Houston – we have a problem, and it’s getting worse

 

The specialist large print publishers (eg Ulverscroft, WF Howes, AudioGo) buy rights from the mainstream publisher or the author’s literary agent to publish a large print edition for five years.

All the specialist large print publishers produce some really appealing titles and some real dross (which it would be invidious to mention by name).

The trouble is that the dross doesn’t sell well and hangs around for the full five years. But our problem is that the good titles, especially the really good titles, are going out of print not just in the first year of the five year license but in the first month.

One publisher which has a much more enlightened attitude is WF Howes. I was speaking to their Chief Executive Officer, Shaun Sibley, at the London Book Fair last month and he told me that their policy is to ensure that all titles in large print are kept available for the full five-year term. They do this by using very short print runs or single-copy print on demand technology after their initial print run is exhausted.

This is the perfect use of print on demand technology. The idea for www.largeprintbookshop.co.uk arose as a result of a visit organised by the IPG (Independent Publishing Guild) to Lightning Source, the major print-on-demand printer, owned by the largest book wholesaler in the world, Ingram, in June 2004.

I should go back to see Lightning Source’s bigger and better facility in the UK, but what I saw in 2004 made a massive impression on me. Vast laser printers printing three titles of differing format and extent onto a seven mile roll of paper; turning the roll and passing it through a second printer so that the reverse pages could be printed; separating the three books into separate piles and creating book blocks ready to be bound with the full-colour cover which had been printed simultaneously on a separate machine. All happening at phenomenal speed, but the thing that amazed me the most was that 80% of all they were printing were single-copy orders. As I say, absolutely brilliant for large print books.

But consider the problem we are having with titles going out of print almost as soon as they are published (in some cases we do not even get one copy because all stock has been sold prior to publication date).

In December, a title I expected to become one of our big Christmas sellers, Victoria Hislop’s The Thread went out of print in the month of publication. (In this instance we will get a second chance as the paperback edition is coming in June).

Mark Logue’s The King’s Speech went out of print in both hardback and paperback in their respective months of publication.

Michael Morpurgo’s War Horse went out of print shortly before the Steven Spielberg film was launched.

There are many other titles that we could keep selling throughout the licensing period, such as Gervase Phinn’s Roads to the Dales; and the award winning Edward de Waal’s The Hare with the Amber Eyes, only published in large print last September but now out of print in hardback and paperback.

Such behaviour is bizarre in the current tough business climate. Actually, it would be bizarre at any time, but large print publishers are a breed apart.

Large Print Publishing as a Sausage Machine

All the specialist large print publishers in the UK are only interested in selling to the public library market, and they all have some incentive scheme to make ordering easy.

For example if you commit to buy one copy of each WF Howes title for a year (19 titles a month) you will make a saving of 20%; Ulverscroft offer a similar scheme whereby you can save 10% or 15%. AudioGo offer something similar.

The consequence of such schemes might be good for the publisher, and might make the librarian’s job easier, but they also have a number of adverse consequences.

Libraries have different demographics just as bookshops do, and family sagas might sell better in one part of the country than another.

The element of choice is taken out of the librarian’s hands. They just take what is offered.

With budget restrictions, a commitment to such an incentive plan might mean that the whole budget is placed with, say, Ulverscroft, rather than spread amongst the publishers. For example under one of the Ulverscroft schemes you can purchase £9,807 worth of large print books for £8,336 (624 books).  I am certain you could make a more interesting and appealing selection by picking and choosing amongst other publishers.

With a guaranteed sale, there is no incentive for the publisher to publish at the most appropriate time. For example when Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol was eagerly awaited in 2009 it was published on both sides of the Atlantic on the same day in September 2009, in time for Christmas. In America, the large print edition was published on the same day, and in the UK the unabridged audiobook version was published on that day. However, the UK large print edition was published the following February, long after the reviews had appeared and interest had subsided.

It would be good to see librarians fight back and opt to use their expertise and training to select the most appropriate titles for their library.

About one third of the 25,000 titles on our website are POD (print on demand) titles which means that they are published by someone other than the main large print publishers. This number is growing and comprises books published in large print by literary agents doing the best for the literary estates that they represent; backlist titles for which there is enduring interest – eg ReadHowYouWant issued two PD James backlist titles late last year as a test with a view to bringing the rest of her output into print (A Certain Justice and The Murder Room); the enduring out of copyright classics, such as Dickens, Hardy and Austen and, just out of copyright, The Great Gatsby, a book which regularly features in lists of favourites, and for which a major film is about to be released.

Less than 1.5% of new titles are published in large print. One day mainstream publishers will realise that they can do their own large print editions (using POD technology) for some of the 98.5% of books that are not currently published in large print and that these titles could sell just as well as any for which they sell rights.

For example, for the past few years we check books shortlisted for prestigious prizes, be they the Man Booker, the Orange, the Daggers, etc and the vast majority of titles shortlisted are never published in large print.

There could be worthwhile pickings for the mainstream publishers and great benefits for the 5% of the reading public who cannot read conventional print.

