 Hello and welcome everybody to Creative Women, Creative Business, Feminist, Publishing, Design and Comics. It is a wonderful three-day festival that we are welcoming you to, started yesterday, going on today and tomorrow, organised by the Business of Women's Words Research Project in collaboration with the British Library. Apologies to anyone who's been to any of the previous events for the festival so far, either yesterday or today, because I'm going to have to slightly repeat myself because I have some vital information to impart. My name is Polly Russell. I'm the British Library partner for the Business of Women's Words Research Project and I'm also the lead curator for the Unfinished Business, the Fight for Women's Rights exhibition, currently being staged at the British Library, but also currently closed as a result of COVID. However, the exhibition is due to be open until August, so we're very much opening that once we're out of all this COVID times, that the doors will open again and we can welcome as many of you as possible on-site again, so please do think about that in your calendars. It is absolutely right that this fantastic festival is running alongside the Unfinished Business exhibition, which so much celebrates women's ingenuity, their tenacity and, of course, their creativity in demanding rights, in insisting on space, on changing the world and, of course, on working out ways to make a living. We have already had two wonderful events and now we're having our third event of the season, today, now How to Sell a Feminist Lost Classic, with two experts from the industry, Maria Vassilopoulos and Kate McDonald, and the event is being chaired by Dr D. M. Withers, who is a research associate on the Business of Women's Words Projects. I will hand over momentarily to D. M., but just a couple of housekeeping points beforehand. On your screen, you will have a tab for the bookshop. Usually, we would signpost you towards the British Library's wonderful bookshop. Unfortunately, it's not at the moment operating the online site because of COVID. So instead, we've listed all our contributors across the festivals, publications, and linked to independent bookshops, so please do check those out. I also wanted to mention that as well as this wonderful festival running over three days, we have all sorts of events scheduled into the next few months, a number of which really speak to the themes and the ideas which we'll be discussing during these events. And I'll just mention a couple that I think you will be interested in. We have Alison Bechdel, the cartoonist, scheduled to speak in February. We've got the artist and writer Laurie Anderson doing an event also in February. And we have at the end of this month, the economist, Mariana Masakuto, in conversation with Gillian Tett, all relevant for the themes that we're talking around today. One last point. We are so excited to hear from our panelists today and for them to share their expertise, but we really want to hear from you. So please do go down to the bottom of your screen where there is a space where you can submit questions and we will get as many of those as possible to Maria and to Kate. Right, for now I'm going to hand over to DM and then see you all at the next event. Bye. Good afternoon and a warm welcome to How to Reprint a Lost Feminist Classic. My name is DM Withers and I'm a research fellow on the business of women's words project. Today I'm joined by Kate McDonald, literary historian and director and energy source for Handheld Press and Maria Vasalopoulos, sales and marketing manager for British Library Publishing, who in 2020 launched their very own reprint series, British Library Women Writers. We will be discussing today the nuts and bolts of reprinting books that have fallen out of fashion, taste and memory. Republishing and repackaging old books in new clothes is a long-standing practice in the publishing industry dating back to the 18th century. In the mid-19th century, reprints became a popular way to make money out of books. Series such as the Routledge Railway Library, which published cheap editions and eye-catching covers, also known as yellowbacks, were designed to appeal to the growing reading and travelling public. In the early 20th century, reprints began to shed their association with cheapness and ephemerality through J.M. Dent's scholarly Everyman Library. And this is followed by mid-century series like the Penguin Modern Classics. When Varago launched the Modern Classics series in June 1978 with Antonia White's Frost in May, the series popularised the idea that women writers were not forgotten or fell out of print simply because they weren't any good. It was because their cultural contribution and their stories had been devalued. It is Varago therefore who we should credit for opening up a cultural and market space in which the forgotten text by the marginal women writer becomes a source of positive identification, a potential tree discovered and whose place on our shelves becomes an active cultural restitution shared between reader and publisher. Now here are some examples of publishers and publisher series that have operated or continue to operate in this fascinating market space. Women's Press, who were established in 1977 and were a contemporary of Varago, their early books were reprints, even if they then went on to focus on contemporary books. Persephone Books established in 1999 continued to pioneer in this area. Honow's Welsh Women's Classics reprint books in Welsh and in English. And Silver Press, who started in 2017, also have reprints as part of their lists. And finally, Black Britain Writing Back is the eagerly anticipated collection of Black British writing curated and introduced by Booker winner Bernardine Everisto, and it launches next month, so make sure you check that out. So as you can see, reprint publishing remains a thriving area within the industry, but how do you go about it? Luckily, this is something our two speakers today have a great deal experience of, so they're going to be able to tell us. First of all, we're going to be hearing from Kate, who is going to talk about research and rights, and then Maria will talk about marketing, curation and sales. After that, it's your turn to have some input. You can submit questions at any time. So if inspiration strikes you while the speakers are talking, or even in relation to anything I've said, please send them in. But we're going to come to those questions after the presentations. So for now, Kate, it's over to you. Hi. Well, thank you all for coming. I want to tell you a little bit about copyright. So John, can we do the first slide, please? When you are looking for a book that you want to republish, the first thing you have to work out is, is it in copyright or is it not in copyright? And in the UK and the EU, this means 70 years after the death of the author. So if someone died in May 1950, they would have come