Sue Woolfe - author, Australia

Arrived but not alive

sue woolfe — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 04:05:40 +0000

30/7/12

The new portal’s actually on my computer though not yet live, and I’m astounded at how work-personlike and authoritative it is, this dream that’s coming true – it’s not touched by all our uncertainties and doubts, rather in the way that one of my newly published novels has always astonished me, where a messy manuscript of thousands of strsy thoughts and dead-ends and revisions becomes a remarkably neat, precise and absolutely rectangular object that I can cradle in my hand without bits of paper falling out.

We have intense discussions about the portal’s features – for example, how to classify all e books for easy accessibility to readers, what extra abilities it needs that we hadn’t imagined when it was just a dream, and what it would look like to readers- is it inviting enough? Does it charm? Since it comes from India I’m advocating that it should look like a magnificent silk sari swathed around a very able body.

Meanwhile, The Oldest Song in the World with the prettiest cover I’ve ever had has migrated via Harper Collins out of my head and into the bookshops of Australia and New Zealand, and so far, no hate mail, no hate reviews. Over the years I’ve had my share of tough reviews, but Oldest Song has caused me many sleepless nights, set as it is in forbidden territory, though told from the point of view of a white outsider…do I dare, do I dare. But there’s a point as a writer at which you have to dare, you can’t live with yourself unless you dare, in fact, you can’t write. Books push us out of our timidity – but of course, maybe not every author is as timid as me. There’s a moment when you give up wrestling with what’s inevitable, trying to make it become something more acceptable, and then you let the book chatter away, and you become its listener, its Boswell taking notes, while the book is Johnson commenting on the world, even pontificating. I remember Elizabeth Jolley saying in an interview with Kate Grenville and I in Making Stories that she didn’t allow her characters to take her over and I , as a new author, with only the experience of Painted Woman behind me, thought “That’s how I’m going to be!” But my determination seems to have nothing to do with the novel’s will. For me, the characters, and this time the setting, take over and lead me and I just stumble along behind, often grizzling away like a small child.

I’d love to hear from other authors if this is their experience.

Now that the portal’s imminent, we panic about our name. Would anyone think of googling us under “The Royalties”? Might it just be an in joke, a family joke? Why would readers think for a moment about the royalties of authors? Shouldn’t we have a name that’s more self-explanatory? I argue that a name can gather its own meaning. Someone else agrees, asking, what did “Apple” originally have to do with computers? Or “Penguin” with books? We decide to decide at dinner, finally, once and for all, again at my place. But the day assigned to this final decision is for me a working day followed by a radio interview and I only think of the menu in my morning shower – minestrone soup, purely vegetarian, with a base of fried carrots and fennel and leeks and then only water for its liquid, not stock which I haven’t made or a stock cube which I haven’t got, with home-made pesto stirred into it to enrich its flavor. Then I’m racing to the shops in the afternoon just before the interview, and arrive at the studio puffing and laden with rustling plastic bags with celery stalks sticking out.

But the soup and the wine work their magic while we try out many names, one of us calling out possibilities from the thesaurus while everyone else eats and drinks and shouts and argues. We consider very Australian place names, since we’re representing Australian authors to the world- Bong Bong Books delights us with its alliteration, as does Bogong Books- then someone remembers that, after all, nostalgia has got to us, we’re not producing books, certainly not in the usual meaning of the book, the old meaning of books, so the alliteration of Bogong Booksor Bong Bong Books is irrelevant. We work through lists of Australian birds, then gemstones, then colours, and that leads us to Australian phrases like “sunburnt country”…It’s during coffee that we realize that over the past year, we’ve become our name, and now it’s part of who we are. It’s too late to change. There’s too much history attached to it now. It’s like changing one’s own name. Besides, we admit as we part, we share a grudging fondness for “The Royalties”. And our URL will be…but I won’t tell it yet. Not until we’ve got it. Just in case.

