SNOWBOOKS

In an earlier post about U.K. publishers who will accept submissions from writers I listed Snowbooks. Here's a link to Snowbooks' submission guidelines.

I check into Snowbooks' blog most weekdays, as I have for the past two years or more.


It's a chatty, friendly, open blog which doesn't fall prey to simply plugging their stable of writers.

I've explored lots of little diverting byways on the net I would never have discovered - steampunk sites, techie sites, and John Cusack's interview with Naomi Klein, for example - through following Rob Jones's and Emma Barnes's posts and links.

Emma Barnes comes across as a friendly, honest and open workaholic who spends a lot of time designing and refining business systems, always with the intention of increasing efficiency and selling more books more effectively.

Emma freely shares a lot of her knowledge with her peers in the publishing industry.
And, very commendably, has opened up access to Snowbooks' monthly sales figures for anyone who is interested and who applies for a password.

Rob Jones (aka as writer Robert Finn) is more the thinker-at-large, opining on topics as diverse as techie gadgetry, exploitation in the Third World, vegetarianism, Dr. Who, screenwriting and Joss Wheedon.

Snowbooks' efforts have been recognised with a clutch of industry awards.

Their stable of writers is a rich, diverse mix of contemporary fiction, non-fiction and a couple of volumes by luminaries such as Virginia Woolf and E.M. Forster.

Yesterday I followed Emma's link to Strictly Writing where she posts an honest assessment of why Snowbooks rejects work , even work they believe to be 'outstanding'. Emma says, "If you have written a novel which is destined in the future to win the Booker, chances are that we at Snowbooks will reject you. We have an editorial policy driven primarily by our own entirely subjective tastes, combined with a forecast of what we think we can sell."

Emma also says, "We've turned down books in the past which fit our editorial plans perfectly but the author seemed to be the sort of person we'd rather not work with."

Interesting, invaluable stuff. Well worth checking out.