Hello and welcome everybody to Creative Women, Creative Business, Feminist, Publishing, Design and Comics. It is a wonderful three-day festival that we are welcoming you to, started yesterday, going on today and tomorrow, organised by the Business of Women's Words Research Project in collaboration with the British Library. Apologies to anyone who's been to any of the previous events for the festival so far, either yesterday or today, because I'm going to have to slightly repeat myself because I have some vital information to impart. My name is Polly Russell. I'm the British Library partner for the Business of Women's Words Research Project and I'm also the lead curator for the Unfinished Business, the Fight for Women's Rights exhibition, currently being staged at the British Library, but also currently closed as a result of COVID. However, the exhibition is due to be open until August, so we're very much opening that once we're out of all this COVID times, that the doors will open again and we can welcome as many of you as possible on-site again, so please do think about that in your calendars. It is absolutely right that this fantastic festival is running alongside the Unfinished Business exhibition, which so much celebrates women's ingenuity, their tenacity and, of course, their creativity in demanding rights, in insisting on space, on changing the world and, of course, on working out ways to make a living. We have already had two wonderful events and now we're having our third event of the season, today, now How to Sell a Feminist Lost Classic, with two experts from the industry, Maria Vassilopoulos and Kate McDonald, and the event is being chaired by Dr D. M. Withers, who is a research associate on the Business of Women's Words Projects. I will hand over momentarily to D. M., but just a couple of housekeeping points beforehand. On your screen, you will have a tab for the bookshop. Usually, we would signpost you towards the British Library's wonderful bookshop. Unfortunately, it's not at the moment operating the online site because of COVID. So instead, we've listed all our contributors across the festivals, publications, and linked to independent bookshops, so please do check those out. I also wanted to mention that as well as this wonderful festival running over three days, we have all sorts of events scheduled into the next few months, a number of which really speak to the themes and the ideas which we'll be discussing during these events. And I'll just mention a couple that I think you will be interested in. We have Alison Bechdel, the cartoonist, scheduled to speak in February. We've got the artist and writer Laurie Anderson doing an event also in February. And we have at the end of this month, the economist, Mariana Masakuto, in conversation with Gillian Tett, all relevant for the themes that we're talking around today. One last point. We are so excited to hear from our panelists today and for them to share their expertise, but we really want to hear from you. So please do go down to the bottom of your screen where there is a space where you can submit questions and we will get as many of those as possible to Maria and to Kate. Right, for now I'm going to hand over to DM and then see you all at the next event. Bye. Good afternoon and a warm welcome to How to Reprint a Lost Feminist Classic. My name is DM Withers and I'm a research fellow on the business of women's words project. Today I'm joined by Kate McDonald, literary historian and director and energy source for Handheld Press and Maria Vasalopoulos, sales and marketing manager for British Library Publishing, who in 2020 launched their very own reprint series, British Library Women Writers. We will be discussing today the nuts and bolts of reprinting books that have fallen out of fashion, taste and memory. Republishing and repackaging old books in new clothes is a long-standing practice in the publishing industry dating back to the 18th century. In the mid-19th century, reprints became a popular way to make money out of books. Series such as the Routledge Railway Library, which published cheap editions and eye-catching covers, also known as yellowbacks, were designed to appeal to the growing reading and travelling public. In the early 20th century, reprints began to shed their association with cheapness and ephemerality through J.M. Dent's scholarly Everyman Library. And this is followed by mid-century series like the Penguin Modern Classics. When Varago launched the Modern Classics series in June 1978 with Antonia White's Frost in May, the series popularised the idea that women writers were not forgotten or fell out of print simply because they weren't any good.  It is Varago therefore who we should credit for opening up a cultural and market space in which the forgotten text by the marginal women writer becomes a source of positive identification, a potential tree discovered and whose place on our shelves becomes an active cultural restitution shared between reader and publisher. Now here are some examples of publishers and publisher series that have operated or continue to operate in this fascinating market space. Women's Press, who were established in 1977 and were a contemporary of Varago, their early books were reprints, even if they then went on to focus on contemporary books. Persephone Books established in 1999 continued to pioneer in this area. Honow's Welsh Women's Classics reprint books in Welsh and in English. And Silver Press, who started in 2017, also have reprints as part of their lists. And finally, Black Britain Writing Back is the eagerly anticipated collection of Black British writing curated and introduced by Booker winner Bernardine Everisto, and it launches next month, so make sure you check that out. So as you can see, reprint publishing remains a thriving area within the industry, but how do you go about it? Luckily, this is something our two speakers today have a great deal