Claire Skuse of Chicken House offers views from both sides of the publishing process
Claire Skuse
For the ninth feature in our series on publishing houses we take our first look at the world of children’s book publishing and interview Claire Skuse, Publishing Officer and author at Chicken House. Claire’s debut novel for teenagers will be published by Chicken House in March 2010. She talks us through the publishing process.
How did you come to work for Chicken House?
I had just completed a BA in Creative Studies in English, followed by a Masters Degree in Writing for Young People at Bath Spa University. I sent out eleven CVs to every single publishing house within a fifty-mile radius of where I lived and by chance the Publishing Assistant at Chicken House was leaving so they contacted me for an interview.
What is your role with the company?
As Publishing Officer my job is really varied so I have many different roles, but the majority of my day is spent on administration tasks like fielding queries from the public, distributing post and liaising with authors and our publicity department regarding author events and festivals.
I’m in charge of our new look website, which launches in September 2009, sending out proofs and new titles for review to trade and press organisations, assisting our Rights Manager with foreign rights queries and mailings and assisting the managing directors with materials and portfolios for presentations and book fairs such as Bologna or Frankfurt.
I’m also responsible for submitting books for prizes such as The Guardian and Waterstone’s children’s book prizes, writing copy for author information sheets, book blurbs and press releases, handling unsolicited submissions and making travel arrangements for literary events.
What makes Chicken House different to other children’s publishing houses?
I think Chicken House is renowned for its embracing of new and quirky children’s fiction and its dedication to bring out the best in its new authors. I haven’t seen the workings of many other publishing houses, but the sheer dedication our editors pour into making our books as good as possible really astounds me.
Because we are such a small company, I think we can offer more attention and understanding to authors and their books than perhaps larger companies would be able to afford.
What kind of books does Chicken House publish?
We publish picture books, books for children aged seven and up, books for the age-group 10 and up, and books for teenagers?
What happens to a submission once it reaches your office?
In February this year, we changed our way of dealing with unsolicited manuscripts. We now ask authors to submit to our annual Children’s Fiction competition, which we run with The Times newspaper.
Authors are welcome to send in their full-length novels between the months of August and October inclusive and from those submissions, our judges will select a shortlist, to be announced in the New Year. The judges will choose a winner from this shortlist, to be announced the following Easter, and this is the entrant whose story demonstrates the greatest entertainment value, quality and originality.
The prize is the offer of a worldwide publishing contract with Chicken House, subject to negotiation and completion between Chicken House and the winner.
What do you look for in a submission?
First and foremost, an original idea. A well told, pacy plot and believable, quirky characters with whom one can identify from the start also help.
How can a new author get past the slush pile?
By entering our competition, every single submission we receive is guaranteed to be considered by members of a panel of highly experienced, competent and knowledgeable readers and even if a book doesn’t go on to win the competition, it may be shortlisted, in which case the author will receive some more detailed feedback from one of the editors. It really is a great opportunity for aspiring novelists.
Once you have accepted a manuscript for publication, how do you prepare it for publication?
From acquisition to finished copy, a book will undergo a number of processes and edits. My own manuscript was acquisitioned and contracted by Chicken House last October 2009 and it is being released in March 2010. After a couple of author edits, it was copy edited and proofread and then it was sent to be typeset to make the text appear as it will in the final book.
The cover designer has done two book covers in pink and black for both female and male readers to choose from. Proof copies will be produced next month for us to send out to potential reviewers and the final book should be arriving in our office in January 2010.
Sometimes this process can take a very long time. A book can undergo a number of edits and will be going back and forth to the author many times, but as my book was written as part of my MA dissertation, it had already been heavily workshopped and edited by my tutors and peers and this has saved so much time for the editors at Chicken House.
What is your favourite part of this process?
Definitely seeing the cover ideas coming in, and that’s the same for all books we produce, not just my own. It’s so exciting because it gives the book a face, and everyone at the company gets a say in what we like/dislike about the initial cover suggestions as they come in from the designer.
What is the most challenging part of it?
Every single process is exciting for me, because I’m watching how books are being created, almost from start to finish. For me as an author, the most challenging part is waiting for the next stage to happen - waiting for my book to come back from being edited or waiting for the new cover idea.
But that’s just because I’m impatient! I’ve had to grow up a little and realise that there are many other books which come out before mine and are just as important, so it’s been a great learning curve for me.
How did you go about submitting your own book to Chicken House?
Basically I plucked up the courage to ask if I could put my manuscript on our Commissioning Editor’s desk and waited to hear what she thought. She liked it, then passed it on to our managing director Barry Cunningham who also liked it, and then this snowballed throughout the company until everyone had read it.
I’ve always been a little jealous of people who work for the company which publishes their books or those authors who know someone within the industry, seeing it as nepotism, but I had been sending a couple of previous novels off to publishers and agents for the past twelve years and had nothing but rejection letters back, so I figured the time had come for me to be a bit hypocritical!
How did it feel to be on the other side of this process?
Very odd, but it’s helped me learn so much about the process that goes into publishing a book and I have got to see my book at every single stage of edit and design, which most authors don’t.
Whose writing has excited you recently?
I’m working through J.D. Salinger’s short stories at the moment and I’m just getting round to reading all the Harry Potter books in sequence and loving those.
I’m also discovering great American authors for teenagers like Ron Koertge, Scott Westerfeld and Jack Gantos. I love reading anything by Stephen King, Kevin Brooks, David Levithan or Rachel Cohn. Anthony McGowan is an exceptional UK children’s writer too.
I read a lot of comics and graphic novels as well, most namely the Bill Willingham series Fables and The Umbrella Academy. I read all four novels in the Twilight saga over Christmas and thoroughly enjoyed those too, despite Stephen King’s reservations.
The very least I expect from books is to enter a world in which I like to spend time and characters with whom I can identify and these books ticked those boxes for me. I’m definitely an Edward girl!
What would you say the main challenges are for an aspiring author? Probably just getting anyone to read their work and, following on from that, learning how to take the criticism when it is offered. Those are the two main obstacles I have had to overcome. I knew I had a tiny gift but I needed to get a lot better if I had any hopes of being taken seriously in the publishing world, which is why I pushed myself very hard in my degree courses and got my work read by as many different people as possible.
Being published is my dream but I knew I had to make it happen, it didn’t just fall into my lap. Also, life tends to get in the way when you’re a writer and it’s very easy to put it on the back burner and allow your day job or your family or other commitments to take over.
A true author has to be quite arrogant sometimes in reducing contact time with people and minimising other activities in order to write or read so it can be a very solitary occupation.
What advice would you offer an aspiring writer?
If you’re serious about wanting to become a better writer and have had many rejections and you have the funds or opportunities open to you, do an MA in Creative Writing or Writing for Young People at a good university, such as Bath Spa or Worcester.
Not only will your writing become better, you will meet likeminded people just as serious about wanting to become writers and you will make valuable contacts within the industry too.
Publishers will take you much more seriously as they will know a certain level of dedication has been employed in order for the book to become better and therefore making it worthy of their attention.
For further information, please visit www.doublecluck.com
Other publishing houses interviewed for this series include Parthian Books, Tonto Books,Dedalus Books, Alcemi Books, Gomer Press, Trapdoor Books, Seren Books, HarperCollins’ imprint The Friday Project and Wild Wolf Publishing
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