Unbound is about connecting authors with readers – but where are they sitting when they’re writing their books or talking with their supporters?

Some of our authors share where they write below. Do you work somewhere unusual? We’d love to know where your favourite places to get creative with words are.

Adrian Teal – THE GIN LANE GAZETTE 

“I work in my studio, which I rent, as I like to be able to shut the door and leave work behind at the end of a day.”

David Bramwell – THE NO.9 BUS TO UTOPIA

“At my desk. I moved my desk from having a great window view to a wall. Why? Because that’s where the radiator is and my feet don’t get cold when I’m writing in winter.” 

E O Higgins – CONVERSATIONS WITH SPIRITS

“Most of Conversations with Spirits is set in Broadstairs, Kent, and - as the name implies - there’s quite a lot of drinking involved within the story. For reasons of verisimilitude, therefore, it seemed entirely reasonable to write much of the book on location in the saloon bars of The Royal Albion Hotel and The Tartar Frigate public house - which both feature in the book. I take this type of research very seriously.” 

I Smith – PAVEMENT

“This is a picture of the writing desk inside my head. It’s a Bureau du Roi (the King’s desk) known as Louis XV’s roll-top secretary, designed between 1760 and 1769 and it has a multitude of secret compartments. My actual writing desk comes from Ikea and is not worth photographing.” 

Salena Godden - SPRINGFIELD ROAD

“The kitchen table. Any kitchen table. I like kitchen tables. I acquired a beautiful desk and have ordered a new ribbon for my typewriter; I’m really looking forward to getting stuck into a new book soon.”

Vitali Vitaliev – VICTOR VODKIN’S NEW ANTI-GUIDE TO THE WORLD 

“My writing ‘shed’, Pegasus Cottage. It’s lovely and cosy inside with bookshelves bursting with old folios, a folding armchair-sofa, where I can have a snooze if tired, a swivel chair and my oak wood desk. The cottage is well insulated: it is warm in winter and cool in summer. But the main thing is that it is at the back of a large country garden and looking out of the window feels like blending with nature: trees, birds, foxes, our endemic black squirrels, and yourself; a great sensation for writing. I joke sometimes that Pegasus writes my books for me, I only type the words on my computer screen…”

Kevin Parr – THE TWITCH

“Our spare room doubles as an office, an art studio and a storage unit and is far too cluttered to fit into a photograph. The view from the windows is well worth sharing though – east and south facing with lots of raptor-spotting opportunity!”

Lisa Gee – HAYLEYWORLD

“Anywhere I can be undisturbed for a good length of time & have a) enough space to lie on my back staring at the ceiling & b) wifi. In my writing room, the notable objects are probably the computer and sound equipment, some pictures, the white board I write my daily to-do list on and my two cats.”

Richard Bray – SALT & OLD VINES

“This varies. I write both in my bedroom and in the library at home. They’re not really set writing spaces as such. For Salt & Old Vines it’s really a case of sitting down and writing in the room that’s the least distracting. There’s a local coffee shop that I’ve used, and my local pub as well. I wrote my first book in my old family home, in a loft space I used to call the Belfry. I turned that into a proper writer’s space, surrounded by personal stuff and the sort of memorabilia that put me at incredible ease. I actually wrote a blog post about what the Belfry looked like, and my blog is still named The Belfry Chronicles.”

If you’re at the Hay festival today, don’t forget to catch Unbound Live (with our authors Katy Brand, Jessica Jones, George Chopping and Hardeep Singh Kohli) today at 2:30 in the Sky Arts Studio.

Author Jessica Jones, whose book, The Elegant Art of Falling Apart is being crowd-funded for UK publication with Unbound, has been featured in The Independent this week, where she discusses how her experience of being paralysed for a period at the age of 25 eventually led to her writing the book.

(You can click here to find out more about the process of “crowd-funding” a book for publication, and how you can get involved and support the publication of The Elegant Art of Falling Apart in return for anything from your name in the back of every copy of the book, a signed first edition hardback, photographic prints, a goody bag of natural beauty products (The Good Glamour Natural Beauty Bag) and even lunch with Jessica.)