into copy out of copyright in the first of January this year. So at the moment, 1950s are a cutoff point for texts that you can republish without anyone saying you are as royalties, you have to ask permission. But if that text is in copyright, then you have to do some homework. Looking at the first picture of the first cover on the left, which is Zelda Fitzgerald, Sammy the Waltz, we spotted pretty quickly that she was going to come out of copyright in January 2019. So we had that edition ready. But we were really worried, we were convinced that every American publisher would be producing their own edition of Zelda Fitzgerald's only novel, Sammy the Waltz, because she's the wife of F Scott Fitzgerald, there's a massive F Scott Fitzgerald industry. And to our amazement, nobody else did, we have the only current edition in print of that novel. This is a good example of a marginalized woman's voice being brought back, mainly because the masculine voice for the mass, the industry around the masculine voice of her, her marriage completely undermined her and ignored her. So they thought she was worthless. And we're very happy that this edition is selling extremely well at universities and colleges in Britain and in the US. So next picture along Malcolm Saville, James Country Year. This is a book we're bringing out in 2022. So you can't find it yet. This author he died. He's still in copyright. I think he died in the 70s of the 80s, but his family administered the estate. So for us it was a matter of, we identified that we wanted to publish it. This is a Malcolm Saville society, which is really active. They sent us to the family, and the family and I negotiated we agreed a contract. We have the rights to publish this text, which is just so exciting. The next one along Vonda McIntyre, this was so tragic. Vonda was a really important feminist science fiction author and sort of a godmother with her great friend Ursula Le Guin of science fiction and feminism in the 70s. In this novel, the exile waiting was her first novel 1975. And I loved it when I discovered it as a teenager and it was one of the top ones in my wish list. So I got in touch with Vonda at the end of 2018 saying I really want to publish this book because it's been out of print since basically the early 70s. And she said that would be terrific. Let me send you to my agent. So the agent and I discussed the contract we agreed the contract. We signed and all was going well. And then February 2019 Vonda told us all that she had third stage pancreatic cancer, and she died at the beginning of April. And that was just so tragic. We brought the book forward as much as we could so she was able to see the cover, but she never saw her book again in print. But because she had been part of the process part of the negotiating process. I was able already to, I was well in touch with the agent and now I'm closely in touch with the literary estate that administers her work. The fourth book was an absolute mystery because I came across it in a book sale. I bought it for three pounds I read it on the way home on the train, and I nearly missed my stop. It was that good. So halfway through, I was thinking I've got to find the rights I've got to find the estate but who are these authors I had never heard of them. I did a bit of basic Googling and Jane Oliver's name came up as the subject of a, what was it, it was a new forest somewhere in Fordingbridge at the Fordingbridge local history society, sometime in the late 1970s someone had written an article about her because that where was where she was living when she died. Luckily, the person who wrote the article was still in that local history society. I got in touch with him, and he said very cautiously, I could put you in touch with the state but who are you what do you want to state your intentions. I persuaded him I was legitimate, and he put me in touch with the air Jane Oliver's nephew and with her agent. And I thought well that's odd why should this utterly obscure author with a friend who's so obscure there is no trace of her left. Why would she need a literary agent and it was only by doing the research helped by information from her nephew that I realized that these two women had written together 97 books. That's a massive literary estate and nobody knows about them. This is the extraordinary thing. These are prolific productive and very successful women writers who have disappeared completely. But luckily this book business as usual is now one of our best sellers because everybody loves it is a complete word of my success. And I feel so fortunate that we've revived the fortunes of this estate, and also brought this fabulous fabulous funny romantic clever witty devastating the interesting book back into the public domain. John, next slide please. Oh, no, no, don't do the next slide. I want to talk about pictures, because when you are doing a book, you have to think about a cover. Looking back at the Zelda Fitzgerald. That picture, and also the business as usual cover both came from the Mary Evans picture library. That's a picture agency. So we have licensed the right to use those images for book covers and for marketing of the book. We don't have the right to use them for any other purpose, although one could if I wanted to put using to make t shirts out or something like that I could I'd have to pay more money. But if you're thinking about bringing a book back you've got to think about how you use the image and what you use it for. The James country year image that is by the original artist who worked with Malcolm Saville in the 1940s to produce a suite of extraordinary colored engravings for that book. Now I've got the first edition, which my mother owned, which I've stolen off her. We're planning to reproduce all the illustrations. The problem is, we cannot trace the artist's estate. The artist to falls under the copyright law and as we know he died, what we know he was alive after 1950. We know he's in copyright, but can we find the estate we cannot. So all we can do is put a disclaimer in the book and reserve a sum in our production budget for paying the estate if it ever makes itself known to us. Back into our image. Well, as you will probably know, the covers of science fiction novels in the 1970s are not desirable artwork. They are just trash and pulp and just ghastly I wouldn't go near them. So we commissioned a piece of brand new art for this book. And that means we can do anything we like with it. We've paid for it is ours we can make t shirts we can make books, books, book bags and that sort of thing. John next slide please. Now the other thing I want to show you is how we use images. So we have here a new book Valentine Acklin the first biography of this really important lesbian poet, social justice activist and the life partner of Sylvia Townsend Warner. This comes out in May and we are at the point of doing the index. We're almost there. The cover we sorted