Saturation and Curation

First questions – with literature, is there saturation or scarcity? Does it feel like saturation just to the makers trying to get noticed and like scarcity just to the readers, waiting to find the right new author for them? Or like saturation when thinking about the stuff you don’t read and like scarcity when it’s about ‘your kind of books’? How to measure saturation and scarcity when we’re not dealing with something like food where people need a certain amount? When it comes to art, I guess we often don’t really know our own appetite and needs (let alone other people’s). 

An example. In the late noughties there weren’t – relatively speaking – many translations being published in the UK. There wasn’t, people said, much interest. In 2009 I wrote a piece in NCW and the Translators Association’s journal In Other Words, wondering if translators should just set up a DIY press as a labour-of-love side project. The article was called ‘Supply + Demand + Magic’. What came out in the end was And Other Stories, and we can actually pay freelancers and a few salaries. And now and then magic does happen. One surprise since we started is seeing that there has been much more room in the English-speaking world for the publishing and reading of translations. (Yes, even a few cat books from Japan, apparently.) 

My thoughts come from a specific place: the UK, Europe. Overall, and in a global perspective, the UK is a place of saturation and waste in pretty much every way. The problem we often have in the UK – though not in everyone’s case of course – is that too much is available. Even more so now that (almost) everything is online, for download or delivery. 

Ah, the internet. I’m sure I’m not the only one here for whom some of my most immersive and memorable experiences of reading books have been when travelling solo on a flight, with little chance to distract myself. What does that mean for people for whom culture is an essential for our lives? Do we need to intentionally curb our internet access, perhaps? I expect some of you clever folk are doing that very successfully. 

And what about the making side of things? How much (quantity) do we make, how much create, how much promote? Is there a danger that we forget what it’s all about, and maybe don’t do as great a job, when we get sucked into publishing / writing / promoting / etc X number of new works in a set time, because that seems to pay the bills? 

Our Argentine author César Aira has published over 100 books, often two to five novella-length works a year. It’s said that’s partly been a kind of absurdist rebellion against the economic crises in Argentina. Publishing isn’t a business? OK, then no need to worry about stoking demand through scarcity! Abundant creation as revolt against the market. Independent presses are his playground, he’s said. 

On the other hand, a Brazilian author Raduan Nassar had great fun writing two short novels and some stories in the 1970s, in a period of intense dedication to writing, and then decided that was enough. He’d created what he wanted to, and turned to a more practical life: becoming a farmer. 

Two great writers, two approaches. And maybe that’s it: that we stop worrying about saturation and just make sure we have fun and write/publish/etc as best we can. Don’t play at economics, it’s beyond us, just play. 

Stefan Tobler founded And Other Stories out of frustration at the great books not being published in English. Born to an English mother and Swiss father, he lived in northern Brazil, southern England and eastern Germany before making his home in England’s Dark Peak, between Sheffield and Manchester. He also translates, including books by Clarice Lispector, Raduan Nassar and Lutz Seiler. 

The International Literature Exchange is a partnership project by National Centre for Writing and British Council, supported by Arts Council England.