Resignation from Embrace Books

Yesterday afternoon, I resigned as Executive Editor for Embrace Books, the popular fiction imprint of Salt Publishing.

I wish all the writers there long and successful careers, and have thoroughly enjoyed the process of running a small independent fiction imprint, from commissioning writers through to helping to promote their books.

I've learnt a vast amount about writing and editing fiction from my work at Embrace Books. Editing is not a job for the faint-hearted, nor indeed the brutally honest. I had to develop skills as an editor that I'd never needed before as a writer - like being tactful, for instance!

It's also challenged me to grow in social terms. Being an editor isn't all about staring at a computer screen for hours or scribbling on manuscripts. Writers can get away with that kind of isolated lifestyle but editors can't. Needing to go out and meet authors in person, do the rounds at the London Book Fair, write long chatty emails, talk at conferences, and generally behave like a normal social creature has been immensely good for me. In fact, I may never slink back into my cave again!

I shall be concentrating on my own writing from now on, largely as Victoria Lamb, and can only hope it has benefited from a year spent on the other side of the desk.

Many heartfelt thanks, meanwhile, to all the lovely authors with whom I've worked at Embrace, and to the team at Salt who supported me in my work there. It's been an amazing year!

Get Writing!

For those based in the south of the UK, next month I'll be appearing at the Get Writing Conference, based at the University of Hertfordshire.

My talk/workshop is on Making the Transition from Poetry & Short Fiction to Novels.

In other words, how to write long after years of writing short.

I'll also be taking pitches for Embrace Books later in the day, alongside a wide range of other editors, agents, publishers ...

The conference is a fast-paced, one-day affair on Saturday 19th February. Hope to see some of you there!

Embrace Books

For those who don't know, I recently accepted an invitation to edit Embrace Books, a new digital romance line coming out of Salt Publishing in the UK.

While I wait for the website to be ready, I've launched an Embrace Books blog so that prospective writers can find the necessary guidelines and details of how to submit work.

I'll be keeping that side of my career separate from my writing, so don't expect many posts here about my work as an editor.

Indeed, I write this surrounded by research materials, reference books, my thesaurus, and a rough handwritten draft of my latest chapter. Yes, the great Tudor novel continues to grow apace.

SALT: Just One More Book

These are lean times for publishers, and my own publishers, Salt, have put out an appeal for people to buy some of their books - just one, in fact, could make a difference. Sales have been greatly reduced in recent months, probably as a knock-on effect from the continuing recession, and they very much need people to buy some of their excellent wares.

You can read their Just One More book appeal here at the Salt blog, with a link to Amazon and the Book Depository, where I believe Salt prefer you to buy their books.

Other writers and bloggers are supporting the Just one Book campaign across the internet. Here's one example from Tom Vowler.

This appeal comes just as Salt announce a brand-new imprint called Embrace Books, to be edited by me. Embrace Books will publish romance ebooks in various categories; we plan to launch the first titles in Spring 2011.

Anyone who was thinking of submitting a category romance manuscript to Embrace Books (first 3 chapters and synopsis to jane AT saltpublishing.com), but is now uncertain, should understand two things.

1. Salt has weathered this kind of storm before, using precisely this kind of appeal to its readers.
2. Embrace Books is a new imprint, a digital fiction imprint, and will be run almost entirely separately from its parent company, Salt Publishing.

The poet Andrew Philip, on his blog Tonguefire, makes the valid point that independent publishers like Salt are vital, and that buying a book from them now, to help them keep afloat in this recession, is 'about you – the reader — and making sure that you continue to have the opportunity to expand your imaginative horizons in fresh and unexpected directions, directions increasingly denied you by the chain bookstores.'

I recommend Wena Poon's brand-new 'Alex y Robert', a brave and stunning novel about a woman who wants to be a matador, against all the odds. It's also a very beautiful looking book.

Support exciting, independently published fiction and buy Wena's novel ahead of the crowd here at Salt (not available from Amazon until its official launch in 2011).