“People get very
worked up about creating a book and having their name on it. Write for yourself. Not for anyone else”.
Tahir Shah is an Anglo-Afghan Indian author and a
controversial character in the literary world, for he is not afraid to talk
about how the book publishing world is behind with the times or about how
self-important authors annoy him. Shah has strong views on traditional book
publishing practices and assertively refers to those publishers who do not
employ new methods as being ‘stuck in the stone-age’.
“I am quite against the conventional model that publishers
use to sell books. It’s really old fashioned and really boring. I think the
printing is really shoddy and pathetic.
I am so passionate to recreate beautiful books”.
Timbuctoo, Shah’s latest book, a historical novel about the
first Christian man to visit Timbuktu, is self-published on the grounds that
Shah is fed up being embarrassed by his books being published in such a ‘shoddy
and pathetic’ way, with cheap paper and unoriginal cover art. He almost
commands that there should be more respect for books, as works of art rather
than cheaply put together paperbacks.
The new book was a complete sell out at Wigtown Book
Festival and those who did not manage to get a copy enquired to as where they
could get one (Amazon - if anyone is wondering). The aesthetic beauty of this book caused
quite a flurry of excitement in the audience. It is rare to see such a striking
looking modern book. We have become used
to seeing brightly coloured book covers, filled with cheap paper.
People queued up after hearing Shah speak to have a better
look at the book, and feel the weight and quality of the book in their
hands. The book feels expensive and you
would be proud to have it on your coffee table, as a conversation piece, some
might say. There are tastefully
illustrated black and white maps that fold out from the book, and create a
whole new dimension to the story being told.
Being a self-published book this also gave Shah the freedom
to experiment with new methods of publicising the book – “What I have tried to
do because I have published this myself is to hype the book in ways that is not
usually done in the media. For example
geocaching things – you hide items, anywhere, like in the countryside or a
city, and then people with their smart-phones use the GPS to find it. So, I
have hidden e-copies of the book on USB drives, lots of them, all over the
country”.
Shah argues that publishers are actually not as great as
some might think at publicising books and he hopes that they change their
approach soon, as to avoid ending up with the problems the music industry
has. He feels the currently publishing
situation can be adeptly compared to a book called The Tale of the Sands – “In
it a river wants to cross the dessert and it gets absorbed by the sand and the
wind tells the river that if it wants to cross the desert it can but it needs
to change its form. You have got to come
in to the wind as mist and I will blow you across. I think publishing is
similar to this. They have been living
in a la la cuckoo land for too long. I hope a new model is emerging”.
Another of his pet hates is when writers are self-important
and in turn almost end up being some sort of celebrity.
“I feel so embarrassed. It is kind of like a carpenter –
‘yeah I made a pretty good table today’. I just see writing as a craft, like
woodwork. I don’t want to know what the carpenter ate for breakfast or what his
sex life is like”.
Despite his complaints about publishing and of other authors
his arguments are all based around the philosophy that you should write for
yourself, as it is the journey you embark on during the writing process which
is the most important part of writing a book, above everything else.
No comments:
Post a Comment