Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:07 You're listening to the how to be an author in Australia podcast. This is a podcast for writers who would like to become published authors. We're going to take you behind the scenes in the book industry from festival organizers, reviewers magazine, editors, and sales reps, and from creative writing teachers and journalists to booksellers and book designers and everyone in between. We promise we'll be talking to the people who love books, just about as much as we do. And we know you do too. I'm Claire Miller and this is my cohost Georgia Richter. Hi, Claire.
Speaker 2 00:00:38 And later we'll be joined by the calmer chameleon who will hit us with a quiz from the editing world,
Speaker 1 00:00:48 Georgia. Hello,
Speaker 2 00:00:49 How are you? I'm well, Claire, thank you,
Speaker 1 00:00:51 Georgia. Have you had your professional author shots down for how to be an author yet?
Speaker 2 00:00:56 I have been marched up and down a street, a lot outside Fremantle press with Tiffany holding a camera and place me in front of various colored walls for effect. And I have chosen a range of outfits that go with the jacket of my book, but I haven't actually had my formal professional headshots done yet is a professional author shot. Is that something that every author should get?
Speaker 1 00:01:25 Absolutely. And several, not just one. I mean, I would love to have about 20 for each author, but, um, that's not always possible from a finances perspective, but you certainly should go out and get a number of shots in different outfits in different settings. Don't make them too formal. We don't want the headshot of the author. That's put up against a green screen or a white wall. We want things that actually, um, show your personality, maybe show something about your book. So for instance, Emma Young, who we're working with at the moment is going to get some shots of her outside local bookstores. She's going to get some shots in front of books and things like that because it fits in with the last book shop. So no pressure.
Speaker 2 00:02:07 He also needs to think about what is the tone of my book and what sort of mood do I want to convey through these shots, but also to give you a range that you can use them in different scenarios is that that's right.
Speaker 1 00:02:20 It's always helpful if I have a number of shots to use, because I can give those out to different media outlets. So you're highlighting a disparate different aspect of yourself. You're highlighting a different aspect of your book. You're helping become more competitive in terms of getting publicity because a media outlet doesn't like to be doing exactly the same thing as every other media outlet. So that can be really useful. We can reuse them in social media as well, and we'll often get extra shots of author. So every time an author comes into our office, be warned, you will be photographed. You'll often be videoed as well because social media is a giant machine that loves to be fed constantly. And the more that we have the better,
Speaker 2 00:03:06 I've also noticed that when in any dog enters our office, that it is also made to pose for a photograph for at the dog park.
Speaker 1 00:03:14 Absolutely, absolutely. Hasn't we, we love a good dog shot. Um, we haven't yet got a good cat shot. So just putting it out there, if anyone would like to bring their cat in to pose with a Fremantle press book, we would be very happy to accommodate that. Perhaps bring them in on a little league, um, bring the whiskers along so that we can make sure that hopefully they, they pose the way we want them to. Is this to
Speaker 2 00:03:41 Promote at the dog park?
Speaker 1 00:03:43 Uh, yes. Why not to promote any book? I think, I think a cat and a book would be a very effective promotional tool. We all know that people love cats on social media. So why not? So I'm putting it out there, everybody. Um, in fact, if you own cats, you're probably more likely to go up the, um, the list in terms of the likelihood of you being published. It's one of the questions on our form. Do you own a cat? So are
Speaker 2 00:04:10 Some do's and don'ts of author shooting.
Speaker 1 00:04:15 Yeah. Look, I think if you have, as I said, some different outfits, but also if you are somebody that prefers to see yourself in makeup, looking very polished in your shots and make sure that you've done that if that's not really a part of your author brand, then that's that's okay. But you know, think about how you want to be perceived. Think about things like if you have an off the shoulder top, you don't necessarily want to be taken your photo taken as a portrait. You want to have a full body shot because otherwise it looks like you're half naked and think about trying to look comfortable. People who get their photo taken, don't do just one shot or two shots, hundreds of shots get taken. So think about, you know, moving around, standing to one side and looking at the camera, looking down the barrel of the camera, looking after the distance, leaning, not leaning, sitting, standing like try a whole bunch of different things until you get a shot that you feel reflects you and also ask the photographer to show you some of those shots as well. And if you're not happy, just keep going until you get the kinds of shots that you're happy with. Is there a way
Speaker 2 00:05:26 To hold a book in a photograph as in your
Speaker 1 00:05:29 Own book? Absolutely. Like you can't cover the cover. So if your name's not readable or the name of your book's not readable, then that's not actually going to work. But for publicity shots, you wouldn't get a lot of shots with the book cover in there because the book cover usually appears separately. Um, and some media outlets actually have a policy where they don't want the book shown. So by all means get a couple of shots of you with your book, but that's not the priority. Right?
