How to get published: ‘Read the classics, read the canon and edit, edit, edit’

Behind a row of white converted shopfronts in Holland Park, in west London, Granta’s offices are hushed and comfortable, an elegant mix of glass panels, fashionable furniture and bright young people carrying piles of books. When Sigrid Rausing arrives, casually dressed and softly spoken, it is hard to imagine that she’s not only Granta’s owner, publisher and editor but also one of the wealthiest women in Britain.

The 53 year-old Swedish heiress, whose fortune comes from her grandfather's invention of the Tetra Pak carton, bought the literary magazine in 2005. Three years ago, after the sudden departure of a number of senior staff, including Granta editor John Freeman, Rausing decided to edit the magazine herself.

Her editorship is far from being a vanity project, however. Rausing is a serious writer and academic, as well as a philanthropist who funds human-rights groups around the world. She is working on a memoir about her relationship with her younger brother Hans, whose drug addiction hit the headlines in 2012 when the decomposing body of his wife, also an addict, was found in their house in Belgravia. Eva Rausing had died of a heart attack two months before her body was found.

As well as editing the magazine, Rausing runs Granta Books, which has become one of Britain’s leading publishers of literary fiction since its foundation, in 1989, publishing about 25 books a year.

“I see our role as being truly independent and having a very strong editorial voice,” she says. “A lot of publishers started publishing books that they thought would sell well, and second-guessing what would sell, and started publishing too much. I think that was a real problem in publishing. And we had the luxury of never having to do that.

“And I was very clear that we shouldn’t second-guess what people want to read, that we are the readers of our own books: we are the readership. If we like it there’s going to be people out there who want it. We’re not in the business of publishing for other tastes. We publish for our own tastes.”

Despite the fact that she occupies all the top positions at Granta, Rausing insists that she doesn’t get her own way all the time (although she admits that she could) and that editorial discussions are robust.

Her latest issue of Granta magazine focuses on Ireland – something she describes as tricky, because it involves interpreting Ireland for a British audience, taking account of the freighted history between the two countries.

“It’s quite a different process from the normal themed issues that we do. In those instances we just think about what is the theme and how do the different pieces fit together with the theme and how do they obliquely address the question. And we spend a lot of time thinking about a sort of sideways-on approach, something new.”

The current issue features 13 pieces of fiction, including work by Colm Tóibín, Colin Barrett and Emma Donoghue, and a single piece of nonfiction, by Kevin Barry.

“In the end, I thought, to some degree that tells us something about Ireland, because fiction is so very strong in Ireland,” Rausing says. “There are still things that are uncomfortable to talk about in Ireland. It’s a very politicised environment, and I think that’s why fiction is a bit stronger than nonfiction.”

For me Barry’s gloriously vivid memoir of living in Cork, The Raingod’s Green, Dark as Passion, is the strongest piece in the collection, the best thing written about the city since Seán Ó Faoláin. Rausing rhapsodises about Barry but says the quality of the fiction Granta considered for the Irish issue pushed out other nonfiction.

She was struck that political violence seldom makes an appearance in contemporary Irish fiction, although the threat of individual violence is a common theme. Irish writers are also unusual in their preoccupation with their country.

“You get the sense in a lot of writing that Ireland itself is a character in the writing, and I think that that strong presence of Ireland, the nation, is a great thing for Irish literature, and it’s also a very heavy thing for Irish literature to have to deal with. It hangs over Irish writers a bit,” she says.

“It struck me as being very different from Britain. In Britain you have regional writers where the land and the countryside is very present, and that almost becomes a character in the writing. So Britain has an equivalent of that, but it doesn’t quite merge with a political tradition in the way it does in Ireland.”

Rausing believes one reason for the strength of Irish writing is that it is relatively well supported, at least in comparison with Britain. She highlights the nurturing role of prizes for short fiction, as well as State-supported magazines and journals.

“It’s definitely better supported than here, no question about that. I think that’s a big part of it. I think literature is taken seriously. The nation takes a pride in its literature, and I think that’s significant. And I think there’s a great literary tradition and a great tradition of poetry, and that poetic tradition and the pride taken in Seamus Heaney and others, it just means there’s a lot of traction on the written word.”

After the upheavals that have hit publishers and booksellers in recent years, Rausing says that publishing is now in a healthy state, with more titles being published every year. There is a return to print, as digital sales have stalled, and publishing’s business model has become more sustainable.

“There’s a return to more sensible prices for advances, there’s a sense that the independent presses are doing quite well, and this kind of looming threat of Amazon has slightly receded. I think Waterstones is doing much better and returning to indie values, if you like, and returning to the importance of the book and paying their staff properly, and that changes the mood. People talk about mood music, and I think the mood music in publishing has returned to the kind I like more. I think we were corroding the heart of publishing in a way, and I think now it’s turning back.”

Rausing’s advice to aspiring writers is to read widely and, above all, not to submit any work to a publisher until it has been thoroughly edited, redrafted and improved.

“Read the classics, read the canon and edit, edit, edit. Self-edit over and over until it’s the best that the piece can be. Do all of that before you send something in. Always bear in mind that editors have no time – so make sure the piece is as good as it can be before you send it.”