experience of, so they're going to be able to tell us. First of all, we're going to be hearing from Kate, who is going to talk about research and rights, and then Maria will talk about marketing, curation and sales. After that, it's your turn to have some input. You can submit questions at any time. So if inspiration strikes you while the speakers are talking, or even in relation to anything I've said, please send them in. But we're going to come to those questions after the presentations. So for now, Kate, it's over to you. Hi. Well, thank you all for coming. I want to tell you a little bit about copyright. So John, can we do the first slide, please? When you are looking for a book that you want to republish, the first thing you have to work out is, is it in copyright or is it not in copyright? And in the UK and the EU, this means 70 years after the death of the author. So if someone died in May 1950, they would have come into copy out of copyright in the first of January this year. So at the moment, 1950s are a cutoff point for texts that you can republish without anyone saying you are as royalties, you have to ask permission. But if that text is in copyright, then you have to do some homework. Looking at the first picture of the first cover on the left, which is Zelda Fitzgerald, Sammy the Waltz, we spotted pretty quickly that she was going to come out of copyright in January 2019. So we had that edition ready. But we were really worried, we were convinced that every American publisher would be producing their own edition of Zelda Fitzgerald's only novel, Sammy the Waltz, because she's the wife of F Scott Fitzgerald, there's a massive F Scott Fitzgerald industry. And to our amazement, nobody else did, we have the only current edition in print of that novel. This is a good example of a marginalized woman's voice being brought back, mainly because the masculine voice for the mass, the industry around the masculine voice of her, her marriage completely undermined her and ignored her. So they thought she was worthless. And we're very happy that this edition is selling extremely well at universities and colleges in Britain and in the US. So next picture along Malcolm Saville, James Country Year. This is a book we're bringing out in 2022. So you can't find it yet. This author he died. He's still in copyright. I think he died in the 70s of the 80s, but his family administered the estate. So for us it was a matter of, we identified that we wanted to publish it. This is a Malcolm Saville society, which is really active. They sent us to the family, and the family and I negotiated we agreed a contract. We have the rights to publish this text, which is just so exciting. The next one along Vonda McIntyre, this was so tragic. Vonda was a really important feminist science fiction author and sort of a godmother with her great friend Ursula Le Guin of science fiction and feminism in the 70s. In this novel, the exile waiting was her first novel 1975. And I loved it when I discovered it as a teenager and it was one of the top ones in my wish list. So I got in touch with Vonda at the end of 2018 saying I really want to publish this book because it's been out of print since basically the early 70s. And she said that would be terrific. Let me send you to my agent. So the agent and I discussed the contract we agreed the contract. We signed and all was going well. And then February 2019 Vonda told us all that she had third stage pancreatic cancer, and she died at the beginning of April. And that was just so tragic. We brought the book forward as much as we could so she was able to see the cover, but she never saw her book again in print. But because she had been part of the process part of the negotiating process. I was able already to, I was well in touch with the agent and now I'm closely in touch with the literary estate that administers her work. The fourth book was an absolute mystery because I came across it in a book sale. I bought it for three pounds I read it on the way home on the train, and I nearly missed my stop. It was that good. So halfway through, I was thinking I've got to find the rights I've got to find the estate but who are these authors I had never heard of them. I did a bit of basic Googling and Jane Oliver's name came up as the subject of a, what was it, it was a new forest somewhere in Fordingbridge at the Fordingbridge local history society, sometime in the late 1970s someone had written an article about her because that where was where she was living when she died. Luckily, the person who wrote the article was still in that local history society. I got in touch with him, and he said very cautiously, I could put you in touch with the state but who are you what do you want to state your intentions. I persuaded him I was legitimate, and he put me in touch with the air Jane Oliver's nephew and with her agent. And I thought well that's odd why should this utterly obscure author with a friend who's so obscure there is no trace of her left. Why would she need a literary agent and it was only by doing the research helped by information from her nephew that I realized that these two women had written together 97 books. That's a massive literary estate and nobody knows about them. This is the extraordinary thing. These are prolific productive and very successful women writers who have disappeared completely. But luckily this book business as usual is now one of our best sellers because everybody loves it is a complete word of my success. And I feel so fortunate that we've revived the fortunes of this estate, and also brought this fabulous fabulous funny romantic clever witty devastating the interesting book back into the public domain. John, next slide please. Oh, no, no, don't do the next slide. I want to talk about pictures, because when you are doing a book, you have to think about a cover. Looking back at the Zelda Fitzgerald. That picture, and also the business as usual