Reopening and renewal

After a pandemic pause, and with the warmth of spring in the air, I am pleased to say that Ventura is opening to submissions again.

When COVID-19 first hit Australia in March and we went into lockdown, like everyone else I had no idea what the future would hold. We closed the office and headed for the sanctuary of home, watching the bookshops we love so much close to customers.

It did not feel possible to read manuscripts and give honest feedback on a writer’s hard work when we were filled with anxiety. 

In fact, reading published books was hard in the early days, and many of us bemoaned the fact that as we finally had time to read, the pounding anxiety of not knowing our future stopped us from immersing ourselves in a good book.

 But even a pandemic becomes normalised, and after horrendous sales figures for March, the sales of books started to pick up. Fiction sales boomed thanks to Normal People by Sally Rooney and Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens and the reading habit re-emerged. 

Online book sales through retailers like Book Depository and Booktopia started to boom, and our favourite indie booksellers like Gleebooks took to their bikes for home delivery with a smile. And then bookstores like Avid Reader and Readings offered some great drive-by pick-up services. Or in my case, a walking the dog /pick-up combo at Potts Point Bookshop.

The book business has always been resilient; we have seen off threats before. In fact predictions of our demise are always wrong: think of what we have faced in recent times: Amazon, ebooks, Netflix, Facebook and Instagram. And my favourite victory is when Readings Carlton saw off Borders after the US giant had opened across the street.

So if the book business is back, then so are we.

 Ventura has always championed the most compelling writing in Australia with globally aware fiction and life enhancing non-fiction books. 

And female agency remains at the core of our business and our list.

We seek stories that are deeply moving, connect with our shared humanity, characters that stay with you and books that can change your life.

From now on, we will be accepting submissions every Friday. You can find more information on how to submit here.

So after a reflective hibernation, the renewal of spring is here and we look forward to selecting new works to be the Ventura titles of the future. 

Cutting the Cord: Book Club Discussion

Looking for your next book club pick? Why not try Natasha Molt’s gripping debut Cutting the Cord? Featuring assassins, global travel, and a kick-ass female protagonist, this is the perfect choice for fans of Killing Eve or Red Sparrow.

Natasha has developed a series of questions for book clubs about her debut thriller. If you have read it, be part of the discussion! If not, Cutting the Cord should be at the top of your reading list.

• How does the title Cutting the Cord relate to the book?

• What do you think the author’s purpose was in writing the book?

• How do you think a thriller can engage with deeper themes?

• In the thriller genre, how original and unique was this book?

• Did the book change your opinion or perspective about terrorism and those who engage in it?

• Did you learn anything about the motivations of terrorists? Are they always clear cut?

• The action in the book takes place in a number of locations, with Amira’s home base of Cologne featuring most prominently. Do they less well-known locations work, or would better known-locations create a more direct link for readers?

• Which places in the book would you most like to visit?

• The book follows Amira’s disillusionment with the Authenticity Movement. Do you sympathise with her increasing questioning of her origins?

• Is it difficult to ‘like’ Amira given the novel opens with her killing elderly man?

• What do you think of Amira’s mental state throughout the book? Does the writing reflect the development her resolve?

• Family relationships play a key part in the novel. What is the most important relationship in the novel and why?

• Henry is a domineering character in the book. Does he have any redeeming characteristics?

• How does Amira’s search for her birth parents lead to her questioning of the Movement itself ?

• If you could pick a character from the book to have coffee with, who would it be and what would you talk about?

• Can you envisage where the characters may go after the novel?

• If you were making a movie of this book, who would you cast in the lead roles?

• Share a favourite quote from the book. Why did this quote stand out?

• Did the book’s pace seem too fast/too slow/just right?

• Which scene has stuck with you the most?

• The terrorist group, the Authenticity Movement remains largely undefined in its beliefs and objectives. Do you think this is a strength or a weakness for the book?

• Are there lingering questions from the book you're still thinking about?

• What did you think of the ending of the book?

Finally,

• If you got the chance to ask the author of this book one question, what would it be?

You can contact Natasha Molt over social media on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter or via her publisher, Ventura Press.

Cutting the Cord: Natasha's remarks

 Opening Remarks

 Thank you for participating in this online launch of Cutting the Cord.

 This is a difficult time for many of us, and being able to tell stories and to experience them is an important part of coping with the events around us.

 Firstly, I would like to thank Ventura Press for publishing my book and for hosting this launch. I hope that we can still hold a launch in person, but under current circumstances that is of course not possible.

 As part of this launch, we will make the opening chapter from the novel available, and you will also find a video with some questions that Ventura prepared. I hope to be able to do a live question and answer session in the future, and, of course, you can always contact me on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter or through Ventura.

Cutting the Cord

Cutting the Cord is a terrorist novel that explores fanaticism, through the experiences of its central protagonist, Amira Knox.

 Amira, a twenty-two-year old Australian has been groomed since childhood by her family to commit acts of terrorism against the world’s capitalist elites.

 Her family leads the “Authenticity Movement”, an unconventional terrorist cult with grandiose non-religious pretensions and a melange of rather vague ideas for eliminating a virus of “inauthenticity”.

 The narrative concentrates on how the cult creates a dystopia for both its victims and perpetrators, and centres on Amira’s quest to leave her terrorist identity behind.

 My novel explores what might happen when a terrorist cult forms based on one person’s closed mind and the answer is terrorist violence for broader Western society, and a dystopian outcome for many perpetrators. 

I would add that the ‘virus’ of ‘inauthenticity’ as used in the book is not related in any way to real-life viruses that we may be experiencing at the moment.

The Authenticity Movement and the ‘virus of inauthenticity’

In short, the ‘virus of inauthenticity’ is the way the cult sees the evils of capitalism.

The longer version is that the Authenticity Movement is a variation on the doomsday cults run by charismatic leaders, which were prevalent in the 1960s through to the 1990s, such as the Manson family, the People’s Temple and Branch Davidians. Like Aum Shinrikyo, The Authenticity Movement engages in outward-directed terrorist activities similar to those of jihad operations (excluding suicide bombings). 

The group claims that the generally accepted notion of economic progress is spread throughout society like an infection, hindering the capacity of people to live “authentically”.

The Movement preaches that those who lead and profit from the global financial system – the billionaires – are especially inauthentic and, as key vectors of contagion, must be eliminated.

According to the Movement, the virus of “inauthenticity” steers the populace into myopic consumption, existential alienation and robotic subjugation. The terrorist agglomeration, using twenty-first century technological innovations (such as mobile phones, computers and the internet), seeks to amplify and diffuse system-created global financial crises via acts of terrorism and economic sabotage, inciting a revolution that will create a more “authentic” way of being.

More importantly though, Cutting the Cord is Amira’s story. Amira’s experiences in this cult leading her to the point where she questions everything she believes. It is also her story of empowerment through building her own identity and find her independence.

Acknowledgments:

"I am grateful to Dr Dianne Schwerdt and Dr Carol Lefevre from The University of Adelaide for their careful readings of many drafts and their support. I am also indebted to the University of Adelaide for enabling me to conduct research onsite in Germany and Switzerland through a Research Abroad Scholarship.

I want to thank my mother for her prayers, strength and love; my father for his constant encouragement and feedback; my sisters for their willingness to listen; my son for his inspiration and patience.

I would also like to thank Catherine Heath for her editing help and the team at Ventura – Jane, Zoe and Holly for their help and advice in bringing this book to the public.

Finally, I want to thank my husband Andreas, without whom none of this would have been possible."

Launching a Book Online in the time of Corona

The book launch is a rite of passage for a debut novelist. Well, for any writer publishing a book really. It’s something you muse about during the long journey to publication; who you’ll invite, a cool venue to hold it. What it’s going to be like showing off a real book after all that time working, writing, waiting!

And then … Corona!

I’d booked my launch for No Small Shame at Readings Hawthorn way back in December, I was that excited! After attending many such similar events, it was finally going to be my turn!

Hmm … Corona!

I returned from a writing residency on Norfolk Island at the end of February believing I had four weeks to organise invitations, nibbles, wine, an outfit, and to get out and introduce myself to booksellers, knowing that Ventura Press’s wonderful distributors, Simon and Schuster had been out and about already and the book was on pre-order. Then the Corona sky began to darken as the nightly news went from worrying to more urgent to lockdowns imminent.

Mid-March, on the Saturday, I was a guest speaker at the Women Writing History Day at Eltham Library. It was my first chance to publicly speak about No Small Shame, to sell and sign books, and I was so delighted to be able to do so in advance of the release date. I had the thrill of selling every copy I’d taken and signing each book for the purchaser with my brand new author signature. (As opposed to the one I use on my credit card!)

With the Corona news worsening, I handed out invitations to my launch that day with a pang of trepidation. There was ‘no hugging’ ‘no kissing’, though there were lovely, quiet words of congratulations. ‘We’ll do the real thing at the launch!’

That night, the news made lockdowns sound imminent! My stomach began to knot, but I was amazed at how well I was handling the prospect that my launch could be cancelled. The next day, orders to self-isolate, avoid crowds and any unnecessary gatherings began to bode ill. Still I remained calm!

The next day came the cancellation.

There were tears! And disappointment. But, I do have to say that any misery quickly dissipated, thanks to the instant and voluminous outreach by the online writing community to all authors who’d had their launches and events cancelled. Along with some particularly wonderful offers to assist debut authors.