Almost there

sue woolfe — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 08:09:08 +0000

I’m back in Australia, with my new novel, “The Oldest Song in the World”, about to come out both in print and e in Australia and New Zealand with Harper Collins, who continue to be generous and patient with me, although I fear I’ve tested them at least once, getting muddled about dates of giving talks, perhaps more than once.

And today we’ve been told that the portal is nearly ready.

We’re about to write to all the authors who replied to our advertisement in March last year – so long ago! What a year! telling them that very soon they’ll be able to send their books to India for conversion, and then use the portal to market their books, and to connect with readers.

“How are you making money from this?” a sensible friend asks me.

I have to admit that we haven’t thought of that. What we long to do is to improve the lot of Australian authors. That seem a big enough task, without having to think of how to make money.

Scrambling across the world to a meeting

sue woolfe — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 08:07:35 +0000

When our portal designers signal that they need to meet us to talk further, Libby is launching her new book, “A Boy Like Me” and Louise is lecturing full time. Our portal builders want to schedule a meeting in nine day’s time. Only Bem and I are free to fly to India. Bem is in Australia and I’m in London to research and write, along with my partner Gordon, my daughter and her friend.

Not quite believing that this fairy story can come true, I nevertheless dash to the internet and buy three flight tickets to New Delhi- cheap, unrefundable ones, always so tempting on the internet. (Gordon has to stay behind in London to work).Then I apply for visas to get into India. In that order. The order is very important to this story. I slosh self-righteously through London rain to the visa place, self-righteous because it’s a whole 8 days before we’re due to fly to India and usually I leave everything till the last minute, especially the boring things. “Madam,” they tell me at the visa place, “Australian visas applied for in London usually take 10 working days to clear. There’s only been once that they’ve been cleared in a week.”

I can’t afford another set of tickets. I’m a writer. I beg the vacation company that sold me the tickets to let me postpone our flight until the visa arrive. They say: “ We can’t. Ask Alitalia.” Alitalia says: “We can’t. Ask the vacation company.” Friends tell me wild stories of how they talked their way into getting changes on unchangeable tickets , stories that involve claims that their child is dying or that they’ve just been diagnosed with a brain tumor. I can only keep hoping. Three times in the next 7 days I slosh again to the visa place- does the rain ever stop in London? Marvelous city but they built it in the wrong place! Each time, the visa officials patiently re-iterate what they told me at the beginning; that when our visas are ready for collection, an sms will automatically be sent to me. But for all my new learning, I’m still a luddite at heart and disbelieve in automatic smses.

On the night before our flight to India, I insist that we all pack. The youngies grudgingly comply.

I wake up with dread. Another grey sky. The flight, Alitalia, leaves at 1.30pm. We must get on that plane, I must, for the sake of my Royal family, for the sake of the revolution in Australian literature, get to the meeting. Rain’s pouring again. The young ones are deeply asleep. Gordon sighs but gets up and makes the coffee. “You’re in fantasy land,” he says. “ Their automatic sms system must’ve been used thousands of times. It wouldn’t fail for you.”

“Get the kids up and ready,” I tell him. His mouth closes grimly. He’s not one to repeat himself: it’s just a fantasy of mine that the visas are there, my silly optimism.

I trundle my bag through the rain to the visa office. I wait for an exasperating hour in the queue, thinking that if we were to get the visas, by now we probably wouldn’t make it to the plane anyway.

“Funny” says the man behind the desk, his eyes squinting in disbelief as he gazes at his automatic system. “Your visas have been waiting for 2 days. And no one’s contacted you?”

Gordon rings serendipitously at the very moment I’m racing up the stairs to get the visas, locked in someone’s office. I hammer at the door as I shout into the phone.

“They’re here!”

It’s now 10.30, an hour before boarding time closes for international flights. “Get the kids to Victoria Station”, I yelp to Gordon down the phone, the visas now in my hand.

“But I can’t wake them up,” he cries.

