Take two

Why a trade show is making me all reflective

Upcoming events at Backstory

(all at 71 Balham High Road)

• Claire Fuller

  Wednesday 26th April, 7.30pm

  The Costa Book Prize-winning author of Unsettled Ground and Swimming Lessons joins us to chat all about her latest, The Memory of Animals. In the book, a pandemic is sweeping the planet. Neffy joins a vaccine trial, cut off from the outside world. The novel puts isolation and humanity under the microscope.

• Jamie Susskind

  Wednesday 3rd May, 7.30pm

  In his book The Digital Republic, Jamie Susskind asks how freedom and democracy can survive in an online world of data leaks, racist algorithms and hate-filled social media. A manifesto for navigating, and managing, the increasingly digital world.

• Georgina Sturge

  Wednesday 10th May, 7.30pm

  Georgina Sturge uses skills from her day job as a researcher in the House of Commons library to debunk nefarious numbers and explain the uses and abuses of statistics in her new book, Bad Data. Numbers tell stories, if only you know how to read them. Thankfully, Georgina is the perfect guide.

• Jennifer Saint

  Wednesday 17th May, 7.30pm

  Breathing life into legendary women of Greek myth who have been forgotten, misrepresented, or misunderstood, Jennifer Saint is the bestselling author behind the magical Ariadne and Elektra. Her third novel tells the story of Atalanta, a heroine whose role in the adventures of Jason and the Argonauts is often overlooked, but is bursting with legend.

• Wiz Wharton and Rowan Hisayo Buchanan

  Tuesday 23rd May, 7.30pm

  Wiz Wharton is the author of a debut novel exploring British-Chinese identity, opening in Brixton in the run-up to the handover of Hong Kong. In conversation with Costa Prize-shortlisted author Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, whose new novel The Sleep Watcher is about how our understanding of who our families are can shift suddenly and irrevocably. 

Team pick of the week

Rory recommends: Isaac and the Egg by Bobby Palmer

It’s not often that a book convinces me to read it within twenty seconds. This is the kind of book you need to have your own relationship with - I can place it into your hands, but you need to investigate it and consider it all on your own. 

All I will say is that this gorgeous story of grief is about a man who comes across a strange egg creature alone in the forest. It will tear you to pieces and put you back together again. Heartbreaking and beautifully hopeful all at once. Now go on, pick it up and have a look.

Our bestsellers this week

1. Cleopatra and Frankenstein by Coco Mellors

2. Milk Teeth by Jessica Andrews

3. Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

4. Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld

5. How to Kill Your Family by Bella Mackie

6. Send Nudes by Saba Sams

7. To Battersea Park by Philip Hensher (coming to Backstory for an event on 31st May)

8. The Premonitions Bureau by Sam Knight - April’s Backstory non-fiction book club pick

9. Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart - new in paperback

10. Super-Infinite by Katherine Rundell

Join our fiction book club

What if the author came to your book club?

Thanks to everyone who has already registered their interest in our new fiction book club. We’ll have more details to share in the next week or two. Please click the button to be the first to hear about our exciting line-up of authors. Each session will be on Zoom, so you can join from anywhere in the world!

WHEN YOU’RE SETTING UP A NEW BUSINESS, the firsts keep on coming. First premises. First hire. First day. First sale. First author event. First Christmas. First resignation. First tax return…

Doing things for the second time round is bittersweet: it’s a sign of maturity and success - we’ve made it this far! But also a moment to pause and reflect that your baby is growing up and that while there will always be another challenge or a twist on the formula, things will never be quite so daunting nor quite so exhilarating as they were that very first time.

Looking back on the post I wrote after London Book Fair, this time last year, I’m struck first by my naivety. Pepped up by the publishers’ talk of their upcoming smash hits, I placed orders for 50 copies of several books… which was, um, bold, minister. That’s the sort of order I would now only place for a new paperback that had performed extremely well in hardback or the new Richard Osman. Many of the books I enthusiastically talked up sold only one or two copies.

But I can also hear, to an almost embarrassing extent, my giddiness. I’d quit my job a few weeks beforehand and was just setting out on this great new adventure. I was sending emails at unconscionable hours of the night and having a dozen contradictory thoughts about the website before breakfast.

So this year’s Book Fair, which starts on Tuesday, will inevitably be a rather different experience. Calmer, more focused, certainly more productive…but slightly less trippy.

There are, though, a few firsts that I am going to savour. Last year, I was a solo act: fired up, but ultimately alone. This year, I’m really excited that, over the course of a couple of days, the whole Backstory team will be there. It will be most of their first times attending and I’m really looking forward to seeing it afresh through their eyes.

I can’t wait to sit through the pitches on Wednesday with Amy, Denise and Rory and swap notes afterwards. I can’t say how lovely it is to be able to share the experience of this big shopping trip with colleagues I like and whose opinions are of genuine interest. It wouldn’t have crossed my mind last year that I’d already be fortunate enough to be able to do that.

The other big first is structure. Last year I was whizzing and fizzing about the place like a firework: lots of fun and flair but not overly much direction. I was having coffees left, right and centre: some very helpful, some less so. This year the team and I are determined to spend most of Tuesday introducing ourselves to editors and publicists whose lists we admire and whose books we want to shout about more. In particular, we are keen to expand our knowledge of, and contacts at, various independent publishers.

(With that in mind, if you’re an editor or publicist reading this, whether adults or kids, and fancy saying a quick hello and having a chat about Backstory events and the like, do just reply straight to this email. It’d be lovely to put some faces to names.)

So, with memories flooding back of snaking queues for overpriced coffees, maps that could only be read by tilting your head 90 degrees and a sweltering conference centre, all that remains to be said is… here we go again.

Tom