BYKER BOOKS

interviewed by Nick Quantrill

Byker Books is a new publishing company based in the north of England. Their aim is to promote good, unknown writers. Their literary heroes include Irvine Welsh, Christopher Brookmyre, Kevin Sampson, Alan Sillitoe and Danny King. You probably get the picture. Nick Quantrill talks with Ed, head honcho of the group.

NQ: Let’s start at the beginning – where did the idea for Byker Books originally come from? Tell me about the master plan.

Ed: We're basically a group of people from the North East of England who aren't that enthralled by reading the memoirs of someone who was briefly on a crap reality show and, after bitching for some years, actually decided to get off our arses and do something about it. That was our main motivation, well that and girls…publishers get groupies don’t they…don’t they?

We’ve been around since November ’08 (if you’re the taxman like!) in a publishing sense but we set our website up in the summer of last year and started publishing short stories to that from then – for free an all! The whole idea behind Byker Books was to give an outlet to writers of British fiction – I don’t know about you but I can’t relate to tales of boy wizards, ancient codes hidden in paintings or the ghost written ramblings of someone who was once on the telly masturbating pigs and flaunting their plastic breasts!

So the original plan was to put together short story collectionsthat mixed new writers (the unknown and unhinged as we like to call them) and more established authors which we’ve achieved with our ‘Radgepacket’ series. So we’re now starting to think ahead and have a couple of full length books planned.

NQ: How easy was it for you in the beginning to attract contributions? As a reader, I’m more than impressed with quality. Has the response been better than you imagined it would be?

Ed: It wasn’t easy in the very beginning as people view you with suspicion (quite understandably really) and one online writers circle I approached basically told me to bugger off as they were going to be producing their own magazine (I don’t think they ever did incidentally and a lot of their members thus missed the opportunity to submit for Radgepacket.) I spent many a night going through the various writers reference books and emailing writers circles and clubs etc. I think the fact I got a couple of ‘star’ interviews early on gave us a bit of credibility and also because I was very upfront and honest about people not being paid for their stories but them getting a free copy of the book. Obviously the chance to be alongside the likes of Danny King, Sheila Quigley etc and the fact I’m a smooth tongued Geordie beefcake helped as well. .

NQ: Most websites seem to be shying away from producing print publications, preferring to remain solely online. Is your quarterly publication, ‘Radgepacket’, a deliberate response, or are you just bloody-minded about these things?

Ed: We were always going to bring out some form of publication as we were all big fans of the now sadly defunct, ‘Bullet’ magazine and wanted to fill the void it left. To be honest though once we started the website there were a couple of emails from disgruntled submittees (rejected ones!) who told us we wouldn’t get anywhere so, as typical Northern boys, the bloody mindedness did kick in and we ploughed on regardless of little things like not knowing how to use the software we’d blagged! Seem to have got away with it for now…..

NQ: Your website claims that the people who write for you ‘live in the real world and know it’s not fair.’ Are you self-funding or have you managed to tap into some of the arts money which always seems to head south?

Ed: Totally and utterly self-funding – we approached one of the arts council mob just after ‘Radgepacket Volume One’ was published and they heard the word ‘Byker’ then ran away screaming whilst clutching their valuables. On the plus side though it means we can publish what we like, when we like and we don’t have to justify it to anyone – it’s probably worth losing our houses for....don’t tell our lass I said that though will you!

NQ: Your first book is a football memoir from Newcastle United supporting Andy Rivers. Is he one of those sad, fat Geordies you see with their tops off at games, or is he more from the Nick Hornby School of writing? Why something about football to (ahem...) kick off the book publishing?

Ed: Sad, Fat Geordies? Oh you’re not taken in by that like the rest of the tabloid fodder are you? There’s no fat Geordies in the world at all – honestly, they just bus unemployed actors in from Brookside for that shite....Andy reckons he could take Nick Hornby in a square go by the way (makes mental note – suggest it for next time the BBC do that celebrity fight thing, that’ll shift a book or two...)

With regard to the ‘Why Football’ question. Basically we know Andy has a bit of a following through writing for various Newcastle fanzines over the years, we like his book (it is funny) and as we mentioned, we are self-funding so if we sell enough of ‘I’m Rivelino’ we get to produce another three or four ‘Radges’ and more struggling authors get a bit of a leg up – everyone’s a winner.

NQ: You’ve also signed up Danny King, who’ll be publishing more of his ‘Burglar Diaries’ later this year. That seems like quite a coup. How did you manage that? Are you offering amazing advances, or have you got something on him?

Ed: Danny is a top bloke and an excellent writer who somehow gets ignored by the mass media – something I think may change incidentally if they get hold of ‘Blue Collar’ his latest effort – and to be honest I’m not sure whether it’s the photos we’ve got of him and Anne Widdecombe in a sauna together or the tape of him admitting he shot JFK but he was happy for us to go ahead with ‘More Burglar Diaries.’

It came about in a boozer one night when, after we’d been to the same publishing type ‘do’, he casually mentioned that he’d written a follow up to the Burglar Diaries but no-one had been that interested. As I’m Northern the thirty pints I’d had didn’t slow down my thought processes and seconds later it was a done deal. I’ve read the book and whilst I’m obviously biased I think it’s fucking fantastic!

That said I think you can get almost any London based writer if you offer them enough jellied eels… in fact has anyone got Martina Cole’s number?

NQ: Given that 2009 has been pretty stellar for Byker Books, what does the future hold? Is there a blueprint for what you’re trying to achieve – maybe Serpent’s Tail, something like that?

Ed: I’m glad you mentioned Serpents Tail cos we love them – they publish exactly the kind of stuff that should be read by the general public and I hope they reap all the rewards they deserve. That said mind we have no plan at all really – we started this basically to try and give ‘ordinary’ writers some exposure and to promote the type of stuff we could relate to and liked to read ourselves. It’s ticking along quite nicely and we’ve got a couple of novels in the pipeline from some past ‘Radgepacket’ contributors so you never know – if you want to interview me again next year you might have to get past my secretary, personal bodyguard and naked harem of top models before I let you onto my solid gold yacht...or not.

To read more, go to www.bykerbooks.co.uk

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© Noir Originals, 2009

NICK QUANTRILL was born and raised in Hull, an isolated industrial port in East Yorkshire. Never realising he could be a writer, Nick spent most of his twenties shouting and bawling his way around Sunday League football pitches before studying for a degree in Social Policy. Approaching now or never time, Nick started writing crime stories set in and around his home city. The result is ‘Broken Dreams,’ a novel which focuses on Hull’s past and future through the lens of the city’s lost fishing industry. ‘Broken Dreams’ will be published by Caffeine Nights, late 2009.

Click here to read an extract from Nick Quantrill's Broken Dreams