Alex
Welcome to Paper Defiance, which is usually a fortnightly podcast all about indie bookshops and their owners. My name is Alex, and I am recording this on Wadawaurang land, in Ballarat Australia. It’s exciting to have you join me.
This is a break in my fortnightly schedule, to bring you a slightly different episode. It’s still an interview, but this time it’s not with a bookshop owner but more someone adjacent to that world. Garth Nix is an author whose books I’ve loved for a very long time. His most recent series starts with The Left-handed Booksellers of London and will continue with The Sinister Booksellers of Bath, which hopefully gives you an idea for why I asked him to be on the podcast. He also started his working life in a bookshop and has had various other book-connected roles in the following decades, all of which makes this interview fit really nicely into the Paper Defiance niche, as I hope you’ll agree.
Garth
Hello, I’m Garth Nix. I’m the author of many, many books over many, many years, including the Old Kingdom series that begins with Sabriel, the Keys to the Kingdom series that begins with Mister. Monday. And many, many others. Most recently, Terciel and Eleanor, which is the sixth book in the Old Kingdom series. And just before that, The Left-handed Booksellers of London. And my next book coming up is The Sinister Booksellers of Bath, which continues in the Lefthanded Booksellers universe, as it were.
Alex
Fantastic. I’ll get to those latest books in a moment. But I wanted to start, Garth, by taking you back to when you weren’t yet a full time author. And I know that you spent some time in the book selling world. Can you tell me a little bit about that and how you got into it?
Garth
Sure. Well, I’ve had many different jobs in the in the book industry over the years. My first one was as a bookseller. I mean going way, way back, it started when I was 19. And I decided that I did want to become a writer. And I’d read enough – I mean, I love writers’ biographies, I love reading about the industry and so on. And I’d read enough to realise that I would need a good day job. Because it’s very hard to make a living, and so much of it relies on luck, basically. I have been very fortunate. But I’m actually kind of astonished that I was sensible enough that at 19, I was thinking, Okay, I do want to be a writer, but you know, I’ve got a plan for a day job. And I need a degree to have a better day job. So I better go to university and get a degree so I can get a better day job. And as it happened, when I decided that I was actually traveling in the in the United Kingdom, in Europe, and I was writing and I went back and I thought I’ve got to get a degree; what can I do? And I just discovered that there was a writing degree. And at that time, there was really only I think, two in the whole of Australia. And this one was at what is now the University of Canberra, but back then it was the Canberra CAE and I lived in Canberra, my parents lived in Canberra, I’d gone back to stay with them. So I thought, well, I’ll do a writing degree. That sounds perfect. And over the course of that degree, that really just sort of confirmed the knowledge that I would need, you know, good day jobs, or interesting ones, at least, that would pay enough to sustain life while while I kept writing. And I had some paid writing gigs through my writing degree. I was very lucky there as well. But it was still very hard. I sold a couple of stories and things. And towards the end of my degree, some friends of mine were working at Dalton’s bookshop in Canberra, which doesn’t – the big old Dalton’s doesn’t exist anymore: it was in the middle of the city, it was by far the biggest bookshop. It was the best known – it was a real establishment. And they said, do want to come and work with us. And so I was interviewed by the very stern Margaret Dalton who frightened me rather, but she did offer me a job. So I worked as a bookseller immediately after leaving leaving university. So I was writing, and I was learning to be a bookseller. And I learned a great deal about books and about what people read and how they choose books, just from being in the bookshop. And I think it’s a tremendous apprenticeship, both working in publishing as I did later, but also for writers, I think it’s a very valuable thing to work in a bookshop. And as it turned out, I probably would have stayed there for much longer. But they decided to – the Daltons decided to retire and sell the bookshop; actually sell the building: they had the secret of success in book selling, which is to own the real estate. It’s really the only way. And it’s a very low margin business. But if you own the real estate, anything can happen. So unfortunately, as I thought at the time, I thought, Oh, that’s a shame, I would have stayed longer. I was there for about eight months. But in the last few months, I was looking for a new job. And I was talking to one of the sales reps from a small publisher who used to come in, and she offered me a job in Sydney as a sales rep and as a