Somehow he succeeds in getting them to the station, all sleepy eyed and lumbering luggage, despite the weather and the snarled traffic and a breakdown on the tube. I don’t have a chance to ask him how he managed this feat. The express train to Gatwick’s just about to close its doors when we four roar yelling onto the platform. The guard waits while we stumble on. I insist Gordon accompany us to Gatwick, given my gibbering state. At the airport, construction work hides the Alitalia check in desk, and when Gordon find it, forty minutes before the plane takes off, we stop short, horrified. There’s a long queue. It must be for the next plane! I think to ask the last person in the queue what flight he’ s going on. He smiles nonchalantly, a handsome Italian. Our flight. Still not reassured, I ask another. The same answer. No one seems fussed. This isn’t like the schedules Qantas keeps. I’m shaking so much, I sit on the floor.

Only as we’re going down the tunnel to the plane do I believe that this fantasy is really happening, and ring Bem in Australia, who’s given up on me. It’s the middle of her night. “I’ll make it to Delhi,” she says. “Somehow.”

So we meet our portal designers in New Delhi, a long meeting that takes all afternoon, and many cups of chai. We describe in detail the portal we’ve been imagining all these months, and all the facilities that only authors would think of. It’s taken a year, but I’ve learned so much in that time, I talk easily. I wouldn’t have dreamed this time last year that I could do it.

Our designers have a huge staff of perhaps 2500 people. They service traditional publishers all over the world, providing e books, including Australian publishers. They’ve never been approached before by a group of authors. We assure them that the site is needed by established Australian authors, that it will be driven by Australian authors and their readers. They tell us that it’d be built in 3 months.

So now we wait.

The portal builders

sue woolfe — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 08:05:42 +0000

Many authors replied! -some offering to help us because they can see that this is a worthy thing to do for Australian literature, its authors and its readers.

And- now I can tell all- a huge e publishing group in India is offering to our rescue, to build our portal, at no cost to us, and only modest costs to our authors!

We’ve already spoken on the phone three times. Today they made a time to Skype us, using a phone that links their offices throughout India. We arrange to gather at Libby’s house. We don’t check to see if her phone is a speaker phone, and when the phone rings and we discover our omission, we can’t bear to tell them, with their very professional hook up across the vast terrain of India, that our four heads were crowded around one little phone! Bem, who’s still the most e literate amongst us, is the head nearest the phone and takes notes which she reads out to me afterwards and then she types them up for us all.

We’re to meet them- our portal builders – in India- soon, to tell them exactly what we’ve envisaged through these long months, what we think the ideal portal for Australian authors should be.

An astonishing reply

sue woolfe — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 08:02:27 +0000

We’ve had an astonishing reply. It’s too astounding to tell at the moment. But the portal may actually happen, built by a very experienced, very professional company overseas.

We realize that we need other authors with forbearing and patience to trial this portal, if and when it happens. We decide to advertise to find them in the monthly Newsletter of the Australian Society of Authors. After many drafts emailed between us, we come up with:

We’re looking for expressions of interest

We’re in the process of creating an author’s portal for digitising, e-publishing and networking: an access point for authors and readers to meet, do business, converse…

It’s an opportunity to join the digital revolution on authors’ terms. We’re not asking for your rights – you’re free to sell your work on any other website. But with our industry partners we plan to offer:

Book digitising: conversion services for your backlist so your books never go out of print.

Distribution: international availability through far-reaching distribution networks.

Promotion: the potential for viral publicity campaigns that link with over 100 social media sites, plus the ability to connect directly with your buyers and reading groups – all online. No need for big marketing budgets.

Networking: Join an active conversation with writers and readers worldwide. Manage reader comments yourself, delete comments you don’t want. Only authors would think of this.

Is writing novels a road-map for living?

sue woolfe — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 08:01:07 +0000

Our little plan is becoming a big plan. It sounds like something out of a novel, out of my new novel, where the heroine scarcely knows her heart’s desire, but stumbles towards it.

The plan is to build a portal to enable Australian authors like us, like me, luddites like me who almost have no bravery at all when it comes to the internet, to e publish. A site that any author can use. A site that attracts readers, and connects them with authors. There are many e publishing sites already, but even though I’ve learned to find my way around this new world, they are probably intimidating to many authors, like the author I so recently was. And they don’t seem an alternative at all, financially speaking. We’d be exchanging one lot of lords of the manor for another. We’ll still be ekeing out a living, growing turnips for the big house on the hill, our children still hungry, our families in despair, and our turnips gulped down and scarcely noticed for the life work we’ve put into them.

