Here are the latest Book Machine newsletters:

BookMachine Monthly

Design | Tech | Editorial | Marketing & Publicity | Production | Business

Dear publishing colleagues,

It was great to see so many of you at the first BookMachine Unplugged event this month - what a turnout! Thanks to everyone involved in making this exciting event series happen.

If you are wondering which events to attend in March and April - here is a reminder of what we have in store. Just click on each event link to read more and book tickets. You can then scroll down to read the latest news and jobs on each channel.

BookMachine London - 14th March - with The Times Literary Supplement

BookMachine at The London Book Fair - 11th April - our annual Book Fair gathering

The LBF global gathering - 11th April - a new LBF initiative, powered by BookMachine

Understanding Ebooks - 25th April - a one-day course (just 3 places left)

BookMachine Unplugged: Talking Editorial - 25th April - Inclusion: It’s time to stop talking and start making real changes

Understanding InDesign: Building a Book - 26th April (just 4 places left)

PRODUCTION

The first Unplugged event of 2018: Talking Production
Abbie Headon, BookMachine Commissioning Editor
On Wednesday, we kick-started the new BookMachine Unplugged series: a year-long sequence of events looking at the latest developments in publishing from across the whole industry.

Read more

BUSINESS OF PUBLISHING

Amazon to sponsor Digital Book World for the first time in conference history
Bradley Metrock, CEO, Score Publishing
We are proud to be able to announce that our partner, Digital Book World – the longstanding and influential publishing conference ...

Read more

EDITORIAL

Crowdfunded publishing (and how we used it to find our place in the UK industry)
Lauren Nickodemus/Ellen Desmond, Monstrous Regiment
It’s undeniable that crowdfunding is a popular option for publishing start-ups in the UK right now.

Read more

DESIGN

A recipe for successful book design
Nada Backovic, book designer, graphic designer, illustrator
Whilst the process, speed and experience of designing a book varies vastly from one book design to the next ...

Read more

Aimer Media are looking to hire a Junior App Designer / App Production Assistant - click here.

TECH

How to run successful technology projects - 5 things to consider
Paula Neary, CEO, Ribbonfish
There are so many things to consider when implementing new technology within a publishing or media business.

Read more

Jolly Learning are looking to hire a Software Developer - click here.

MARKETING & PUBLICITY

Publicity campaign case study - How to Stop Time by Matt Haig
Claire Maxwell, Publicist and Member of BookMachine Works
There are so many variables to a good publicity campaign, so I must preface this article by saying that no size fits all.

Read more

Pavillion Publishing are looking to hire a Junior Marketing Executive - click here.

Thanks to our SPONSORS

We hope to see you soon!
Laura & the BookMachine Team

Why do we need so many? Do we need them at all?

Hello!

Do we need so many literary prizes? And how do they work? Well, on Wednesday 16th March we're talking all things literary prizes with The TLS. Everything you could ever wish to know. It's going to be eye-opening and entertaining, featuring fantastic speakers like Toby Lichtig, Michael Caines and Alex Clark.

Book tickets here

Currently you can get your ticket for JUST FIVE POUNDS. A steal. But that ends at midnight on Friday so snap them up quick.

To whet your whistle ahead of the event, the brilliant Michael Caines from The TLS has answered some burning questions on the literary prize subject. Read on…

Michael Caines works at the Times Literary Supplement. He is the author of Shakespeare and the Eighteenth Century (Oxford University Press, 2013) and the editor of a TLS bicentennial celebration of Jane Austen.

1) Every year there seems to be more literary prizes appearing: why do you think this is? Do we need so many?

MC: People have been saying we have too many literary prizes for decades, but it doesn’t stop new prizes mushrooming all over the place. I suspect they do that partly because it seems like a good marketing wheeze – eg, if it works for the French (with their Prix Goncourt), then it can work for the British (with their Goncourt-inspired Booker). And it helps that prizes inevitably have boundaries or unintended tendencies that mean somebody somewhere understandably feels excluded and senses the opportunity to set up a prize of their own.

2) What's it like to be a judge?

MC: I’ve never judged a major competition myself, and hope never to be put in that position. But I’ve interviewed several judges for – blatant self-promotion alert – a short book about literary prizes I’m writing at the moment; quite a few of them said they’d calmly got on with it, agreed with their fellow judges, and enjoyed the process. They also showed me how diligent they’d been with doing the reading, making notes and so on. The media love the spats, but I wonder if, for the most part, it’s actually a ridiculous amount of critical work that intelligent readers recklessly undertake. Personally, I’d rather have their individual recommendations than the sometimes extremely dull, safe, pointless overall choices of winners the system (usually) compels them to make.

3) How much emphasis do you think the publishing industry puts on prizes? Do you think it's the right amount?

MC: I fear it’s too much, but, as a mid-list novelist said to me recently: what else is there? And a publisher likewise challenged me to come up with a comparable alternative. The prize industry is now securely welded onto the publishing industry, and it will perhaps take some great climacteric shift to shake it off. I’m in two minds about the whole business. It’s rather wonderful that a well-placed prize can make a bestseller out of an Ali Smith or an Alan Hollinghurst – yet I cannot shake off the fear that the whole thing is a scam and a corruption of the critical impulse.

4) Which prizes have you seen emerging recently that you think will have a bigger prominence in the literary publishing scene in the future?

MC: I’m rubbish at the prophesying game. My wish-list, though, if we have to prizes is: that the Republic of Consciousness Prize should endure, and continue to draw attention to small presses and their authors; that the relatively young Goldsmiths Prize should live up to its mission statement to reward “creative daring”; and that the judges of the major poetry prizes should always reward talent rather than one another, each in their turn, from year to year. Again, though, I’d imagine that it’ll take some drastic shift in the “economics of prestige”, as Professor James English called his study of the prize phenomenon, to shake things up. So you should probably take my pretentious and naïve wish-list and chuck it bin-wards. The current crop of big prizes seems likely to remain on top, as long as they bring to market either widely acceptable (or gruesomely controversial) choices.

5) As someone who has been a judge, what advice would you give to anyone submitting a book to a prestigious award? Any faux-pas we should know about?

MC: Perfect the knack of indifference. If you find yourself on a shortlist, congratulate and celebrate with your fellow shortlisted authors. Also: a novelist was once talking down to a young photographer who’d been sent to take his picture. Then he realized she was the girlfriend of the judge of a major literary prize. His behaviour altered somewhat. So don’t be that man.