cover both came from the Mary Evans picture library. That's a picture agency. So we have licensed the right to use those images for book covers and for marketing of the book. We don't have the right to use them for any other purpose, although one could if I wanted to put using to make t shirts out or something like that I could I'd have to pay more money. But if you're thinking about bringing a book back you've got to think about how you use the image and what you use it for. The James country year image that is by the original artist who worked with Malcolm Saville in the 1940s to produce a suite of extraordinary colored engravings for that book. Now I've got the first edition, which my mother owned, which I've stolen off her. We're planning to reproduce all the illustrations. The problem is, we cannot trace the artist's estate. The artist to falls under the copyright law and as we know he died, what we know he was alive after 1950. We know he's in copyright, but can we find the estate we cannot. So all we can do is put a disclaimer in the book and reserve a sum in our production budget for paying the estate if it ever makes itself known to us. Back into our image. Well, as you will probably know, the covers of science fiction novels in the 1970s are not desirable artwork. They are just trash and pulp and just ghastly I wouldn't go near them. So we commissioned a piece of brand new art for this book. And that means we can do anything we like with it. We've paid for it is ours we can make t shirts we can make books, books, book bags and that sort of thing. John next slide please. Now the other thing I want to show you is how we use images. So we have here a new book Valentine Acklin the first biography of this really important lesbian poet, social justice activist and the life partner of Sylvia Townsend Warner. This comes out in May and we are at the point of doing the index. We're almost there. The cover we sorted out at the end of last year, and we wanted to use a terrific portrait of Valentine that was made by Eric Gill. Now Eric Gill is one of the most important artists of the early 20th century in Britain, and he's out of copyright because he died really young. So after a bit of checking, we assured ourselves that he was out of copyright we could use it and so we have this amazing illustration, which we can use completely for free. That to need to consider when you're thinking about your budgets of what you use what you spend your money on in the production of a book, the fees for reproduction are as important as the fees for printing. Another example. This is a collection of letters of family archive about a conscientious object around his wife. And obviously, as about the family I wanted to use an image of the family. So we used an original family photograph which as you can probably see is really scratched very sepia it's been folded and our art designer she tinkered with the image and Photoshop to show us how you can make it look almost brand new. So that has become the cover photo. But again it was part of the family's agreement with me that they could just give us all the artwork we wanted. We would use them we didn't need to do any more research and that it was extremely easy. But then it was a personal connection and sometimes you just get lucky, you find a fabulous book and it falls into your lap with almost no strings attached. That's just a very, very brief outline of different copyright issues you're going to come across, and different ways you have to approach spending your money, doing the legal thing with contracts. If you've got any questions, check them out me at the end of the session I'll see if I can help. Thanks so much Kate that was brilliant. Okay Maria over to you. Hi everyone. So I'm Maria Basilopoulos and I am the sales and marketing manager for British Library publishing. If I'm looking down it's just because I've got my notes here but I'm sorry about that. I am here to talk about the British Library women's fiction series which we launched in 2020. So before I introduce the books I should just start by saying that British Library publishing sits within the commercial department of the library. We published around 50 books a year including exhibition catalogs. Like of course the fantastic unfinished business exhibition catalog which I have here and is available at all good bookshops and a host of nonfiction fiction series books. And today I'll just be speaking on behalf of that team, which includes the editor of the women's fiction series Alison Moss, who is responsible for searching the library archives and recommissioning titles. And also our series expert and a blogger at Stuck in a Book Simon Thomas, who has helped us so much with his knowledge of the genre. I'd also like to just say a special thank you to the BL curatorial team, including Tanya, Lucy Evans and Alison Bailey who have contributed introductions and ideas throughout us engineering this new series. So as a publisher, we're probably best known for our series of crime classics, for which we have a loyal fan base and we're not far off having 100 of these in print. And the idea to create a women's fiction series in part came from our readers and our bookshop customers who wanted us to find more women writer authors in that genre. So we delivered the division bell mystery. And when we pitched this to the book buyers and press the we use the author as well as the story because Ellen Wilkinson has had a really prolific career as an MP at a time when it was rare for women to hold such a position. And her story resonated with our booksellers and customers, and a light to the point where a waterstones buyer personally championed her book. After this success, we found other women authors such as Mary Kelly and ECR Lorac who have also become successful on the list, not only for what they wrote but for who they were as women. And when the unfinished exhibition was an unfinished business