out at the end of last year, and we wanted to use a terrific portrait of Valentine that was made by Eric Gill. Now Eric Gill is one of the most important artists of the early 20th century in Britain, and he's out of copyright because he died really young. So after a bit of checking, we assured ourselves that he was out of copyright we could use it and so we have this amazing illustration, which we can use completely for free. That to need to consider when you're thinking about your budgets of what you use what you spend your money on in the production of a book, the fees for reproduction are as important as the fees for printing. Another example. This is a collection of letters of family archive about a conscientious object around his wife. And obviously, as about the family I wanted to use an image of the family. So we used an original family photograph which as you can probably see is really scratched very sepia it's been folded and our art designer she tinkered with the image and Photoshop to show us how you can make it look almost brand new. So that has become the cover photo. But again it was part of the family's agreement with me that they could just give us all the artwork we wanted. We would use them we didn't need to do any more research and that it was extremely easy. But then it was a personal connection and sometimes you just get lucky, you find a fabulous book and it falls into your lap with almost no strings attached. That's just a very, very brief outline of different copyright issues you're going to come across, and different ways you have to approach spending your money, doing the legal thing with contracts. If you've got any questions, check them out me at the end of the session I'll see if I can help. Thanks so much Kate that was brilliant. Okay Maria over to you. Hi everyone. So I'm Maria Basilopoulos and I am the sales and marketing manager for British Library publishing. If I'm looking down it's just because I've got my notes here but I'm sorry about that. I am here to talk about the British Library women's fiction series which we launched in 2020. So before I introduce the books I should just start by saying that British Library publishing sits within the commercial department of the library. We published around 50 books a year including exhibition catalogs. Like of course the fantastic unfinished business exhibition catalog which I have here and is available at all good bookshops and a host of nonfiction fiction series books. And today I'll just be speaking on behalf of that team, which includes the editor of the women's fiction series Alison Moss, who is responsible for searching the library archives and recommissioning titles. And also our series expert and a blogger at Stuck in a Book Simon Thomas, who has helped us so much with his knowledge of the genre. I'd also like to just say a special thank you to the BL curatorial team, including Tanya, Lucy Evans and Alison Bailey who have contributed introductions and ideas throughout us engineering this new series. So as a publisher, we're probably best known for our series of crime classics, for which we have a loyal fan base and we're not far off having 100 of these in print. And the idea to create a women's fiction series in part came from our readers and our bookshop customers who wanted us to find more women writer authors in that genre. So we delivered the division bell mystery. And when we pitched this to the book buyers and press the we use the author as well as the story because Ellen Wilkinson has had a really prolific career as an MP at a time when it was rare for women to hold such a position. And her story resonated with our booksellers and customers, and a light to the point where a waterstones buyer personally championed her book. After this success, we found other women authors such as Mary Kelly and ECR Lorac who have also become successful on the list, not only for what they wrote but for who they were as women. And when the unfinished exhibition was an unfinished business exhibition was announced we decided that because we were getting more requests to find women authors that we would begin a dedicated series. Although as we know women's fiction publishing is not a new phenomenon at all. We decided to put our values as a publisher behind our series. And we believe as a publisher in making the British Library collections available to as accessible as possible to readers all over the world. And so our women's fiction series is designed to carry not only the author's work but the author history behind their time of writing and the context. So our mission statement for the series and if I can have the next slide and the mission statement reads that this series from British Library publishing brings back and contextualizes works by female writers who were successful in their day. These authors have been selected not just for the strength of their writing and the power of their storytelling, but for highlighting the realities of life for women and societies and changing attitudes towards female behavior through the decades. And that was our main mission that we took out to bookshops and to the press and reviewers. And our series editor Alison wanted me to just elaborate on this and impart her on her behalf from her perspective that what is interesting about the novels we've chosen is that while the authors were influenced by their times their own lives and so and society at large. In the creation of these works for us the readers, they present a fascinating social history from which we can learn so much as well as enjoy their fiction, the fiction that they wrote. And Simon Thomas adds to this by stating that one of his observations that he made over and over again in his reading life and academic research into the genre is that brilliant novels sometimes disappear. And if we're looking at broad trends in the early and mid 20th century, it is women writers who disproportionately wrote about small everyday moments, and these moments in these novels are often unjustly forgotten. Can I move to the next slide please. So now I'm going to introduce you to the series and try and show you how we've made it easy for readers, booksellers and reviewers to engage with the context and meaning behind the everyday moments in these novels. I'm just going to hold up one of the books. So this is Chatterton, Chatterton Square by EH Young so I hope you can see that. And each book follows the same design brief so the pattern on the cover is designed to evoke the decade the book is set in so in this case, the 1940s. And on the flap inside, I don't know if you can see that at all but there's a silhouette, and it says 1940s in there so it's really obvious to the readers which decade they're going into. The silhouette matches the one on the cover. And inside each book we've included a timeline of key historical events that happened in the decade the book's written in, a biography of the author, a preface