Y Pwyllgor Diwylliant, y Gymraeg a Chwaraeon

Policy review - English Medium Writing In Wales

Meic Stephens DLitt

Emeritus Professor of Welsh Writing in English, University of Glamorgan.

Formerly Literature Director of the Welsh Arts Council (1967-90). Founder and editor of Poetry Wales (1965), editor of The Oxford Companion to the Literature of Wales (1986), the Writers of Wales series and author / editor / translator of many other books dealing with the English-language culture of Wales. Secretary of the Rhys Davies Trust, a registered charity devoted to sponsoring Welsh writing in English since 1991. Literary journalist and Life Member of the Welsh Academy. The views expressed in this memorandum are attributable to me alone. These notes are all I can find time to write in the two days I have at my disposal before the deadline of 29 August, and they are therefore hastily written. I hope they will serve at least as an introduction to the field and perhaps raise a number of questions which the Committee may feel able to consider in greater detail. I should be prepared to give oral evidence to the Committee if it so wishes. A summary of my views on Welsh publishing in English will be found in my article, `A Ridiculous Mouse', which appeared in Planet (134, April / May 1999). I take for granted that the Committee shares my view that English is one of the languages of Wales, with its own historical and contemporary culture, and that provision needs to be made for cultural activity in English as the language of the majority in Wales alongside that made for its counterpart in Welsh. If it is not, English is at best a provincial language in Wales, merely reflecting what goes on in metropolitan England and never likely to become the medium of a significant culture, and at worst a foreign language, which clearly it is not. I also assume that the Committee agrees that there is such a body of writing as the one we now call Welsh Writing in English (rather than Anglo-Welsh literature) and that it includes a number of major writers whose work merits being read as a valuable part of the literature of Wales. If Wales is a country with two languages, it is a country with two literatures. Welsh writing in English makes articulate the minds and aspirations of a large part of our people over two hundred years and more, and is neglected at our peril. There are many weaknesses in the context in which English-medium writing and publishing exist in Wales, among which I note the following: The publishers are few in number, and for the most part located in villages or small towns (Llandysul, Cardigan, Talybont, Llanrwst), far from the main centres of population. They are inadequately staffed and resourced, with little capital, small profits and sluggish cash-flows, often unable or unwilling to co-operate or participate in ambitious or experimental projects, and over-dependent on subsidy from public sources, without which some of them would not exist at all. The only exception is the University of Wales Press, the nearest we have to a professional publisher, and it depends on subsidy from the University and normally publishes only books of an academic nature in small print-runs. I write as one who has published books with the UWP, Gomer Press, Christopher Davies, Seren, Y Lolfa, Welsh Academic Press, Carreg Gwalch, Parthian, and in England Oxford University Press, Routledge, Carcanet and Dent. In Wales we need a few more publishing imprints (not printing presses) which specialize in the publication of English-language books. Seren and Parthian, already in the field, could be provided with better resources such as editorial and marketing staff but they should not be allowed to become complacent or monopolies, so others will have to be encouraged as well. Initiatives like those of Literary Publishers (Wales) Ltd, one of the few encouraging signs in recent times in the field of English-medium publishing, should be given more funds with which to promote their books. Training schemes should be provided with a view to increasing the expertise of the publishers' staff. Even so, I fear that the situation will not be substantially changed until there is a either a wholly commercial publisher in Wales, or one heavily subsidized on a scale not hitherto envisaged, who is able to reach all parts of the country and to compete in the market in England and beyond. The chances of a commercial publisher setting up or moving into Wales are slim. On the other hand, more generous funding could be provided for the creation of a new, professional imprint that would publish books of literary merit to at least the standard of London publishers or, in the English provinces, of publishers such as Carcanet and Bloodaxe; a start might be made with poetry, fiction, biography, literary criticism and historiography. I hesitate to mention a National Publishing House (on which I once wrote a memorandum for the Literature Committee of the Welsh Arts Council) because it puts fear in the hearts of those who believe in a free, unregulated market and invites charges usually leveled at the `command economies' of the former Soviet Union; such an initiative, although it exists in various forms in Scandinavia and elsewhere, would be in danger of being talked to death in laissez-faire Wales. But, quite frankly, the alternative seems to me that Welsh publishing in English will muddle on, in a more or less amateur, piecemeal, ineffective way, with inadequate resources and pathetic sales, `half-and half with nothing quite right', as T. H. Parry-Williams once put it. In certain quarters, particularly among those who believe in the amateur tradition, that may seem an attractive scenario, but I ask the Committee to consider whether something approaching a National Publishing House for Wales might be a better option. Such an initiative need not adversely affect publishing in the Welsh language nor the system of grants from public sources on which it depends; it would be designed to deal with the specific problem of publishing English-language books in Wales. But I say again: it would need massive investment. I ask the Committee to consider this : there is something drastically wrong in a culture where speakers of the majority language do not read books relating to their own country, whereas speakers of Welsh read and buy them in sufficient numbers to make publishing in that language more or less viable (albeit with the help of subsidies and an infrastructure provided by public bodies). Tinkering with the system, which usually means little more than fine tuning of the Books Council's policies or more substantial grant-aid for publishers or more generous discounts for booksellers, is not what is needed; only a radical new approach will achieve results. But who has the temerity to attempt it? There are so many vested interests - among publishers, booksellers, the public bodies - that it seems fraught with difficulties. At the moment we exist in `a mixed economy' consisting of the publishers (private enterprises that are driven, more or less, by the profit motive) and the public bodies, and it is the publishers' interests which are usually paramount, so that the public bodies have little room for innovation or maneuver. Yet the system is not working: the publishers are more or less content with things as they are, except they want more subsidy, while the public bodies are powerless to bring greater pressure to bear on the publishers because, at the end of the day, unlike a theatre or opera company or symphony orchestra or art gallery, the books belong to private companies owned by individuals. The result is stasis.