Also, we’ve launched a Flash Fiction Writing Prize in celebration of Jessica and her book, and you can find out more about the competition and how to enter by clicking here.

Read on for an extract from The Independent’s piece:

1987 – I was twenty-five years old and holed up in the intensive care unit at the National Neurological Hospital in London, stricken from head to toe with Guillain-Barré Syndrome. Symptoms: total paralysis. Prognosis: uncertain.

Guillain Barré Syndrome is a bizarre illness. It attacks the myelin sheath that transmits messages along one’s peripheral nerves. One day my toes went numb. A week later I found myself in hospital, unable to move, breathe or speak. An unscratchable itch on my leg could propel me to the brink of insanity. Dust fell into my eyes and I couldn’t blink or wipe it away. I could not call out for assistance.

Upon learning of my perilous condition, my mother had dropped everything, packed a suitcase and flown from Sydney. Now she sat by my bedside for twelve hours a day, every day.

Each night mum grabbed a few hours sleep at her friends’ house; Chrissy and Ralph were devotees of an Indian guru by the name of Swamiji. When Swamiji heard of my situation he began to call my mother and tell her of his visions for me. ‘I see yellow,’ spake the guru. The next day mum arrived at the hospital laden with armfuls of daffodils and yellow tulips. She filled all the vases in the room with them. Two days later, Swamiji called again: ‘I see purple.’ Out went the daffodils, replaced by swathes of irises. Mum herself was dressed in a purple silk kimono that she’d borrowed from Chrissy. Then Swamiji made a personal appearance at the ICU, without shoes. Through his flowing grey beard he blew into my chakras. Matron tried to hustle him from the room but Swamiji resisted her. At that point Sister Mary entered the scene.

Sister Mary had been hospitalised for an acute attack of Multiple Sclerosis but was now on the bounce back. She busied herself by ambling from ward to ward with her walking stick, rescuing the souls of fellow patients. Some of those ingrates did not wish to be saved but in me she found a compliant mark. Being fully paralysed I didn’t have much choice in the matter.

Sister Mary visited most days and sprinkled my motionless body with Lourdes water that she kept in a plastic bottle. She left a specimen jar by my bed containing some small pieces of black stuff. ‘Relics of Padre Pio,’ Sister Mary said. Not being much of a Christian I didn’t cotton on to the significance of these. I was quite taken aback when I later learned that they were bits of the charred remains of a revered Catholic priest.

Click here to read the rest…

Unbound’s John Mitchinson plus authors at Unbound’s “Has Anyone Spoken to the Author” panel. Cromwell room, London Book Fair 2012.

The next Unbound Live event (you can read Intelligent Life’s review of our last one here) will be on Monday 4th June at the Hay Festival.
Tickets are only £6.25 and you can get them from here. Read on to find out more about the event…

UNBOUND LIVE!

The award winning crowd-funded publisher Unbound, launched at Hay last year, celebrates its first birthday with a live event unlike anything else at the festival. Join a panel of Unbound authors competing to win the approval of the crowd to raise funding for their book ideas, in a cross between an election hustings and a literary Dragons’ Den. Featuring super-smart comedian Katy Brand, controversial polymath Jonathan Meades, novelist and developmental psychologist Charles Fernyhough, cult perfomance poet George Chopping, the inimitable Glaswegian Sikh writer, cook and performer, Hardeep Singh Kohli and others.

www.unbound.co.uk

Lucy Farmer’s great review of last week’s Unbound Live event, in Intelligent Life :

On Tuesday night, Unbound Live took over Le Baron nightclub in London’s Mayfair for an evening of crowd-funded publishing. Billed as “a cross between a book slam and election hustings”, nine authors had 10 minutes each to pitch to an audience who could then pledge anything between £10 and £250 in support of the book. If enough money is pledged the author writes the book and Unbound publishes it. If not, the prospective book stays on the slush pile and pledgers get their money back (or the chance to re-pledge to another book). Pledgers keep up-to-date with their author’s progress on the Unbound website.