and an afterward. So it's a full package. The collections are there to provide context, but we also do use them when creating our press releases when we're talking to buyers and when we're producing our sales material. And I've gone through each book and just pulled out a few themes from each of them and I wanted to share them with you just to illustrate the kind of information that we are trying to make more accessible and hope to also bring these books to life as well. So my husband Simon by Molly Pantadams is set in the 1930s and it explores classism and marriage and during World War Two, and during World War, and not during World War Two sorry I'm reading my notes too fast during World War Two. And the author was actually the voice of England to an American audience in the New Yorker magazine. And this is set in the 1920s by Rose Macaulay was is set in the 1920s and this focuses on the prejudices which were forced on women by society at various stages of their lives. Virginia Woolf was good friends with Rose and repeatedly noticed her noted her as too sensitive far too sensitive in her diary several times. And this was the one I held up first and was set in the 1940s and it contains perceptions of marriage divorce and spinster hood. And Young's novels took place in a fictional city called upper Radstow, which was actually Bristol where she actually grew up. So that's quite interesting. And this is set in the 1930s by Elizabeth von Arnim, and this tackled the experiences of what were branded surplus women in the interwar periods. And these were women who are married, and they were just called surplus women. Elizabeth was prolific but it's she is mostly remembered for just one novel which was called The Enchanted April. The music by Dorothy Evelyn Smith was written in the 1940s and is a retrospective coming of age story, which is set in the interwar years. And Smith later remarked that she wrote this book on the edge of her kitchen table with bombs flying all around her. She is so intoxicating set in the 1950s in a village where a man attempts to set up a tea room that displeases the lady of the manor in doing so. It's really, really funny. And Mary Essex was a pseudonym for Ursula Bloom, who wrote her first book as a child, as a child, excuse me. It was called Tiger and it was about a cat saving a family from a house fire. But not by no means least, Tree of Heaven, which is our earliest classic from 1910s by May Sinclair talks about women's suffrage and debates peaceful protest against more militant actions within her characters. Sinclair to many literature scholars is best known for having first used the term stream of consciousness in a review of Dorothy Richardson's book pilgrimage, which was released in 1918. So there's some facts I've plucked out from the books, but more than this, we also acknowledge how difficult how these books were published in a century, in which the role of women in society changed radically and explained that the authors fictional characters highlights the women's own the authors own experience of life being a woman throughout these decades. I think we can go to the next slide I think now. Yeah. So we launched this series in 2020. And which was right sort of where before the first lockdown. So a lot of our promotions we had a window displays all kinds of things for all canceled. So we had to move everything online. And we had the British Library publishing Twitter feed and Instagram account which we hurriedly set up. We had to work out how to share the books but also the stories of the authors because that's really important to the series. And this led to a lot of reviewer and blogger interest which was fantastic. And we got lots of requests and we now have a healthy fan base and a healthy blogging community and reviewers have spoken about the series in podcast and on YouTube as well. One thing we've noticed is that people not only see collectibility in the series, but they also like to rave about which is their favorite. And on the slides you can see a bit of evidence of a favorite book being tweeted about or shared. And this activity has created new conversations around these books and authors, which is just what we wanted to introduce them to new generations of women and men. And to the next slide please. And even journalists have been selecting their favorite women's fiction books. So we had a lovely review a couple of weeks ago from the TLS of all the books in the series, but the journalist remarked that other brave music was her favorite and I have to agree with her I think it's my favorite as well. And the spectator reviewer in her roundup in December the best books of 2020 stated that dangerous ages was better than most new novels she'd read for years. And going forward, we hope to continue this conversation and encourage more readers to engage with the authors and their backgrounds as we expand it. The next two will be out in spring this year, and they are mummer by Diana Tutton, which is about a dysfunctional family and tension by EM Denfield, which might rival other brave music to be my favorite because I absolutely love all her books, the ones that are currently in print. So do look out for more additions in the autumn and we'll also be launching the series in the USA and Canada later this year. And then last slide. Thank you. And thank you so much for listening. And I wouldn't be a good sales person if I didn't encourage you all to use the link in the information you've been given to the blackwells online shop to check out the books and as Paulie said at the beginning, all our books were available at the British Library shop when that reopens. So thank you so much for listening. Thanks so much to you both. That was so fascinating and a real good insight into the world of reprint publishing and how to do it. So now is our time to have questions from the audience. I am going to abuse my position as chair and ask the first question to you both, which is a question about whether you think reprint publishing has an edge over contemporary works. Does being old lend works books and the aura of gravitas and distinction that new things can simply never have. Well, my first response is, if the author is dead, you don't have to deal with the author, which may or may not be an advantage. Sometimes it's absolutely lovely dealing with an author. And sometimes it's absolutely lovely dealing with estate administrations like the Society of Authors who are super professional and just exceptional in my line of work. If you reprints have the edge. I think they can do because they will appeal to a different set of markets which the rest of trade publishing doesn't often consider. I do notice looking at the trade press like the bookseller and like the various newsletters you get that reprints and republications of forgotten fiction forgotten authors. They're ignored by the bulk of the trade press, but the readers, the people who pay the