If you were to do a Twitter search on the word ‘publishing’ you might see that there’s a lot of chat on there at the moment about apps and whether they are the future of the industry. In March, Forbes said we were at the dawn of the tablet era which was leading publishers to look at enhanced eBooks and the like. Fastforward to last weekend, when Vicki Hartley wrote on the Future Bookseller that the death of publishing has been greatly exaggerated, and that apps are here to save it.
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Trenton Lee Stewart is the American author of The Mysterious Benedict Society, which is the sort of book a library assistant might recommend to young persons who like warm humour, adventures, puzzles and fun. I asked him if he would do an interview with me by email, and he said yes. So here it is.
Can you sum up The Mysterious Benedict Society books for people who haven’t read them?
After passing a series of mysterious tests, a diversely talented group of four children are recruited by a benevolent genius named Mr. Benedict to go on an important mission. The first book is about that mission and the children’s developing relationships; the second and third are continuations of the Society’s adventures.
I read in one interview with you that the editing process for The Mysterious Benedict Society was quite arduous – was it the same for the other books in the series or did it get easier?
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Andy Stanton is probably best known as the author of the Mr Gum series of books (technically aimed at 7-10 year olds, but I started reading them at 24), and the mastermind behind hit TV show Bag of Sticks. If you haven’t read anything by him and you’re not sure whether you’d like to, my rule of thumb is to suggest you head to your nearest book shop or library, pick up a copy of You’re a Bad Man, Mr Gum!, and turn to chapter 4. If it doesn’t make you laugh, there’s probably something wrong with you.
I interviewed the man himself on Monday afternoon after a hectic weekend at the Edinburgh Book Festival. Here’s what he had to say.
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Book Seven is begun! So far I think it’s pitched more at the 10 end of the 8-10 spectrum, but we’ll see how it unfolds.
It was a beautiful starry morning, but Chris didn’t know that because when he woke up he was in a house with no skylight, and anyway there was a cat on his head.
“Urmph,” he said.
“Mrau?” the cat replied, carelessly flicking its tail. Evidently it didn’t think there was anything unusual about going to sleep on someone’s head.
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