Speaker 2 00:05:54 So you might be having that kind of photograph more in media, say of you with your book. What's the range or the spectrum of social media images, because I'm thinking shot after shot of the author is not the most dynamic way to go.
Speaker 1 00:06:11 Well, people respond to pictures of people. So it's not terrible to have a lot of pictures of yourself with your book all with a, with, and without your book, interspersed
Speaker 2 00:06:21 By cats,
Speaker 1 00:06:23 Interspersed with cats and dogs. Um, no, no. Um, so yeah, every fourth or fifth photo, there's no reason why it couldn't be a portrait of yourself or a portrait of someone else holding your book. You could do pictures of your book out in the wild at bookstores and things like that. It's gotta be something that's sort of natural and maybe just mix it up a little bit. Um, you might do some shots of an event that you go to, you might do a shot of, um, catching up with your publisher. Like there's all sorts of things that you can do. And I think it's about, it's about variety, but it's also about consistency in the sense that it has to be true to you and authentic to you. So there's no point getting Xi Jackman to hold your book. If it's not, not relevant or not authentic to you, and you don't even like Hugh Jackman. Anyway, I think Hugh
Speaker 2 00:07:12 Jackman would always be, I
Speaker 1 00:07:14 Know that was a really bad example because he wouldn't want Hugh Jackman to hold
Speaker 2 00:07:18 Their books once you Jackman to hold my book. Yeah. But
Speaker 1 00:07:21 If you hate
Speaker 2 00:07:22 Journals as I do,
Speaker 1 00:07:25 Then perhaps you don't want to journal with your
Speaker 2 00:07:27 Book. So does a photo need a story behind it?
Speaker 1 00:07:31 Thank you. As an author should use your storytelling ability in all your social media posts and think about the, where, what, when, how, and, um, even if it's a couple of lines, try and make an interesting try and make it true to you and try and make it a bit of a story. Cause that's why you're getting published in the first place. So you should explore all of your talents.
Speaker 2 00:07:50 When I think about, um, authors and social media that, that stick in my mind and things that stand out, I think of say Natasha Lester, who will photograph beautiful dresses or give us a little snippet of what she's been researching. That that's one that comes to mind or Moira court who will photograph art found in nature or things that she's constructed. And so it's just an image of something, but it very much goes to who that author is and what the story around them and their books are. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:08:21 And Myra goes one step further because her audience is children because she's working in the pitcher book realm. And so what Moira does really well is she works with her daughter Winnie, who is a kind of budding artist and without taking photos of Winnie necessarily, or having her in the shots, she'll have Winnie's artwork there. And so she's making that connection between her own artwork, her book, and the audience. And she's doing that in a very respectful way, in a way that's very creative as well.
Speaker 2 00:08:52 So all those elements go into author brand. Don't in the sense of, this is what this author is about. Initially as an author, I've needed to fill in a contributor information form for marketing, which is telling you everything I possibly can about the book about the contents, about its key words, about how I would describe it about my connections with people in the media and booksellers and so forth, because you are going to take that information from me and build that into a marketing program. And sometime after that, an advanced information sheet is produced by marketing, which may absorb some of that, but is distributed to the people who are going to sell the book in to bookshops and other outlets and also to reviewers and people who may write about the book journalists or so forth in advance of the book appearing in the stores.
Speaker 1 00:09:55 So that's all happening in the background. And
Speaker 2 00:09:57 How far ahead of time is that material going to
Speaker 1 00:10:00 Six months ahead of time? So we may not have even met the author at that time, which is why filling in the form is really, really important to us, but why don't we meet Jane and Kevin from penguin random house and get them to explain it a bit more first.
Speaker 2 00:10:13 Great idea.
