Michelle Loubon

Caribbean writ­ers like VS Naipaul have penned Miguel Street and Wine of As­ton­ish­ment by Earl Lovelace. Char­ac­ters like 'Man Man' and 'Moth­er Eva' re­main etched in read­ers' minds.But be­fore a bib­lio­phile can curl up in bed with their favourite book of po­et­ry, the au­thor has to get the work pub­lished.Pub­lish­er Ken Jaikarans­ingh paint­ed a grim pic­ture of the lo­cal mar­ket. He iden­ti­fied fac­tors such as lit­er­a­cy and sup­ply and de­mand which in­flu­enced the pub­lish­ing in­dus­try.

He had shared some of these sen­ti­ments at a sem­i­nar on pub­lish­ing host­ed by Bo­cas Lit­er­ary Fest at Nalis Li­brary, Port-of-Spain re­cent­ly. Oth­er pan­elists were UK-based Bar­bara Bus­by and Je­re­my Poynt­ing.Jaikarans­ingh said: "The mar­ket is not large enough to en­cour­age or sus­tain some­one who would want to pub­lish fic­tion or po­et­ry. The fact is it is hard and cru­el. The text­books work in favour of the text book pub­lish­er, but it does not work the same way for the pub­lish­er of po­et­ry or fic­tion."

He added: "They could in­vest a fair amount of mon­ey and be rea­son­ably con­fi­dent he would earn his in­put with the text­books."For ex­am­ple, it you want to pub­lish a bi­og­ra­phy on a politi­cian, you can't make the pre­dic­tion it would sell."You can nev­er tell how many peo­ple would buy the book. You won't know how many buy at a par­tic­u­lar price point. This is the chal­lenge a lot of lo­cal pub­lish­ers face. The point of in­ter­sec­tion be­tween the sup­ply and de­mand. It is be­com­ing hard to pre­dict."Re­vert­ing to the '70s and '80s, Jaikrans­ingh not­ed "20 per cent of books on a pub­lish­ing list sup­port­ed the oth­er 80 per cent that didn't break even back in the 70s and 80s. That was the ra­tio."

'Less like­ly to re­cov­er costs'

Al­though the pub­lish­er might be will­ing to take a gam­ble, Jaikarans­ingh said the risks in­volved were "be­com­ing ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult and pre­car­i­ous."The grim re­al­i­ty was "the more mon­ey you put to­ward pro­mot­ing a book the less like­ly you are to cov­er your costs."Jaikarans­ingh cit­ed the ex­am­ple of some­one wish­ing to pro­duce the "next best Caribbean cook­book."Jaikarans­ingh iden­ti­fied many fac­tors which have to be tak­en in­to ac­count.He said: "You have to check out the mar­ket. What price do we need? Do we need to put it in colour? If we put it in full colour, what are the costs of colour pho­tog­ra­phy? Do we need to get a celebri­ty per­son like a Wendy Ra­hamut to write a chap­ter or sub­mit a recipe?

He cit­ed a po­ten­tial quo­ta­tion from the print­ing press. "It might range be­tween one and 500. If we work out the cost is $100,000 for 1,000 books. You would work out the cost of pro­duc­ing it is $100. To make back the mon­ey ($100,000) we need to get back $100."He added: "It is not tak­ing in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the cost of mon­ey fac­tor."Should I put it in the book or in­vest it in re­al es­tate?"Jaikarans­ingh iden­ti­fied oth­er at­ten­dant costs like mar­ket­ing and pro­mo­tions. It might en­tail a fly­er, book launch or Let's Meet The Au­thor.