The Real Mystery about SJ Watson’s Before I Go To Sleep

Hardly a week goes by without SJ Watson receiving some new accolade for his Before I Go To Sleep.

Unusually it was selected for the competing book clubs, Richard & Judy and The TV Book Club. It was voted the second most popular Richard and Judy title.

Earlier this week the unabridged audiobook edition was shortlisted for a Crimefest 2012 award, and the day before that the book was selected for the longlist for the Desmond Elliott Prize 2012.

In addition, the book won the Crime Writer’s Association John Creasey Dagger in 2011; was selected for the longlist for the CWA Ian Fleming Dagger 2011; and was shortlisted for the Galaxy Thriller and Crime Novel of the Year 2011.

So what is the mystery?

The mystery is that no one in the UK has published this book in large print. It is available in the US published in a Harperluxe edition.

Harperluxe editions are better than nothing but they are not really large print, being printed in 14 point size and are aimed at “baby boomers”.

Booker Prize 2011

Congratulations to Julian Barnes for winning the Booker Prize last night for The Sense of an Ending.

Already Random House have announced a 75,000 copy reprint and if you are a member of the RNIB you can borrow the book in giant print, braille or audiobook.

However, you cannot read it in 'large print' (16 point) because no one has published a large print edition.

It stands to reason that of those who cannot read one of the 75,000 books currently being printed, more would be able to read large print than braille; more people need large print rather than giant print (24 point); people who can still read prefer reading to listening.

Why don't Random House do their own large print edition? In the USA Random House have a very good large print imprint.

“The First Grader” an inspirational film marred by dishonesty.

The First Grader is the story of Kimane Maruge, an 84 year old Kikuyu Kenyan who, when the government announced universal primary education in 2003, presented himself at the village primary school requesting that he be taught to read.

He is turned away, but persists and is eventually taken into the class. The story was national news in Kenya at the time and in 2005 Maruge was flown to New York to attend the United Nations Millennium Development Summit, at which he addressed the delegates on the importance of free primary education.

The story is a heart-warming and inspirational one and the director and publicist for the film make much of the fact that it is “a triumphant true story” and “this is based on the true life story of a man’s determination to learn, the power of education and the shocking untold history of British colonial rule in Kenya”. Except that it isn’t true.

The writer and director have chosen to explain the inspiring story of Maruge’s determination to succeed by the use of flashbacks to depict the horrors that he experienced at the time of Mau-Mau.

The flashbacks are truly shocking and horrifying and depict the murder of his wife and two children, in front of Maruge, by British soldiers. The film depicts him as a lonely old man, living on his own.

Now whilst there is no doubt that there were atrocities during Mau Mau, on both sides, which make one truly ashamed, the horrors as depicted in this “true” story are a fiction.

When Maruge died in 2009 he had great-grandchildren, and 30 grandchildren.

The result of this dishonesty is that the film, whilst inspiring admiration for Maruge and bringing home the benefits of universal education, also engenders anger and horror, and provides far too simplistic a picture of the colonial legacy.

To make matters worse this film was part funded by the Lottery Fund and the BBC. For some reason the film company have disabled the option of adding comments to the You Tube trailer for the film.

You can find the trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-eBT7vnTLE

You can find a story from Nairobi television about the real Maruge here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYWnq4p2OBY
Wikipedia has more information about Maruge, which you can find here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kimani_Maruge
Incidentally, part of the film was made on location at the first tea farm in Kenya, http://www.kiambethufarm.co.ke. Tea is now the biggest export earner for Kenya, greater even than tourism.

Guy Garfit

Newsletter September 2010

Introduction

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UK publishers continue to ignore the needs of those requiring large print editions but you can access many titles not otherwise available in the UK surprisingly quickly through our website.

From now on we hope to produce a newsletter every month.

Tony Blair

Tony Blair’s A Journey sold over 92,000 copies in the UK in its first four days. This is said to be the fastest rate of sale of any autobiography since records began. None of those sales will be in large print because there is no large print edition published in the UK.

It is often said that Tony Blair is more popular in the US than in the UK, so perhaps that is why Random House, who publish the book on both sides of the Atlantic, published a simultaneous large print edition in the USA. We are selling this for £25.50 and you can find it on our website here.

One of the things that the RNIB advocate with their Right to Read campaign is that publishers produce large print editions at the time of the original publication. It mystifies me that publishers do not do this, with their major titles. The visually impaired want to read what everyone else is reading and talking about at the same time, not six months later. (For example, Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol was published in September last year on the same day around the world; in the USA the large print edition was published on that same day. In the UK, the large print edition was published the following February. It could have made a perfect Christmas present!). Click on the title to find the hardback and paperback on our website.

Stieg Larsson: The Millennium Trilogy

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, together with the other two volumes in The Millennium Trilogy, The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest are said to be the biggest selling ebooks, and on every beach and holiday flight and railway carriage people can be seen reading the conventional paperback. But they are not available in large print in the UK. Luckily, they are available in the US so we import them. You can find the three Larsson titles listed here.

