First published by The Skinny (April 2011)
As launches go, the birth of Cargo Crate was definitely a tale of two cities. On a Friday evening in a chilled Edinburgh, within the hallowed halls of the National Library of Scotland, there were serious talks on the past and future of ‘the book’, with publishers and academics in attendance.
Two days later, on a Celtic Connections stage in The Arches in Glasgow, a notably younger audience were given a technological demonstration that, in the grand tradition of the BBC’s Tomorrow’s World (No? Ask your parents) didn’t quite work as planned. But that’s part of the fun of new technology.
At the heart of both events, though, were spoken word performances and an explanation of what Cargo Crate does, and plans to do — essentially, to find great writing and to present it in a way that utilises current and future technology.
Cargo Publishing’s founder and MD Mark Buckland first thought about setting up an eBook publishing line about a year ago. “I’d seen signs that companies like Waterstones would be going through tough times, and I thought that’s going to close off a lot of routes for writers who either want to experiment or get their debut in,” he explains. “I thought the digital presented an interesting chance to not only experiment and produce some really good texts but also to add to, and really enhance texts, and take things forward.
So he drafted on one sheet of A4 his idea of what an eBook imprint might look like. Coincidentally, new author Anneliese Mackintosh— a contributor to The Year of Open Doors, an anthology published by Cargo in 2010 — contacted Mark asking is she could get involved with the company. “Anneliese and assistant editor Craig Lamont came on board and they’ve really taken it from a bit of paper to what we’ve got now, which is a fully-fledged imprint,” Mark says.
So what is Cargo Crate’s remit? “Cargo Crate has traditional writers that we publish on paper, but we identified that there were some writers who would really suit the eBook format as well, so we wanted to set up a label to try out the new technological stuff with them,” Anneliese explains. “The written word will always be our priority — that’s why we’re also offering the print-on-demand version of any of these books that we have – but we’re talking pretty much as much as we can find out the technology can do – experimenting with using audio, embedding images, live links and other kinds of enhanced features. The more that we learn as we go along, the more that we’ll be incorporating.”
The Cargo Crate team have identified three types of writers that they feel they can work with. “The first are quite established writers who have been around for a while but would like to try out a format that might be a bit experimental, or could be considered risky by larger publishing groups,” says Anneliese. Alan Bissett, whose fourth novel is published later this year, fits into this type very well; he has performed his ‘one woman show’ about ‘the hardest woman in Falkirk’, The Moira Monologues, to great acclaim around Scotland, but few ‘mainstream’ publishers were likely to take a risk on publishing it – especially with an audio track of Bissett’s performance from last year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
“It’s also getting increasingly hard for new writers to get their first book published because, in the current economic climate, you’ve got to have something that’s completely marketable and quite safe,” Anneliese adds. Cargo Crate’s other debut title, Simon Sylvester’s 140 Characters fits into this category. “He’s a new writer, not yet had a novel published, but we saw him publishing short stories on Twitter,” she explains. “We thought that because he was engaging in new technology in such an interesting way, it would be really good to be publishing him as well. And he’s got illustrations and links to his Twitter feed embedded into the eBook.”
And the third group of writers? “Something that’s really exciting us at the moment about Scottish literature are the writers that have some kind of ‘added value’ to go with their writing, whether that’s because they’re really strong performers, or have started to use audio-visuals in their performance,” Anneliese says. “Writers are making themselves heard among the crowds, and we’ve really excited; if you can give people that ‘live’ experience in a book, that makes it more exciting.”
The ethos behind Cargo Crate is certainly what attracted Alan Bissett. “I thought Cargo would be a good publisher for Moira because they embody the spirit in which the play was written and toured, and of Moira’s own voice: home-grown and pulsing with energy,” he says. “Given the Cargo staff are all in their early twenties, they have great ideas for how to publish using a mix of both new technology AND print on demand paper versions, letting the live literature and music scenes, as well as new media, carry the message. They’re just not dependent on marketing spend or large bookshop chains for their existence, which makes them nimble, fluid and suited to the modern climate.”
Cargo can certainly seem like a nimble little mammal running between the legs of the publishing industry’s multi-national behemoths. “This is the first time, for example, that I’ve released a book on a USB or as a download,” says Bissett. “There’s a punk energy about it all, in Moira herself, the DIY theatre tour and now the publication — all of it done with zero budget. It’s a perfect convergence of the grassroots, young Scottish writing, theatre and publishing scenes. The method of Moira’s release carries as much political significance as the content of the play. It’s a challenge to the corporate, top-down approach. We can do this ourselves.”
The Cargo Crate team are already looking three, four years ahead in terms of the technology, working with ‘various technology partners’ to devise eBooks that will match the capabilities of the next generation of e-readers. But Mark is not so entranced by the technology that he forgets the main point of Cargo. “You can add as much technology as you want, but it’s got to be at the core good writing,” he says. “We still have a commitment to finding the best writing we can, and then working out how we can apply new things that will really bring out the best of the work.”
© paul f cockburn
