The Same Old Story?

A few thoughts on Insta's widespread clamouring for Keshed to be on the Booker longlist, and the inevitability of it not being.

Been the usual excitement in much of the world this week in anticipation and subsequent discussion of the Booker Prize Longlist. Usually it passes me by and I’d be the last person to comment on it. Despite it’s clout as the ultimate in UK prestige literary prizes, I couldn’t give a trapeze-swinging toss for the Booker Prize. Whatever vestige of credibility it had left with me went right down the shitpan in 2019 when it was awarded to Margaret Atwood for being Margaret Atwood instead of to Lucy Ellman for writing the greatest English language novel of the twenty first century, then compounding this absolute fuckery by making her share the ad hoc lifetime achievement award with Girl, Woman, Other, thus overshadowing Bernardine Evaristo’s landmark achievement of being the first Black woman to win the prize. It’s the ultimate Establishment honour, and as such holds little interest to a low-rent shitkicker like me, so it was a surreal couple of weeks in the run-up to this year’s longlist announcement when I was bombarded, daily, with screenshots of stacks of Instagram lit accounts, and a few from YouTube too, clamouring for Keshed to be listed. Even yesterday just as I arrived at band practice, Heidi sent me this screengrab:

That’s an amazing thing to read, again, and I’ll be honest, it was a whole lot of fun watching the buzz build even though I knew full well there wasn’t a cat in hell’s chance of the book being listed when everyone knows it’ll largely be made up of the usual suspect: Big Writers at Big Publishers who write Big Books designed to win prizes like this; presses like Ortac and writers like me don’t get a look-in, so there was never any expectation on my part and if it hadn’t been all over Insta I’d not even be passing any comment. And I’m not going to, really, that’s not what this is about; though I will say I am absolutely delighted for M John Harrison and hope he wins it.

What the fuck do you want to talk about, then?

I want to talk about the fact that for so many people to be pushing for a book published by a press like Ortac to be on the list shows the disconnect between the reading public and the Establishment/Big Publishing world at large, and to shout the fuck out about the fact that the response to the book has been amazing, and that Henry needs bigging up to the heavens for putting it out there when every other publisher who I sent it to (I won’t name them, obviously, but there were three or four indies and a couple of Big Ones) said they absolutely loved it but still turned it down. No one needs another rant about the state of publishing, but what the fuck does that say about the market?

Forgetting Keshed, was there really not a single book published by one of the scores of small UK presses that wasn’t deserving of a place on the list this year? There are over eighty of them in the Indie Press Network alone. You might point to the longlisted Fitzcarraldo title (who I love, btw, and have championed for a decade, especially their non-fiction) but they’re not exactly a small press now, even though they’re an indie, and to compare Serpent’s Tail to Ortac or, say, époque, or Renard Press, is apples and oranges. Just to give you an idea of the economies of scale here, we sold out the first print run of 1000 copies within three months, but with warehouse stocks dwindling, we had to wait until sales money came in for some other titles before the second run could be printed, because otherwise there was no way to pay. If the book had been listed, and a shitload of orders came in, a press like Ortac would be fucked in a way, cos the money wouldn’t be there to print them…….And yet they’re the ones who’ve taken the risk on publishing it, fully justified by the public reaction.

Brass tacks: while the publicity and sales that would have come with a listing would have been great, and I’d’ve taken great pleasure in lowering the tone and taking the piss out of the whole circus at every opportunity (like when I turned up to the Parliamentary Book Awards at Westminster wearing a STILL HATE THATCHER shirt in a room full of MP’s, Lords and Ladies), the most meaningful thing for me is that readers are connecting with the book and whatever my own personal feelings, a lot of people hold the Booker Prize with a huge amount of regard; so when we were being sent mock-ups of prediction lists with Keshed next to Marlon James or whatever, that’s so much more meaningful in some ways than a listing. Writers are fucked without readers, and it’s their opinion that matters, however nice critical acclaim, prizes, whatever may be. “Self-appointed judges judge more than they have sold,” like the man once sang. I’ve said it before and will never tire of repeating it, my readers are fiercely loyal and the word-of-mouth buzz around this novel is bringing more and more people into the fam - that’s why I write, that magical act of communication and connection with people you’ve never met, the idea of your work affecting people like your own favourite writers do you and happily for me, seems like a lot of people who come to my stuff fresh decide they like it enough to stick around and see what else is shaking. I’m not on Insta, but heartfelt thanks to everyone who was pushing this, and I’m glad the book has resonated so strongly with you.

Why the world needs Ortac Press

I was championing Ortac a long time before we started working together. The first time Henry and I spoke was when he emailed to say thank you after I put Emily Bootle’s book about authenticity and social media on a list for Bookshop dot org and sold about forty copies for them. In a very short time, Ortac have put together an amazingly diverse backlist of fiction, non-fiction and hybrid texts which I’d urge everyone to check out - always challenging, always interesting and the books as physical objects are beautifully deigned, typeset and produced. The publishing world is hideous and it would be so easy to make concessions to trends, gimmicks and fads that dominate the majority of the industry, but Ortac are ploughing their own furrow, publishing books on their own merits, because Henry thinks they deserve to be out there. They do all the right things, for all the right reasons, with total clarity and integrity, and the one thing I really hope does come out of the last couple of weeks, is that it brings more people to the press, and leads more people to check out what they do. Weirdo outsider writers like me need to have publishers who “get” what we do, trust us to do it, and fully support it, however uncompromising the work may be. Keshed was always going to need a special home; in Ortac it found one, and I’m proud that my work is playing some part in getting them the wider attention they so richly deserve.

This is the most unfocused newsletter I’ve ever written

How to do it without sounding like a cunt, or bitter I wasn’t listed, which couldn’t be further from the truth. I can’t imagine anyone who’s followed my stuff for any length of time thinking that, tbh, and if that is the case for anyone you’ve missed the point of everything I’m about by a considerable margin and probably shouldn’t be here. Prizes are a lottery at the best of times. I was deluged with people - writers and publishers as well as readers - when Ghost Signs was around saying it was nailed on to win the Gordon Burn and Orwell Prizes, and it ended up not even being listed for either of them (have to admit, even I was baffled it wasn’t on the Orwell list when it didn’t just tick the box for every criteria, it torpedoed them out the fucking water), but it did get listed for one I’d never heard of (Books Are My Bag) and one I told Kev to enter for a laugh (Parliamentary Book Awards). To me, at risk of labouring the point, the fact of the book’s existence is success. Tens of thousands of people dream of publishing a book and never get to do it; I’ve done it twice, with another on the way, and published shitloads of other stuff too. Everything that happens around and outside of that is noise, just a big mad adventure I’m determined to enjoy every minute of - even the shit, hard bits - until such a time as people stop wanting to read and publish me. When I say I don’t give a fuck about the Booker, I truly don’t. But I do mean every word I say about the credit due to my publisher - the industry is a much better place for having them around and I hope shitloads of you are gonna stick with us for the next book and beyond and see what else is in store down the line.