Speaker 3 00:10:18 Hello. My name is Brendan Richie, author of carousel and beyond carousel and also a contributor to the new book, how to be an author, the business of being a writer in Australia. My best advice for aspiring writers is to find ideas and focus on ideas that keep you returning to the desk in front of your work as much as possible. So anything with some urgency, um, some questions that require exploration and answering, um, anything that will target you to return to the work over and over again for the many days, weeks and months that are required in order to finish a long project. Um, if you can do that, I think you're half a chance best of luck.
Speaker 1 00:11:10 We are very pleased to have Jane Parkhill and Gavin Burbage of penguin, random house with us today. Welcome to you both. Thanks. So can you start by telling us what each of you do at penguin random house? Let's start with Jane,
Speaker 4 00:11:24 Um, none as a sales account, many gen, and what that entails is looking after our accounts, book, sellers, bookshops, we sell them the new release fiction and we're at their Beck and call for everything.
Speaker 1 00:11:41 And Gavin, apart from being in different states, are you doing the same thing as Jane or something slightly different?
Speaker 5 00:11:47 I think where the human face of the publisher, and as Jane said, we're the first port of call, which means we get the good and the bad, of course, it's on the winds and the losses all come to us. Both of us do some key camp work as well, looking after, um, I mean, Jane looks after you as an agency Fremantle and, uh, I look up Collins, bookshop chain as well, but yeah, on the whole it's, it's a fairly similar, similar gig that we have. Yes.
Speaker 2 00:12:13 What was your journey to the role of account
Speaker 5 00:12:16 Manager? I was working, I was managing a bookshop in the city in Melbourne, a technical bookshop, actually. So lots of non-fiction and wheels, wings, killing things and, um, and engineering books and so on. And the penguin list as it was penguin at the time before the merger was the most interesting and diverse ones of all of all the publishers that I used to see and buy from when the job became vacant at penguin, I just had to go for it because I just wanted a broader range of books to pay with. So here I am,
Speaker 1 00:12:47 Jane, you've got a degree in literature, so haven't you. So what was your journey?
Speaker 4 00:12:51 I actually wanted to be an editor, but my daughter started high school and I had to work. Um, so I did lots of hospitality, tourism. I worked in a bookshop as well, a busy Dimmick store here in Perth and I was manager buyer. So I knew my penguin rep and when a vacancy came up with penguin at the time, it seems to be a natural progression for people that love books and work in bookstores. So that's, um, where I am now, 13 years later, I think
Speaker 1 00:13:22 Most people will recognize penguin random house as a publisher, but you're also a distributor. Can you explain to our listeners who are authors? What that means?
Speaker 5 00:13:32 Well, originally it was just penguin. Penguin was based in Ringwood, in Melbourne, on the outskirts of Melbourne and the warehouse was the warehouse and the publishing house. And everyone was all in one, one place, but they did need to join the new century or the new decade and opened up United book, distribution, UBD. Um, so there's a warehouse, of course it will always run more efficiently with the more books and units that have been put through people. Might've been probably wary of having their books coming out of a warehouse with the name of penguin, but UBD of course is a separate entity. So, um, we also distribute for various other publishers as well as around boots.
Speaker 2 00:14:10 And that warehouse is absolutely enormous. Isn't it? I've driven past on the freeway. It seems to.
Speaker 5 00:14:16 Oh yes. Yeah. It's, it's, it's the, it's the scene out of the end of reds, the lost art where they're carrying the Ark of the covenant into the distance, you know, that's what it looks like when you go in there is massive. Absolutely massive.
Speaker 2 00:14:27 Could you tell us about the different kinds of accounts that penguin random house services, because you don't just sell to booksellers?
Speaker 4 00:14:35 Right. In my role, as an account manager here in w a I sell to the book sellers, the book shops, we also have library suppliers and educational suppliers as well that we call on and show them the new release stock. As a large publisher, we do have different outlets for the books, which are sold into a big W's. Other DDS is Booktopia. Our books are filling spots everywhere. How often do
Speaker 2 00:15:04 You see your accounts?