money, they adore the reprints. And I think, yeah, I think reprints have a real place in the market that the book trade media don't really pay much attention to. Yeah, I'd agree with Kate on that point. I think it's more difficult to get a hook on the market, which is why a lot of reprints here is I think our series. It's very difficult to ask a bookshop or booksellers to take a risk on authors that are completely unknown. And so there has to be, I guess, a lot of backstory behind why you've chosen to publish those particular authors. And that's actually really good because a lot of these authors do have very interesting lives and they should be remembered and brought back for new generations. Yeah, do you think there's something about the, you know, the otherness of the past as providing an escape for, you know, from the contemporary particularly now, given the contemporary is so kind of awful. I think that has a role in in selling these books and the way in which you select them and position them for the readers. I wouldn't say that selling the past as a pure nostalgia trope is a very good basis for publishing anything. It's much more important if you're going to pick out a book from the past needs to be brought back that it has something to say to the present. So when we publish Rose Macaulay's whatnot, which I think we revive Macaulay's career about 18 months ago. It was not only was a 100 year old speculative fiction about eugenics and government meddling and how people's relationships with each other worked. It had a great deal to say to present day attitudes to fake news and media manipulation. And the reviews we got were so dogmatic about this saying this is absolutely a book for our time, and it was 100 years old. And it was because we spotted that and we knew it would speak to today's readers. That's why I did so well. I think I agree with Kate on that, but I think that, you know, there's, I think there is some kind of escapism in going into the past. And I think that the import importance of work of being publishing these books is that you make sure that you do contextualize them and you do make sure that the point that those important points are not just drowned in nostalgia. They're kind of, you know, kept as as important as they were when they were first written. Yes, certainly. And I wasn't necessarily equating that, you know, escaping to otherness with nostalgia as such, but more just an escape from the present. But yeah, I think it's that interesting thing about positioning a book and I've not certainly noticed that in your marketing discourse Kate, but I think you're very skilled at spotting those connections and positioning. You know, books, forgotten books and showing how they might resonate with this context. So I wonder, could you talk a bit about, you know, your process of thinking through that when you're doing, when you're reading these books and making these selections and and, you know, the skill involved in the kind of thought processes without obviously revealing every single secret that you have, because that would be terrible. I don't think I've world enough and time to do that. My thought processes are, do I love this book? Do I have such a passionate response to this book that I want to tell someone about it immediately and to say you really must listen to me talking about this book or you too must read this book because I want to talk to you about it. If I have that reaction, that's a pretty strong signal to me that that book needs to be seriously considered. Then once I've got through the copyright, it's available. Can I track down the estate? Is it, you know, logistically, is it possible to get this as a property that we can republish? I then have to argue with the other half of handheld press, who is my husband, who is the finance director, and he knows very little about the kind of literature we publish, which is a good thing because he is the devil's advocate. I have to persuade him that we have two or three crossover markets who I will convince him will want to buy this book. And if he's happy with that, then we go ahead. If the cash flow works. Does that help to answer your question? Yes, for sure, for sure. Yeah, I suppose I'm interested in those techniques in terms of the thought processes that people have when they're reading things that make them kind of position books, but that's maybe a little bit esoteric. So let's let's move on to something else. Thank you for sending me from the audience and hello to the audience. Thank you for sending in your questions, please keep them coming in. What is the role of libraries in supporting feminist creative businesses? Obviously, the British Library has a very particular as a particular library, but any other kinds of libraries. So thoughts on libraries first Maria. And I can only speak on behalf of the publishing team at the library and the libraries are huge. The British Library is a huge sort of institution and I am. There's a lot that's going on curatorially that I may not be privy to in my, my own role but I suppose we, it's, it's, it's good to provide I suppose we felt like there should be an avenue for some of these women's voices to come through, and with the British Library branding on we felt like that was something that should happen and I think, you know, with coinciding with the unfinished business exhibition, it just seemed to us a sensible time to to do so. I mean, yeah, we're, we are the sort of National Library of the United Kingdom, we have a great resource at our fingertips. We do also operate like Kate does we have to track down the states we have to pay royalties, you know we do the whole everything by the book as a normal publisher would so we kind of crossover and I think that yeah there's probably, I'm probably not doing the question justice by my, my very commercial answer to that but yeah. That's, that's okay so it's a very good answer. And Kate. I use for libraries routinely in my daily work. I use my local library in Bath, and then on the library's West network, which is pretty much the southwest of England, because I'm continually looking for books looking for texts by authors and researching. And if I can't order it up in Bath so I can physically go and collect the book and take it home, then I use the London library, because I have an electronic access. I can order books from the London library and have them sent to me and then I can send them back. And I can use their electronic research papers. And then because I'm a research fellow Oxford Brooks University, I can use their electronic access and technically the Bodleian as well but they're close to accept the University of Oxford staff now. And finally there is a British Library catalogue, which I think is the single most important resource that I, I use all the time as a way of researching what I want to publish and the authors I'm interested in. But because of that because I use these libraries