That same day, fellow debut author, Kirsten Krauth set up a fabulous new Facebook group, Writers Go Forth. Launch Promote Party to provide a forum for authors who’d lost their launches and events to promote and celebrate the release of their books. Opportunities and offers began to flood in and within days I had several fabulous blog and interview spots lined up and two very exciting guest spots on podcasts. Holding a launch online began to seem a real possibility too – though I’d no clue how to go about it. Even, a few days later, as I scheduled and posted news of my virtual launch, I wasn’t sure how it would all work. At first, the plan was for the wonderful Alison Goodman, my launcher, writing buddy and friend, to come to my house, so we could either record or livestream proceedings. We decided, being online, we needed to make the launch more interactive than just speeches, so we’d do a short QandA.

Within a matter of days though, social isolation regulations became more stringent, the need for care more urgent, and the plan changed to prerecording the launch from our separate houses. Perhaps via Zoom.

I wasted several stressful days trying to work out if we could livestream from separate houses, or run a pre-recorded video during a livestream. It’s allegedly possible if you have the know-how and technology. We did not! So we reverted to Plan B, to pre-record the actual launch and then once it played on the night, I’d flip to a livestream. Right up until the moment that the livestream worked, I wasn’t sure or convinced it would; despite having a phone tutorial on the process from wonderful author and tech whiz L.J Owen.

There were a few little hiccoughs along the way! Facebook didn’t deliver all my invitations. Apparently, they have a guest limit and a send only a few ‘at one time’ limit. Some guests were unable to comment during the event. I’m still not sure if it was the group Facebook settings or the guest’s privacy settings? However, I was thrilled that most people managed to let me know that they were there either in the comments, by text, Messenger or email.

I’d seen from others’ experiences how hard it is to search through all the lovely messages and comments to find the questions, so my daughter was on stand-by (at her house) to text me any questions via my laptop.

I am thrilled to say now, that on the night, all went exactly to plan. The video uploaded and played; and when it finished, I successfully switched to the livestream. I was hugely relieved though to see that first message appear in the comments, letting me know that someone was out there and watching. Questions duly arrived via text giving me the chance to talk about the journey of writing No Small Shame and share some of the research and background to the novel. I’m still amazed how natural it all seemed. And it was an absolute joy to know that so many family, friends and peers were there watching, including many that couldn’t have been at a physical launch here in Melbourne. Sadly I did lose a few guests when we switched to livestream who’d not realised the launch was to continue.

It all felt like a real celebration! And strangely, I didn’t feel solitary or socially distanced at all. No, the night wasn’t what I’d planned; but that didn’t lessen the joy of holding up No Small Shame, knowing it was out in the world – finding readers – and being read.

If you’d like to learn more about No Small Shame (or even get yourself a copy!), you can find more information here. To hear more from Christine, check out her website: christinebell.com.au

A screenshot from Christine’s online launch with fellow author Alison Goodman

Five Questions with Christine Bell

Our authors are the heart of Ventura - without them we wouldn’t have the books we do! But what makes them tick? What lies behind their passion for literature? To answer these sought after questions, we’re bringing you the Five Questions With series to give you a little more insight into who lies behind the words you’re reading.

Award-winning Melbourne author Christine Bell explores female agency, social inequality and the far reaching impact of mental illness in her meticulously researched historical fiction debut novel, No Small Shame, out today 1 April. She has written extensively for children and young adults across her career, including 35 short fiction titles published for children. No Small Shame is her first published adult historical novel. Good Reading selected Christine as their March featured author, and chatted with her about the adventure of writing a first novel, and the transition from writing for children to adults.

 No Small Shame is your first novel. What were some of the challenges in the transition from writing short fiction to longform? For example, did you have to use more discipline in your writing habits? Keep better track of characters and the surrounding story? 

The novel spans seven years and two continents with a few shifts of location throughout. So, there were a lot of settings to establish and new characters to introduce. I wish I’d known at the start to chart the ages of my characters over the passing years. That got tricky trying to sort later. And I didn’t know that I should be keeping detailed spreadsheets of facts, and where I found them, research contacts, a bibliography and good records of my many reference materials, etc. After upgrading to a new computer, I lost all my web bookmarks, which resulted in a lot of re-treading when it came time to double-check facts. The story was written very organically, and I must’ve ended up with almost as many discarded words as what remained in the finished book. So, it was a huge learning curve going from short fiction to an epic novel, and a big part of why it took so long. The plot of my current work-in-progress is a lot simpler and covers a much shorter time period.

You’ve also written a fair bit for children and young adult readers. What were the main differences for you between writing for a younger audience and adults?

Writing for children insists you keep to the point, don’t waffle on or be disingenuous. You have to work within certain boundaries in regard to language and content. I found it hard having to constrain my writing as I often tend to write challenging characters and situations. My most recent YA manuscript needed considerable re-working as it was considered too harsh for contemporary young adult readers, though I was told equally it was very authentic to place and time. I rewrote the entire novel as I was told readers wouldn’t have the patience for my more complicated syntax and less contemporary voice. Personally, I think that opinion sells young adult readers short. The shift for me really came because I wanted to start exploring adult, most particularly women’s issues. Their challenges and motivations and how society and cultural expectations changed during the early 20th century and how women fought to gain agency.

No Small Shame is set in both Scotland and Australia - what drew you to these two settings?

The idea for the novel came while researching my family history. In 1913, my great-grandparents emigrated from the tiny pit village of Bothwellhaugh in Scotland to the new State-owned coal town of Wonthaggi in Victoria. While I was visiting the State Coal Mine museum, a little voice kept saying, ‘there’s a story here’. And what a great setting! Instead of writing the novel I’d begun a few months earlier, I found myself researching the long-demolished village of Bothwellhaugh and pre-WW1 steam ship journeys to Australia. Then my main character, Mary, turned up and kept talking until I had to give away the other novel and write her story.

What techniques do you use to help you evoke a sense of place in your writing? Do you visit the setting then take photos to look at?

I initially did a lot of online and book research for my settings in No Small Shame. I was fortunate to be put in touch with an ex-Bothwellhaugh miner. We then had an ongoing correspondence where he answered my most basic of questions, resulting in an authenticity of detail in the novel that I couldn’t have hoped to make up. In the years just prior to Bothwellhaugh being demolished, one of the miners began to take home movie footage of the village and his fellow residents. The tenement rows and surrounding buildings and landscape looked much the same as they had fifty years previously – in the time of my characters – so the film really informed on the setting and life in the village. In 2012 I travelled to Scotland and was able to obtain invaluable maps, images and valuable archival material through meetings with the Motherwell Heritage Centre and the park ranger of the Strathclyde Country Park, which was built over the site of the former village. The real-life stories and geographical information provided by the ranger were gold. Walking the ground also gave me a real feel and insight as to the distances between nearby towns, the river and landscape that helped bring the narrative to life.

What were some surprising things you discovered while researching No Small Shame?

Though I’ve long known of the effects of shellshock and how little the condition was acknowledged in the early days after WW1, I was surprised to learn just how many men were left damaged or failed to resume their former lives. And how little they were supported by the Government when they came home. Often roles and expectations changed within families and wives and sisters were left to care for and advocate on their soldiers’ behalf. The deep Catholic/Protestant divide in Australia during WW1, particularly over the issue of conscription was a revelation. The two religions took opposing sides and the fight was bitter. The attitudes to me were shocking at a time when there was so much horror in the world.

Your next novel is set in France. Can you give us a little teaser as to what it’s about?

I can’t give away too much yet. But the novel is set in the year directly after the First World War and tells the story of a young AIF soldier who elects to stay on in France, the French girl he loves, and the traumatic reason he refuses to go home.

 No Small Shame by Christine Bell is published by Ventura Press.

A Christmas Wishlist

Christmastime is nearly upon us and if you’re in need of some bookish ideas, Ventura has you covered. Here’s our round-up of the best titles to gift loved ones this holiday season.

For the lover of a best-seller:

Whether it’s a thoughtful gift for your partner or a stocking filler for your friends, you can’t go past a best-seller on Christmas. Paris Savages by Katherine Johnson is based on the true story of three Badtjala people from Fraser Island who travel to Europe to perform as part of ethnographic exhibits in the 1800s.
With praise from Alice Nelson, Kate Holden, Peter Cochrane, and reviews from Better Reading, Good Reading and more, this is one new release not to miss!

After being shortlisted for an Aurealis Award, the MUD Literary Prize, an Australian Book Industry Award, the Readings Prize for New Australian Writing and a Saltire Literary Society Award (Scotland), A Superior Spectre by Angela Meyer has taken the world by storm. If you’re looking for genre- and mind-bending literary fiction, go no further.

For the lover of heartwarming and hilarious women’s fiction:

For many of us, Christmas books means gifting the best new beach reads to fill the time on our summer break. Our November release, The Changing Room by Christine Sykes is just that. Entertaining, captivating and easy-to-read, you’ll be drawn in by the strong character developments and social justice story. Read Better Reading’s review here.

And we can’t forget about other releases from earlier this year! The Age of Discretion by Virginia Duigan is a hilarious and provocative novel that will leave you in stitches one minute and tears the next. A gift that any women in your life will love.