The new Richard and Judy Book Club

We welcome the return of the Richard and Judy Book Club in its new guise this month. However, of the eight titles that they have selected only one, Operation Mincemeat by Ben Macintyre is available in large print. It is an enthralling story of how “The Man Who Never Was” – a dead vagrant who was dressed as a naval officer and washed ashore off the coast of Spain with secret documents on his person which fooled Hitler into thinking that the southern invasion was going to be anywhere but Sicily. You can find further details here.

The Man Booker Prize shortlist

The six titles shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize were announced this week. I am afraid that it is the same old story: not one is available in large print in the UK. It is so easy, in this digital age, to format a novel for large print and make it available as a print-on-demand title that it really is rather disgracefully shoddy on the part of these publishers that they do not make them available.

However, two of the titles are available in large print in the USA, and we have them on order. They are Peter Carey’s Parrot and Olivier in America and Emma Donoghue’s Room. You can find further details by clicking on the highlighted titles.

BBC Book Club

If you follow James Naughtie’s Radio 4 Bookclub you may be interested in what is coming up. You can listen to past programmes by visiting the Bookclub website here. The most recent programme dealt with The Life of Pi by Yann Martel, which is not available in the UK but we import it from the USA.

Coming up later in the year is a discussion of Claire Tomalin’s biography of Thomas Hardy which we normally have in stock.

Book Clubs

If you want to join a Book Group in your area, I can recommend http://www.bookgroup.info/ which is filled with valuable resources on finding and setting up a group. We hope that those who are choosing titles for their group will consult our site to check if a large print edition is available.

Ebooks

2009 was the year that saw ebook sales take off in the USA, and no doubt the UK will follow the trend very shortly, particularly with the excellent ibooks feature on the new Apple ipad, and the new Kindles which have just been launched by Amazon.

Many of our customers are elderly, and are unwilling or unable to embrace this new technology (quite apart from the fact that the hardware is still quite expensive) but for anyone younger with a visual impairment I would recommend that they try out the new readers. Also, you do not need to own a Kindle to read a Kindle book: you can download a free Kindle application to your PC.

I am fortunate in not being visually impaired (although I cannot read many of the paperbacks I bought over 40 years ago) but in the interest of research have been reading Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall and Bill Bryson’s At Home on the PC, the iPad and the iPhone and I am in no doubt that this is the way I am going to choose to buy books in future. Wolf Hall is a marvellous book but, especially in large print, it is enormous and heavy, and the ibook version is about half the price of the large print edition. (Even so, we would be very pleased to sell you the hardback edition! Just click on the title.)

However I live in hope that the ebook digital revolution will have a silver lining for large print book readers: once the book has been digitally formatted for ebooks it is so simple to generate a large print edition.

For a very helpful article on the current situation with ebook readers (and their text to speech capabilities) see the article in Book Brunch by Denise Dwyer who is Development Office Access to Publishing at the RNIB.

Till next month

If you know of someone for whom you think this might be of interest please forward it to them.

We always welcome feedback, so you are very welcome to write or email.

With best wishes.

Guy Garfit

TV Book Club Summer Reads

The eight new titles for the summer programme were announced yesterday, and one can confidently predict that there will be some entertaining and thought-provoking titles as usual, selected by Amanda Ross.

However, with Specsavers as major sponsors of the TV Book Club now, it would have been good to see rather more provision made for the visually impaired.

Of the eight titles, only 3 are available in large print (and only from US publishers). These are The Help by Kathryn Stockett; Stone’s Fall by Iain Pears; and The Weight of Silence by Heather Gudenkauf.

Only 3 are available as audiobooks: The Help and Stone’s Fall, and also The Bed I Made by Lucie Whitehouse.

And only 3, so far, are available as ebooks: The Help, Stone’s Fall and The Weight of Silence.

This really is pretty unsatisfactory all round. All typesetting is digital nowadays so it is comparatively easy to produce an ebook edition, comparatively easy to produce a large print edition. Audiobooks are not so easy, but at least the three available are all produced by publishers who cater for the visually impaired, Isis and WF Howes, so the audiobooks are likely to be unabridged.

Ebook sales took off dramatically last year in the US and are likely to follow suit in the UK this year. Whilst UK publishers try to work out what to charge for ebooks, and how to protect copyright infringement, I suspect they are going to be overtaken by events as people adopt the expensive but beautiful (and beautifully simple) ipad.

Still, at over £400 for the cheapest version, the demand for large print editions is not going to diminish in the immediate future.

So lets see Cactus TV, Specsavers and Channel 4 use their clout to encourage the major publishers of these eight titles: Penguin, Hodder, Orion, Bloomsbury, Random House, Macmillan, Harper Collins and Mira (an imprint of Mills and Boon) to ensure that alternative editions are produced as soon as possible.

Furthermore, if they could be encouraged to produce their own editions, rather than selling rights to specialist large print and audiobook publishers, they might be surprised at the commercial benefits they derive.