A ‘Close Shave’ with Man Booker!

Writer Robert Davidson at the book signing of his novel "Site Works" at Waterstones Inverness. Picture by Gary Anthony

The Sip of Life Newsmaker this Week is Robert Davidson, Managing Director of Sandstone Press in Scotland, UK. The Press has got a global acclaim after one of its titles, The Testament of Jessie Lamb, by Jane Rogers, was named on the long list of the prestigious Man Booker Prize. Rogers, professor on the university creative writing MA course, has made the last 13 for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction with her novel.

Interestingly, the novel, which happens to be Jane’s eighth, was turned down by a number of mainstream publishers but has now been published by a small Scottish independent, Sandstone Press. The Sip of Life Moderator, Amit Roy, got in touch with Robert Davidson, the man behind the Press, whose happiness knew no bounds when the news broke.

The shortlisted authors were announced on 6 September, with the winner announced the next month at a dinner at Guildhall in London. Though the book did not make it to the final shortlist but Sandstone has surely made it big.

SOL: Robert, we would first of all like to know a little about you and how and when you set up the Sandstone press?

ROBERT: Thank you, but first of all let me say that I am delighted to be in touch with readers of The Sip of Life, especially in India. The sub-continent has always been fascinating to me although I have never visited. There is a very long history of co-existence between Scotland and India, and Pakistan.

I’m not sure how to answer your question without appearing egocentric. Sandstone Press is about readers and authors meeting through the media of language and design, whether on paper or through the internet. It isn’t just about me. To attempt an answer though: born in working class Glasgow. Between the ages of seventeen and fifty one I worked in civil engineering, mostly the water industry, with contractors, consultants and, latterly in the public sector.

At the same time I was reading constantly and, after a while, writing. I am a published poet, reviews editor and editor. I have written many books and recently published Site Works which is a novel based on my experiences in civil engineering. When I left civil engineering I decided that I would not look for another job. Instead, I would take the risk of setting out on a more uncertain route.

I founded Sandstone Press in October 2002. At that time my verse sequence Columba was being produced as a dramatic tableau for the Cromarty Book Festival, after being produced on radio, with plainchant composed by the harpist Bill Taylor. My song sequence Centring on a Woman’s Voice had been performed at Highland Festival ’01, scored by no fewer than nine different composers; and Dunbeath Water: an Oratorio was in preparation. I had been appointed Managing Editor of Northwords Magazine and was moving it away from being an entirely new writing magazine to becoming a general arts magazine. They were exciting times: around sixty people were working creatively with me on all these projects.

When Coracle, the magazine of the Iona Community, took a series of six poems to print on the back cover of the magazine over the period of a year I decided to make a pamphlet of them, Butterfly on a Chestnut Leaf, to give to all my collaborators. It was then that I decided to create a publishing company that might free me even more and be a wonderful creative tool, and wondered about a name.

When on my daily walk down by the Cromarty Firth I could see both the Old Distillery flats, where I live and Ben Wyvis beyond and in my imagination I moved to the Torridon hills in the west. The flats reminded me of the tenement flats in Glasgow so many years before, which are made of sandstone blocks. The Torridon hills are also made of sandstone, but let me tell you something about them.

Torridonian sandstone is one of the oldest rock formations in the world, and many people consider Torridon to be the one of the world’s most beautiful places. To create that environment though, tremendous geological forces had to come into play. Long periods of time were required as well as great pressure. To complete the process the whole thing had to be, literally, turned upside down. I thought about that history of the material’s creation, such revolutionary force leading to such incredible beauty, and, of course, that it is also a building material. Sandstone appeared to be the perfect elemental symbol for what I was trying to achieve and Butterfly on a Chestnut Leaf became the first publication with the words ‘Sandstone Press’ on the cover.

A few weeks later the company was formally founded and began its creative life. We have travelled quite a way since then.

SOL: We believe you had made a humble beginning and still operate out of a bedroom in a flat. Is it true?

