Bug Week won the Ockham award for fiction but many shops have already sold out
Bug Week, a short story collection by Whanganui writer Airini Beautrais, won the $57,000 fiction prize at the Ockham New Zealand book awards on Wednesday night. She gave a round of interviews that night, appeared on Breakfast with John Campbell the next morning, and featured on the cover of Canvas on Saturday. It’s an extraordinary level of attention for a New Zealand book and would have led to an immediate boost in sales – but many shops will have to wait until next week to put it in front of customers.
Victoria University Press publisher Fergus Barrowman told ReadingRoom a new print run of 1000 copies was ordered the day after Beautrais won the Jann Medlicott Prize. They ought to arrive in shops on May 24.
Good Books in Wellington and UBS in Dunedin tweeted this morning they have copies for sale. But there have been reports of many other booksellers having to turn away customers who assumed they would be able to buy the hottest book in New Zealand. On Saturday, it drew a frustrated response from Dan Slevin, CEO of Booksellers New Zealand, who tweeted to VUP: "You had one job."
Barrowman responded on Twitter, "Like you have a fucking clue."
The two parties made peace on Monday afternoon on Twitter when Slevin issued an apology – but only after both were interviewed yesterday morning by ReadingRoom. "I think it would be fair to say that I am waiting for an apology," Barrowman told ReadingRoom; Slevin, in turn, was asked if he was going to apologise, and he replied, "I wasn't the one who swore."
In his interview with ReadingRoom, Slevin refused to resile from his remarks on Twitter, which implied that VUP dropped the ball over Bug Week. He said, "No. No. No, I don't think so. I mean I haven't deleted any of them. They're all out there."
He was reluctant to comment. "I better keep my head down from now on." Asked whether he thought his Twitter comments were provocative, he said, "Well – I'm not sure who else – like – first of all, if books don’t get delivered to bookshops so that bookshops can't sell books, then – like - unless – I'm not quite sure – first of all we have to reach an agreement about whether there was a failing or not, and if Fergus doesn’t agree there was a failing, that somehow not being able to sell the biggest book in the country at the time it’s the biggest book in the country, then that's his opinion, but it seems to me that – oh man…."
Barrowman rejected the suggestion that it was a failing. "If we reprinted shortlisted books in the hope they might win, we might end up with quite a lot of overstock."
He said it was a "normal" state of affairs.
"Are you surprised? Because my impression of the way the New Zealand book trade works is that every Ockham winner sold out immediately the prize is announced, and is then temporarily out of stock until the urgent reprint came in. I thought that was normal…It's only a two-week turnaround. So we'll have stock for the trade as soon as we possibly can."
It was put to Barrowman that perhaps this was not exactly ideal.
He said, "Well, it's reality. We don’t get any warning at all, so we swing into action as soon as the winner is announced. I can't think of a case when we've won the big prize and we haven't been temporarily out of stock for a while soon after the prize is announced. It happened with Luminaries [by Eleanor Catton]. It happened with New Animals [by Pip Adam]. It happened with – what's Catherine's novel called? You know. That book. [The Wish Child by Catherine Chidgey.] So it's just what happens. The demand doesn’t blow over instantly."
Slevin was asked if he was bothered that customers would have to be content to wait. He was quite bothered.
He said, "Anybody will tell you there's a certain amount of heat that happens out of the Ockhams…Everything was geared to this ceremony and this announcement and this event, and we have to be able to take advantage of it before the heat goes out of it, and gets replaced by something else."
Barrowman was asked if he was bothered that customers would have to be content to wait. He wasn't bothered.
He said, "I can't really afford to be bothered. It's just the situation that occurs when you get a sudden demand. I'm not bothered! That demand, that interest, is not going to go away. People are prepared to wait. We’re not asking them to wait for long."
Will things ever change? Do things need to change? Is it a problem, or no big deal? Is the New Zealand publishing trade forever doomed to run out of copies immediately after a book wins an Ockham award, and for customers to have to wait, or not wait and forget all about it?
Slevin said he hoped things might change. "No one can tell me this is an ideal situation. And if this isn't an ideal situation, and it hurts booksellers, then surely we need to find a better way. There's got to be a solution some way."
Barrowman said things would never change. "It's just how it is. I absolutely do not want advance notice of who's going to win because I want to preserve my own pleasure in the process and I want to preserve the freshness of the occasion. Given that, and the fact it would be insane for us to reprint our shortlisted books in the numbers that would supply the demand that followed a win, this is just the way the game is played."
The game played out that way with another book which won an Ockham award on Wednesday.
VUP ordered a reprint of The Savage Coloniser Book, a poetry collection by Tusiata Avia, when it made the shortlist. The book won the poetry prize on Wednesday night.
Barrowman said, "Our shortlist reprint proved not to be big enough, so Tusiata's book is also temporarily out of stock…"
Bug Week by Airini Beautrais (Victoria University Press, $30) will be available in bookstores nationwide from about May 24.