exhibition was announced we decided that because we were getting more requests to find women authors that we would begin a dedicated series. Although as we know women's fiction publishing is not a new phenomenon at all. We decided to put our values as a publisher behind our series. And we believe as a publisher in making the British Library collections available to as accessible as possible to readers all over the world. And so our women's fiction series is designed to carry not only the author's work but the author history behind their time of writing and the context. So our mission statement for the series and if I can have the next slide and the mission statement reads that this series from British Library publishing brings back and contextualizes works by female writers who were successful in their day. These authors have been selected not just for the strength of their writing and the power of their storytelling, but for highlighting the realities of life for women and societies and changing attitudes towards female behavior through the decades. And that was our main mission that we took out to bookshops and to the press and reviewers. And our series editor Alison wanted me to just elaborate on this and impart her on her behalf from her perspective that what is interesting about the novels we've chosen is that while the authors were influenced by their times their own lives and so and society at large. In the creation of these works for us the readers, they present a fascinating social history from which we can learn so much as well as enjoy their fiction, the fiction that they wrote. And Simon Thomas adds to this by stating that one of his observations that he made over and over again in his reading life and academic research into the genre is that brilliant novels sometimes disappear. And if we're looking at broad trends in the early and mid 20th century, it is women writers who disproportionately wrote about small everyday moments, and these moments in these novels are often unjustly forgotten. Can I move to the next slide please. So now I'm going to introduce you to the series and try and show you how we've made it easy for readers, booksellers and reviewers to engage with the context and meaning behind the everyday moments in these novels. I'm just going to hold up one of the books. So this is Chatterton, Chatterton Square by EH Young so I hope you can see that. And each book follows the same design brief so the pattern on the cover is designed to evoke the decade the book is set in so in this case, the 1940s. And on the flap inside, I don't know if you can see that at all but there's a silhouette, and it says 1940s in there so it's really obvious to the readers which decade they're going into. The silhouette matches the one on the cover. And inside each book we've included a timeline of key historical events that happened in the decade the book's written in, a biography of the author, a preface and an afterward. So it's a full package. The collections are there to provide context, but we also do use them when creating our press releases when we're talking to buyers and when we're producing our sales material. And I've gone through each book and just pulled out a few themes from each of them and I wanted to share them with you just to illustrate the kind of information that we are trying to make more accessible and hope to also bring these books to life as well. So my husband Simon by Molly Pantadams is set in the 1930s and it explores classism and marriage and during World War Two, and during World War, and not during World War Two sorry I'm reading my notes too fast during World War Two. And the author was actually the voice of England to an American audience in the New Yorker magazine. And this is set in the 1920s by Rose Macaulay was is set in the 1920s and this focuses on the prejudices which were forced on women by society at various stages of their lives. Virginia Woolf was good friends with Rose and repeatedly noticed her noted her as too sensitive far too sensitive in her diary several times. And this was the one I held up first and was set in the 1940s and it contains perceptions of marriage divorce and spinster hood. And Young's novels took place in a fictional city called upper Radstow, which was actually Bristol where she actually grew up. So that's quite interesting. And this is set in the 1930s by Elizabeth von Arnim, and this tackled the experiences of what were branded surplus women in the interwar periods. And these were women who are married, and they were just called surplus women. Elizabeth was prolific but it's she is mostly remembered for just one novel which was called The Enchanted April. The music by Dorothy Evelyn Smith was written in the 1940s and is a retrospective coming of age story, which is set in the interwar years. And Smith later remarked that she wrote this book on the edge of her kitchen table with bombs flying all around her. She is so intoxicating set in the 1950s in a village where a man attempts to set up a tea room that displeases the lady of the manor in doing so. It's really, really funny. And Mary Essex was a pseudonym for Ursula Bloom, who wrote her first book as a child, as a child, excuse me. It was called Tiger and it was about a cat saving a family from a house fire. But not by no means least, Tree of Heaven, which is our earliest classic from 1910s by May Sinclair talks about women's suffrage and debates peaceful protest against more militant actions within her characters. Sinclair to many literature scholars is best known for having first used the term stream of consciousness in a review of Dorothy Richardson's book pilgrimage, which was released in 1918. So there's some facts I've plucked out from the books, but more than this, we also acknowledge how difficult how these books were published in a century, in which the role of women in society changed radically and explained that the authors fictional characters highlights the women's own the authors own experience of life being a woman throughout these decades. I think we can go to the next slide I think now. Yeah. So we launched this series in 2020. And which was right sort of where before the first lockdown. So a lot of our promotions we had a window displays all kinds of things for all canceled. So we had to move everything online.  