Category Archives: Publishing

Kindle, Sony E-reader, digital formats for reading novels. Is it really the way ahead, and will it superceed conventional books? Phoenix Ark hope not, don’t think so, and since Guttenberg, a book has been a thing of beauty, and bookshops wonderful places to be. Yet it’s inevitable that books will transfer, and are doing so rapidly. Perhaps to publishers, but authors too, it is all about price pointing, delaying Kindle and others sales until a book has acheived in the conventional market place. The thing about Kindle, controlled it seems by Amazon, like Sony’s E-reader, is that they are platforms and since folk started going on about the medium being the message, the smart money knows that controling the point of sale is the key. So Kindle becomes a virtual bookshop, where everyone has to turn if the readers are going there. Perhaps in fifty years time we’ll live in sparce, modernist homes, with one ‘machine’ representing a library as vast as the internet. Then perhaps those clever, terrifying technocrats should invent a book that has flipping electronic pages, and a cover that takes on the entire style and design of a novel, almost magically. The one place where that could triumph is in Children’s Books, adding film to the word. But still all those publishers have to believe, as the best Hollywood directors believe, in the importance and power of the storyteller.

Children’s or adult, fiction or non fiction, despite the fact more books are published than ever, do you actually read anymore? Or is life swamped by TV, the moving image, film, Utube and sound? We want to know the importance of story to you, the significance of words, whether it’s a poem, the perfect words in the perfect order, or great novels. We are not entirely sure that they are being written anymore. We would like to hear from younger and adult readers, partly because the founder has being doing a survey of favourite moments from children’s books. They will be posted in the next few weeks, but we want to hear from adults too, unknown or famous. The question is, is there a significant moment in any book that has stayed with you forever and seems to have made an important impact on your whole life?

For all the other stuff, we should really be blogging about books and story! Why they are so important, particularly at certain ages, how much value and joy they impart, and the kind of impression great fantasy fiction made on Phoenix Ark’s now rather grumpy founder. I can still remember the amazing excitement of Lord of the Rings, bunking off school, to consume a book that vitally bridges a gulf between  a younger reading world, and an entire universe of adult books, as mysterious as the real world, or worlds, we have to face. Perhaps it’s something perculiar to fantasy, but the moment that had me hooked forever was Frodo’s race to Rivendale, after the attack at Weathertop, chased by the terrible, extraordinary Nazgul, the Nine Riders. On my website I’ve asked my younger readers to contribute their favourite moments from literature; not books, but scenes that especially affected them, and to say why, and it’s as interesting for adults. Especially moments in ‘children’s fiction’ that have stayed with you forever, and perhaps affected a life view, your politics, or beliefs. I’m not sure why, but another moment from Lord of the Rings is when Gandalf cracks the seal to Moria, reading the runes above the door – ‘Speak, friend, and enter’. Of course he uses the Elfin word for ‘friend’, and then leads the ringbearer into a world that is perhaps symbolic of the darkest unconscious, once a great and powerful citadel, now overtaken by orcs and evil. That the finest fantasies are about doorways both between worlds, and inside the self, is one of themes I’ve tried to follow in all my books. Yet discussing story is a different thing to the vital role it has, as you are going on the journey, living it with the characters. Literally like talking about two different worlds, I think, one self conscious, and reflective, the other directly engaged with another, very immediate part of your whole self. The real storyteller knows those things instinctively, at various levels, and avoids what’s didactic, to explore the tension between the creative imagination, where anything might happen, and what we call reality, and actual experience, so constantly exploring the very nature of belief and reality. On the other hand, for any grandiose pontificating about books, just go for the ones that are good!