publicist, which is a very strange combination of roles. It’s very hard to do, but that’s what I moved on to next. Andthat was my first non book selling job but you know, a sales rep very closely connected, because of course you’re visiting book shops trying to sell them stuff and it’s all different degrees of trying to sell things to people. And from there, I eventually became an editorial assistant. And I worked my way up, to being a senior editor at HarperCollins eventually. Then I left for a while; I got tired of being poor, basically, because publishing jobs are badly paid. I’d had one book published at that stage, which was The Ragwitch, which is when I was a senior editor at HarperCollins, is when that came out, I’d actually sold it before I was there to PanMacmillan. But I was tired of – I went traveling, I came back and I thought, what can I do instead? I love books, I love publishing. But I’d like to be -just earn some money. And so I went to work in marketing and PR, where I was still using my writing skills for tech companies, basically, but it was massively massively better paid. But then that sort of coincided with my writing career taking off. And eventually I had to sort of decide what to do. This is condensing a more complicated story, perhaps. So I had an opportunity where I could be a full time writer, I had an American deal, which meant I could live for a few years. So I decided, Okay, I’m going to – and by that stage I was a partner in my own PR business. And I disappointed my partners greatly by deciding that I would exit at that point, and I became a full time writer. But actually, I wasn’t prepared mentally for that. It was interesting, because I’d always been incredibly busy working, both publishing jobs and then later the PR marketing job. And writing at night, and just on Sunday afternoons. So when I became a full time writer, I actually did very little, for quite a long time, because I hadn’t psychologically prepared myself for – I just kept thinking, well, I’m a full time writer, I can do it tomorrow, I’ve got all this time. And then, sort of nine months into that year of doing very little, I had a complete freak out because I, you know, had a book do and so on. And at the same time, I had the opportunity – I was helping out Curtis Brown Australia with the acquisition of the Hickson Agency. And Fiona Ingliss is an old friend of mine, we’d been editors together HarperCollins, said, Well, why don’t you come and come and be an agent part time, and you can be a writer and an agent. And I did that. And so I went back. And that was my last publishing job, I was an agent with Curtis Brown, which I loved. I mean, it’s – in a way, the book selling and the agenting are two ends of the spectrum. Well, they’re at each end of a very important spectrum. But you’re basically trying to match people with books. I mean, as an agent, you’re finding stuff. And then you’re matching it with an editor to buy it. As a bookseller, you’re trying to match a customer with a book and so on. I love – those probably my favourite jobs in the in the book industry. But ultimately, I had to stop being an agent, because I couldn’t balance – not so much the writing, I could have continued to be a writer and an agent, if it was only just the writing. But of course, it’s not. It’s also all the promotional stuff. And I couldn’t say to my clients, I’m sorry, I can’t read your manuscript. I can’t do anything. I’m going on tour in the US and the UK for my book for the next month. No, that just doesn’t work. And it’s just not compatible. Unfortunately. Some people seem to manage it. But I think the only way to manage it would be to not do that sort of promotional stuff. Or less of it or something. And so I had to make that choice. But so I had many different jobs in in books. And I love books. I love the book industry. I wish I could do more things. I mean, if I could open a bookshop tomorrow, I would, I can’t afford to lose that much money, but, you know…
Alex
Yeah, I was gonna say, opening a bookshop seems a lot like the joke about the wine industry. How do you make a small fortune, start with a big one. Yeah.
Garth
Yeah, well, a friend of mine, and I worked, you know, we worked out quite a decent plan, but it’s such a small margin industry that the plan really has to be that you make your money some other way, which supports the selling of the books, hence cafes and so on, because the margin on coffee is so much better than it is on books and so on. I mean, so, I love seeing authors who do have bookshops, but typically, you know, they are supporting something, which at best at best will be breakeven or maybe very small profit, but with so much work, you know, so much work is needed just to reach that point. And it becomes, you know, all embracing, I think, so I quite like the idea of a sort of hobby bookshop that I could – but I’d have to support it with money because I couldn’t support it with time and energy, or not enough. And, yes, it’s certainly not a recipe to, to make your fortune that’s for sure.