I'm very very aware that the local library network is an invaluable repository of texts. Anybody can go to their library catalogue online and look up and see, is there a book here by Angelica Garnett, is it does a library have anything by Marjorie Grant Cook. Names that nobody now will remember, but the library system and their stacks will hold these texts if they have the space and please libraries do not check out the old books are so important. So the feminist researching individual women's histories can retrieve those texts which they will never get access to in any other way. Absolutely libraries, totally invaluable in all of their different guises and I'm now going to take a slightly different tack and ask a question about bookshops and in particular Amazon. What do you think about Amazon? Should we boycott it? Should it be reformed? What about bookshop.org as an alternative. So thoughts about the contemporary bookselling book buying landscape. It is essential for many people who can't get what they need in any other way because you can't leave the house. It has a use, it's valuable. It's very important as a bibliographical research to know what is in print. I find that professionally really useful to know what texts are available and what editions they might be in. And after that I've checked on Amazon then I go to my local bookshop and order them. Girl on the Block, bookshop.org is the online replacement for Amazon and I think it has massive potential and it's so important because it gives money back to booksellers. The way it will work best is if all the publishers can get their books registered online on bookshop.org so that customers can go and buy what they want and then the wholesalers and the distributors will do the physical packing and posting. But this will mean that for every sale you make on bookshop.org a bookshop will be sent a tiny percentage of that money and they've sent hundreds of thousands of pounds already in only three months of business in the UK and in the US they've done even better. So I think that bookshop.org has the potential to take a lot of Amazon's business and Amazon won't mind because they're a behemoth. But the other really important thing about Amazon is that they distribute ebooks. There are many, many different ebook distributors but Amazon have the dominance in the market because of their Kindle platform, which they're withdrawing that's slowly being phased out to EPUB. But so many people who physically can't read or can't get at books in any other way because they can't get bookshops, they can't go out, they rely necessarily on ebooks and to be able to buy them quickly and cheaply through Amazon is essential. I think that for us, we're quite an unusual publisher in the sense that we have our own, we have a shop as part, you know, we're part of the same team that the retail team sit in. So we're very lucky to have a retailer that our books are available from and we obviously operate online and you can go into the library and buy from two, there's two sites, shop sites there. And for us, we tend to follow the line of our books are available at all good bookshops. And by that we mean online, we mean physical bookshops. And, you know, if that happens to be Amazon or if that happens to be bookshop or as long as people are able to access our books, I think that's the most important thing for us as a publisher. I think we all have our own kind of subjective opinions on things and, you know, that kind of, you know, over the lockdown I've done a lot of work in my other guys I'm a PhD student studying the history of the British book trade. And I've been doing a lot of work with the booksellers association to support that we have a hashtag on Twitter, which is choose bookshops. And that means go direct, you know, order direct, pick up the phone, and, you know, make use of your, your local shop. But so, you know, I do a bit of campaigning there but I think in terms of talking British library publishing we just we just like everyone to be able to access our books in the way that suits them, essentially, but we'll always say that they're available everywhere we never, we never kind of choose a retailer as it were. For sure. I've got a question now from Charlotte, who says thank you Charlotte. And what do you think about the trend for feminist books for children. So good night stories for rebel girls for instance. And are there any lost feminist children's classics that you can recommend or know about. Goodness. As long as feminist books are read to children of old all sexes and all gender is that that's great books are good, give them to children give children lots of books. I think that's your bottom line. Feminist classics. It's called the Wardens niece. And I'm struggling to remember the name of the author but it came out as a puffin in 1960. And it's a historical novel about a Victorian girl doing her own research and tracking down something lost. And it was so important to me as a child that still got my copy and it's upstairs. I won't go and get it. I think that's been republished and for me it was really important not just as a story in which the girl did the leading and the girls the protagonist and she found what she was looking for, but she was doing research. She was using her brain she was finding things out, being brave, pushing her boundaries. It ticked every box for me as a book for a girl. It was great. I think that I think it's great. I think it's brilliant. I really like the rebel girls products and and also then I think there's a publisher called quarter books who do a series called great lives and they started off with doing lots of different like Florence Nightingale and I can't think of any more off the top of my head but lots of different lives that by like biographies of of like women and their childhoods. And I mean as a child I would have loved that kind of book so you know it's great to see them coming out like more more of those coming out. And I can just plug her the brave music again because this is actually a coming of age tale. So this is suitable for a sort of teenage audience anyway. And I think sometimes with some of these the reprinted classics they are probably suitable for for teenage like a teenage audience or a young adult audience. So they they kind of yeah they can kind of go across kind of a few different age groups. But yeah, all in all a positive development I think. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that there's lots of children's books although I can't they can't I can't come to mind at the moment which ones they were but written during the women's movements in the 70s and 80s so it's probably worth, you know doing research in that area if if that's something you're interested in. And a question, a bit of a technical question here. So what would the copyright situation be if the novel was serialized in a newspaper but never appeared as a book. In one case it appeared in the Daily Herald which no longer exists in another appeared in a range of local papers in the UK and in Australia, and the author died in 1963. It would still be in copyright wouldn't it Kate, but it's nothing to do with where it was published. If it was, if the author died in 63 it's in copyright for 13 more years. Now getting around that. Yeah, so moseying up and trying to make friends with the, the, the estates and the, the relatives, and that's the only way to do it isn't it. So get in touch with the estate and discuss and you may find that a family are just so delighted to have a book back in print they won't charge you anything. I've had that happen a couple of times. And it's, you know, not everybody wants the money. They just want the book back so people can read it that is sometimes as important, if not more. So don't worry too much about can I afford it is it going to cost me thousands of pounds because it won't, it really won't try just, you know, have a look, see what you can do and then negotiate. Yes, negotiation, for sure. And there's another technical question. Thank you, Kate says Miss, Miss McDonald, Dr McDonald mentioned that she was worried that another publisher would also republish the Zelda Fitzgerald book as it went out of copyright. If there was one more, more than one publisher doing so, would someone have to bow out or can multiple publishers release a book that has gone out of copyright. Hope that makes sense. Yes, if a book is out of, if a text is out of copyright, it can appear again in as many editions as the market was a publisher's think the market will support. So we have this when John Buchan came out of copyright after 50 years after his death because this was before you all changed. You have five separate publishers reprinting John Buchan's text like mad because he is a perennial best seller, and then EU law change and he went back into copyright. And so we have the bizarre situation of John Buchan editions, all over the place but he was out he was still in copyright. The point is, can the markets, can, can the market support multiple editions. In the case of Zelda Fitzgerald saved me the walls. I reckon another edition would be fine. I think four editions would be completely bonkers because it's one title only. And for a big name like Scott Fitzgerald himself. I'm pretty sure the estate have that all sewn up, but I think he's now out of or about to come out of copyright. And it could well be that the major publisher is like oh you be classics penguin Barnes and Noble classics New York review book classics they all have editions lined up of all of his works to come out as a big batch. We don't know, but was a name like that you can be sure of selling a lot with a lesser known name like Zelda, you can't be sure. So that was my concern, would our edition be swamped out as a foreign British edition in the massive heartland of the same country. And thankfully it hasn't been it hasn't been the case. Okay, so a question for both of you because I think both the British Library women's series and the handheld press books are both very elegantly designed and presented and very recognisable as well. So how important do you think having a unified design and an aesthetic consistency to that is in ensuring that books are recognizable and identifiable for for readers they thinking about the package of the design I know you talked a bit about the lovely images on the cover. Kate, but if you could talk about the whole. Yeah, the, the design was one of the things I tackled almost immediately. Once I got the company up and running, and I needed a designer because I'm an editor and print bar. I'm not a designer. And thankfully I found perfect designer almost immediately and she and I have been working together for every three years. But her background is book design as well as corporate design. So she and I were very clear we needed a unified series design for the handheld classics. So you've got the bleed off at the top. So the image at the top it goes right to the top of the card. But you've got a border either side and we have the title and the author names, but the spine in the back. I've got the color picked out from one of the colors in the cover here in the picture. So that's our series design for the other lists we have which is hand out research and hand out modern, the look is a little different. And that's important so the books can be seen on a table in waterstones if we could ever afford to pay that and look like they come from the same family they're going to lend each other the same authority the same. If you like this you might like that. It's important to have a family reassures the reader and makes them feel okay we know what's here we know what the parameters are. And it just looks gorgeous. I mean what is wrong with good design it's just a joy to behold it makes you feel positive and good and I want to hold that about the product that's that's our rationale. Yeah, I think I grew Kate on that and I for us. We've got a brilliant designer specifically just for the series and who we've been working very closely with and she came up with the idea of doing this wrap around kind of so that yes it's fully covered. And I mean I as a salesperson my main sort of concern when designing anything new or if the editors come to me and say this is a new design for a series is is envisaging that in a bookshop and is it going to stand out other words is the type going to stand out. And one of the suggestions we had a thought we had originally so I'm just trying to hold this book up so you can actually see the silhouette on the front and someone suggested we die cut that now I'm an expert seller and I know that die cut equals tears covers. So I sort of said I think maybe we should keep that filled in and I and when I spoke to the buyers. They were a big book chain about about that they were they were quite relieved because they said that they probably would have ordered less had we gone with the die the die cut. So it's things like that is it's kind of paying attention to your bias as well and thinking about where your books are going to be seen. Additionally, if you're going to go for more of an online audience you have to think about whether or not the tiny image you get, you know to, you know that your customers are going to see is are people going to be able to read it are people going to be able to look at that design and know that that's your series. So, and I think we had a bit of practice in that with the crime classics, because they are very much known for their series design. So we have the kind of pressure that we needed to do something really good with this series because we were going to be touched on our previous success essentially. Yeah. Great. Okay, a question here from Shristi who says, and I wanted to know if either of you feel that there is enough. If there is enough black Asian and other minority voices being heard in