called Zola Books, named for the writer Émile Zola. Audrey helped Joe set up the company. The idea behind it is that e-books could and should be better. The idea is also to bring the community together through social networking and partnering with independent bookshops and authors.
For The Time Traveller's Wife e-book, she is writing a sequel to go with it.
Audrey says that things that succeed are: "Useful, beautiful, friendly, and make themselves available to you." These are the ideas behind book production on Zola Books. She mentioned that there is an idea to make e-books available on 5 devices so that you can register on the site and move your e-book to any of your reading devices.
She believes that distribution is the most important thing when it comes to e-books.
She recommended a book, "The Gift" which is a study of creativity.
She says that she believes creativity has to be somewhere people can interact with it. She pointed at fan fiction as one of the most active ways this is happening lately, with readers becoming writers and back again.
In her book that is now a ballet, she has an idea to include sound and animation that would be an extension of the text. Although, she did say that she finds it distracting to listen to music with lyrics when she's writing. I do too. I know that there are some writers that can write and listen to songs at the same time, though.
Audrey's experience in the publishing industry is a good example of how much has changed, and at quite a rapid rate, over the past twenty years or so. What Audrey's students were once doing in the paper arts centre is now being done on computers and in digital form for e-books. Despite all the changes, she says that in the publishing world everyone depends on everyone else, and she doesn't see e-books as a challenge to paperbacks.
Audrey's speech affirmed to me some things that I already knew about the publishing world and writers in general, but it was good to hear it from a multi-million bestselling author. She has her feet firmly on the ground even after all her success, and I believe that is because she had to work hard to become successful and didn't quit.
**************************************************************************************
