A Q&A With Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood doesn’t seem to waste much time. She’s written more than 40 books, recently completed a world tour for The Year of the Flood (Nan A. Talese), maintains an online presence, is an active member of the Canadian Green party and a joint honorary president of the Rare Bird Society within BirdLife International, and she sells t-shirts. The much-honored poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, and environmental activist has also recently drawn praise for what Publishers Weekly described as her “measured – and entertaining – perspective”on a book industry in flux, at February’s Tools of Change Conference.

Booksellers and other BookExpo America attendees will have the opportunity to hear Atwood’s thoughts on the ongoing changes in book industry, especially on the role of writers and their special relationship with indie bookstores, during a plenary event at ABA’s Day of Education, sponsored by the Ingram Content Group, from 3:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. Monday, May 23.

Atwood’s work encompasses novels, short stories, poetry, literary criticism, social history, and books for children. Her novels include The Handmaid’s Tale and Cat’s Eye – both shortlisted for the Booker Prize; The Robber Bride, winner of the Trillium Book Award and a finalist for the Governor General’s Award; The Blind Assassin, winner of the Booker Prize and a finalist for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award; and Oryx and Crake, a finalist for The Giller Prize, the Governor General’s Award, the Orange Prize, and the Man Booker Prize. Her most recent books of fiction are The Year of the Flood, The Penelopiad, The Tent, and Moral Disorder. Her upcoming book, In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination, her account of her relationship with the literary form we have come to know as science fiction, will be published in October by Nan A. Talese/Doubleday.

Here the author talks with BTW about what happens when the “oldest human technology” is filtered through the new; how she still harbors allegiance to Marshall McLuhan; and who might get a bigger slice of the publishing pie.

BTW: Publishers Weekly described your Tools of Change talk in February talk as a “measured – and entertaining – perspective” on the changing roles of authors and publishers in the 21st century. During that talk you described yourself as “not a tech person, but an author.” What made you want to participate in the TOC conference?

Margaret Atwood: I met TOC through a mutual friend who basically picked me up on Twitter, so this story has a tech component! And I was on Twitter because of the sort of pressure to do your own promo – or part of it – that is increasingly being placed on authors. But apart from that, it seems to me just common sense that you can have all the publishing tech tools in the world but if you don’t have anything to publish, they’re useless. So the author is worth a passing thought, no?

And, being an old McLuhan gal, I am of course interested in the way our tools shape us, as well as vice versa.

BTW: You also talked about changes in the way the publishing pie is being divided and that there are many more people looking for a slice of it. How do you think these changes will affect the industry?

MA: In the current Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, everyone keeps moving round a place. Will authors become publishers become booksellers become e-tailers become agents become publishers become authors become PR people? Consolidation is in the wind, because if you slice the pie into too many pieces, no one will be able to survive on just one tiny piece. However, human beings are very creative. There’s an old 1940s song called “Close the doors, they’re coming in the windows.” That kind of sums it up.

MA: I’ll draw some pictures and put them into a PowerPoint. But essentially, I’ll be talking about our oldest human technology – language – and how we get it from here to there via many vehicles, and some of the neurology involved in that, and in reading and writing. All publishing is two tin cans and a string – Tin Can Author (broadcaster), Tin Can Reader (receiver, but not a passive one), and the string, which is everything connecting them. Some old ways, some new ways. And a surprise new tool – I won’t be demonstrating the surprise at the keynote, but I’ll refer to it and then it will be demonstrated with the help of Ingram, at their booth, on May 24 and 25.

BTW: For a self-described non-techie, you seem to really like social media. On your blog you’ve taken the time to answer a number of student questions. What do you think of blogging and interacting directly with students and other readers?

MA: It’s not a new thing. It’s a very old thing. We are always doing old things in new ways. The village storyteller was in constant interaction with the audience, and he/she fielded questions and interruptions and comments, and if he/she got the story wrong, the rotten vegetables started to fly... Twitter and blog interaction is a virtual way of doing much the same thing.

 BTW: You’re a longtime favorite of indie booksellers. What does their support mean to you?

MA: Very longtime! Once, every bookstore was an indie. Chains are pretty recent. Indies are the gateways for many new writers, offbeat writers, regional ones. They are often run by people who are passionate about reading and are willing to champion things that are different. They handsell, they work like murder, a lot of them, just to make ends meet... If they were to disappear, our choices would shrink. No question.

Atwood will be a featured plenary speaker at ABA’s Day of Education, on Monday, May 23, at BookExpo America (BEA). The hour-long event will begin at 3:00 p.m. and will be open to all BEA badged attendees.