We had to work out how to share the books but also the stories of the authors because that's really important to the series. And this led to a lot of reviewer and blogger interest which was fantastic. And we got lots of requests and we now have a healthy fan base and a healthy blogging community and reviewers have spoken about the series in podcast and on YouTube as well. One thing we've noticed is that people not only see collectibility in the series, but they also like to rave about which is their favorite. And on the slides you can see a bit of evidence of a favorite book being tweeted about or shared. And this activity has created new conversations around these books and authors, which is just what we wanted to introduce them to new generations of women and men. And to the next slide please. And even journalists have been selecting their favorite women's fiction books. So we had a lovely review a couple of weeks ago from the TLS of all the books in the series, but the journalist remarked that other brave music was her favorite and I have to agree with her I think it's my favorite as well. And the spectator reviewer in her roundup in December the best books of 2020 stated that dangerous ages was better than most new novels she'd read for years. And going forward, we hope to continue this conversation and encourage more readers to engage with the authors and their backgrounds as we expand it. The next two will be out in spring this year, and they are mummer by Diana Tutton, which is about a dysfunctional family and tension by EM Denfield, which might rival other brave music to be my favorite because I absolutely love all her books, the ones that are currently in print. So do look out for more additions in the autumn and we'll also be launching the series in the USA and Canada later this year. And then last slide. Thank you. And thank you so much for listening. And I wouldn't be a good sales person if I didn't encourage you all to use the link in the information you've been given to the blackwells online shop to check out the books and as Paulie said at the beginning, all our books were available at the British Library shop when that reopens. So thank you so much for listening. Thanks so much to you both. That was so fascinating and a real good insight into the world of reprint publishing and how to do it. So now is our time to have questions from the audience. I am going to abuse my position as chair and ask the first question to you both, which is a question about whether you think reprint publishing has an edge over contemporary works. Does being old lend works books and the aura of gravitas and distinction that new things can simply never have. Well, my first response is, if the author is dead, you don't have to deal with the author, which may or may not be an advantage. Sometimes it's absolutely lovely dealing with an author. And sometimes it's absolutely lovely dealing with estate administrations like the Society of Authors who are super professional and just exceptional in my line of work. If you reprints have the edge. I think they can do because they will appeal to a different set of markets which the rest of trade publishing doesn't often consider. I do notice looking at the trade press like the bookseller and like the various newsletters you get that reprints and republications of forgotten fiction forgotten authors. They're ignored by the bulk of the trade press, but the readers, the people who pay the money, they adore the reprints. And I think, yeah, I think reprints have a real place in the market that the book trade media don't really pay much attention to. Yeah, I'd agree with Kate on that point. I think it's more difficult to get a hook on the market, which is why a lot of reprints here is I think our series. It's very difficult to ask a bookshop or booksellers to take a risk on authors that are completely unknown. And so there has to be, I guess, a lot of backstory behind why you've chosen to publish those particular authors. And that's actually really good because a lot of these authors do have very interesting lives and they should be remembered and brought back for new generations. Yeah, do you think there's something about the, you know, the otherness of the past as providing an escape for, you know, from the contemporary particularly now, given the contemporary is so kind of awful. I think that has a role in in selling these books and the way in which you select them and position them for the readers. I wouldn't say that selling the past as a pure nostalgia trope is a very good basis for publishing anything. It's much more important if you're going to pick out a book from the past needs to be brought back that it has something to say to the present. So when we publish Rose Macaulay's whatnot, which I think we revive Macaulay's career about 18 months ago. It was not only was a 100 year old speculative fiction about eugenics and government meddling and how people's relationships with each other worked. It had a great deal to say to present day attitudes to fake news and media manipulation. And the reviews we got were so dogmatic about this saying this is absolutely a book for our time, and it was 100 years old. And it was because we spotted that and we knew it would speak to today's readers. That's why I did so well. I think I agree with Kate on that, but I think that, you know, there's, I think there is some kind of escapism in going into the past. And I think that the import importance of work of being publishing these books is that you make sure that you do