But how can we afford to build an interactive portal for authors? Authors carry begging bowls, asking for the world’s spare change. Where will the money come from for an interactive portal?

We are applying to big funding bodies, and small. Our applications go everywhere. Everyone’s knocking us back. They don’t share our imperative. We’re too small, too inexperienced, there are many sites already. At least, because of all this hard thinking about how exactly to explain what we want to do, we’re learning so much about e publishing, and more, we’re working out exactly what’s needed in the portal, which other sites simply don’t offer. Elements that only authors would offer, only authors would think up.

For instance, one of my friends says that one of the problems with e publishing is that it’s like printing a whole lot of your books and having them languish on your garage floor. Who’s ever going to know about them? Marketing is essential to get books off the garage floor. Direct marketing seems the answer, getting around the need for huge marketing budgets that traditional publishers have, the sort of budgets that allow ads on the sides of buses. We need a way where authors can market their work directly to existing readers, if the readers agree, of course. The technology allows this, but no other site will share buyers’ addresses with authors- why not? Our site must do that- and the extension of that thought is, our site must also allow readers access to the authors, if the authors agree, so that authors can find out who their readers are if they wish, can even try out new work on selected readers, uniting both authors and readers in the common purpose of building literature.

And with app technology, it might be possible to have a site where authors don’t have to wait for someone to stumble into the accidental discovery of the garage stacked with books, but to reach out to thousands of potential readers.

And then, of course- the royalties. Our site must pay good royalties. In the old days of traditional publishing, authors were lucky to get 10% of the earning of their sales. (I always say how wealthy would the impressive Bill Gates be if he had to give away from the very beginning of his career 90% of his possible income?) Of course, publishers meet many costs, including the huge percentage paid to bookshops to stock the books, but still, little is left over for the person who’s put unpaid years into a book. (For me, five to seven years on average- for many authors, much more).Research shows that most Australian authors earn little more than $10,000 a year! This must change! Our site must turn this around, must earn the author up to 90%!

Sometimes living seems just like writing a novel, where you daren’t look at the big picture, for if you did you’d give up in fright. You just do the next little bit that’s in front of you, and somehow that leads to the next bit and the next bit, and eventually those tens of thousands of bits become a novel, and somehow the novel is more than the sum of its parts.

But like so many times before in my life, I’m thinking: why doesn’t someone else do this?

The strange importance of carrots

sue woolfe — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 07:59:53 +0000

Harper Collins have been dream publishers. Just when I thought I must turn my back on traditional publishing houses, I come across a model one. For example, I’m being consulted about the cover, and for most of a day I’m allowed to discuss with their artist colours, desert scenery, a figure wandering blithely away across a sunlit but forbidding landscape…such matters so vital for a reader to connect with my story, matters like exactly what shade of blue or purple the sky is, because the shade must reflect the turmoil in my heroine’s life, yet look as if there might be joy at the end. Also, I’ve been given the brilliant editor of my choice, Linda Funnell, and inspired by her, I’m practically re-writing the book – I’ve already past tensed most of it, a labour of months, hoping at first I could accomplish the brunt of it by instructing my computer to automatically change a list of eighty-seven common verbs to their past tense form, but soon I found what I’d already suspected, that far more was needed- I had to re-vision the book. Now I’m working on-line with Linda Funnell because she’s in Sydney and I’m being a writer-in-residence in Perth, at the historic house of Matti Furphy, invited there by the Perth Fellowship of Writers. It’s near a lovely beach, and each morning I force myself not to worry about my book and whether my computer might lose it all, and how to do track changes without going crazy, but to think only of the golden sand and the ocean surging over it and ebbing away. Gordon comes to stay with me for a precious fortnight, then Libby joins me, and through the days we work, helping each other keep at it, keep at writing. I’m barely able to manage track changes, and saved all the changes on a memory stick, with an unquestioning assumption that memory sticks were my confidantes forever – but the stick got itself corrupted and I’ve lost a week’s work! “Of course you can’t trust computers!” cries the computer expert I take it to, gazing at me, astounded at my naiveté. “Computers are only machines!” Linda somehow stays patient. It must be terrifying to work with me.

