{"id":507,"date":"2016-05-30T22:30:34","date_gmt":"2016-05-30T22:30:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/centreforcreativewriting\/?p=507"},"modified":"2016-05-30T22:30:34","modified_gmt":"2016-05-30T22:30:34","slug":"eloise-millar-aidan-semmens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/centreforcreativewriting\/eloise-millar-aidan-semmens\/","title":{"rendered":"Eloise Millar & Aidan Semmens"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eloise Millar is one of the directors of Galley Beggar Press, a literary journalist, and a novelist. Aidan Semmens is a poet and a journalist, and the editor of the poetry e-zine Molly Bloom<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As it\u2019s now the summer term, the event kicked off with four student readers. We heard Katie Szyszko reading a fragment based on a house she lived in in Hungary, Chris Scott reading a scene set in Paris at night time from the novel he\u2019s writing for his PhD, John Wright reading poetry written in dialogue with articles by Robert Macfarlane, and David Dykes reading some poetry that he had written in a seminar taught by Simon Smith. You can read all of this work in the summer reading series booklets, available at the reading series every week — do buy one!<\/p>\n

The summer term reading series events are about the publishing industry, and so while both Eloise and Aidan are published writers, they were here in their capacity as publishers and editors.<\/p>\n

Molly Bloom<\/em> is an online poetry magazine that Aidan says is pretty much in \u2018the modernist tradition\u2019 — which doesn\u2019t mean that everything he publishes has to be explicitly modernist<\/em>. But it is a tradition, or a general area of poetry, that he\u2019s interested in. That he likes. The magazine is a reincarnation of a print magazine that Aidan published in 1980, shortly after leaving Cambridge. He set the website up three years ago after being persuaded to recreate it online — he could reach a much wider readership. \u201cPoetry is a niche within a niche,\u201d Aidan says, and finding the readership for the print magazine had been difficult. Online, it\u2019s much easier.<\/p>\n

Galley Beggar was set up in 2012, Eloise tells us, by three people — her, Sam Jordison, and Henry Layte (who is no longer involved; he runs The Book Hive in Norwich). She says that they\u2019d been meeting in Henry\u2019s bookshop for a year, \u201carrogantly moaning\u201d about publishing — about ugly books, and about how it felt that writers they liked weren\u2019t able to get published, or weren\u2019t selling so well, which would then stop them from being able to publish their work. They have eclectic tastes, and the books they wanted to see were often considered maybe too experimental, too left-field. And then one day, she says, they decided — let\u2019s do this! Henry\u2019s godfather, Simon Gough, had written a fictionalised book about his great-uncle — Robert Graves. It had been commissioned as a drama by the BBC as a drama, but when they dropped it, he turned it into a novel. He had been working on it for 25 years. So they took it on — it was their first book. It was a process of learning very quickly. They\u2019ve now published a number of books, including the multi-award-winning A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing<\/em>, by recent guest to UoK Eimear McBride! Eloise says that like Molly Bloom<\/em>, Galley Beggar is also interested in publishing works that fit into a modernist tradition, with their authors Eimear McBride and Alex Phelby as key examples.<\/p>\n

Amy asks if it\u2019s been difficult for them to publish works that are modernist and\/or experimental, and why they think they\u2019re not being more widely published. Eloise says that at Galley Beggar they can publish what they fancy, and with Eimear and Alex their work is definitely modernist, with a real focus on interiority, but both have done well. Aidan says that poetry doesn\u2019t sell — nobody is in it for the money, and so he\u2019s able to publish what he wants, too, without worrying about what is financially viable. The project is about him working out what he likes on his own, without external\/monetary pressure.<\/p>\n

Next they talked about how they promote the work they publish. Aidan says that he uses Facebook to connect with writers, and that his network is always expanding there. Facebook is also his prime means of distribution. In 1980 it cost \u00a3400 to produce a single issue in print, even as cheaply made as possible. Now he can reach people for a fraction of the cost.<\/p>\n