For the non-fiction reader:

If your loved ones are book lovers, then they might already have a copy of Jane Sullivan’s Storytime, but if not, it’s the perfect present. A bibliomemoir delving into your favourite childhood books, Storytime is a wander down memory-lane and a reminder that childhood books have a deep impact on who we become.

And for those who love essays, Split by Lee Kofman is the go-to. Acclaimed Australian writers are brought together in this anthology of writing about leaving, loss and new beginnings. It’s a book to gift to any loved one who has experienced grief, and the overwhelming changes that can come after - all tied together by the literary prowess of Lee Kofman.

For the business minded:

Venturing into the New Year means creating new years resolutions. Maybe it’s time to take the career step you’ve always dreamed of? Career to Calling by Annie Stewart is the guidebook for turning your calling into a reality, from lifetime career coach Annie Stewart. A perfect gift for university leavers, back-to-work mums or anyone in your life who needs a nudge in the right direction.

Then there’s Breaking the Banks by Joseph Healy, the insider’s guide to what went wrong with Australian banking, from a career banker. Exploring the criticisms from the Royal Commission and ideas of how to improve, this book is the gift to give the financially-savvy person in your social circle.

For when you can’t decide what to give:

With climate change gracing the news at all hours of the day and fires burning all over the country, what happens when this becomes a reality? The Warming by Craig Ensor is a climate-fiction-romance about humanity at the end of the world. A stocking-filler to give someone who needs a little bit of hope in these times of crisis.

Happy shopping and Merry Christmas from the Ventura team!

Five Questions with Christine Sykes

Our authors are the heart of Ventura - without them we wouldn’t have the books we do! But what makes them tick? What lies behind their passion for literature? To answer these sought after questions, we’re bringing you the Five Questions With series to give you a little more insight into who lies behind the words you’re reading.

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The lead up to Summer holidays means an influx of book buyers looking for the next best beach read. The Changing Room, a story of hope, second chances and the power of female friendship, ticks all the boxes for a lazy afternoon at the beach. In November, Better Reading chatted to author Christine Sykes about the inspirations behind the book.

1. Tell us a little more about The Changing Room.

The novel tracks the lives of three women from diverse backgrounds and generations, who are strangers in the opening scenes.

Anna is in her sixties and faces a life of loneliness and purposelessness when she loses her dream job and the man to match. An interfering friend introduces Anna to Suitability, a styling service for women seeking employment, where she meets Claire.  Claire is a forty-six-year-old philanthropist who appears to have everything – the renovated mansion, the perfect family and a full life.  When twenty year old Molly enters Suitability, having been through more strife than anyone should, the three women learn the true value of friendship.

The journeys of Anna, Claire and Molly are bumpy and become more entwined when Suitability faces closure.  Through mutual support, these women find the strength and courage to rebuild their lives and a way to ensure ongoing support for thousands of women.

2. You were involved in Dress for Success, the inspiration behind The Changing Room. Can you tell our readers a bit about this organisation and why it inspired your book?

Dress for Success ticks all the boxes.  It’s about fashion and style, as well as social justice and the environment.  In NSW, over 3,500 women a year are assisted by the organisation. I became a volunteer over 7 years ago after meeting the founder, Megan Etheridge.  As a stylist I was able to put into practice all the lessons I’d learned about dressing for work during my long career as a public servant.  In the space of an hour, I watched women being transformed by both the outfits and the styling experience.  As Molly says, it’s not just the clothes, but the self-confidence that goes with the whole experience.

When I retired, I extended my role to include coaching and became the volunteer coach co-ordinator.  This provided women who were struggling to find work with one-on-one support in their quest.  It also provided me with a sense of value, much as it does for Anna.

3. What do you hope the reader will take away from this book?

My main hope is that the reader enjoys the novel and is engaged with the characters.  Story can be a powerful way of learning and gaining insight into our lives and the way we can support each other to face challenges. While it is a story of hope and the value of female friendships, the novel touches on some gritty topics.  In particular, as Claire says, there is no excuse for domestic violence.

The novel is a celebration of the resilience and empowerment of women through organisations like Dress for Success and it would be wonderful if more people learn about the value of and realise the need for a range of services for women.  The importance of services by women, for women and with women in daily life cannot be overestimated.

I think it is critical to showcase services like DFSS in literature, to explore their contribution and to validate their existence and use by women as both volunteers and clients.

4. What is something that has really influenced you as a writer?

At an early age I discovered a love of reading where I found both escape and knowledge in novels.  When I was older, I discovered amazing women writers who influenced me and who I longed to emulate.  Some of my favourite Australian women writers throughout the years are Elizabeth Jolley, Kate Grenville, Stephanie Dowrick and Liz Byrski. Through writing I have met some of these writers and they have inspired me to persist and to invest in my writing and myself.

When I retired, one of the first things I did was to enrol in the Year of Writing a Novel course with the brilliant Emily Maguire at Writing NSW.  After the course I was privileged to meet up with Emily in Paris over coffee where she was completing a well-earned residency. Emily read an extract of The Changing Room and encouraged me to pursue publication.

5. What’s your daily writing routine like and what are you working on at the moment? 

My routine varies depending on what I’m working on and what else is happening in my life.  I prefer to write early in the day, and my favourite time is from about 6am to about 11 am.  I’ve also enjoyed the times I’ve had the opportunity to retreat and write full time for a week or more, when I minded a friend’s apartment.

I have a memoir and a novel which are close to completion and I’m looking at publishing options.  There are several other projects and ideas which are at different stages.

Read more about Christine and her latest book The Changing Room, or head to our events page to save the date as The Changing Room goes on tour.

This Q&A was originally posted on Better Reading.
You can read Better Reading’s review of The Changing Room here.

The Secret Life of an Editor

By Jane Curry, Publisher and Director of Ventura Press.

‘Who’s the editor?’ I have only been asked this question once in my career and it was by a very savvy US fiction agent who really knew how to assess a manuscript with forensic precision.

It is very rare for an editor to receive credit for their work on a book or get a mention in the sales points. Any appreciation shown is usually from the author, tucked away in the acknowledgments. And yet at the very core of our industry is the quality of the writing.

How has the role of the editor become hidden in plain sight? Time and money are the main culprits. Ever since the 1980s, when the consolidation of small companies into large multi-nationals began, the need to feed the engines of turnover has seen every publishing schedule reduced to the fastest turnaround. The pressure is on from payment of the advance to the pub date: to be first to market, make the catalogue deadline, make the budget, maintain market share, impress investors, sign the next book, publish simultaneously with other countries.

Commercial imperatives are the antithesis of good editing because editing needs time: time for re-reading, re-drafting, reflection and discussion. At Ventura, for example, debut novelist Craig Ensor has been working with his editor on The Warming for well over a year. What came to us as a brilliant novella has been reworked into a full literary work. We allowed him this time but we can make our own rules as a small press and not every publisher has that luxury.

Of editing’s three distinct stages, the most satisfying for me is the structural edit where the book is reviewed as a whole, with the characters, narrative, timeline and length all assessed for their credibility and contribution to the overall work. To do this properly the manuscript needs to be read and re-read—with the money clock ticking.

After the structural edit comes a thorough copyedit, and the manuscript is then typeset before the third editorial stage—proofreading and taking in corrections—takes place. The three stages of the editorial process each need extraordinary expertise and experience—and time.

Compounding the issue of editors’ work hiding in plain sight is the fact that managing directors—the corner office folk who set the corporate culture—most often come through the ranks of sales and marketing, and very rarely come from the editorial side. Our best editors may rise to become publishing directors but they usually stay there. Most often the people who call the shots have never edited a book.

American publishing is a wonderful exception to the ‘hidden editor’ rule. US authors are very close to their editors and often move with their editor if the editor changes house. Editors are more highly valued as a result because they are seen as profit centres—they keep the big authors on the list. You will often see a US editor given their own list (a great way to keep them in the tent).

But in Australia we have seen a curbing of the editor’s power, not only because of commercial factors but also because editing has become gendered. It is now seen as a female profession and, like nursing and teaching, it is undervalued as a result. Editors may ‘lean in’ in terms of commitment and skill but they certainly don’t get valued for these attributes on payday.

Of course the converse is often true too. An editor or publisher with the Y chromosome is seen as a serious thinker. They are seen as adding gravitas and depth to the same job, rather like a dad getting brownie points for doing what mothers do every day.

I was as guilty as the next publisher of treating editing as something that could be minimised or rushed—trying to squeeze another book into the month or onto the Christmas list—but I have changed my ways since working with the wonderful Zoe Hale, who joined Ventura as managing editor a few years ago.

Thanks to Zoe’s gentle yet firm professionalism, we have instituted a minimum turnaround of nine months from receipt of manuscript to release into bookshops.

I am soundly rebuffed if I say we can move a pub date forward—a decision that I respect as I know it is right. And Zoe also has power of veto over our marketing material so I can no longer make ambit claims on ARC covers!

Our list has matured and our reputation has grown as a direct result of putting the editorial process at the centre of our company. I hope it heralds the start of a ‘slow publishing’ movement where we can pursue both editorial excellence and commercial success.

This article was originally published on Books + Publishing.

Writing a Personal Essay with Lee Kofman

Renowned author, writing teacher, speaker and mentor, Lee Kofman, is the queen of creative non-fiction and personal essays. Here, Lee shares her insights into crafting a personal essay: what makes it ‘good’? How do we define a ‘bad’ personal essay? And who does Lee reach to for inspiration?