Speaker 4 00:15:06 Some of the accounts, I just sell random house too. And some, so myself, penguin and random house too. And so we can do two visits to them. Um, but it's, we, we work on a monthly cycle basically because we do, we sell new releases to them once a month, three months in advance. And given
Speaker 1 00:15:26 What does a day in the life of Gavin Burbage as a sales account manager look like,
Speaker 5 00:15:32 Uh, emails while having breakfast in the time of COVID it's been straight onto the computer and then meetings. Otherwise it would be driving to see a bookshop and then I'm doing a grand loop around Melbourne. Um, so your last call is closer to home. Um, and then finish off with some emails and then it's time for bed. Yeah. Talking to bookshops all day, essentially.
Speaker 2 00:15:56 Do you pitch to the shop owner themselves or who are you pitching?
Speaker 5 00:16:02 It depends on the store. Sometimes the manager does the buying others, other stores have separate buyers for their stores. And of course, some have many stores that they own, which it could be to have a single buyer for buying for all of them or a group of buyers at the same time. So it, it, yeah, it's bookshop by bookshop. Depends.
Speaker 2 00:16:21 Jane, what does a sell in
Speaker 4 00:16:22 Consists of? We have anywhere upwards of 300 books a month that are new releases. And we sit down with our books, sell it. It's always nice to buy them a coffee. And we go through the lists. We have, um, on-screen presentations that we show them so they can see covers covers are hugely important to book sellers. And you tell them everything. You learn about a book, all the information, you know, about every single book you distill down into 10 seconds and tell your book seller that they really need the book. It's basically a nice conversation about books with your bookseller.
Speaker 5 00:17:05 Yeah, this is the murder me coming up, but I worked out the average at 437 books a month.
Speaker 4 00:17:10 Um,
Speaker 5 00:17:12 And that's the actual ones that are released in Australia as opposed to indent titles, which were deemed not suitable for market, which we have access to, but it didn't bring into the warehouse or only buy in if a bookseller wants them. And they'd be easily that amount again, that aren't sold. Normally
Speaker 1 00:17:30 Book nerds worked out how many other sales reps there are selling in the same number of titles.
Speaker 5 00:17:34 How many publishers have a list as large as ours so that there are a few other reps out there. Of course, most of the publishers have at least one, one or two that are probably larger at mango grown-ass them anyone,
Speaker 1 00:17:45 But it could conceivably be a thousand books a month. And then book seller has look at
Speaker 5 00:17:50 More easily. I would say several, I would say several thousand.
Speaker 1 00:17:53 Um, so very competitive. Do you find that the book sellers take every book on your list?
Speaker 4 00:17:59 No,
Speaker 5 00:18:03 I don't know. Absolutely because it's sales and returns management at the same time, Jane and I could push a huge range of books to a bookseller, but then we'd know that the bulk of those would be returned because they're not suitable to their market or their audience or whichever type of bookshop it is. Um, for instance, I see a bookshop called books for cooks, and that is what they sell cookbooks and nothing else. So, you know, unless the fiction is hugely food related, they're not going to be taking anything else.
Speaker 4 00:18:30 I really have to know your demographic for each store. You have to walk in there and you have to be in the shoes of that particular buyer and know what they want to sell. So,
Speaker 1 00:18:40 Um, and is that something an author should be doing as well? Thinking about which of the book sellers are the most appropriate outlets for their book?
Speaker 4 00:18:49 Yes,
Speaker 5 00:18:50 Always, uh, after they've written a book, of course, unless you're being truly, truly mercenary. I don't own people write a book with a marketing in mind. Well, I hope, hope a lot of people don't, but if you've written a book guests, then consider it from that point.
Speaker 2 00:19:05 The thing you would say that authors can do to help sales reps make their books stand out from the competition.
Speaker 4 00:19:13 Authors need to really throw themselves into publicity, do lots of publicity listening, listen to their publicist and their marketing people at their publisher. It's important too, that they have a online presence. They should be active on social media and be willing to do events and talk to people, talk to their readers and get out there in there and, um, tell them how good their book is. Um, trust the publisher to on the cover that they're going to put out there. Cause cause they know what's going to sell what works. So usually
Speaker 2 00:19:49 Are you consulted in relation to covers that publishers are thinking about,
Speaker 4 00:19:53 I love getting covers from you guys at Fremantle because it's a great process to have a look at what's going to be on the shelf because we see so many books, we know what's out there in the bookshops and what does work and what definitely doesn't work and what makes a book look a particular way, whether it's nonfiction or fiction, but within those genres of fiction as well, how it looks. So it's great to have input into that.