Alex
Books and kind of the consumption of books and so on featur in a lot of your books that I’ve read as far as I can tell. And as you said earlier, most prominently I guess, in your most recent – I want to say series, is there going to be one after the Bath book? Or is that a secret?
Garth
After The Sinister Booksellers of Bath? There might be – I suspect it may well be a series. At the moment, it’s two. But it may well – I’m never quite sure about these things. I mean, unless it’s something like The Keys to the Kingdom, which was very definitely planned as a series due to the structure of the narrative. Even then I tried to make it not seven books,
Alex
Horrible thought!
Garth
Well, how do you do a days of the week series… kinda like you do Monday to Friday and then the weekend or something, but I just, I didn’t want to do seven. But I couldn’t make the structure of the story I wanted to tell work, except in that way. So…
Alex
On my behalf, at least I say thank you for the seven, because I liked all seven of them.
Garth
Oh, thank you. Thank you. Well, that was the story.
Alex
Yeah, absolutely. So then, from my perspective, the obvious question is, how do you come to the idea of booksellers being these kind of protectors and defenders of magic – actually how are you describing the booksellers in your books? How are you how you doing that?
Garth
Well, I mean the left and the right handed booksellers of The Lefthanded Booksellers of London and The Sinister Booksellers of Bath are part of an ancient clan, I guess, whose job it is to keep the keep the ancient mythic powers of England, essentially, under control, and make sure they don’t impinge too much on on the modern world. And they’re booksellers for a variety of reasons, but one of them is that what they do is such a stressful – I mean, one of them is actually that is how they make their money and sustain their operations to a degree but the other one is that it’s also a sort of anti stress mechanism for them: reading and books are really important to them as a means of de-stressing from the awful things that they are often involved in, and the very stressful and dangerous things, which seems to me to make sense. And also the nature of bookshops as repositories of knowledge, and secrets. I think, you know, they totally go together. So then the notion of booksellers who are protectors and sort of, you know, who protect and police these ancient secrets, I think it just seems to make perfect sense to me. I didn’t overly think about – I didn’t really think very much about it when I when I started; I just said yeah, that makes sense of course bookshops are magic, booksellers a magic too, you know, why not?
Alex13:17
Have you come across people in bookshops who, you know, kind of wave their left hand at you?
Garth
I’ve had various booksellers say don’t reveal too much, and so on. But I mean, the basic idea came from a bookshop, I was in a bookshop in Leith, the port part of Edinburgh. And I was signing Goldenhand, one of the Old Kingdom books with my gold Sharpie, which the publicist carried about 10 of them, because weirdly, the metallic Sharpies don’t last as long as the other ones, you can only do like 50 signatures, and you need a new one. And the black ones will do 500 or 1000, or whatever. So that’s important bit of knowledge there, metallic Sharpies not as much – don’t last as long. And the bookseller, who was helping me open the books and so on, I noticed he was left handed. And I possibly was left handed. I’m of an age where I wasn’t allowed to be, you know, at school, and I can write with my left hand as well as my right. And my oldest son’s left handed and so I’m sort of interested in left handedness anyway. So I said, oh you’re left handed and he said, Yes, we all are. So all the booksellers in this bookstore in Leith and I said, Oh, you’re the left handed booksellers of Leith. And he said, Yeah, I guess we are. And I thought, there’s a story in that. And yeah, I made some notes that day, about the left hand of booksellers of Leith and I immediately thought, Well, that does sound interesting. So I’m sure they’re up to something. What are they up to, you know, who are these left handed booksellers? But I changed it to London, partly because I know – I actually have visited Leith quite often, but I know London much better, and also, it’s a much bigger scope, of course. So it does seem to make more sense. And then in the course of working it out, I also decided to set it back in 1983, which is when I first went to the United Kingdom, and I spent quite a lot of time in London and other parts, and that was also quite instinctive. I don’t actually know why. But I liked it. It gave me – it’s like a lot of things I do in my writing, I don’t really know why. But if I like them, thin I think other people probably will, too. Doesn’t always work. But, you know, my particular – things that I particularly like in stories aren’t always universal. But it mostly works. So if I make myself happy with the story, I think it’s more likely to work for readers. So that’s where it started. Yes. So in a Waterstones in Leith.