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I’ve always loved the personal essay genre, especially because of the freedom embedded within it. A personal essayist can say whatever they wish directly; unlike in fiction, there is no need to couch their views, or research, in an imagined story, set the stage, develop a plausible plot. In short, personal essays don’t require any of the artifice fiction needs. And yet, in contrast to ‘straight’ nonfiction, personal essayists can also be as creative as they like – write lyrically, incorporate description, dialogue and scenes, develop characters, quote poetry or do whatever else they find useful to explore their subjects.

Over the years, I’ve read countless personal essays and essay collections (I’m addicted to the Best American Essays series), and I’ve written many of my own. More recently, I progressed my love affair with this genre by curating two anthologies of essays from well-known Australian writers for Ventura Press: Rebellious Daughters (with Maria Katsonis), and Split: True stories of leaving, loss and new beginnings (on my own). Still, whenever I get asked what in my opinion constitutes a good personal essay, I feel somewhat at a loss. Here I’ll try to unpick why I feel so, and to answer the question.

My uncertainty about defining ‘good’ is somewhat symptomatic of the genre itself. The personal essay is a versatile animal. I could have said ‘chameleon’, but then it frequently changes not only colour but also shape. Some essays actually do read like short fiction – they are narrative-driven snapshots of a particular event or relationship or some other slice of life. My own essay in Split, Bruised, is an example. There I describe the end of both my life in Tel Aviv and a bad relationship I was in then. Other essays – often about ongoing, and/or less dramatic, life experiences, like parenting or gardening – might be more discursive. Then there are the personal essays that can sound as not personal at all. Some of these would critically dissect various phenomena, such as Madonna’s music, chess or behavioural therapy; or they may even engage with so-called ‘issues’, say de-forestation or rising anti-Semitism. The structure of such essays is usually more argumentative as the authors consider various positions and press certain points. So what would make this last essay category ‘personal’ then? To answer this question would be to start answering the main question too – what constitutes a good personal essay.

What all personal essays share is the emphasis on writer’s voice.

Their topics, be this an author’s teenage crush or Putin’s policies, are always filtered through the writer’s unique prism – their personal experience/history with their subject (with possibly some related anecdotes told), their emotional (as well as cognitive, of course) responses, and their idiosyncratic worldviews. So when I think of the ‘goodness’ of a personal essay, I foremostly consider the quality of the voice.

Then in a good personal essay the process of how the writer arrives at their interests and views is often a part of the essay’s drama. An essayist doesn’t avoid self-scrutiny, but rather thrives on it, examining their views in light of the time and place they live in, as well as in light of history. They relish presenting the reader with the inner workings of their (often conflicted) consciousness, or as David Shields puts it – ‘the theatre of the brain’. For personal essayists, Robert Dessaix suggests in his seminal essay Letters To The Unknown Friend, ‘the underlying air of incoherence that characterises our thought is something to be joyfully acknowledged – it’s what makes us who we are.’

Of course, writers cannot copy their consciousness precisely nor do they need to – this can make for self-indulgent writing and tedious reading (I have read some not good personal essays that did just that). Good essayists order their reflective flow to some extent, but do so while striving towards authenticity, towards showing the overall contours of their thinking process with all its doubts and paradoxes.

Certainty, then, isn’t good personal essayists’ currency. These essayists don’t scream at you, don’t wave fingers nor do they take the high moral ground, drunk on self-righteousness. They don’t hit you with a lecture or opinion piece or a litany of complaints. As Virginia Woolf puts it, ‘Literal truth-telling and finding fault with a culprit for his good are out of place in an essay… the voice of the scold should never be heard.’

It’s not that personal essayists don’t have a viewpoint, but that curiosity is a major part of their mindset, including towards their potential opposition; as is awareness of the multitudes of contradictions that characterise human thoughts and behaviour. ‘Contradiction, paradox and questioning best reflect the moving, morphing human mind, which is what the essayist wants to capture… An essayist celebrates questions, loves the liminal, and feels that life is best lived between the may and be of maybe,’ writes Lauren Slater ever so poetically.

The poetry, the delivery, the voice… ‘A genuine essay is not a doctrinaire tract or propaganda effort...’ tells us Cynthia Ozick. ‘The essay is not meant for barricades... [it] courts agreement; it seduces agreement.’

Good personal essays court their readers by sharing intimacies, and confusions, with them as one does with a trusted interlocutor, and often by using humour. Some even address readers directly, like Laura Kipnis does in the ironic opening of her essay Sexual Paranoia:

‘You have to feel a little sorry these days for professors married to their former students. They used to be respectable citizens – leaders in their fields, department chairs, maybe even a dean or two – and now they’re abusers of power avant la letter. I suspect you can barely throw a stone on most campuses around the country without hitting a few of these neo-miscreants.’

Surprise is another of my parameters of goodness. An essay, Ozick tells us, ‘is a stroll through someone’s mazy mind’. It’s only natural that some mazes will be more twisted, will contain more detours, unexpected stopovers and hidden alleyways than others. Many good essays have a serpentine structure that reflects the author’s delightfully idiosyncratic and wandering mind. Ramona Koval, for example, in her essay Goodbye And Good Luck in Split, discusses her career at the ABC while also venturing into such topics as pre-digital technology and Ovid’s life. Digressiveness, for me, when not so excessive as to muddle the heart of the essay, is a sign of a healthy sensibility, of the author’s willingness to engage with the untidiness and richness of life.

A good personal essay also has to have a certain energy – feel urgent, or at least bubble with excitement.

Good personal essayists choose themes that truly matter to them. Dessaix says his writing can be about ‘Vladivostok, the subjunctive, swearing, silence, Saturday afternoons – almost anything will do. Well, anything that the voices in my head habitually talk about with passion.’ As a reader, though, how can you tell how much the subject has mattered to the essayist? We can’t, of course, know this with any certainty, but I do know well that electric charge, that tension I sometimes feel when the writer’s urgency infuses the work. Often I sense this energy in the rhythm, the music of the writing. Listen to these lines from Resisting The Nipple, Rochelle Siemienowicz’s essay in Rebellious Daughters. Listen to the aria performed in the theatre of this writer’s mind:

Will I ever escape the push to rebel against my mother, and the equal and opposite pull to please her? I wonder at my compulsion still, to tell her everything, the whole truth, so that she might understand me, forgive me, accept me, difficult daughter that I am. As I’m writing these words, I wonder what she might think if she reads them. I want to send my essay to her, like a cat that’s killed a rat and rushes to lay it at the feet of its owner. Would she see this as a gift of love, my struggling with truth and memory? Or as a mangled dead thing, disgracing her doorstep?

Perhaps, though, the best answer to the question at the heart of this essay can be found in a straightforward recitation of my favourite essayists’ names.

I’ve already mentioned several ones earlier, so I’m ending up with another (non-exhaustive) list. If you like the works of these writers, it’s possible you’ll then notice some other commonalities between them and come up with your own criteria for what constitutes a good personal essay.

• Adam Gopnik

• Emily Gould

• Patricia Hampl

• Alexander Hemon

• Katie Roiphe

• Zadie Smith

• Sandra Tsing Loh

• Maria Tumarkin

• Fiona Wright

• Poe Ballantine

• Elif Batuman

• Terry Castle

• Bernard Cooper

• Rachel Cusk

• Meghan Daum

• Joan Didion

• Geoff Dyer

• Helen Garner

Dr Lee Kofman is a Russian-born, Israeli-Australian novelist, short story writer, essayist, memoirist and sometimes-poet based in Melbourne. Lee holds a PhD in social sciences and MA in creative writing. She is the author of three fiction books and two memoirs, The Dangerous Bride (Melbourne University Press 2014), and Imperfect (Affirm Press 2019). Lee co-edited Rebellious Daughters (Ventura Press, 2016), an anthology of memoir by prominent female Australian authors, and most recently, Split: true stories of leaving, loss and new beginnings (Ventura Press, 2019). Her short works have been published in Australia, Scotland, UK, Israel, USA and Canada. Her writing has won many awards, including the Australian Council grant and Varuna’s flagship fellowship, and her blog on writing was a finalist for Best Australian Blogs 2014.

You can find Lee on Twitter, Instagram & Facebook!

The Art of Book Cover Design with Alissa Dinallo

Alissa Dinallo’s designs grace the covers of many Ventura books - from the more complex Paris Savages, Matryoshka and Raptures Roadway to the minimalist cover of The Warming. To celebrate the release of Paris Savages, we chatted to Alissa about the origins of her design career, the evolution of a book cover, and where her inspiration comes from.

Tell us a little about yourself – how did you get into book design, and what do you love about it?

While I was at university (UTS) I met a brilliant tutor by the name of Zoe Sadokierski, who was a former book designer from Allen and Unwin. She really opened my eyes to the possibilities of book design as a career. As I was completing my degree, I managed to get a job at Allen and Unwin archiving books. Once I was in-house working I got to understand how the design process worked and eventually applied for the role of junior designer. After 3 years at Allen and Unwin I moved to Penguin Random House. At the end of 2015 I decided to start my own business as design freelance for all publishers in Australia and worldwide.

When you received the initial cover brief for Paris Savages, what was your process of coming up with the resulting concepts? Talk us through your process.