"You would not walk around Trinidad with your cook­book. You have to give a per­cent­age to your chain of sup­ply. The stan­dard is min­i­mum 25 per cent to the book­shops."Where are you go­ing to keep the books? Are you go­ing to keep it un­der the bed or ware­house the books?"Who is go­ing to pay for books that are dam­aged on tran­sit?"These nig­gling de­tails, in­clud­ing the au­thor's roy­al­ties, im­pact up­on the ul­ti­mate re­tail price.He said: "If a book costs $100 to pro­duce that book would not re­tail for any­thing less than $200. The au­thor has to be paid a roy­al­ty."If you work out the num­bers, you would have to be ex­treme­ly care­ful you don't end up los­ing $100,000."

Pub­lish­ing in T&T

Jaikarans­ingh said: It's a busi­ness, it's like any oth­er busi­ness."He said: "A pub­lish­er is like an en­tre­pre­neur. In the purest sense of pub­lish­ing, in the old days, an au­thor would write a book. They would go to the print­er and the print­er would print. The au­thor be­came his own pub­lish­er and he would pay peo­ple to walk around Eng­land. An au­thor would go to the print­ery and the print­er would fi­nance it and say: " I would take mon­ey as it comes along."He said two types of pub­lish­ing ex­ist lo­cal­ly.

Jaikarans­ingh added: "An au­thor would say, 'I have a book but I don't have the mon­ey.' The print­er would say I would fi­nance you along the way. The whole pub­lish­ing in­dus­try has evolved in­to pub­lish­er and in­vestor. The pub­lish­er would take the writer's work and get it de­signed, edit­ed and mar­ket­ed. It's an all in­clu­sive kind of busi­ness."In con­tem­po­rary times, small pub­lish­ing hous­es are run by ac­coun­tants. They are think­ing in terms of dol­lars and cents.

"Fi­nan­cial peo­ple would not pub­lish a book un­less the num­bers make sense to them. They are the guardians of oth­er peo­ple's monies. Hard­ly any­body would want to pub­lish a book, if they don't re­cov­er some in­vest­ment for their share­hold­ers." He has al­so seen the ad­vent of seg­ment­ed pub­lish­ing.It caters to spe­cif­ic gen­res in­clud­ing clas­sics, cof­fee ta­bles, text­books and high­er ed­u­ca­tion books.Jaikarans­ingh said: "To­day, you have huge pub­lish­ing hous­es...con­glom­er­ates. They are pub­lish­ing any­thing from acad­e­mia, comics and jour­nals. In an iron­ic kind of way that hap­pens in T&T. One or two pub­lish­ers are mul­ti-seg­ment­ed."

Pub­lish­ing tips for­bud­ding writ­ers

Jaikarans­ingh al­so shared some sound ad­vice.

• Be­gin with the as­sump­tion that you are not go­ing to make a liv­ing from writ­ing

• Get oth­er peo­ple's opin­ions about your writ­ing

• Get a lot of crit­i­cal in­put

• Some writ­ers have a high re­gard for their writ­ing with­out re­al­is­ing it isn't what it is

•Be re­al­is­tic about the ex­pec­ta­tions

(There are on­ly one or two writ­ers like the Derek Wal­cotts and Earl Lovelaces)

• You are lucky if you make it

• Hone your skills-by read­ing and "read­ing in­tel­li­gent­ly"

• Start look­ing for op­por­tu­ni­ties to show­case your work

• De­vel­op some kind of crit­i­cal fol­low­ing for your work

• Few peo­ple look for pub­lish­ers who tend to spe­cialise in spe­cial ar­eas, but try to spe­cialise

• Ap­proach a pub­lish­er who has a track record in pub­lish­ing the kind of ma­te­r­i­al you have in mind, for ex­am­ple fic­tion or po­et­ry

• The US mar­ket tends to work through agents

• Link your­self with an agent

• When you do get a pub­lish­er, nev­er send your full man­u­script

• Send a cov­er let­ter, an ab­stract, a sum­ma­ry and an ex­tract of the work

• It would al­low the per­son to ac­cess the work

• Most un­so­licit­ed man­u­scripts get dumped; a lot of them are nev­er read

• It helps if it has an en­dorse­ment by an au­thor who is known (that helps in get­ting you in the door)