Alex
I have to admit that as I was reading it, I wondered how the booksellers in the 21st century would be dealing with, you know, the problems of ebooks and how they would you know, get into those changes?
Garth
Well, if I keep writing the series, maybe I’ll I’ll get there one day. It would be – I mean, I think, of course, for the St. Jacques, which is the name of the family, the clan, they have other sources of revenue than books as well. I suspect it might well be that in the modern era, their bookshops would still be going concerns, but will probably need much, much greater help from other economic avenues. Though of course, actually, the New Bookshop, which sells old books, and rarities, probably that will be fine because at the very high end of the market, particularly with their stock as well, you know, with their massive amounts of hidden stuff that they can bring out which they’re allowed to sell, as opposed to the stuff that must never emerge from the secret cellars. Yeah, I suspect they’d have quite a lot of extremely valuable stock they could bring out if necessary. Yeah, I was gonna say the antiquarian trade doesn’t seem to be slowing down or losing money, as far as I can tell. Well, it has, I think it has changed quite a lot. I don’t know – have you read – I’ve just read Oliver Darkshire’s new book Once upon a Tome –
Alex
It’s on my list, it looks amazing.
Garth
It’s great. Yeah, it’s funny, and it’s clever. But it also, you know, it’s about rare books selling and how – and some of the changes there. I guess the main one is that it’s relatively easy to establish a value for something now. And so, so many of those old avenues of, you know, Lifeline book fairs or whatever, they’ve had a look to see what they’ve got. And whether it’s valuable; you don’t get that sort of treasure finding aspects so much anymore. Because people can look it up.
Alex
There are a couple of books that I’ve got on my list, every time I go into a secondhand books, I’m like, I wonder if I’ll happen to find this that is impossible to buy elsewhere, and they don’t know. But I suspect that that’s just a forlorn hope.
Garth
Yeah, but it’s still a hope; it can still happen. You just never know. You know, and also just garage sale, people can’t be bothered. You know, you’re just – that sort of thing, you never you never can tell: walking past hard rubbish collection day, all the books are out and look at them carefully.
Alex
Always!
Garth
Yeah, for sure.
Alex
So if you’ve had sort of vague fantasy plans about opening a bookshop, and you obviously go to a lot of book shops, you still think that there’s a place for physical book shops in the 21st century?
Garth
Absolutely. I mean, I think they are still important places, of discovery and community. And it’s like, I think it has got harder, it was always a hard business, it’s got even harder. But when it’s done really well, you can create a truly wonderful place. But it’s sort of I guess – and this, I guess this applies to a lot of other things: you can’t be an also-ran kind of bookstore. I think that’s, it’s just not going to last unfortunately. But if it is a destination, and you make it a place that people want to come to, and there’s things going on – I mean, it’s an enormous amount of work. And of course, if your objective is to make money, do something else, you know, or to make a lot of money, do something else. But yeah, I mean, I love bookstores. And one of the things I miss about this COVID era is, you know, when I’d go on tour and see lots and lots of different bookstores and be in lots of different bookstores and see books that I never knew existed, and that’s one of the things I love so much. I mean I buy books online, I read ebooks, as well as paper books, you know, they’re all important. They all have their place. You know, I find books through lots of online ways, but I still – it still doesn’t match up with, you know, just wandering around a bookstore and finding things you never knew existed you suddenly want to read – and also just the whole environment of a good bookstore I like and of course, I think they’re a very important part of the environment for promoting books and for helping authors connect to readers; for readers to meet each other quite often. I mean, it’s interesting: signing queues for at an author event, people meet friends, they meet lovers, and then there’s all kinds of stuff happening in signing queues – someone should, there’s probably a book to be written about, sort of meet-cutes in signing queues. All that stuff, you know, just, it wouldn’t happen if the bookstore wasn’t there. And booksellers who will find things for you, or will make connections you didn’t know, I mean, where you mention a book that you love, and that is a clue for them to connect you to some other book, which you just wouldn’t have heard of otherwise. But their expertise and their knowledge has made that happen for you. And maybe you find an author that you’ll love all their work for the rest of your life and read dozens of times, and you would not have encountered that author without that bookstore experience. So I do think they’re important, but it is a very, it’s a hard business.