This is the third of Katherine’s books I’ve designed. I love her writing, and have a good understanding of the mood and tone she conveys in novels. I wanted to create something dark, naturally beautiful and subtly Australian. I knew I wanted to use flora in an eye catching, clever way. I was originally inspired by the beautiful Ernst Haeckel illustrations, which have a great sense of dark, yet beautiful mystery. As I worked on these concepts, Ventura felt we needed a human element, so I focused on creating covers that hinted at a female character. I tried overlaying illustrations of Australian flora onto a woman’s skin/face. Whilst working through these concepts I started collaging a woman’s face with leaves and flowers. And that’s how I eventually arrived at the final cover.

some early concepts of Paris Savages

How long does it usually take you to come up with concepts once receiving a cover brief from the publisher? Do you have a number of concepts you aim for? 

Depending on the urgency of the cover, it generally takes me around 3 weeks. This gives me time to read the manuscript properly and come up with key imagery I think best illustrates the text, whilst keeping it commercial/appropriate to the books genre. I don’t aim for a certain number of roughs, but once I’m on a roll I can produce a lot, and I generally need to cull them before sending them off.

Where do you draw your inspiration from as a designer?

I’m always looking at how image and text interact in the world. I’m always taking note/photos of cool shop signs, menus, movie posters, artworks, logos, vintage books, and other graphic design (the list is honestly endless). Social media platforms like Instagram and Pinterest also allow me to catalogue inspiring visuals so I can look back at them when I receive new briefs.

What is the aim of any cover you design?

There are a lot of things you want to achieve when designing a cover – from good design to a product that sells. But I think the most important aim for me is to honour the work of the author, and give their hard work a brilliant face for the world.

Do you have any other memorable Ventura covers you’ve worked on?

I have to say, Paris Savages is one of my all time favourite covers with Ventura. I also loved working on Katherine’s previous books (The Better Son and Matryoshka). More recently I loved working on The Warming and Rapture’s Roadway.

more Alissa Dinallo cover designs for Ventura

You can find Alissa’s portfolio here, or follow her on Instagram here.

Five Questions with Katherine Johnson

Our authors are the heart of Ventura - without them we wouldn’t have the books we do! But what makes them tick? What lies behind their passion for literature? To answer these sought after questions, we’re bringing you the Five Questions With series to give you a little more insight into who lies behind the words you’re reading.

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October is often a big month in publishing, so it’s fitting that Katherine Johnson’s fourth novel steal the limelight for our fiction release. Following six years of research and a PhD, Katherine Johnson brings a little-known but true story that traces the darker side of P.T Barnum's Greatest Showman to blazing life. Paris Savages was inspired by the story of three Badtjala people, Bonangera (Bonny/Boni), Jurano and Dorondera, who journeyed from their home on Fraser Island to the heart of Europe in the 1880s to perform as ethnographic exhibitions, otherwise known as 'human zoos'. We chat to Katherine about the inspirations and experience of crafting her masterpiece work of fiction.

1. What do you love about writing and literature?

Writing and literature can both take you deep inside a person’s interior reality and can transport you across oceans and continents. It can be revelationary and transformational; it can also be quiet and reassuring. It can show us new and imaginative ways of seeing the present or the past and can point to imagined futures, whether familiar or far-fetched. Fiction, by definition, is imagined, and there-in lies its strength. It provokes contemplation and conversation, opening potential new doors to understanding, empathy and connectedness. And, perhaps most powerfully of all, it can hold a mirror up to ourselves and make us question old assumptions and imagine new futures.

2. Tell us a little about the inspiration behind Paris Savages. Why was it so important to write?

Paris Savages was inspired by something I heard on the radio – a documentary about the discovery, in a museum basement in Lyon, France, of a full body plaster cast of a young Aboriginal man from Fraser Island, Queensland. The cast was in storage and hadn’t been on public display for many years. I went to France and visited the cast and it was incredible – almost as if I had gone back in time to the 1880s. As the museum attendant wound the handle on the enormous storage stacks, opening them up, a shape emerged – a man standing proudly, a boomerang over his head. The man was Bonangera (Bonny/Boni), and it transpired that he and two fellow Badtjala people had been taken to Europe for exhibition. They were shown throughout Germany and in France and Switzerland, and I could not stop thinking about what this might have been like for them. They danced and sang, threw boomerangs and climbed poles, meant to resemble trees. Just as thought provoking was what this period in history says about the western people looking on, and the scientists who studied the visiting performers. Not long after seeing the cast, Adam Goodes was called an ‘ape’ on the football field, and he called on Australians to be educated about prejudice. The more I looked into the story of ‘human zoos’, the more it struck me that the stereotypes and misrepresentations that still exist in some sectors today have their origins in this little-known period of history. It seemed to me essential to contest those old stereotypes and turn the ‘camera’ back out to the audience looking on – to ask, who were the real savages?

3. What are you currently reading?

I’ve just started reading – literally a page in – Leah Kaminsky’s The Hollow Bones. We have an event together at Readings in Hawthorn and I’m very much looking forward to meeting Leah and reading the book. I’ve also recently started Elizabeth Gilbert’s City of Girls, which was chosen by my bookclub. I loved Gilbert’s Big Magic and look forward to getting into this book, too. So far, I’m enjoying its ‘light/fun’ but sharp and witty voice. I’m also listening to Trent Dalton’s Boy Swallows Universe as an audiobook. And I’ve got about two other audio books on the go to. Must try to stick to one at a time!

4. Tell us about the book that has impacted you the most.

I’ll go back in time to my early adolescence to answer this one. Growing up, we had on our family bookshelf Thoreau’s Walden, and I remember being completely captivated by the ideas in that book. The concepts that stayed with me were: the value and importance of wildness and nature in our lives, the value of simplicity, and the value of carving your own path/taking the path less travelled and how quickly we tend to find ourselves beating the same old path out of habit and routine if we’re not careful.

5. What is the value of books in the fast-paced, digital world that we live in?

Books have infinite value in our modern world. Essentially, I think that stopping to read a book has the capacity to slow us down. It’s meditative in that it makes us focus on only one thing at a time, which seems to have become a luxury given all the competing demands and overstimulation we’ve become so accustomed to. But they are a bit magical, too, books, in that they can also wake us up. Indeed, maybe we have to slow down to be able to reflect and contemplate and ‘wake up’.

Read more about Katherine and her latest book Paris Savages, or head to our events page to save the date as Paris Savages goes on tour.

Nine million books in Beijing - What's the Deal with Publishing in China?

Ventura Press founder and publisher Jane Curry attended this year’s Beijing International Book Fair, which ran from 21–25 August.

I am writing these words as I prepare to fly home from the Beijing International Book Fair. To be in the heart of a city of 21.8 million people, capital of a country of 1.3 billion, certainly makes you aware of the vastness of the market potential here.

The metrics are impressive. In 2018 the book market turned over 89.4 billion yuan renminbi (RMB) (A$18 billion), up 11.7% from 2017. Online sales account for 48% of the market even with Amazon China bowing out in 2019, leaving the dominant players Dangdang and JD.com.

As head of the Independent Publishers Committee (IPC) at the Australian Publishers Association (APA), I have been a keen advocate of strengthening our relationship with China. This year we had eight publishers on the APA stand: Rockpool Publishing, Big Sky Publishing, CSIRO Publishing, UQP, National Museum of Australia Press, Atlas Jones & Co, Australian Scholarly Publishing and Ventura. Of course, we are there primarily to sell rights, but I strongly believe it is essential to our understanding of the world that we understand China. To do so represents vital cultural literacy. The Frankfurt Book Fair skews towards the UK, US and Europe, but as Australian publishers we need to know more about the vast single-language market of our near neighbour.

This is the third year that the IPC has hosted an Australian stand at the Beijing Book Fair. We receive no funding other than from our own IPC budget, and as a result our stand is extremely spartan compared to other group stands. We look with envy at the stands of France, Germany, Britain, Korea and even tiny Macau. Fortunately, this year Maree Ringland, counsellor for Public Affairs and Culture at the Australian Embassy in Beijing, together with Guo Ying of DFAT, hosted a pre-fair lunch for visiting publishers to meet our Chinese counterparts.

The lunch was very productive as it brought together the actual publishers rather than the figurehead-only chairmen, which is so often the case at more formal events. We were united as publishers talking books, all with a keen interest in literature, retail and cultural trends.

I sat next to Peng Lun of indie press Archipel, the publisher of Sally Rooney in China. He printed 25,000 copies of Normal People, which lasted a month before reprinting—an achievement that puts the ‘othering’ of the Chinese market in context. Also at the lunch was Azia Cheng, the new CEO of Penguin Random House North Asia, who, being young and dynamic, epitomises the new generation of Chinese publishers.

The business side does butt up against the state. Only a state-owned publisher can issue an ISBN, so a small press has to be ‘adopted’ by a state-owned publisher and share the ISBN allocation after the title has been approved. ISBNs can also be ‘auctioned’ as they have a separate market value to the book. And I was informed that in one sweep of the presidential pen the booming children’s market could be closed if it is deemed to allow too much Western influence. There are also cultural sensitivities. Our book Everyday Ethics (Simon Longstaff), which contains issues of abortion, gender and religion has sold into Taiwan but not into China.

But, overall, I can only enthuse about the welcome we were given, the interest in our books and the respect we were offered as fellow professionals. It is an extremely worthwhile adventure both personally and financially.

This was originally published in Books + Publishing.