• Bookshops in Wales are few and far between and are situated mostly in the west and north, with only one or two in the populous south-east. Cardiff is particularly badly served now that Oriel, formerly owned by the Arts Council and once the leading stockist of all Welsh books, has become a branch of HMSO, while books of Welsh interest are sparsely stocked and poorly displayed in chainstores such as Waterstones, Smith and Menzies. Bookshops in the west and north usually give little or no prominence to English-language books; like many authors now coming to the end of their writing careers, I have never seen a book of mine in the window of a Welsh bookshop in the west or north. Looking for a book from Wales in London or Oxford is like looking for a butterfly on an iceberg. Bookshops in Wales generally compare badly with those in Scotland and Ireland which stock good selections of those countries' books and display them prominently. Greater effort needs to be made to take mobile bookshops into the valleys of the south-east, into factories, schools, shopping centres, offices, and so on, and into rural areas, though local bookshops would no doubt have to be involved if the usual complaints about taking bread out of the mouths of booksellers are not to be heard. Many of the best Welsh bookshops now in existence, such as Siop y Pethe in Aberystwyth, were opened in the 'sixties and soon made a difference to sales of the books of Wales. It is high time a new wave of booksellers were encouraged to do the same in small towns and villages that are poorly served.
• The Welsh Books Council has responsibility for books in English that are relevant to Wales but it seems from anecdotal hearsay that it does not take it as seriously as it does its responsibility for books in Welsh. This is particularly noticeable in its dealings with shops: English books are delivered in small numbers and according to weak demand, so that when the two or three copies of a title are sold the stock is not replenished, with the result that books disappear from the shops soon after publication and are never stocked again. I am loth to criticise the Books Council because, on the whole, I admire its work and support almost all it does, but I do believe that it might be asked to put greater effort into the distribution of English-language books from its warehouse in Llanbadarn. The service it provides is the envy of publishers in England but it should be reminded that it is also meant to serve the English books of Wales. The gwales website should be developed but the trade journal Book News from Wales should also be brought back. I have my doubts about the efficacy of the Books Council's blanket promotion of books in general because it is not accurately quantifiable; far better, it seems to me, would be to concentrate on a small number of specific titles, in co-operation with publishers and ringing the changes from time to time, so that publishers are eventually able to do this work for themselves.
• There is so little coverage of English-language books on radio and television and in the newspapers that many books of merit appear without a word being said about them in public. In my experience, coverage is more likely to be given by Welsh-language programmes than by English-language ones; eg I have recently been invited to take part in ten weekly discussions about Welsh writers in English on Prawn Da (Tinopolis / S4C Digital), beginning in September, something that has never happened in any English-language programme on BBC Wales or HTV, as far as I remember in a career stretching over forty years. There is no decent book discussion programme on radio or television nowadays and new books, if they are treated at all, are featured only in a most superficial way. As for newspapers, coverage by The Western Mail, which seems to have given up all claim to be a serious, quality paper, is now so woeful that many people interested in the English-language culture of Wales have stopped buying the paper. Can it be persuaded that it will continue to lose readers if the current policy of basing its `arts' coverage on TV celebrities prevails? A more informed approach and regular features about the books of Wales might be one of the ways of arresting the slide of its daily sales to below 50,000 copies.