In a dark boudoir-like room the writers took to the mic in front of about 100 people. We heard pitches, for instance, from Pete Lawrence for his memoir about founding The Big Chill festival, from Kevin Parr for his novel about an obsessive bird-watcher who turns murderous, and from Robbie Hudson and John Finnemore, two comedians who got funding for a first book—a series of letters between two gay horses during the Napoleonic wars—and now want funding for a sequel.

By bringing authors and readers closer together Unbound throws a democratic punch at the big-money publishers who monopolise the book stores. For Unbound, the pledging system is a novel way of drumming up capital before shelling out to publish a book. And pledgers get to be financially and emotionally invested in a literary project. Every pledger gets a nod in the afterword and big investors get signed editions, goodie bags and lunch with the author.

Click here to read the rest of the review at Intelligent Life’s website.

A Box of Birds, a literary thriller about the brain and those who study it, is now launched on Unbound. You can pledge support for the book here.

Here’s what some other novelists have been saying about the book:

“It’s rare these days to read a writer who cares about ideas in the way that the great nineteenth-century novelists did. With A Box of Birds, Charles Fernyhough creates a thrilling plot and wonderfully constructed characters who are never overwhelmed by the twists of the story. The clash of philosophies at the heart of the novel—in which the certainties of neuroscience are unpicked by the mind’s need to tell a coherent story—is presented in such plausible terms that I should think any reader would instinctively align themselves and then be challenged by the other side of the question. This is both a serious novel and a great read.” SARA MAITLAND

“We have been waiting a long time for Charles Fernyhough to follow up his fine first novel The Auctioneer, and he has now done it in brilliant style with A Box Of Birds. Taking its title from Plato’s metaphor for memory, this is both a novel of ideas and a pacey thriller. The idea is a profound philosophical one: how can cells and chemicals produce our sense of consciousness? Fernyhough’s feisty heroine, neuroscientist Yvonne Churcher, takes us on a rollercoaster plot involving animal rights’ activists, lovers, geeks, entrepreneurs and a senile chimp. Exhilarating, thought-provoking and well worth the wait.” ANDREW CRUMEY

An early version of the first chapter of A Box of Birds was published in New Writing 14, selected and edited by Lavinia Greenlaw and Helon Habila. You can read the first chapter of the book at the Unbound site; if you become a supporter, you will be able to read more chapters in the Shed. The first two and a half chapters are currently posted.

Anonymous asked: What is the 'author's shed'?

Each Unbound author has an area on our website called their “Shed”. It is a behind-the-scenes space, that can only be accessed by readers who have contributed to their book, where the author shares their process of writing their book as they go along. It can contain photos, blog posts and even videos from the author.

Pre-order or contribute to any of our books here to see inside a shed for yourself!

photo: Martin Burns on Flickr

Matt Keay has written a great article discussing crowd-funded publishing and Unbound for One & Other. In response to some of the questions he raised about what it all means for unknown authors, we’d like to note that we are working with writing community sites such as ABCtales and Jottify, and will soon have many more unknown authors up on Unbound.

“Historically, budding authors wishing to have their work published would have to individually print out a manuscript, post it to their chosen publisher, and feverishly hope with their fingers tightly crossed that eventually they would receive a positive reply. As technology advanced, and with the advent of the Internet, it became easier for writers to get their work to a wider audience.

As time progressed, so did the sheer number of authors hoping for fame and fortune, and with the success of such massive book series as Harry Potter, the Twilight saga and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, more people than ever want to be writers.  Now, with the highly functional and social resources of Twitter and Facebook at their fingertips, wannabe authors can persuade friends, followers and even strangers to help them in their quest for publication.

Unbound offers a completely different way to get your work published. The brainchild of John Mitchinson, Dan Kieran and Justin Pollard, Unbound is a website which endeavours to “crowd-fund” books. The premise is simple. Visitors to Unbound can pledge money for a book that is only part-written.

If enough money is raised, the author can afford to finish the book, and each pledger gets a copy. “We can make books work at a much lower level of investment,” explains Mitchinson, who has already proved his literary chops, being a successful author himself, as well as a former Marketing Director of Waterstone’s, Managing Director of Harvill Press, vice-President of the Hay Festival and Director of Research For QI, the popular BBC television programme.