Alex
You mentioned good bookshops: are there particular things that you think are important in the physical space for a bookshop?
Garth
I like a lot of stock. But that’s hard too of course, because you know, that’s invested money. I like – I mean, I love a really large, interesting, bookshop, that has a lot of books. I like them to be organised. I mean, I’m not a supremely organised – I don’t organise my shelves but I like book shops to have – possibly very hypocritical, except I’m not trying to sell mine off my bookshelves. And I think you know, where it’s friendly and welcoming. And the staff say hello, and all that sort of thing. I mean, going way back to Dalton’s, we were trained and expected to say hello to everybody, to ask if they needed help, to leave them alone if they said no. All those sorts of things, I think, are important – it’s creating that welcoming environment where everyone’s a book lover. Or maybe they aren’t, maybe you should treat them as if they are. So all those things adequate light, which can be a bit tricky. Some books need to stay ~in the darkness~ – rare books don’t want too much light. I guess probably, you know, friendly booksellers with a lot of books is the very basic requirement. But I also, I love bookstores that are quirky and reflect the owners’ or the staff’s interests. I love personal recommendations. I love bookstores that let their staff build a tower out of some book that they love and no one’s ever heard of – things like that, which is, you know, goes against the sort of corporate dictate, you must have this book there and so on; though I do understand the requirements for that sort of stuff, I think there’s a sort of happy medium, where you can have all the systems and processes which make it easier to sell books and find books and so on. But you still need that creative flair. And you’ve got to give your booksellers the freedom to make it more interesting as well on top of those good systems because of course, the idiosyncratic bookshop that looks fascinating and’s got the quirky eccentrics but they can never find a book for you is no good either. So I kind of like creative efficiency, I suppose is something that I like. And I also like it if they have a great cafe – my friend and I’s plan was always to have a bar as well as the bookshop. Again, better margins on alcohol, but also it just would be nice. Maybe have a ramen bar and a bookshop. But then, there’s always – there’s practical complications with all of that kind of stuff, as well. But all of them can be addressed. I like a bookshop that’s open very late. But again, expensive and difficult. The giant Barnes and Noble at Columbus Circle in New York, you’d go there at midnight, you know, back in the day – it’s long gone – and it would be full of people buying books, looking at magazines – all the magazines are mostly gone now too – but just that sort of life, the bookshop as a hub of life, I think is great. But yes, very hard to achieve and harder now than ever probably.
Alex
I don’t know if it’s still there, there used to be a little bar called The Moat underneath the State Library of Victoria, which was primarily a bar but they also had like the equivalent of one of those little libraries. So you could just go and grab a book and like all their cocktails were like literary themed and those sorts of things.
Garth
Well, the State Library here in Sydney has just opened a new bar on top of the State Library, which I’ve not been to, but my wife Anna has been to. So I mean, that’s a good start. I don’t know if The Moat is still there. I mean, I remember it from years ago, but I haven’t been to the State Library of Victoria for a long time, sadly.
Alex
I hope The Moat’s still there, it was always a lot of fun.
Garth
Yeah, sadly, I suspect it might not be but, you know, maybe it could come back.
Alex
That would be good. Garth, my final question is hopefully an easy one, which is, what are you reading at the moment?