And meanwhile, the Royalties keep having delicious dinners and excited discussions. I’m so old that I remember being a breathless eighteen year old at university, leaning over a laminex table so excitedly that its metal edge got imprinted on my chest, careful not to breathe out the one flickering candle between us all, and trying to think of something intelligent to say about the coming revolution. In those days the way ahead seemed clear; it was imperative to free oneself from the System and grow one’s own food, especially carrots. Carrots seemed to go to the very heart of the change that was needed. It’s hard to explain that to my daughter, hard to recapture the belief in this path to freedom. My daughter looks up disbelievingly from Facebook. “Carrots?” she echoes.

But revolution has come again, this time apparently of its own accord. The revolution for authors to own their means of production. Now we’re thinking that once we’ve e published ourselves, we should help writers like us to publish themselves. We could show them how.

But that’s impossible.

What’s so safe about traditional publishing?

sue woolfe — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 20:18:44 +0000

It was in the bad old days. You wait all your life to find a way to export your first novel out of your head and onto paper. You think publication will put you into heaven. I found publication, while not exactly hell, at least a punishment. My “Painted Woman”, first published by Hudson in 1989, had been scorned by many critics, though praised by others.(I have a genius for remembering criticism, and not noticing praise: in my old age I’ll be sitting in the sun in a nursing home reciting sad words like “irrelevant”, “overblown” and “marshmellow”). I’d been repeatedly warned that a new book had six weeks to make it in the bookshops, or it was history. Mine hadn’t made it. My last hope was a good notice in “The Sydney Morning Herald’s” book pages, but the then head of the literary pages saw it as “just another women’s coming of age story”, and therefore not worth reviewing, as he told a large audience in the early days of the Sydney Writers’ Festival, not hearing my heart thumping in the back row. So the novel seemed to be in its death throes, and me as well, when, months later, something prompted him to ask Tom Keneally for his opinion of the book. Keneally’s generous and encouraging review brought it, and me, back to life.

It was re-published by Allen and Unwin in 1991, but even so, when I was invited three years later to my first writer-in-residence at Iowa University, I was only too happy to leave it at home, preferring instead to to pack an evening dress in case of glittering evenings, heavy jumpers and a coat as padded as a sleeping bag because the mid-west seemed like Antartica to a woman from a warm climate, and even a thick blanket.

I was caught out. One of my hosts asked me to read it in front of scores of students. I had to explain, in a mixture of embarrassment and relief, that I didn’t bring it. This was in the days before I used a computer, just one of those old-fashioned, finger- bruising typewriters, so I didn’t even have the manuscript in a floppy disc with me. It was also in the days when Australian books were very difficult to come by overseas, when you had to achieve publication overseas to be available anywhere but home, and that seemed an impossible obstacle. Allen and Unwin had sent a shipment of the book to London, where it had been well-reviewed and had sold out, but, lamentably, no one over there had offered to publish it.
“We’ll get a copy from the library,” my host said.
“That’s impossible,” I replied. But I didn’t like to argue, so I followed her to the library. Within minutes, a copy of “Painted Woman” was put in my hands. But it was not like the book I knew. It had a clumsy painting on the cover, and it bore the name of a publisher I hadn’t heard of. More bewildering than anything was the spelling of my surname. Now every second person accidentally misspells my name, but for a publisher to make a mistake like this seemed a strange accident. While my host stood beside me, puzzled by my sudden silence, I opened the book and found it was a large print edition on coarse paper already yellowing at the edges.
“OK?” she asked. For a moment, I thought I’d have to disappoint her, and say: “This isn’t’ mine” – like a new mother takingone peek at a baby in a nurse’s arms and saying: “You’ve got the wrong one.”But the book began with the line I’d worked on for so long I could recite it:
“His arm is above me. I’m thinking that he may hit me the way he hits my mother, his face slashed between the red protuberances of nose and chin, his lips purplse, his teeth flaring like a saw’s edge…”
I leafed through the yellow pages, dizzyily – had someone stolen my beginning? and my name? and my scorned book? But I found the familiar,comforting rhythms of my prose. Even the page layout, that Hudson’s had painstakingly set, was familiar.
“OK,” I agreed and followed her out of the library and did my reading from the book that was mine, but not mine.