The founders understand the importance of allowing authors to retain as many rights as possible. Significantly, Unbound retains the publication rights in books it signs for the first year. (“Longer copyright terms are increasingly becoming meaningless,” says Mitchinson). After that first year authors can sell paperback rights to traditional publishers if they wish to do so. This method of publication ensures the relatively inexpensive exposure of the work initially, leading to a wider distribution if the book is successful.”

Read the full article here.

Just installed the /ask feature, so feel free to fire away with all your questions about Unbound, our books, our authors, and publishing in general. We’ll do our best to answer them as quickly as possible.

Looking forward to hearing what you all have to say! x

How a new online venture helped to publish Evil Machines

Photograph: Jose Frade

It was only when I sat and counted them last Friday that I discovered I’m now the proud author of 26 books. Some would call that a library. The first, Chaucer’s Knight, might never have found a publisher if I had not already made a name for myself as a Python. In the late 1970s it was rather tricky for a new writer to get a book published, especially on what was seen as an academic subject. As it happens, were it not for the launch of the publishers Unbound, my most recent collection, Evil Machines, might not have been published either.

Earlier this year I was approached by my old friend Justin Pollard, a writer for QI who, along with a couple of other writers, had the novel idea of getting books published by involving readers directly. They were frustrated by the way in which the publishing industry seems to have lurched towards the pile-‘em-high bestseller, leaving many books that don’t fit the mould on the slush pile, with brilliant yet quirky ideas never seeing the light of day. Worse still, it is getting increasingly harder for an author to survive on ever-dwindling commissions. UK authors on average earned just £4,000 from writing last year on royalty figures of less than 10%. That’s hardly enough to pay for all our fast cars, lavish houses and gold-plated fountain pens, let alone food and a mortgage.

The Unbounders’ solution is to use their website to cut out the middle men. They ask readers directly what books they would like to see funded and then politely suggest that they might like to put their money where their mouths are. By bringing readers and authors closer together, the publishing process can be demystified, even democratised. Authors can publish books that would not be commercially viable for a big publisher and receive 50% of the profits. How could I not be interested?

Read the rest of the article here.

All photos by Paul Clarke

See more of the night here.

Publishing Books Together

Unbound is a new type of publishing house. Using crowd-sourced funding, it allows authors to write the books they want to. It also gives readers access to the writing process and involvement with their chosen book on varying levels. Sponsor a book’s publishing with a donation and your name is included in the back of the book. You might even get an invite to the launch party. 

One of the co-founders of the project is John Mitchinson. Away from Unbound he’s also the director of research at QI, co-author of the QI books and Vice President of the Hay Festival of Literature. After Unbound’s first live event, we spoke to John about helping out unknown authors, the pleasure of a good read and advice for setting up a small press. 

Unbound has just run its first live event. How did it go?

It was a triumph. 300 people, 180 pledges, thousands of pounds spent. It’s a new model - like a publisher’s sales conference for the public, with the participatory excitement of an auction of promises. Several of the authors at the event, including Jenny Pickup and George Chopping, were unknown. That’s a huge part of it - showcasing the new by packing in the audience with the better known.

Each author made a six minute pitch. We had a trapeze artist and novelist to open and a kick-arse band to close, with every shade of literary, commercial, serious and amusing in between.

Would you have been able to set up Unbound without your previous experience in book publishing?

I think good ideas always tend to come from the outside and although we are all writers, we’re determined not to reproduce the same rather cliquey, inward-looking feel that surrounds many publishers.

How does Unbound find its authors?

Many come direct from authors themselves; some come via agents and writers’ groups like ABCTales. Others come out of jolly lunches and drinks in the pub with people we love, or better still people we have only just met and who we will come to love.

What do you think attracts them to Unbound rather than established publishing houses?

Three things. One. Speed of turnaround. The first conversation to the pitch can take as little as a fortnight. Two. The financial upside. It’s a fifity-fifty profit share, so if a book does take off the author stands to make more than the traditional 10% royalty. Three. The direct contact with the most important people of all: their readers.

Read the rest of the interview here.