Today
we are pleased to welcome Hazel Cushion, founder of Accent Press and Xcite
Books, to answer our questions about her well known publishing company.
Can
you tell our readers how Accent Press began?
It
all started in my front bedroom when I was a single mother to 6 year old
triplets. I did an MA in Creative Writing intending to be an author but, when
putting together our anthology, I learnt how to make a book and I was hooked! I
realised that making books had become very easy with the advent of desk top
publishing software but selling them would still be hard. I’d worked a lot in
the charity sector before and came up with the idea of combining sex and
charity in short story collections – the first was called Sexy Shorts for
Christmas and raised money for a Breast Cancer charity. Katie Fforde was
amongst the authors that kindly donated a story and her name helped sell it
into WH Smiths. We still do at least one charity book a year but these days our
main focus is on contemporary women’s fiction and crime.
You
kindly undertook one2ones at the RNA Conference. Did you enjoy the experience?
Yes,
I did, very much. I have a great deal of empathy with authors as I’d planned to
be one myself and know well the disappointment of rejections and the joy of an
acceptance or positive feedback. Without a doubt digital publishing has opened
up new opportunities for writers and enables us to offer a wider and more
interesting range of titles. I think it’s an exciting time to be an author as
you can now reach a truly global readership and there aren’t the rigid genre
restrictions that finding the right place, on the right shelf, in a bookshop
used to impose.
What
are you looking for from authors? The winner of the RNA's Joan Hessayon
Award, Jo Thomas, was published by Accent Press. How important are
competitions and awards to your company?
Yes, we were very lucky to be the launch pad for
Jo Thomas who was then sold on to Hodder Headline and is continuing to win
awards for The Oyster Catcher. Last year I had a very proud moment when we were
shortlisted for Independent Publisher of the Year alongside Bloomsbury, Faber
and Faber and Constable and Robinson. For a small and relatively new publishing
company to be up against those three established London companies was simply
incredible. We didn’t win, Bloomsbury did, but it was a huge endorsement and
boost for me.
I do think awards are really important to both
us and our authors.
Our erotic imprint Xcite Books has won the ETO
Best Erotic Book Brand for the last five years and gives us some serious
international marketing clout and credibility. I would always encourage people
to enter awards because even if you don’t win there are often other benefits
and recognition for being shortlisted.
We understand you will shortly be running
your own competition, closing date 30th November 2014. Can you give
us details?
We are currently running a novel writing
competition with Woman magazine and I really hope your readers will participate
in that as they can win a writing holiday in France and a publishing contract.
Here’s the link to the full details: http://www.accentpress.co.uk/woman-writing-comp.html
Accent Press has grown to become well known
in the publishing world. Are there plans to move in other directions in years
to come?
This last year has seen a great deal of very
positive growth for the company and I have been able to establish a wonderful new
team which includes four full-time editors. That has enabled us to take on a
lot of new authors – these include debut writers, self-published ones or those,
like Christina Jones, who had a strong backlist. Without a doubt our strength lies in our digital
marketing where, due to the way the Amazon algorithms work, authors benefit
from being part of a stable of authors that includes top 100 Kindle
bestsellers.
One new innovation is our Accent Hub which we
are developing as a meeting http://accenthub.com/
place for readers, authors and reviewers – anyone
can join so I do hope your readers will as it’s a great place to connect.
Have you ever considered writing a novel?
Yes, and I have two outlined but I have so much
fun publishing other peoples that I doubt they’ll ever get written. My triplets
are now 18 and have all left for university this September so just maybe, I’ll
get around to it. I doubt it though as I have the attention span of a teabag
and lack the self-discipline required. I’m genuinely in awe of authors who do
ever managed to get to write The End – the dissertation for my MA was 20,000
words and I ran out of things to say at 17,000 so I really don’t think there’s
much chance of me bashing out a 70,000 word bestseller any time soon!
Hazel, thank you for finding time in your very busy life to join us today
This blog is
brought to you by Elaine Everest and Natalie Kleinman. If you would like to
write about the craft of writing or perhaps be interviewed about your writing
life please contact us at elaineeverest@aol.com