ROBERT: That’s a slight exaggeration!  However, I do still work from home, as do my fellow directors.  I am one of the world’s most privileged men just to be doing what I do. Making money at publishing, even enough to get buy is very difficult, so we still work hard at keeping costs down. The cost of producing a book in numbers around, say, 1000 to 1500 is relatively high against any acceptable retail price. In addition the logistical costs are also high. Bear in mind that it is a rare book that sells a thousand copies. A bookseller once said to me (around the time we published Jamie Whittle’s White River) that ‘we all know that only about one book in six covers its costs and it has to pay for the rest’.

This being so, and if you can imagine a long, slow upward curve, very flat at first but eventually rising and steepening, it will of course take a long time to succeed from such a beginning. My two colleagues on the Board, Iain Gordon and Moira Forsyth, have made sacrifices to bring the company to a point where, after publishing many great books, some of them very successfully, the curve appears to be steepening.

We have had many expressions of support since Jane Rogers’ long listing and one of them said this: ‘A note from nearby to congratulate you on everything. When I first came home to live here and learned of Sandstone Press, it was tiny (you know what I mean, not tiny small-and-insignificant, but tiny local-and-off-the-literary-radar along with the rest of rural Scotland. And now everyone who’s anyone has heard of you and is reviewing your books, and you’ve got a Man Booker winner… it’s wonderful!’

That is tremendously gratifying but, you know, it is also a responsibility. Other people have put their hopes in us. Another thing that is becoming clear is that our recent authors are especially glad to be with us, to have ‘joined us’ as one put it just today. They see a future. I have said from the outset that our location would at first be a disadvantage from both a logistical point of view and from the point of view of credibility, but that with increasing success it would become an advantage because the Highland aura makes us not simply different but unique.

SOL: Tell us something about the book, The Testament of Jessie Lamb, which has been named on the long list of the prestigious Man Booker Prize? Also can you tell briefly about the author too?

ROBERT: The Testament of Jessie Lamb is an exquisitely written novel of the near future. Into that future, which is not all that different from the real present, a future of enormous turbulence, arrives a manufactured virus which combines the menaces of AIDS and CJD. By its nature it strikes women at the point of their becoming pregnant, when the body’s immune system lowers its defences to allow implantation. The whole future of humankind is threatened but I do not want to give too much away. Suffice to say that, in addition to the book’s page turning qualities it provides fuel for moral and religious debate; important debate which Jane (and Jessie) explore.

Jane Rogers http://bit.ly/nu6UJU  is the author of seven previous novels one of which, Mr Wroe’s Virgins, was an early and successful television project for Danny Boyle. She is Professor of Creative Writing at Sheffield Hallam University and a colleague of one of our Vista authors, Leslie Glaister, but also teaches through the Arvon Foundation including at our local centre, Moniack Mhor  http://bit.ly/r2k990, not too far from Beauly.

Shortly after accepting the book I met Jane at Beauly’s Café on the Square, which is one of the cafes I use to meet authors and some others from time to time. Editorial Director Moira Forsyth joined us later. Thoughtful and precise, her sense of humour is very definitely present but a sense of seriousness is more pronounced. Emphatically, she is a good colleague to work with.

SOL: The novel is said to have been turned down by a number of mainstream publishers. How did Sandstone Press accept it?

ROBERT: I read the text here, in this room where I am working now. Occasionally I would stop to look out over the Cromarty Firth to clear my head and take stock. Otherwise it was a single sitting. It didn’t take long to identify the book’s genius.

The Testament of Jessie Lamb can be categorised with that small group of classic books which are spoken through the mind of a child or young adult for a principally adult audience while still being accessible to a younger readership. Often the voice is that of the adult remembering, as with To Kill a Mockingbird and David Copperfield with, for me the best in this field, Great Expectations. The feat takes tremendous empathy and uncanny writing skills. I won’t say how Jane achieves it, but she is up there.

