Report
from the Writers' Union of Canada AGM 2008
by Michael Bryson
The Writers'
Union of Canada's 2008 AGM concluded today (May 25, 2008) in Toronto. I attended
sessions on May 22 and 23, before family duties called. (My step-son
turned eight!)
May 22nd: Panel on "Making Our Words Count: Canadian
Authors in the Electronic Era"
- The panel consisted of Derek
Weiler, editor of Quill
and Quire; Bill Kennedy, Coach
House Books web editor and director of the Scream
Literary Festival; Simon Chester, copyright lawyer; Jill
Tonus, new media law expert.
- The key message that came out of
this session was authors need to be online.
- At the same time, there is still
no viable business model for making money through digital
publishing.
- Ten years ago, I graduated from
the Canadian
Film Centre's new media program. A bright future was then
imagined for "digital storytelling." While some of that
has come to pass, we still seem deep in the middle of a
transition. Are writers just "content producers"? The
Writers' Union represents writers "of books," but the
consistent message through the AGM was "go online." You
need to have an online presence to "get a platform" to
"get an audience" to ... sell, sell, sell.
- The other key message from this
session was that copyright law is in a state of confusion.
Technology has evolved and continues to evolve well ahead of the
ability of legislators to keep up ... if they even care to keep
up.
- The final message was, it's an
awful lot easier to sell non-fiction than fiction. Online
communities can be built around areas of common interest -- like
wine -- but how does a novelist build an online community. By
spinning off a subject related to the novel? Isn't this just
non-fiction? How does fiction survive in a virtual world demanding
links to the "real"?
May 23: Workshop on
"Looking Forward: A New Generation of Industry Insiders"
- The panel consisted of Amy Logan
Holmes, of Open Book
Toronto; Jennifer Lambert from HarperCollins; lawyer Warren
Sheffer; Suzanne Brandreth from The Cooke Agency.
- While the subject of this session
was shaping "the books of tomorrow," the panel really
talked about the pressures shaping the book business today. There
was more focus in this session on the literary market.
- For example, Jennifer Lambert
talked about the types of submissions publishers see. Right now,
there are apparently lots of people writing from the point of view
of dogs and elephants. Please, people, stop! Your work is hard to
distinguish from each other!
- Suzanne Barndreth talked about
trying to sell Canadian novelists to foreign publishers who recoil
at the thought of yet another "Canadian suicide novel."
No more protagonists dying in the snow! More fulsome, thumping
endings!
- Key message repeated: Authors need
to blog, get online, build up a community of readers.
May 23: Workshop on "The
Future of Magazine Lit"
- Bill Nickerson with The
New Quarterly's Kim Jernigan; The
Walrus's Daniel Baird; and the managing editor of Descant
and Carousel, Mark Laliberte.
- Once again, this was a workshop
advertised as a talk about the future, but the participants spoke
about the pressures of the present (and the evolution of magazines
over time).
- Norman
Levine's short story
"We All Start in the Little Magazines" was invoked, as
was the notion that the small lit mags are the breeding ground of
the literary stars of tomorrow. Perhaps it ought to have been said
that the literary magazines are where literature lives (they are
the big leagues!).
- The lasting impression left by
this workshop: the funding model for literary magazines is insane.
- Why was no one on this panel from
an online magazine, say The
Danforth Review? Online magazines are not the future of
magazine lit.... They have been its present for a decade already!
May 23: Workshop on
"Raising Your Public Profile"
- The panel consisted of moderator
Ray Argyle; Cynthia Good, former President and Publisher of
Penguin Canada; Rick Broadhead, literary agent; and pod-caster
extraordinaire Charles Hodgson.
- How do you raise your public
profile? Write non-fiction; get a platform; go online and blog
blog blog.
- What's a platform and how do you
get one? Think: Who are you? Why should anyone else care?
Aristotle would have said it's your ethical appeal. What makes you
convincing?
- No one addressed the question: How
are you supposed to find time to write your book, when you are
spending so much time trying to get famous doing something else?
- Bottom line: Books written by
famous people are easier to sell than books written by people with
no public profile.
- How do you get a public profile?
Don't write a book!
- As above ... blog, blog, blog.
May 23: Workshop on
"What I Wish I'd Known"
- The panel consisted of novelists
Susan Swan, Wayston Choy, Nino Ricci and Paul Quarrington.
- Ricci and Choy said they're glad
no one told them was the writing life was really like. It's better
not to know and to find it out for yourself.
- Quarrington repeated some learned
wisdom: "Bitterness is the writer's black lung disease."
- Ricci agreed. You need to accept
that you will be repeatedly humiliated. Last year (!), one of
Ricci's readings had an audience of three people. The reading was
in an Italian neighbourhood in Toronto. The audience consisted of
two tourists from England who'd never heard of him and someone
who'd wandered in off the street. The organizer said: "I
thought you were better known."
- Swan said she wished she'd known
that funding bodies expect writers to be professional. They don't
just hand out money because you have a brilliant idea!
- Choy said: At the end of the day,
learn your craft. Having a good idea is not enough.
- Quarrington said: At the end of
the day, there's the body of work. Be proud of it. Avoid
careerism.
- No one said: Start a blog!
Michael Bryson
started a blog: http://thenewcanlit.blogspot.com/
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