Much later, back in Sydney, I asked my agent how this strange edition had come about. He had no idea. His inquiries found that Allen and Unwin and Hudson had no idea either, and the US publisher seemed to have disappeard without a trace. My agent had never warmed to the book, and had initially refused to represent it, saying distressingly that even if he worked every day for four years, he wouldn’t find a publisher for it. (It had taken two weeks, in the end).
Now he laughed. “Probably gone bankrrupt”, he said, implying that’s the havoc my book might wreak on any publisher, although he mentioned that to sell into universities probably all over the US was a sizable market. “Pity about the royalties,” he said.

There’s a happy ending to this story that all new writers should take heart from: “Painted Woman” survived that pirating, and in fact, twenty-one years later, is still in print in Australia. It was bought by Random House in 1997, and given its current, beautiful cover. Random even allowed me to re-write a section of it that had long weighed on me – I’m a fiddly, obsessive person. The book was adapted as a radio play and broadcast on the ABC. Recently it has been translated into French by Marie-Odile Fortier Masek, and published by L’Edition. As Frank Moorehouse once said to me: “Books have a more interesting life than we do.”

But now when people warn me off e publishing, saying that “e” books aren’t safe from pirating, I reply: what’s so safe about traditional publishing?

More daring demanded

sue woolfe — Mon, 02 May 2011 07:58:27 +0000

Suddenly everything has changed.

At a literary evening which I almost didn’t go to, I come upon Shona Martyn of Harper Collins.

“You wrote that letter. Come and see me,” she says.

I ask Bem to come with me, for she’s much more e-literate than me- though I’m learning fast, on the job, the way I learn best. But I’m still incoherent- e knowledge seems like learning a language, where you understand more than you can say.

Harper Collins are very welcoming, and don’t put me on the spot at all, except that we have a discussion about digital rights management, which they think is essential, but Kate Eltham didn’t, relying instead on pricing books low. And afterwards, they send me a letter offering to publish my novel, taking print rights, and e rights for Australia and New Zealand, but giving me rights to e publish everywhere else.

So it is quite like the partnership I envisaged back in the hotel room in Athens!

So, how do I take up these rights I so desired? How exactly do I e publish?

Learning fast

sue woolfe — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 07:57:23 +0000

We now have a name – The Royalties. I’ve tried it on a few people, and they’ve laughed at its cheekiness.

But to become a dignified royal, I must become e competent, fast. Who can explain this arcane knowledge to me in words I can follow?

I’m used to researching, and ring around bothering people- though everyone seems intrigued and supportive, which comforts me because I’m guilty about being so slack as not to have learned about e publishing already. I often feel guilt when I haven’t got around to learning things. It must’ve cut very deep in me, somewhere in my forgotten school days, when I didn’t learn what I was supposed to learn for homework! Anyway, I soon stumble on one of Australia’s e publishing experts, Kate Eltham, connected with the Queensland Writers Centre. I shyly ring and ask if she’d fly to speak to our group (in Sydney), only to hear that she’s going to be in Sydney soon to speak about e publishing on the very popular “Last Tuesday Book Club”. She’ll make time for us. I’m thrilled and very grateful.

We sit in my office over cups of tea and biscuits and record her as all afternoon, she gives us an overview of where e publishing is up to. I find myself writing down acronyms I’d never heard of, and like a child, constantly asking her to repeat that name and that name and that name- how had I dared say I was going to do this e publishing, without being seeped in this?