Part Two of Guest Blogger: Gwen Davies

Following on from yesterday, Gwen Davies has continued her blog - describing upcoming titles and authors.

I need to have a think about a few authors who had been taken up by London agents but who for various reasons are considering coming back to the fold. This will be more likely if we can boost their advance via a WBC commissioning grant (these go as high as £10,000). However, the scheme stipulates very high printruns (for literary works) and denies us access to the publishing grant scheme, and since the advance goes exclusively to the authors, the scheme is not as appealing as it initially looks to the publisher. There is still time to mull this over.

Once the production rush calms down, I will look into sorting out advance bound uncorrected proofs to promote our October titles, The Deer Wedding by Penny Simpson, which is set in Croatia, and Bamboo Grove by Romy Wood, which is set in Bangkok. Lovely covers of these have already been sorted: a delicate Balkan folk-art feel for the Croatian novel and a hot, sexy urban tang for the Thai one. Romy is very open about the fact that she has Bipolar Disorder, and we have been discussing how this aspect of her personality and the novel’s themes, might fit in with marketing the book. She only recently sent me a jolly text saying “Getting on well with next book but hospitalised again!” Being involved with the ups and downs of an author’s emotional life is an interesting part of the job, too – though there are limits!

A big thankyou to Gwen for providing us with such a fantastic blog over the last two days.

Both Bumping by Tony Bianchi and Faith Hope and Love by Llwyd Owen from Alcemi are featured in the next cycle of Exclusively Independent. You can find out more about the company by visiting there site and clicking here.