sunday links

Good morning from Kintyre, where outside my new workspace in the mill, a large, shouty thrush is declaring that spring has most definitely sprung. How are you? What with one thing and another, it’s been a very busy week here, and I’m looking forward to long walk on the beach this morning and some secret knitting this afternoon. I have some great links for you today, but first I wanted to say something about the situation with Colour at Work.

We have been publishing books since 2012 and are by now well-versed in the vagaries of print runs and pre-order planning, but sometimes situations can still really take us by surprise. On one occasion, we ordered a large print run, only to be disappointed when the pre-order number amounted to less than 10% of the number of copies we’d ordered. Another time, we ordered a perfectly reasonable print run for a book we had moderate expectations for, and were completely amazed when demand far outstripped supply, necessitating several editions in quick succession.

As an experienced small publisher, producing books in (and for) a very particular niche, Colour at Work looks like it might be a head-scratching, unpredictable title. Now, I personally think the book is bloody brilliant – a completely beautiful thing to browse through, with subject matter that’s continually inspiring and thought-provoking, engaging and enabling – but my view is necessarily biased because I made the thing! This book contains no patterns for hand-knitters, and it explores a wide range of topics that readers don’t necessarily know they will be interested in in advance (for me, this is the best kind of book, but I am perhaps unusual in that respect).

For these reasons, we decided to offer the book with free shipping, a promotional mechanism of which in general I am not terribly fond, because it has the effect of disguising both the labour and the costs that shipping involve, both of which are considerable. When we put the book on pre-order a few weeks ago with this offer, sales were very strong. Good news! People seemed to be just as interested in this book as we were! We were now able to project sales of the title forward, and to calculate a print run with a cushion large enough to cover the pre-order period, to fulfil forthcoming trade orders, and to continue selling the title, retail and wholesale, for the next year. With the book now in production, subsequent weeks of pre-orders bore out our projections. But then suddenly, as the free shipping offer drew to a close, sales of the title very suddenly went through the roof – consuming all of our pre-order cushion and the whole next year’s stock of the title as well.

Anyway, we are very grateful indeed for all your pre-orders, and very sorry if you missed out on buying the book this time. I just wanted to be up front here about how we’d very carefully tried to think things through, for this title, as a publisher. But the fact is that, however much you project, and however much you plan ahead, things can turn out unpredictably, and titles can fare much better – or indeed much worse – than you expected. If you are interested in such matters from a writer’s – rather than a indie publisher’s – perspective, I suggest you read Caroline Crampton’s recent informative post about the importance of pre-orders – an author whose brilliant work, incidentally, I heartily recommend. (And you might like to pre-order her new book as well)

Meanwhile, here are some links to fun stuff to lighten up your Sunday.

I suspect some of you may have happened upon this story already, but if not, it’s definitely the knitting scoop of the week! 49,000 pairs of stockings, and a knitted colourwork bodice were among the treasures unearthed at the National Archives as part of the cargo of a Danish ship that had been seized by the British navy during the Napoleonic wars. The bodice–formed of a familiar Faroese diced pattern in natural sheep shades and madder-dyed yarn–is particularly glorious, but the large number of finely-knitted stockings also interestingly suggest the importance of the stocking trade to the Faroe – as much as the Shetland – islands during this period. Go and take a look!

Second, I would love to be able to see the new exhibition about the work of Angelica Kauffman currently showing at the Royal Academy. Kauffman – who was one of only two women artists to be admitted to the Royal Academy until the election of Laura Knight in 1936 – was someone about whom I became interested in the 1990s, and whose neglect often surprises me. Her work was (and is still) criticised for its sentimentality – but critics fail to understand how cannily and self-consciously Kauffman rocked the cult of sensibility – fashioning a contemporary cultural trend into the medium of her own success. They also underestimate the boldness and sheer brilliance of the artistic (and subtly political) statements she made, within the tight-constraints of eighteenth-century gender norms and conventions. She made one such bold statement in the paintings she produced for the ceiling of the Royal Academy, such as Colour (1778) (which I discuss in further detail in Colour at Work). Please do visit the exhibition, if you get the chance, and tell me all about it!

Third, something else that takes me back to the 1990s, when I first discovered Cymande, the genre-defying band who, in the early 1970s, made eclectic, creative music that was definitively Black and British.

You may not think you’ve heard of Cymande, but you will undoubtedly have come across their music because it was so heavily and extensively sampled during the ’80s, ’90s and early ’00s in an extraordinarily wide range of cultural contexts. As well as introducing a group of wonderful musicians, and exploring the racist cultural gate-keeping that kept the band from success in 1970s Britain, this film tells an ultimately uplifting story about how music can be just so brilliant that it will continues to make its mark on audiences across time and space. And those breaks! I defy you not to want to get up and dance. Tim Mackenzie-Smith’s very joyful and moving documentary – Getting it Back: The Story of Cymande – is now available to watch via BFI player (or prime)

Finally, a wee shout-out to wonderful Scots singer, Amy Leach, who with Highland guitarist, Alasdair Paul, has just released a new EP of Six Sangs on Bandcamp. If you enjoy traditional music – and especially traditional ballads – then you will love Amy and Alasdair’s gorgeous, spare, and spacious sound, which really gives both melody and story room to breathe. As well as being a super-talented musician, Amy also happens to be the daughter of Claire (who manages our Ravelry Group). Give her a listen!

And enjoy your Sunday!