Q&A with Angela Meyer

A Superior Spectre by Angela Meyer is one of the six books shortlisted for this year’s Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction. Readings recently chatted to Angela about ghosts, female desire and blurring the lines of fiction.

Tell us a little bit about your book?

A Superior Spectre is about a man who abuses an experimental technology that allows him to enter the mind of a woman in the past. It’s also about Leonora, a young woman in 19th-century Scotland, who begins to become aware of a strange presence invading her mind…

You’ve said in the past that you wrote parts of this novel while living in George Orwell’s run-down house in Scotland – a place he lived while essentially dying with tuberculosis. What was it like writing a gothic ghost story in such an evocative setting? Did ghosts feature in your writing process? Was your writing informed by your surroundings?

I did stay in the beautiful old house on the isle of Jura where Orwell lived while completing 1984. I was redrafting the novel at this point, and had spent a lot of time in Scotland while writing it, too. That’s such an interesting question about ghosts. The novel gives a kind of scientific explanation for a ‘haunting’, but I am very interested in the idea of ghosts, or the resonance of the past in a place or person. I wonder about the capacity of the mind to perceive, process, or create various phenomena. It’s an open question for me. There are many grey areas in the novel, and this is one of them. Did I meet Orwell on the isle of Jura? I felt a strong (and benevolent) presence, certainly, but I also had a lot of time in my own head…

Your novel explores, with grace, the complicated themes of bodily autonomy and consent. What kind of dynamic were you hoping to explore with the challenging relationship between the two main characters, and can you speak a little bit more about that relationship?

It might sound strange now that at first I didn’t realise I was writing about that. I thought it was mainly about empathy (the reader is challenged to empathise with Jeff, and he is challenged to empathise with Leonora). And then I realised that it was about a man invading a woman’s body and mind, having an effect on her, while she is also being pushed in directions she does not wish to be pushed in by the patriarchal forces of her own time and was whole, and happy, before this chain of events. But I wanted it to remain complex. Jeff, her invader, is a selfish man, but he is a product of his environment. He is dismissive of women in many ways, he struggles to truly understand them, while he obsesses, self-flagellates, over pain he may have caused to others (not women). All the men in the novel struggle to see women as whole people, only as how they relate to various archetypal roles, and this is because, past and present (and near future), they are socialised to see women this way. Jeff is a sort of pathetic character because he is given a chance to empathise, and he fails.

But I do want to also say that while I am invoking a binary, here, it is in part to playfully also question it; to open up spaces in between (just as I have with mind/body, future/past, spirit/tech!).

Your novel expertly blurs what should be clearly distinct lines of difference, and employs several narrative and stylistic devices to emphasise this as the novel progresses. Was your use of these narrative devices inspired by or informed by other authors’ work? Are there writers who inspired A Superior Spectre?

Thank you! Yes, I love unreliable narrators, absurd humour, and metafiction, and I’m so glad people have felt stimulated by the shifts the book takes. There are so many books in the background of Spectre but some I’ll note, in regards to these elements, are Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (superb unreliable narrator), Janet Frame’s work (how she blurs planes of ‘reality’ and fiction), The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles (metafiction), The Driver’s Seat by Muriel Spark (unreliable narrator), Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (different POVs and types of narration as the story unfolds) and then there’s the original high concept show with a little surprise or twist in each episode (and often characters who don’t know if they are seeing through their own eyes!), The Twilight Zone. There are more but that will do for now…

Female desire is a hot topic in fiction and non-fiction at the moment. What are the benefits of exploring the nuances of female desire in fiction? Did you feel any internal conflict by the way Jeff inserts himself and subsequently influences Leonora’s acts and feelings of desire?

I love writing desire in general. A character’s desires and fears are often secret and so that’s where some of the tension can come from. Exploring a woman’s desires can be powerful, I think, because the dominant narratives still favour women as the supporter, the receiver of desire, passive, caring but otherwise out of the way. A woman desiring is beautiful. A woman acting on her desires is daring. Yes, it was hard to write about Jeff’s influence, because it confused Leonora. At the same time it was satisfying to write, because I can relate to it. When I was coming of age, there were influences on my desire that confused me for many years. It took me a long time to find out what was mine, and what was the influence of culture as to what I should like, what I should desire.

And finally, what books have you loved lately? And what is in your to-be-read pile?

I’ve been at the Edinburgh International Book Festival and also Authors at the Fringe and I bought a ridiculous amount of books. I loved A Glass Eye by Miren Agur Meabe, translated from the Basque by Amaia Gabantxo. It’s about a woman processing the loss of a relationship, the loss of her eye, and all of her losses, really. It’s a self-aware piece of writing. I’m looking forward to Crudo by Olivia Laing and also Out of the Woods, by Luke Turner, which is a memoir about bisexual identity set among the trees of Epping Forest (I may not be summing it up well but I saw Luke speak and was very intrigued, I think we need more narratives of bisexuality). I’ve also started Carrie Tiffany’s Exploded View, and the opening is exquisite. And I love, love the stories in Josephine Rowe’s Here Until August, out in September. I’m saving the last one for when I get home. I also have Alice Bishop’s A Constant Hum lined up as the next short story collection. On audiobook I am enjoying Kathy Reichs’ third Temperance Brennan novel. Crime works quite well for me in audio.

This interview was originally published on Readings.

For more info on A Superior Spectre, head here.

What Makes a Good Author?

by Ventura’s Director, Jane Curry.

Writing is a solitary and fiercely intellectual craft that is also a sheer slog. To hand over your work to a third party is an act of deep trust and one that good publishers do not take lightly. A writer becomes an author only when they are published, and because publishers and authors both need each other, ours is the ultimate symbiotic relationship.

So what makes a good author?

Well, the most important attribute is clearly the writing. It should be writing that inspires and transports the reader. It should be stories that you don’t want to finish, as you love the alternative world they create: the imagery, characters, plot twists, pace and revelation. For nonfiction works, it should be ideas that challenge and change our worldview. Good writing creates the lodestar of publishing: word of mouth. Good writing can create the kind of buzz that drives people to bookshops in a way that advertising and publicity alone cannot achieve.

So assuming an author writes well, what else makes a good author?

The answer at Ventura is ‘author DNA’: an expression coined by the wonderful and much-missed Simon Milne during one of our strategy workshops. We had conducted a deep dive into the performance of our titles over the previous 12 months, which included reviewing the genre, price, positioning and author. We found that one of the key factors in the success of a book was the right author DNA.

This means that the author must be the unabashed champion of their own work, with a strong commitment to success and the motivation to support their work long after the launch champagne has gone flat. A healthy ego is also important: if the author is to really shine on the platform we publishers create, they have to enjoy the limelight.

I often refer to publishing as an energy transfer—our passionate belief in the book must be transferred to sales reps, booksellers, the media and ultimately the reader. It is impossible to achieve this without the author being a key partner or, dare I say, a stakeholder. Maria Katsonis, the author of our bestselling book The Good Greek Girl, has gold-standard author DNA. Maria worked every facet of the market upon launch and continues to promote her books many years after publication. We call this the long tail: library talks, book clubs, events, articles—they all contribute to backlist sales and provide a platform for future works.

The book market is flooded with 5000 new titles every month, so much is made of ‘author platform’. What is the author’s background, their profession, their story? What makes them different to the rest? These details can provide the key to achieving cut-through at retail. Publishers seek this information to see if there is a hook on which to hang a marketing campaign or start an author profile. Authors with a strong social media presence provide a ready market for their books and are largely published because of it. But for other authors, social media is irrelevant—it is their very gravitas that impresses.

In small companies such as Ventura we view our stable of authors like our kin. We seize every chance to promote them both here and overseas, whether frontlist or backlist, at book fairs or in impromptu settings. We maintain a very strong sense of alliance and collaboration, and I am convinced this commitment has contributed to our success, as we genuinely believe in every author we publish.

There are some potential authors who do need a reality check, so that their expectations of our publicity campaign are realistic. When meeting a first-time author I always say, ‘I cannot make you famous’ before we sign, and remind them that becoming a household name takes many years. When I published Robin Barker (Baby Love) at Macmillan, sales were slow initially but after I negotiated a monthly column at the Australian Women’s Weekly her name slowly built to become the brand that it is today.

I also say to authors that I cannot dictate to booksellers what books they should stock—it is ultimately the bookseller’s choice. We publishers can persuade with the strength of the concept, the profile, the marketing and the writing itself, but being stocked in bookshops is not an automatic right just because the book is in print—a fact we clearly articulate with authors.

As a career publisher, I can say that the best authors are the ones that submit a stunning and compelling manuscript, take a receptive position on editing and cover design, have a healthy sense of self to cope with the publicity trail, and the stamina to keep going into the backlist years. And a new book every other year please!

This article was originally published in Books + Publishing.

Five Questions with Melanie Dimmitt

Our authors are the heart of Ventura - without them we wouldn’t have the books we do! But what makes them tick? What lies behind their passion for literature? To answer these sought after questions, we’re bringing you the Five Questions With series to give you a little more insight into who lies behind the words you’re reading.

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September brings us new life with Spring, but more importantly, we’re celebrating the release of Special by Melanie Dimmitt. Curious, casual and conversational, Special gives honest and uplifting advice to those new to the special-needs club - shaped by her conversations with parents to children with disabilities, researchers, specialists and experts.