your sourcing and contextualizing. Do you have any books in the works for either of your your series. I don't, I don't publish any, I cannot find books, texts to publish in the handheld classics. I'm trying hard to get one in the handheld research list. I knew I was picked at the post last autumn because I had tracked down a superb memoir by an author I can't name because another publisher now has the rights to that author's estate. I don't agree because I was two weeks too late to get to negotiations and aggravated me so much. I think the problem is, I don't know enough about what is out there because I'm white. I come from Northeast Scotland. I do not have the cultural background. I don't have the access. I don't have the connections. This is a heartfelt plea. If anybody out there knows of a text, a novel, short stories, nonfiction biography letters by the diverse market we're talking about, which is black BAME, Southeast Asian, whatever, that they think would work for handheld classics, please get in touch. I am handicapped by my own restrictions by my limitations. I'm very aware of it. So I'm asking for your help. Please help me expand the range in that way. We, like with what Kate said, we found it a challenge to find, to research and source a lot of BAME or Black and Ethic Minority fiction from these eras that we're talking about. But we really want to, and it's definitely part of our mission as a library and as publishing department. We're actually putting together a task sort of focus group of people from all different backgrounds who are going to help us in our search in the library's archives. So do watch this space because we are going to be massively diversifying the list in the next couple of years. Like, because we always plan quite forward in what we're doing. So yes, we're very excited. Yeah, and I suppose this relates to that question, a question from Sophie, which is that other than bringing forth a possibly forgotten history, what more can reprints add to the current social political conversations and can they create new ones? So that's a question of whether or not reprints can move forward conversations. Yeah, I think what I'm actively trying to do is normalizing certain groups. So I have quite a few titles on our list which are by lesbian, lesbian writers, because for me it's important to ensure that women who live with other women are just as part of the normal background, the default background of our society as heterosexual couples. It's a small thing, but the more texts we have in print, which have that kind of diversity, the better. I'm also making a very active push to have writers with disabilities. At the moment it's physical disabilities and to write about disability in the text, not as this is a story about disability, but here's a character who happens to have a physical impairment and let's just get on with it. So normalization is I think what we can bring to extending the acculturation of these things. Whether all these diverse elements will exist in the literature of the past, which is what I in British Library Publishing Specializing, that's a separate question, and we have to look harder I think. Yeah, we're out there. We just have to work at it and get them into print again. I particularly agree with Kate's response. We have to put the work into finding these voices. They do exist. They are there. We're not shutting them out. We want to actively republish them. And I think what Kate said about their being, and what I touched on earlier, that it's difficult within the early and mid 20th century, the predominant voices were for a lot of fiction and that were kind of publicized heavily were white and were seemingly straight white. But there were writers that were writing at the same time. And it's about finding the sources that lead us to those writers because they are there. It's just about uncovering. And that is something that we are definitely working on. Yeah, well that sounds really exciting for the future, I think. Just one more question, and just to conclude close about nonfiction works. This is focused mainly on fiction. This is from Fiona and really enjoying the women writer series among other and other reprints and wondered if there are any similar series with nonfiction works and is there a market for reprints of forgotten nonfiction written by women. Yeah, we're bringing out one this summer, Rose McCauley personal pleasures collection of estates which are divinely funny and witty and so intelligent. But also collections of letters and biography which is what we are beginning to specialize in with the handheld research list. So letters from the past and studies of women from the past, reliving their lives bringing their lives to the public gaze. So that's a very important part of what we do. Yeah, we without nonfiction we do tend to enlist the help of our curators to tell stories from the archive so I suppose in some ways our nonfiction is all about that so we publish a variety of topics. So we've got a book on sea shanties that's coming out next week, quite timely apparently because TikTok is apparently full of sea shanties stuff at the moment, but that wasn't planned, but that that was put together with the British Library Sound archive. And so we, and the maps archive have been fantastic we've done some really amazing maps books, and within all of our books we use our images from the archives but we also tell the story behind the images and why the library has them and that kind of thing. So, so yeah so we hope to continue doing a lot more, a lot more of that in, you know, yeah we publish as a say 50 books a year and majority is fiction we do have a small nonfiction list as well and they're all available on the field British Library shop. And if you wanted to have a look at what we have. Sure. Okay so that's it I'm going to hand over to Margaret a jolly in a second I just want to say huge huge thank you to Kate McDonald and to Maria for their amazing presentations and input into this session it has been so interesting to me to hear from you and I'm sure everybody else feels the same. So, over to Margaret. Okay, thank you also I want to really thank our wonderful speakers. Also to you DM for sharing and to the audience for joining the debate. Please come back at five o'clock today, where we will continue to explore these quite complex questions of how to do feminist business and how to do creative and ethical women's business. We'll be doing this in a workshop on making feminist comics, and bring your pencil and paper if you want to have a go doing it. Nicholas Street and will tell you exactly how and what to do as a leading comics scholar. And of course come back tomorrow to on Friday for our closing panel debate. If you miss anything all will be recorded and available on the British libraries website. So more about the business of women's words project check out our blog. Thank you again so much and see you soon.