Garth
Well, I just read Once upon a Tome, Oliver Darkshire – I’ve just finished that. And then I just read – I’ve just – I can’t even remember where I saw a reference to it – it’s quite an odd book, from the 1930s called Miss Hargreaves by Frank Baker, which, I mean, it’s very obscure. And it’s about a young man, and his friend, who invent an old woman as a sort of joke, but then she turns out to be real. And she descends upon their town and makes his life a misery. But it’s, it’s very, it’s, it’s not ultimately completely satisfactory. But, you know, it is a fascinating fantasy about sort of creation, because essentially, it’s a sort of variation of one of those things where you’re cursed with what you say will become real. And what he says about this old woman becomes real, and he gets himself sort of deeper into a hole, as he invents stuff about her – initially for fun, but then to try and rectify the situation. So it sort of turns into a horror story towards the end. I wish I could remember – something led me to it, which happens quite often, I’m reading something else and then I’m sort of led into thinking, I’ve never heard of that book, I must now find it and read it. And sometimes, that’s one of the great things about ebooks – this was a ebook, though weirdly, it was quite hard to find, because searching, it’s part of a – it’s been published as part of a series called the Bloomsbury Group. And if you search just the title, it doesn’t show up, you have to search in – I had to do a roundabout search. So ebooks are – I mean, that can be weird treasure hunt. So I actually just finished reading that yesterday. It’s interesting – I mean, it also has the poetry, at the back it has the poetry of the invented old woman, which is quite strange. But one of the things I like about it the most is that the main character’s father is aware of this creation thing that goes on, and he swore off it himself. Because of something that he did. He created a lizard in South America, when he was a youth, and has sworn off at and he just talks in such a weird – and his whole dialogue is a method of making sure nothing can come true. He just has such weird, conversational methods. That’s very, it’s clever. And it’s funny, but I think it ultimately doesn’t totally work. That’s probably a classic example of y reading. The other thing that I’ve been reading – or rereading for the first time in, probably 40 plus years is Julian May, and her Pliocene Exile books, which I only very vaguely remembered. And I saw some hardcovers at St. Vincent DePaul and and bought them because weirdly, they’re not available – or maybe they are available now on ebooks. They weren’t a few years ago. I mean, anyway, I saw the hardcovers and bought them. So I’ve just reread that quartet.
Alex
Did they hold up?
Garth
Mostly? Yeah, mostly yes. They’re still very gripping stories. There’s a few oddities, there’s some sort of strange stuff there. But yeah, they do. I mean, they, and I could see why they impressed me so much when I first read them at 15 or whatever. Because they’re powerful, clever stories. And also, it’s science fiction that is fantasy, really. It’s – the framing is all science fiction, but their metapsychic powers, it’s all really fantasy. And of course, they are also meant to be fantasy archetypes. Their existence laid the foundation for the later myths. So it’s a very interesting combo. So it’s been good to read them. I seriously, I don’t think I’d read them for at least 40 years. Yeah, so there’s a St Vincent dePaul across from my office here. And I do look at their bookshelves quite often. I haven’t ever seen any super rare books that are worth a fortune but you know, $5 hardcover, you know, 20 bucks for four hardcovers, that’s not bad.
Alex
Very quickly that turns into you having saved a fortune.
Garth
And also I probably will give these back too – so it’s really like a reading, it’s a library fee. I tend to keep books, but I, I have, you know, 120 boxes in a storage unit. I have this office, which also has a storage room, which is actually mostly full of my own books because even though I try and give them away and so on, you know, all the different publishers send me quite a lot. The Americans in particular send me a lot. Which is good, of course. And then at home, it’s completely full of books as well. So I do now try and think yes, maybe I don’t actually have to keep these. I will give them back to St. Vincent DePaul.
Alex
Garth, thank you very much for your time. This has been fantastic. I’ll end it there.
Garth
It’s a pleasure. Always happy to talk about books. It’s easy, isn’t it?
Alex
Thanks for listening to this out of schedule episode. If you enjoyed it, consider leaving a review or a rating somewhere. You can find paper defiance on Twitter as paperdefiancepod. On Instagram, as paperdefiance. And on Facebook, it’s Paper Defiance Podcast.
This podcast is created and produced by me, Alexandra Pierce. The music is called Loopster, by Kevin MacLeod; you can find the attribution at paperdefiance.com.
Music: “Loopster” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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