contextualize them and you do make sure that the point that those important points are not just drowned in nostalgia. They're kind of, you know, kept as as important as they were when they were first written. Yes, certainly. And I wasn't necessarily equating that, you know, escaping to otherness with nostalgia as such, but more just an escape from the present. But yeah, I think it's that interesting thing about positioning a book and I've not certainly noticed that in your marketing discourse Kate, but I think you're very skilled at spotting those connections and positioning. You know, books, forgotten books and showing how they might resonate with this context. So I wonder, could you talk a bit about, you know, your process of thinking through that when you're doing, when you're reading these books and making these selections and and, you know, the skill involved in the kind of thought processes without obviously revealing every single secret that you have, because that would be terrible. I don't think I've world enough and time to do that. My thought processes are, do I love this book? Do I have such a passionate response to this book that I want to tell someone about it immediately and to say you really must listen to me talking about this book or you too must read this book because I want to talk to you about it. If I have that reaction, that's a pretty strong signal to me that that book needs to be seriously considered. Then once I've got through the copyright, it's available. Can I track down the estate? Is it, you know, logistically, is it possible to get this as a property that we can republish? I then have to argue with the other half of handheld press, who is my husband, who is the finance director, and he knows very little about the kind of literature we publish, which is a good thing because he is the devil's advocate. I have to persuade him that we have two or three crossover markets who I will convince him will want to buy this book. And if he's happy with that, then we go ahead. If the cash flow works. Does that help to answer your question? Yes, for sure, for sure. Yeah, I suppose I'm interested in those techniques in terms of the thought processes that people have when they're reading things that make them kind of position books, but that's maybe a little bit esoteric. So let's let's move on to something else. Thank you for sending me from the audience and hello to the audience. Thank you for sending in your questions, please keep them coming in. What is the role of libraries in supporting feminist creative businesses? Obviously, the British Library has a very particular as a particular library, but any other kinds of libraries. So thoughts on libraries first Maria. And I can only speak on behalf of the publishing team at the library and the libraries are huge. The British Library is a huge sort of institution and I am. There's a lot that's going on curatorially that I may not be privy to in my, my own role but I suppose we, it's, it's, it's good to provide I suppose we felt like there should be an avenue for some of these women's voices to come through, and with the British Library branding on we felt like that was something that should happen and I think, you know, with coinciding with the unfinished business exhibition, it just seemed to us a sensible time to to do so. I mean, yeah, we're, we are the sort of National Library of the United Kingdom, we have a great resource at our fingertips. We do also operate like Kate does we have to track down the states we have to pay royalties, you know we do the whole everything by the book as a normal publisher would so we kind of crossover and I think that yeah there's probably, I'm probably not doing the question justice by my, my very commercial answer to that but yeah. That's, that's okay so it's a very good answer. And Kate. I use for libraries routinely in my daily work. I use my local library in Bath, and then on the library's West network, which is pretty much the southwest of England, because I'm continually looking for books looking for texts by authors and researching. And if I can't order it up in Bath so I can physically go and collect the book and take it home, then I use the London library, because I have an electronic access. I can order books from the London library and have them sent to me and then I can send them back. And I can use their electronic research papers. And then because I'm a research fellow Oxford Brooks University, I can use their electronic access and technically the Bodleian as well but they're close to accept the University of Oxford staff now. And finally there is a British Library catalogue, which I think is the single most important resource that I, I use all the time as a way of researching what I want to publish and the authors I'm interested in. But because of that because I use these libraries I'm very very aware that the local library network is an invaluable repository of texts. Anybody can go to their library catalogue online and look up and see, is there a book here by Angelica Garnett, is it does a library have anything by Marjorie Grant Cook. Names that nobody now will remember, but the library system and their stacks will hold these texts if they have the space and please libraries do not check out the old books are so important. So the feminist researching individual women's histories can retrieve those texts which they will never get access to in any other way. Absolutely libraries, totally invaluable in all of their different guises and I'm now going to take a slightly different tack and ask a question about bookshops and in particular Amazon. What do you think about Amazon? Should we boycott it? Should it be reformed? What about bookshop.org as an alternative. So thoughts about the contemporary bookselling book buying landscape. It is essential for many people who can't get what they need in any other way because you can't leave the house. It has a use, it's