SOL: What was your reaction when you heard about the book being named in the list? How did you celebrate it?

ROBERT: I was of course absolutely thrilled – but not shocked.  We have worked towards this for a long time.  Any such achievement carries its share of luck, of course, but that is not to be confused with accident. We tried for this; we meant it. Some things simply have their time and we have been working for nine years to create a company capable of this level of achievement. The ground was prepared. If Jane Rogers and Sandstone Press do not reach the shortlist we will accept that decision with not only good grace but also gratitude for getting this far. We will continue to build from what is already a higher platform. Whatever happens, this is no more an end than it is a flash in the pan. We are working on more books of this quality now.

Jane and I spent a considerable time seeking a suitable artist for the cover and in the end approached Kirstie Cohen http://bit.ly/qmcQAx  who frequently exhibits at Kilmorack Gallery http://bit.ly/diozS3 . Her landscapes have just the right combination of bleakness, colour and depth for Jessie’s story. Kirstie came on board and we were able to pass her Winter along to Rebecca Pickard at Zebedee Design http://bit.ly/e9pIZB  in Edinburgh to complete the cover. To answer your celebration question: I have commissioned a landscape painting from Kirstie. She does not do conventional mountain paintings (and I wouldn’t ask her to) so I have given her just two key words, ‘Alligin’ and ‘sandstone’. Beinn Alligin is one of the great Torridon mountains which, as said earlier, are made of sandstone. It’s a Gaelic word and means ‘jewel’. Within those loose parameters she is free, and I can’t wait to see what she comes up with.

SOL: How do you think this will help you in building your reputation in the British publishing business?

ROBERT: It is already a big step. I divide publishing into art, industry and trade. All have overlaps but it is the trade that is the biggest remaining challenge. We want our books to be reviewed in the worldwide press and have automatic access to retailers’ shelves. This is not yet so, but credibility has been raised and world’s gaze has rested on us, at least for a while. We will build on that. Will the trade continue to look and listen? In time, yes they will and The Testament of Jessie Lamb has shortened that time.

SOL: What has been the reaction from across the world to this achievement of Sandstone Press?

ROBERT: Reaction from outwith Scotland and Britain has been most gratifying. Rights interest in some of our other books has come in from several different countries and from all the continents not actually covered in ice. I suspect that some, more in Britain than abroad, might see us as quaint, as a company that will disappear from sight as quickly as it arrived. Others see further, observe the seriousness of our intent and the speed of our journey to this point. The aura of the Highlands, its qualities of beauty, the cleanliness of our environment and its deep culture perhaps speak more clearly to others than to those close at hand.

SOL: How do you plan to move ahead? Any plans for expansion?

ROBERT: We do indeed have plans for expansion. We already had these plans before the Man Booker long listing but, if you don’t mind, I won’t go into them here. There is many a slip between cup and lip, as the title of your journal suggests you will know. Besides, whatever we plan the future will be unexpected and surprising. Let’s accept that and go forward bravely.

SOL: One last question: As a publisher, what do you feel makes a book become a “bestseller”?

ROBERT: That is easy to answer: I don’t know more than anyone else. Story is king and the telling of it is his queen. We can analyse a text and guide the author. We can have it beautifully laid out on the page. We take endless trouble to create striking, usually beautiful, always memorable covers. We get better at pre-marketing all the time. Our Distributor, BookSource http://bit.ly/rpje19 gets the books out swiftly and efficiently. Knocking on the door of the trade as often as we do we grow increasingly aware of its needs. After all that art, design and preparation, success comes down to the Abracadabra Factor.

The Testament of Jessie Lamb, by Jane Rogers centres on Jessie Lamb, “an ordinary girl living in extraordinary times”. If the human race is to survive, it’s up to her. In a world irreparably altered by an act of biological terrorism, the story explores a young woman’s determination to make her life count for something, as the certainties of her childhood are ripped apart.