Eloise says that at Galley Beggar they publish 2-4 writers in print books a year — they couldn\u2019t manage more books than that. But Sam thought up their Singles Club short stories and subscription package, that allows them to publish one short story a month as an ebook. These tend to be small pieces of work by new writers, giving them a platform. They\u2019re for sale online, and they go to a few hundred subscribers. They had a headstart with publicising their books because of Sam\u2019s contacts (Sam works as a literary journalist at The Guardian and elsewhere), and their skills from publishing — the networking really helps. The book trade is the only industry where stock can be returned up to 18 months later. So Waterstone\u2019s might order 800 books but send 600 back — which is really difficult and dangerous for small presses. So they have to do their best to survive. Eloise deals with the production side of the books herself — she talks to the typesetter, printer and distributor directly. She has a database with literary journalists in and a good sense of what everyone likes, what\u2019s been reviewed lately etc., so they can email people individually about their upcoming titles. This allows them to ask for feedback, and knowledge of what\u2019s happening. They go to events, and meetups with other small publishers too. \u201cIf you run a small press you\u2019ve got to be a jack of all trades!\u201d<\/p>\n

The first issue of Molly Bloom<\/em> was entirely made up of writers that Aidan had invited to submit poems to him, but the proportion of solicited to unsolicited works that he publishes is changing with time. The website says that he\u2019s open to submissions, and he\u2019s slowly getting more and more sent to him without having to ask otherwise. He says that the next issue he publishes will be the first to be entirely made up of work that he came across in this way. Because it\u2019s not about money, he can just take what he likes, and what fits the magazine — he says he does get some submissions that are well-written that he doesn\u2019t take just because he can\u2019t see the point in what they\u2019re doing.<\/p>\n

Galley Beggar used to have manuscript submissions open online, but Eloise says that it was too overwhelming — they\u2019d be sent around 200 manuscripts a week. They had to find a third reader, but even then it was just too much to get through. So they\u2019ll move to a system where they have short reading windows — that way they can still receive unsolicited manuscripts, but it\u2019ll be easier to manage. They\u2019ve got a book upcoming from a UoK alumnus (Gonzalo<\/a>! A former writer of this blog<\/a>!) who was shortlisted for their recent short story prize, and they\u2019re working closely with another writer from the shortlist too. They only publish work that they love — they need to have a lot of passion and interest to get through the process. \u201cWe know it when it arrives,\u201d Eloise says. This passion hopefully follows the book through the whole process — Eloise says that independent publishing isn\u2019t likely to make a lot of money, but they do get attention from people who really care about the work. Larger publishers are great too, but they\u2019re up against a lot — smaller presses can maybe take more risks. Aidan says that poetry publishing has now often moved to PoD, but Eloise says that Galley Beggar use litho printing and have books stored in a warehouse; this is a key difference between poetry and fiction. It\u2019s good to have a number of books printed at once — better margins, and the books are readily available if they\u2019re suddenly needed.<\/p>\n

The best part, for Aidan, is when he receives a great new poem by someone he hadn\u2019t heard of before (although he stresses that it\u2019s also good to get poetry from people he does know!); he doesn\u2019t like reading a lot of the poetry that\u2019s out there, but he does like the poetry that gets sent to Molly Bloom<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Eloise\u2019s favourite part of the process is watching a book come together over the editorial process — and then hopefully receiving good reviews, and awards nominations! So many of their authors have previously been rejected from bigger presses for commercial reasons, so it\u2019s really great to see them selling well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eloise Millar is one of the directors of Galley Beggar Press, a literary journalist, and a novelist. Aidan Semmens is a poet and a journalist, and the editor of the poetry e-zine Molly Bloom. As it\u2019s now the summer term, the event kicked off with four student readers. We heard Katie Szyszko reading a fragment […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41164,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/centreforcreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/centreforcreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/centreforcreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/centreforcreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/41164"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/centreforcreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=507"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/centreforcreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":508,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/centreforcreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507\/revisions\/508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/centreforcreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/centreforcreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/centreforcreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}