Speaker 5 00:20:17 Um, harking back to what authors can do is, is go and see your bookshop and introduce yourself. Um, and I mean the worst thing an author can do is wander into a bookshop and ask if they stock their book without actually introducing themselves first. I mean it'll book a book seller or a buyer offsite immediately is quite rude, um, as well because it it's, it's a little bit devious and it normally will backfire the same as people's family. Um, of course the family's going be excited and proud of an author having published a book. But if you, if, if mum wanders in pretending to be the public, it can go very badly. Very quickly. Generally booksellers are really happy to meet authors and will go out of their way to stock their books if they haven't already. Um, yeah. So, so meet your local bookshops, have a chat to them, offer yourself up for any event you can. Um, so I might not be very successful in terms of book sales, but, but any publicity is good publicity.
Speaker 4 00:21:17 Uh, an author needs to know how to present their book themselves in a really interesting way and really talk well about it and bring people in and, and enjoy that and make people want to buy it and want to read it because that's the whole aim of it.
Speaker 1 00:21:36 Yeah. Um, so tell us about the competition for space on shelves and how it works. Like say you have a successful selling, you get tons of books out there. They're all on the shelves everywhere in bookstores. Does that mean that's it?
Speaker 5 00:21:48 Um, so a book will be out there. It might be proud of space. It may sell just on the cover alone. It may sell because the bookshop and the booksellers have read it and loved the book in their hand, selling it fiercely. It may sell because of media that the author has done. And it's lifespan on a shelf, especially lifestyle on front of shelf or front table or window will depend on its success. In those first few weeks,
Speaker 1 00:22:14 QI timeframe, Jane you'd say north, it needs to be around for the sale of their book
Speaker 4 00:22:20 The first couple of weeks, for sure. And then moving on, making themselves available for those first three months or
Speaker 5 00:22:28 Longer, as long as I can,
Speaker 4 00:22:30 As long as I can.
Speaker 5 00:22:31 I always wonder whether, whether the author has to spend more time selling the book after writing it than the actual, actual writing as well. Um, it is it, you know, some books do take off immediately, of course, and then a hugely successful without with an anonymous author or an unknown author and so on. But, but that's more the exception than the rule.
Speaker 1 00:22:50 Um, so do you think for new and emerging authors, it's a bit of a slow burn for sales or can one book kill your career if it doesn't go?
Speaker 4 00:22:57 Well, I think with the first book and with the debut, I mean book buyers, booksellers, they definitely want debuts. They want new authors, but it's a risk. They don't know how this book's going to work. So it's important to have them to read it if they can, if we believe in this book and then they will push it, like I've said about hand selling,
Speaker 1 00:23:20 Well, let's talk about hand selling. What does hand selling actually mean? So we talk about it a lot that if you're a new author and you've never heard the term, what would you call cancer?
Speaker 4 00:23:29 When someone goes into a bookshop and says, I'm looking for a nice fiction raid and the people on the shop floor, the booksellers have read this particular author's book and loved it and they'll take them straight to it. This is, this is the book you want. So good book sellers can sell you a book that you don't even want
Speaker 5 00:23:52 Never considered. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 4 00:23:54 Yeah.
Speaker 5 00:23:56 As well. But, but some booksellers can hand sell literally a thousand units of a book a year in, in the bigger bookshelf. So it does make a difference if you've got some people championing your book. Yeah. You can do very well out of it.
Speaker 1 00:24:09 Kevin, you work with colons and I know Colin's has, um, they do hand selling, but they also do a lot of selling through their catalogs. Can you explain to authors, how does their book get into it?
Speaker 5 00:24:20 Uh, Colin's works on a system where a certain number of books from each publisher chosen as a group buy they're given to the bookshops at a higher rate of discounts and a higher number of purchased. And those ones are generally guaranteed to be in the catalog columns, for instance, put out three catalogs a year, the titles that are included as cited at head office level. Um, and then there'll be negotiation on other ones to get them included.
Speaker 2 00:24:45 The question for each of you now that you both know what you know about selling in books, would that affect the kind of book that you yourself wrote with a view to its success?