For these reasons most attempts to publicise the English-language books of Wales fall on stony ground. The Book of the Year award, for example, hardly registers at the Hay Festival and is said to have little or no effect on sales, especially when the ceremony turns into a shambles as it did this year. Only when an author manages to win a prize in England do the media show any interest, which seems to me to betray the provincial mind at its feeblest. More thought needs to be put into prizes and award ceremonies, with a view to making books and literature more `sexy'. The literary magazines, per contra, notably Poetry Wales, Planet and The New Welsh Review, keep good standards and, of course, they are devoted to Welsh writing in English. But their circulations are small and they would welcome additional funds specifically for marketing within Wales and in England and the rest of the world. I wonder what the British Council does to promote the periodicals of Wales overseas. There used to be a lobbyist employed in London whose task was to create interest in the books of Wales; can the post be revived?

• The teaching of the English-language literature of Wales has for long been totally inadequate at all levels. Because it is not taught to undergraduates in the universities (the University of Glamorgan is the exception), it is not taught in the schools, so that young people grow up in Wales without ever having heard of writers who once lived in their hometowns; I have recently met adults from Aberdare, Newport, Merthyr, Pontypridd, Cardiff, who have never heard of Alun Lewis, W. H. Davies, Glyn Jones, Alun Richards, Dannie Abse et al. This is a symptom of cultural alienation at its most pernicious. It is high time the WJEC took its responsibility in this respect more seriously and ensured that the English-language literature of Wales is studied as an obligatory part of the national curriculum.
• There are two aspects of the current method of funding publishers in Wales that need attention.
• The first is the means by which subsidy from public sources is calculated and distributed by the Books Council. Grants are primarily meant to cushion publishers from financial loss. Unfortunately, they are often the reason why they publish books at all. Three of the publishers mentioned above are, in fact, printer-publishers and the regular supply of subsidy keeps their printing presses busy -- a crucial consideration for printers. As a result books appear for the sole reason that subsidy is available to pay for part or all the cost of production, including materials, labour, printing and binding. Print-runs are deliberately kept small, so that books often go out of print a few months after publication and thereafter are unavailable for school courses and the general reader. Works that might be called `classics', or books of literary merit from yesteryear, are rarely reprinted. The publisher has little interest in promoting, marketing, advertising and selling because his costs have already been defrayed, wholly or in substantial part; the cost of further effort would not be worth the candle in terms of sales. This is a problematic area because only the publishers know the details of their operations and they resent enquiries by public bodies, who are not therefore able to check the figures provided. The Books Council should be asked to impose more stringent conditions, to monitor them more closely and to take the broader view occasionally as to what old titles should be kept in print and what new titles be commissioned. Some books should be published without subsidy at all and the Council should be able to withhold a grant from time to time. The publishers have had the benefit of subsidy for their English-medium books for some thirty years now, and some should be expected to stand on their own feet occasionally; if they want to be `independent', let them show some initiative from time to time. If that means fewer titles, so be it. On the other hand, the Books Council should be provided with more substantial grant-aid, on a par with the recent increase for books in Welsh, so that a number of specific titles can be commissioned every year.
• The second aspect is the whole question of sales. Publishers are wont to claim, when challenged, that such-and-such a book has sold one/two/three thousand copies and is therefore a `best-seller'. I have no doubt that such books do exist, but they are rare exceptions. It is much more usual for an English-language book, say a volume of poetry or short stories or essays, or a novel, to sell between 300 and 500 copies; many do not sell 150. It is difficult to make any more accurate an estimate about the sales of English-language books because we simply do not have the figures, which are closely guarded by the publishers, and authors do not like complaining because they depend on publishers for the publication of their next books. Whenever the Books Council looks into the matter the sales figures of specific titles are treated as confidential - because they are, of course, private property. In my own experience, the sale of 500 copies is about the norm, but 300 is also fairly common. Let me give just one example: my three-volume edition of The Collected Stories of Rhys Davies (Gower, 1996,1998) did not sell more than 300 copies per volume, despite substantial grants from the Arts Council for volumes 1 and 2 and a grant of £7,500 from the Rhys Davies Trust for volume 3. The book was not advertised, reviewed or displayed in the Cardiff shops and no attempt was made to sell it to schools and libraries in the Rhondda; in the end, the Trust, appalled at the publisher's failure to sell the work of one of our most distinguished writers in English, bought a few hundred copies of the books and made sure they were deposited free in the libraries of Rhondda, Aberdare, Merthyr and Cardiff, and the publisher pulped the rest. The books were no doubt priced too highly at £17.50 a copy. Many books by English-language writers are too expensive: who but the well-off can happily afford to pay £35 for an author's Collected Poems or Stories? A few libraries perhaps, some of the author's friends, other writers, but not many ordinary readers. But I had a similar experience with my translations of the popular Lleifior novels (Gomer, 1998, 1999, E9.95 each) by Islwyn Ffowc Elis: `Book of the Century' in Welsh and never out of print, but fewer than 750 copies sold in English, with no attempt to market the books in Montgomeryshire where the story is set. It seems to me to be folie de grandeur for Welsh publishers to go on about `breaking into the English market' when they are unable to break into the market in their own country.