1. As a journalist by trade, and now a published author, what do you love about writing?

A lot of the time I don’t love it. It tends to be an agonizing process of obsessing over every sentence until (hopefully) things start sounding about right. But in writing’s defence, it does hold my attention like nothing else. I’ll be bashing away on the keys and five hours will pass in what feels like minutes. I also feel incredibly lucky to be paid to do it. I

2. Tell us a little about the inspiration behind your latest work.

I wrote Special out of desperation. When my six-month-old son was diagnosed with cerebral palsy I felt lousy. To my mind, this was a completely unacceptable situation to have wound up in. So I reached out to dozens of other parents raising kids with disabilities and said, “help me!” – what did you do to feel better at the start of this gig? How do you feel now? Tell me this isn’t what I think it is! It was an entirely selfish pursuit and it really helped. I hope Special can do the same for other parents.

3. What are you currently reading (or watching or listening to)?

I’ve just finished Three Women by Lisa Taddeo (lived up to the hype) and Melissa Broder’s The Pisces (weird but in a good way) and am now tucking into A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles (delicious writing). I’m watching Younger and eternal replays of Sex and the City. I’m listening to The High Low, No Filter and Lit Up podcasts.  

4. Tell us about the book that has impacted you the most.

There are a couple of stories that really stuck with me from my childhood – The Fairy Rebel and The Indian in the Cupboard, both by Lynne Reid Banks. The Bronze Horseman trilogy by Paullina Simons saw me through my romance-deprived teen years, and when I started writing articles, Annabel Crabb’s The Wife Drought made me realise that research and statistics needn’t make for boring copy. Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic has helped me out of many a creative block… and I’ll wind it up there because you asked for one book and I’ve listed seven.

5. Do you believe books have the power to create change? How do you imagine Special to impact the world?

I certainly think books can broaden perspectives and give us glimpses into different people’s lives. They can also be a nice little escape into other worlds (thank you, JK Rowling). I’m hoping Special lands in the hands of the people who need it – parents who’ve discovered their kid is travelling a not-so-typical path – and helps to make the emotional shit-storm at the start of this journey just a little less shitty.

You can find more about Melanie and Special (and pick up a copy for yourself) here

The Rise of #Bookstagram

With 5000 new titles a month released into the Australian market, what publishers seek is cut-through: the ability to stand out from the crowd.

Cut-through can be achieved by many methods but the sweet spot, which is available to all publishers, is the cover. Books that are the same size, the same price and the same specs all have one obvious variable from the outside: the cover.

Like the LP record covers of my youth, a book cover is consumable art that appeals to our sense of aesthetics. The cover of a book positions it in the marketplace; it relays a message about the content and is a call-out to a loyal readership. I am always amused by the publishing maxim ‘Know thy shelf ’—a directive to visit bookshops and observe how different books are displayed—and this is particularly useful when thinking about cover design.

The first role of design is to define the genre. In fiction the big divide is between commercial and literary fiction, and this influences everything from the book’s title to the final typography. There are accepted norms for each genre that are obvious to anyone browsing in a bookshop: thrillers have the author’s name in BIG CAPITALS; crime covers are bold, black and red; motivation books are often white with strong typography; and biographies feature a full-bleed headshot and a title based on wordplay (Shane Warne’s No Spin being a prime example). But ‘knowing thy shelf ’ makes commercial sense too: it is a hedge against getting lost in the vast market. You want the bookseller and the reader to recognise the genre immediately and know they will enjoy the book.

Despite this herd mentality, the best cover designs often don’t follow a trend, and many stand-out examples of this come from the small literary publishers. Giramondo’s spare minimalist covers are worthy of framing; Xoum and Transit Lounge also punch above their weight. Their covers convey the message: ‘I am intellectual and don’t play by the commercial rules. I am special like you.’

Ventura’s most recent ‘instagrammable’ cover: Paris Savages, by Katherine Johnson

At Ventura, before we even start on cover design we hold a positioning meeting where we decide the readership profile for this book—is it literary, commercial or genre? What are the key elements of the manuscript and why do we love this book? We complete a competitive market analysis and produce a mood board of competing titles. We observe the trends, the imagery and typography, as well as the use of cover quotes, shout lines and subtitles. We want our book to reflect its genre, which offers assurance to both retailer and reader, but also to be unique.

The biggest influence on design trends this decade has been the advent of Instagram and the notion of a curated feed. This concept was introduced to me by the wonderful Ventura author Melanie Dimmitt (Special, September 2019). Melanie comes from a digital background with Collective Hub, HuffPost and Mamamia. She arrived at Ventura with her own mood board, a colour palette for the book and social media promotions. It was a complete visual marketing package for the digital age, and I was very impressed.

This trend for curated visuals has given rise to #booksofinstagram, which links Instagram users to a world of stylish books and equally stylish readers. This hashtag is not exclusive, but it is only really effective for books with high design values—they often feature elaborate flat-lays that relay some of the narrative or add to the hygge feeling of curling up with a book.

We ventured into this world when our marketing coordinator Sophie Hodge joined us last year straight from university. Like her peers, digital is in Sophie’s DNA and she has crafted our Instagram feed to great effect. Our covers are very ‘Instagrammable’ as a result. But there is more than sheer aesthetics to this. We have found a small army of Instagram reviewers who ply their craft outside the legacy media, and we have a younger and more active readership as a result.

The rise of Bookstagram also offers an opportunity to extend our franchises through visual merchandising. Even bricks-and- mortar bookshops sometimes seem to sell more non-book paraphernalia than books. We in the book world have traditionally been reluctant to venture into designed objects beyond book covers, but when we do break out it has great impact. I will never forget the sight of the stunning Holly Ringland tote bags at the London Book Fair in 2017—it was a delight to see rich Australian botanicals livening up the dull surrounds of Olympia. Maybe more should follow.

An investment in good design leads to a stronger, more vibrant and diverse book market. We should rejoice in the stunning covers that appear on the bookshop shelves and in our feeds. This way we can find new markets and a new generation of readers.

This article was written by Ventura’s Director & Publisher, Jane Curry.

Originally published in Books + Publishing.

You can find Ventura’s instagram here: @venturapress__

Five Questions with Jane Sullivan

Our authors are the heart of Ventura - without them we wouldn’t have the books we do! But what makes them tick? What lies behind their passion for literature? To answer these sought after questions, we’re bringing you the Five Questions With series to give you a little more insight into who lies behind the words you’re reading.

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August is for celebrating all things wonderful about childhood books. In Storytime, author and literary journalist Jane Sullivan takes us on a journey of self discovery, enchantment and wonder as she explores her favourite childhood stories (and even some she hated). As she re-reads the books so important to her as a child, Jane makes some surprising and emotional insights into how books have shaped the woman she is today.

1. What do you love about writing and literature?

I love how both reading and writing books, and perhaps particularly fiction, can transport me into an entirely different world which is yet somehow very similar to my own world. This double vision of the world is vitally important to me, it’s how I get my perspective. It’s been that way for me ever since I was a child, even though I didn’t understand why at the time – I just felt I had to get my nose into a book as often as I could.

2. Tell us a little about the inspiration behind your latest work.

Storytime came out of a desire to explore why it was that although I’d spent a lifetime in love with reading, no book I’d ever come across had the same deep impact and resonance as those I read when I was a child. Why did Enid Blyton trump Tolstoy or George Eliot? I decided to go back and reread some childhood favourites to find out. And my discoveries were so surprising and far-reaching, they turned themselves into a book.

3. What are you currently reading?

At any one time I’ve probably got two or three books on the go, plus others I skim for my column. One I’ve read recently that particularly struck me is Colson Whitehead’s novel The Nickel Boys, a story of two African-American youngsters in a brutal correction centre (sadly, based on a real institution). Also Rick Morton’s memoir 100 Years of Dirt, another story of overcoming poverty, disadvantage and violence, this time in the Australian bush. Currently there seems to be a huge wave of these stories; you don’t always want to pick them up because you might get compassion fatigue, but the best of them are both shattering and inspiring.

4. Tell us about the book that has impacted you the most.

I can’t really get that answer down to one book, so many have had so much impact at different stages of my life – but when I was rereading my favourite children’s books, the one that delighted me still and delighted me the most was Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows. It is a surprisingly daring and masterful tale that marries very different styles and perceptions into what at first seems a simple jolly story about talking animals. It made me feel both happy and queasy, which a good book should.

5. What is the value of books in the fast-paced, digital world that we live in?

Words on the page open up vivid spaces in my head that can’t be reached through film, TV, computer screens and smartphones. Reading a book is a different kind of addiction to the social media habit: it’s not about the fear of missing out, it’s more about the fun of getting out. It’s a gentle, meditative, highly enjoyable immersion that slows the frantic speed of superficial day-to-day contact and encourages the intellect and the imagination to go exploring. But reading isn’t always gentle: it can also knock your socks off.

Read more about Jane, and her latest book Storytime, or head to our events page to see how you can be involved in the launch.

What You May Not Know About Your Editor

By Zoe Hale, Ventura’s Managing Editor

In the editorial industry there are a lot of common stereotypes you may have heard about – we’re often (but not always) female, we’re cat people, tea people, book people, and we’re cardigan wearing, glasses wearing grammar Nazis. And if we ever went to war, it would be over the oxford comma. A lot of those stereotypes prove true, while others, well ... we like to think of ourselves as a little more diverse.