Speaker 5 00:24:58 I suspect anything I wrote would be hugely unsuccessful or be so niche that the numbers would be small. I mean, there's a couple of a couple of authors who've decided to ride mass market best selling Matthew Riley, esque style, you know, almost big dumb book and they failed terribly acid as well. Um, so even, even those who've tried very hard to break into Gianna have, have, have haven't succeeded. Um, so I I'd hope you'd rather, I'd rather write something that I wanted to write about rather than the go for, um, monetary monetary gain, I think would be the thing that's, uh, I think the cynicism might show through a little bit.
Speaker 4 00:25:38 Jane, what about you selling books? Um, if I had any ideas of writing one, when I was at uni, I certainly don't now it's hard work and you have to be prepared for that hard work and everyone has a story within them, I'm sure. Or more than one. Um, but it's, uh, you know, it's not just that creative process, but um, yeah, if I wasn't gonna lie when it would just be something that I wanted to write, you couldn't do it to a formula.
Speaker 5 00:26:05 It can be a very long slog and it's not an instant way to wealth and fortune. And how
Speaker 1 00:26:09 Many books do you guys read a year? Okay.
Speaker 4 00:26:12 I'd probably read 50 that's full books that I'd read. And then we read a lot of chapters of books, beginning of chapters and, and things like that to get a feel for them so we can sell them as well.
Speaker 5 00:26:24 Barely read a hundred a year now since having children. I used to average about one a day. Um, but that's, that's been cut back somewhat with other duties,
Speaker 2 00:26:35 A book. What kind of a book would you be clear? Let me put that to you first. I'd
Speaker 1 00:26:43 Be, um, a nonfiction book featuring a middle-aged person, having a breakdown and just chucking everything in and going off on a bicycle or something in bad, bad light crap. So that would be me,
Speaker 5 00:27:01 The lady equivalent of mammal middle-age middle-age person Lycra.
Speaker 1 00:27:10 Kevin, what would you be?
Speaker 5 00:27:11 Um, I was definitely have to be a hard covered and, um, comedy nonfiction, I think, I think what am I, I mean, one of my favorite authors is, you know, in more the, the travel writer who manages to get that one full mix of reality and the absurd in his travel works. Yeah. I do love that sort of thing.
Speaker 4 00:27:30 Probably be, um, a guidebook on how to save the environment because that's what I'm so passionate about.
Speaker 5 00:27:40 Oh, lovely. You've just said that we're not worthy basically shamed us all their
Speaker 5 00:27:53 Toughest sentences for parole violated
Speaker 2 00:27:56 Aspirational, But would I be, I think I'd be a work of literary fiction. I think I'd be a story about a passive aggressive librarian. I don't think I'd have a big issue.
Speaker 5 00:28:14 And is that under, is that in the horror genre or true crime or passive-aggressive librarians?
Speaker 2 00:28:22 I think the fan fiction about my literary fiction would be in the horror genre.
Speaker 5 00:28:28 Okay. That's a sweeping rollercoaster of a novel where a, where a librarian starts murdering people live damaged books in libraries. Yeah, I think it would catch on,
Speaker 2 00:28:38 I'd take
Speaker 1 00:28:38 That in my book. I read that book, read
Speaker 2 00:28:41 That book. Very nice.
Speaker 1 00:28:44 Um, so is there anything else you'd like to share with the authors out there that are listening today about your jobs and making your job easier or helping them be more successful
Speaker 5 00:28:54 As many people as you can? And if you can, if you can get to talk to the sales team at your publisher, it will really help selling your book because you should know your book better than anyone. Of course. Talk to reading groups, talk to libraries, do as many events as you can. And, um, yeah, just don't be shy.
Speaker 4 00:29:14 Your good work, keep trying. And we just need you all to write new stories for us because, uh, books are so important
Speaker 1 00:29:24 That was Jane Parkhill and Gavin Burbage of penguin random house.
Speaker 2 00:29:39 It's time for the common chameleon, our mill Davies to put us through our editorial paces. She actually shot over to the Eastern states. I think she thought that the punctuation was going to be greener. On the other side, before
Speaker 1 00:29:51 She left, she made a bit of an effort to come up with one more dastardly Queensville us. I thought it was a little bit unfair because she expected us to remember 12 months ago.