I suggested in my article in Planet, not altogether facetiously, that perhaps the best way of making sure that the books of Wales are accessible to the young, the poor, the disadvantaged, is to give them away or else to sell them at prices so low that a book can be bought for less than the price of a pint of beer, so that they reach the widest possible audience. My Corgi series (Carreg Gwalch); of which eight of the 24 projected titles have now appeared, is meant to test the waters by selling selections of verse and prose by well-known writers in a cheap but attractive format, at £1.99 a copy, in the hope they will attract new readers to the authors' main works. The series was edited and panned in the teeth of stiff opposition from Seren and Gomer who objected to `their' authors being presented in this innovative way, with the result that the series does not include a number of important writers who have thus been denied royalties and a new readership. I have not yet been told how the first eight titles have sold so far.

• Lastly, the poor author. Few authors in Wales earn more than £1,500 a year directly from their books, though there are still opportunities for visits to schools and other paid activities; they are thus condemned to being amateurs in a field now dominated by a small band of professionals (publishers, printers, booksellers, designers, officers of the public bodies). One of the few ways in which the writer can hope for remuneration is to apply for a bursary. I understand that the bursary scheme which I initiated at the Arts Council in the late 1960s and which ran successfully until quite recently, has now been transferred to the Academy. I do not know what the Academy intends, but I hope the principle of `buying time' will be upheld, so that writers can be released from their employment in order to finish writing specific prose works. On the other hand, I hope this principle will not be extended to include pensioners, the unemployed, the unpublished and academics who, in my view, have `world enough and time' to get on with their writing without subsidy, nor that poets will be eligible except in special circumstances. It could be argued that literary translation into English from Welsh and other languages is an exception because it is a hard slog which is akin to writing original prose: the monetary reward is negligible, and so bursaries should be awarded regardless of whether the translator is in employment. Furthermore, the translation of Welsh-language literature into English is essential if the world (and the English-speaking Welsh) is to read it from time to time and this should be given priority, perhaps by a committee specially convened for the purpose.

Bursaries are awarded infrequently and are meant to be in lieu of salaries, so authors must have some more reliable source of income. But given the poor sales of books published in Wales, it is no wonder that some leading writers (like some pop groups) have begun to turn their backs on the publishers of their early books, principally Seren and Gomer, and gone to publishers in England, mainly Carcanet and Bloodaxe, where they can expect greater effort to be put into the marketing of their books and so enjoy greater sates and royalties. This is a trend which will have grave and perhaps mortal consequences for publishing English-language writers in Wales because the cream of our literary talent is being taken away. But who can blame the writers concerned? We hear so much that reflects badly on our publishers: Seren does not offer contracts, is slow to answer letters, shows no enthusiasm for its books and does not always pay royalties; Gomer never advertizes or promotes or markets its books; Parthian is not very good on design and copy-editing and publishes third-rate material; the University of Wales Press `publishes books that no one wants to buy'; and so on. Whatever the truth may be, the fact remains that some of our writers are voting with their feet. The idea that famous English writers might be invited to publish in Wales in the present climate seems to me ludicrous. Authorship in Wales has never been a lucrative activity, especially when an author publishes books with a publisher in his own country. But must it ever be so? In conclusion, I should like to say that I can recall a number of official enquiries into the state of publishing in Wales, but this is the first time a public body has looked specifically and exclusively into writing in the English language. I hope the Assembly's report will be not merely descriptive but analytical and prescriptive, with clear and far-reaching recommendations which have a good chance of being implemented. I wish the Committee well in its deliberations and look forward to its report. But I fear that the problem of English-language culture in Wales, so closely linked to that of England and the falling literacy standards of the Anglo-American world, may be too pernicious and, moreover, beyond the Committee's purview, for it to do much about it. 23 July 2003