That said, if you are new to publishing, a first-time author, or are about to engage an editor for the first time, here are some things you might not know about your editor.

1. We’re on the side of the reader

Editors read a manuscript with the end reader and target market in mind. They are constantly asking the question – will the reader understand this? And especially for fiction – will the reader believe this? An ego during the editorial process, from either the author or the editor, is the worst thing that can happen to a book. Each side must be prepared to let go of firmly held beliefs about the text and serve the potential of the work and reader, whether the reader is a 16-year-old girl browsing her school library, or a middle-aged father receiving a birthday gift.

2. We like collaboration

The editor is not out to get you, or itching to slash your work into a million pieces. Most editors, myself included, see the editorial process as a partnership, one that concentrates on bringing the book to its full potential. This means an editor won’t be rewriting passages that don’t work, but may make suggestions. It also means the author needs to take ownership of their work and consider each editorial suggestion seriously, before deciding whether to accept or reject that suggestion. Simply accepting or rejecting all suggestions without considering them, or asking the editor to write something else that works, is not collaborative and goes against the spirit of editing.

3. We can’t tell you if your book will sell millions

If we are working on your book it means we believe in it. We believe in the power of your story and the importance that your work goes out into the world. But we can’t tell you how many people will buy it, if it will be the next Harry Potter or if you will be the next Liane Moriarty. And if you are engaging us privately, we can’t tell you if it will be picked up by a publisher. How many sales a book will make is a task undertaken by the marketing and sales and PR teams of a publishing house, and for a self-published author, the author themselves. We are gradually reaching the point where there will be more writers than readers, and in an increasingly competitive market, excellent content or writing is not enough to make a book sell. Sales and marketing lie outside of the domain of the humble editor. We will help you craft the content to be the most compelling it can be. After that, the baton is passed to marketing.

4. It’s all about style

Sometimes whether or not to use that contentious piece of punctuation, the oxford comma, comes down to a matter of style. Style is the instituted punctuation and spelling decisions taken on a piece of writing. Every publishing house will have their own house style – a handbook that says whether it is ‘focused’ or ‘focussed’, ‘aging’ or ‘ageing’, oxford comma or no. Us editors love consistency in style; so much of our job at the microlevel will be to make sure the text conforms to the chosen style. Australian publishers and editors tend to prefer the Macquarie Dictionary spelling, but each publisher will have a slightly different style for how they prefer to list references, or whether or not to have a spaced en dash or unspaced em dash, and even whether or not to use the oxford comma.

5. Pet peeves

Every editor will have a grammatical or language usage error that sticks out to them and rubs them more than others. Mine is the use of eggcorns. What’s an eggcorn, you ask? An eggcorn is the misspelling or construction of a common idiom. A common one is ‘For all intensive purposes’, rather than ‘For all intents and purposes’. Or, ‘the crutch of the situation’, rather than ‘the crux of the situation’. I find these faults in language simultaneously fascinating and headache inducing. In my experience though, they aren’t too common – you might find only one or two in entire first draft. If you’re interested in finding out more about eggcorns, there’s a great database here: https://eggcorns.lascribe.net/ 

Five Questions with Lee Kofman

Our authors are the heart of Ventura - without them we wouldn’t have the books we do! But what makes them tick? What lies behind their passion for literature? To answer these sought after questions, we’re bringing you the Five Questions With series to give you a little more insight into who lies behind the words you’re reading.

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June’s release was Split, an anthology of work from author, editor, essayist and Ventura alumni Lee Kofman. Split features candid essays from prominent Australian writers, including Lee herself, on leaving, loss and new beginnings.

1. What do you love about writing and literature?

There are many things I love about both, but if I have to sum it up succinctly, the best that the experiences of reading and writing offer me is a kind of transcendence – a delicious way to escape myself. At the same time, paradoxically, they also offer me ways to forge a better self – a more relaxed, slowed-down, thoughtful and reflective self. In fact, these two activities serve for me the same functions that religion serves for many, helping me to understand the world and myself better. I particularly need reading, the way one needs meditation – to ground myself and improve my mental health. I cannot imagine a day go by without reading.

2. Tell us a little about the inspiration behind your latest work.

My latest work, Split, is a collection of personal essays by known Australian writers which I curated and edited. My own essay, Bruised, is a story of how in my mid-twenties I struggled to end two passionate yet damaging relationships at once: with a man and with a city I lived in. I wanted to unpick that experience of lasting indecision, both to reconcile myself with my younger self and also in the hope that some readers can recognise something of their lives in my story and possibly feel less alone. When I was trapped in those relationships, shame and loneliness were my dominant emotions. I thought then that it was just I who couldn’t summon enough courage to leave what I needed to leave, that everyone else had it all together. Only years later did I realise how wrong I was and how non-exceptional my story is. Perhaps if I knew it earlier, I’d have left what I needed to leave quicker. But then, this might be just wishful thinking…

3. What are you currently reading?

I’m reading the final instalment of My Struggle, the Norwegian Karl Ove Knausgaard’s six-book opus. My Struggle is an autobiographical novel depicting Knausgaard’s life from childhood until his early 40s, but it is much more. Proustian in flavour, and genre-defying, Knausgaard’s life story is punctuated by essayistic prose that can go for dozens, and even hundreds, of pages. At 1153 pages, the last book is the longest and dryly named The End. Here, Knausgaard examines the aftermath of his literary success, and the personal costs of writing about his life he’s paid, as well as reflecting on dystopia, Paul Celan’s poetry, familial intimacy, and Hitler’s Mein Kampf no less. Its formidable size notwithstanding, I’ve been reading The End quickly, greedily, possibly because deep in me lurks the foolish hope that some tiny percentage of Knausgaard’s brilliance might trickle into my own future pages...

4. Tell us about the book that has impacted you the most.

It is Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. The novel’s hilarious premise is that during the Easter week Satan and his entourage arrive in Stalin’s Moscow of the 1930s, to wreak havoc in this God-less city. I read this novel several times and in three languages (the first time when I was ten years old). I believe its humanist bent helped shape my personality and my worldview. The book taught me about the redeeming power of laughter in the face of the despicable, how irony rather than righteousness is our best friend. This novel has been also partially responsible for my quasi-metaphysical approach to writing where I often use my work to try finding some hidden order in the chaos of life.

5. What is the value of books in the fast-paced, digital world that we live in?

Today we need them even more than ever! Books are our salvations in the midst of the storm of instant views and loud opinions. They create oases in our lives, and support and nourish whatever is still left of our inner lives.

Read more about Lee, and her latest book Split.

Five Questions with Craig Ensor

Our authors are the heart of Ventura - without them we wouldn’t have the books we do! But what makes them tick? What lies behind their passion for literature? To answer these sought after questions, we’re bringing you the Five Questions With series to give you a little more insight into who lies behind the words you’re reading.

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July’s release is The Warming, the debut novel from lawyer-turned-author Craig Ensor. The Warming joins the growing genre of climate fiction in Australia, but at its heart it presents a world of hope and love in even the worst of circumstances. You can read more about the plot here.

1. What do you love about writing and literature?

As a reader I love the power of stories to move and pull at both the heart and the mind, the beauty of a perfectly made sentence, the sound and look of words rubbing against each other, and the fact that literature – as the nearest thing to life – is the only art form that can get close to representing consciousness or what it feels like to be human. As a writer I love trying – with mixed success – to achieve all of the above.

2. Tell us a little about the inspiration behind your latest work.

The story came to me initially as an image of a couple living in the future who were trying to get away from their past lives – a dark secret, the technologies and obligations of modern urban life – by moving to a remote beach house. It grew from there to be story of how it feels to live in a world nearing its end as a consequence of rampant climate change, and the importance of love and family in the face of such terrifying change. If anything it’s about love – love between husband and wife, parents and children, between each other – and found its inspiration in my love for my family.

3. What are you currently reading (or watching or listening to)?

I just finished reading George Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo which is a great example of successful experimentation in fiction; that is, it is formally novel and readable. It shows how the best novels – because they deal with situation and action – can create a poetics of space which is largely unique to that art form. The parts where Lincoln is holding his dead son Willie in the crypt are also heartbreaking. As for watching, like almost everyone else, I watched the last series of Game of Thrones and am looking for something on Netflix to replace it!

4. Tell us about the book that has impacted you the most.

When I was thirteen or so I read Smith by Leon Garfield as part of the school curriculum. It was kind of a Dickensian young adult novel before young adult became the industry it is now. What was so impactful about it was the fact that it took me to another world – Victorian London – but even more so that I had no idea what was going on. Lacking the life experience to comprehend much of the narrative and its themes, it became a challenge for me which lured me into the contest of comprehension (or writing). I learned that books could be like a puzzle of meaning, and that it took skill and hard work to fit the pieces together to complete the puzzle, which was all part of the enjoyment.

5. What is the value of books in the fast-paced, digital world that we live in?

Books slow down and reduce our thinking and attention to the open page. They are real, tactile, sensory. They open up a space for noticing details and things that would be overlooked in a fast-paced digital world. They also open up a space for the imagination to  be exercised, not only by filling in gaps of narrative and character that may have opened up in the novel we are reading, but the openness and freedom to let the imagination wander away from the book to other things, other stories we tell ourselves or forms of thinking that have no space to exist in daily fast paced life. They are also the most convenient form of technology – small, light – they don’t need a charger or a password!

Read more about Craig and his latest book, The Warming.