Speaker 2 00:30:01 I think it was quite Corona appropriate. Actually
Speaker 6 00:30:07 Today I wanted to talk about should the McQuarry dictionaries would of the year, which is always a very exciting announcement for language nerds all over the world, but probably mostly in Australia, the 2020 would have the, uh, was obviously dominated by coronavirus related woods so much so that they've added a separate category just for COVID words. So that means that we're actually going to have two questions today. So I think that means that this will be a tiebreaker as
Speaker 1 00:30:41 Well. Don't mention the
Speaker 6 00:30:43 Sensitive subject
Speaker 1 00:30:45 Subject moving on,
Speaker 6 00:30:47 Which of these shortlisted words was the 2020, what are the, uh, in the general category first? So our options are a pyro Cumulus Nimbus, which is a cumulonimbus, which forms above a source of intense heat, such as a Bush by a volcanic eruption or the live bait, Karen, which is a derogatory term used predominantly to refer to a middle-class white woman, often of generation X, who is regarded as having an entitled condescending and often racist attitude, or see doom scrolling a colloquial, Tim, which is the practice of continuing to read newsfeeds online or on social media. Despite the fact that the news is predominantly negative and often upsetting. You want to hear those again? No,
Speaker 1 00:31:40 There too depressing. I'd prefer not to hear them again. This is a very, very sad least McGorry. Um, I'm doing like this list.
Speaker 2 00:31:48 I sometimes have lists that I'm more uplifting and you think, wow, that was a good,
Speaker 6 00:31:52 Yeah. But yeah, it is very reflective of the events of the, uh, isn't it. And, uh, you can see how these tie to 2020 events
Speaker 2 00:32:01 Very much Claire. I'm going to magnanimously. Let you have first go.
Speaker 1 00:32:06 Pretty sure I'm going to get this wrong. I just don't want to choose Karen cause I don't want to give her any more air than she's already got. So I'm going to choose a pyro, Cumulus thingy, pyro, Cumulus pirate, pyro, Cumulus
Speaker 6 00:32:21 Power. Qumulo Nimbus
Speaker 1 00:32:23 Pyro, Cumulus, Nimbus. I'm choosing a pyro, cumulonimbus rolls off the tongue.
Speaker 2 00:32:29 Um, good Scrabble word. If you could ever get that many letters together, I think I'm actually going with dooms growling because I think that is maybe an action that covers the whole year. Whereas the first one takes me back to the start of the year and the other, the other Karen seems episodic. So I'm going with doom scrolling.
Speaker 6 00:32:51 Well, Georgia, you are correct the weather, the it is doing scrolling, which I actually think is a great word because as soon as you hear it, you know exactly what it means. And I think we are all guilty of it this year.
Speaker 2 00:33:04 Is it hyphenated?
Speaker 6 00:33:06 It is not. It is one word. Is there a
Speaker 2 00:33:08 Sub genre called Trump scrolling?
Speaker 6 00:33:11 I have no idea. I love the word. It didn't make this Rutledge.
Speaker 2 00:33:15 I love the word scrolling because it actually harks back to scrolls, which initially being made from, uh, Vela more or skin were rolled up. And you, you, you rolled up one end and unrolled the other to read them. And we've appropriated that word again in a digital world. And we understand what it means, but we're again, we're back rolling up and down with our reading. I imagine there was also some, uh, dooms growling going on in the middle ages to the hilarious thing is that that wasn't even the Corona virus word list. So it's going to get Bleaker, isn't it?
Speaker 6 00:33:54 It is going to be, yes, I apologize for that. All right. So which of the following was the COVID would have the, uh, a Rona, a colloquial term for the Corona virus, uh, B Covidien, a person who refuses to follow health advice aimed at holding the spread of COVID-19 as, by not social distancing, taking part in large gatherings, et cetera, as well as buying large amounts of perceived staples, especially toilet paper and see COVID normal, a way of living in which a community takes precautions against the transmission of COVID-19 prior to the availability of an effective vaccine as a natural part of day to day life.
Speaker 2 00:34:41 Um, I don't really associate the Macquarie with slang so much, but I'm not that familiar with how they choose their words, but I'm actually going to go with Corona normal. Was that what it was a COVID normal
Speaker 6 00:34:55 Normally?
Speaker 2 00:34:56 Yeah. I'm going with C. I just realized none of the words in the McCrory dictionary are actually things I can say. Covidien Covidien.
Speaker 6 00:35:06 Uh, well actually I don't think they had a pronunciation guide on that, but I assume it is Covidien. Yep.
Speaker 2 00:35:12 He really liked the word COVID yeah. I think it sums up a lot that we've seen over the past year in Australia.
Speaker 6 00:35:19 Well, this is unprecedented, but you were actually both incorrect. The way they chose was Rona Rona, which is just a colloquial word for Corona virus and is a classic Australian abbreviation. Hm.
Speaker 2 00:35:34 Yeah. We don't agree Macquarie so common. Did you vote for any of these words yourself?
Speaker 6 00:35:41 There is actually a separate people's choice pedigree and I did indeed vote and some of my favorites were quarantining, which is a very 20, 20 word and one that I love because it puts a positive spin on a bed situation.
Speaker 2 00:35:58 Sorry, is that a
Speaker 6 00:35:59 Cocktail? Yes, that's a cocktail consumed in quarantine. I also, I loved, uh, I, so, which is another Australian abbreviation, which is just economical and quite beautiful, I think. And I also loved scene, which is when you read someone's message. So it says that you've seen it, but you, another term for this is that you leave them on red. So you have seen something.
Speaker 2 00:36:29 So I'm going to ask both of you a question.
Speaker 1 00:36:31 Do you have Macquarie
Speaker 2 00:36:33 Dunk bears? Absolutely. I think a great example is air conditioning versus air con versus air condition, which is treated differently in three different ways. So one is hyphenated. One is spaced and one is a compound noun. And that sort of inconsistency is frustrating for an editor,
Speaker 6 00:37:01 Especially when you have two different versions that appear in the same sentence. So the same paragraph. So the difference is very obvious and we actually decided for our earn style guide that we would just hyphenate all of them. So we would have a blanket rule.
Speaker 2 00:37:18 So sometimes we divert from the Macquarie, but we, we notice these things because when one is editing a book and you're at the stage where you're creating a style sheet for the book. So you're making a word list of all decisions made in relation to hyphenation hyphenation and compound nouns and so forth. When you have these words listed side by side, that's when the inconsistencies arise. So Macquarie hasn't necessarily gone through that process itself to notice the words together.
Speaker 1 00:37:46 And are there words that are so common in our books that they end up on the big bed style sheet or style sheets? The overall company?
Speaker 6 00:37:54 Yeah. And the air conditioning is one of them, but another one that comes up all the time. And in fact it feels like it's in every single book that we publish is ice cream
Speaker 2 00:38:04 Funny that you think you'd have to look up a word like ice cream just to check, but it's one of those words that could be spelled three ways, again, with a space, with a hyphen or as a compound noun. And it is amazing actually, how many characters will at some point eat ice cream in a book? I think to the extent where if ice cream doesn't appear in a book, we almost feel as if we should suggest to the author that it goes in.
Speaker 6 00:38:26 Yeah. So it can be almost a sort of Fremantle press Easter egg for our rate is
Speaker 2 00:38:32 Exactly.
Speaker 6 00:38:35 Exactly. It's funny that you said exactly because we have lots of issues in marketing where we make up words and then you guys have to make a style decision on it. I know exactly was one of them when we were playing with, um, chicken Saurus promotions for James Foley and we had E G G X, a C T L Y N E G G S a and so on and so forth. So there's lots of those where we kind of create issues for you all by creating words from scratch chicken scratch, and we have to, and we have to figure out some kind of logic for it. Otherwise we just like consistently keep going back and looking at it again and ending up with inconsistency. Does the
Speaker 2 00:39:17 Marketing department use the McQuarry Claire?
Speaker 1 00:39:25 I do. If I'm desperate, if there's no handy editor around, um, that sounds really bad. And then if neither of them are available, I think I'll have to remember my login for the Macquarie and look it up. Thanks
Speaker 6 00:39:39 Karma. Thank you. Bye.
Speaker 2 00:39:44 Thank you for joining us on the how to be an author podcast. Don't forget to subscribe on your favorite app. So you don't miss an episode and to discuss anything raised on today's podcast. Join us on the how to be an author in Australia, Facebook group. It's a great place to chat with other writers who are starting out along with many of the contributors from the book I've written with Deborah hum, how to be an author. The business of being a writer in Australia is available from men, press.com.edu, and it all good bookstores. See you next time.