valuable. It's very important as a bibliographical research to know what is in print. I find that professionally really useful to know what texts are available and what editions they might be in. And after that I've checked on Amazon then I go to my local bookshop and order them. Girl on the Block, bookshop.org is the online replacement for Amazon and I think it has massive potential and it's so important because it gives money back to booksellers. The way it will work best is if all the publishers can get their books registered online on bookshop.org so that customers can go and buy what they want and then the wholesalers and the distributors will do the physical packing and posting. But this will mean that for every sale you make on bookshop.org a bookshop will be sent a tiny percentage of that money and they've sent hundreds of thousands of pounds already in only three months of business in the UK and in the US they've done even better. So I think that bookshop.org has the potential to take a lot of Amazon's business and Amazon won't mind because they're a behemoth. But the other really important thing about Amazon is that they distribute ebooks. There are many, many different ebook distributors but Amazon have the dominance in the market because of their Kindle platform, which they're withdrawing that's slowly being phased out to EPUB. But so many people who physically can't read or can't get at books in any other way because they can't get bookshops, they can't go out, they rely necessarily on ebooks and to be able to buy them quickly and cheaply through Amazon is essential. I think that for us, we're quite an unusual publisher in the sense that we have our own, we have a shop as part, you know, we're part of the same team that the retail team sit in. So we're very lucky to have a retailer that our books are available from and we obviously operate online and you can go into the library and buy from two, there's two sites, shop sites there. And for us, we tend to follow the line of our books are available at all good bookshops. And by that we mean online, we mean physical bookshops. And, you know, if that happens to be Amazon or if that happens to be bookshop or as long as people are able to access our books, I think that's the most important thing for us as a publisher. I think we all have our own kind of subjective opinions on things and, you know, that kind of, you know, over the lockdown I've done a lot of work in my other guys I'm a PhD student studying the history of the British book trade. And I've been doing a lot of work with the booksellers association to support that we have a hashtag on Twitter, which is choose bookshops.  But so, you know, I do a bit of campaigning there but I think in terms of talking British library publishing we just we just like everyone to be able to access our books in the way that suits them, essentially, but we'll always say that they're available everywhere we never, we never kind of choose a retailer as it were. For sure. I've got a question now from Charlotte, who says thank you Charlotte. And what do you think about the trend for feminist books for children. So good night stories for rebel girls for instance. And are there any lost feminist children's classics that you can recommend or know about. Goodness. As long as feminist books are read to children of old all sexes and all gender is that that's great books are good, give them to children give children lots of books. I think that's your bottom line. Feminist classics. It's called the Wardens niece. And I'm struggling to remember the name of the author but it came out as a puffin in 1960. And it's a historical novel about a Victorian girl doing her own research and tracking down something lost. And it was so important to me as a child that still got my copy and it's upstairs. I won't go and get it. I think that's been republished and for me it was really important not just as a story in which the girl did the leading and the girls the protagonist and she found what she was looking for, but she was doing research. She was using her brain she was finding things out, being brave, pushing her boundaries. It ticked every box for me as a book for a girl. It was great. I think that I think it's great. I think it's brilliant. I really like the rebel girls products and and also then I think there's a publisher called quarter books who do a series called great lives and they started off with doing lots of different like Florence Nightingale and I can't think of any more off the top of my head but lots of different lives that by like biographies of of like women and their childhoods. And I mean as a child I would have loved that kind of book so you know it's great to see them coming out like more more of those coming out. And I can just plug her the brave music again because this is actually a coming of age tale. So this is suitable for a sort of teenage audience anyway. And I think sometimes with some of these the reprinted classics they are probably suitable for for teenage like a teenage audience or a young adult audience. So they they kind of yeah they can kind of go across kind of a few different age groups. But yeah, all in all a positive development I think. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that there's lots of children's books although I can't they can't I can't come to mind at the moment which ones they were but written during the women's movements in the 70s and 80s so it's probably worth, you know doing research in that area if if that's something you're interested in. And a question, a bit of a technical question here. So what would the copyright situation be if the novel was serialized in a newspaper but never appeared as a book. In one case it appeared in the Daily Herald which no longer exists in another appeared in a range of local papers in the UK and in Australia, and the author died in 1963. It would still be in copyright wouldn't it Kate, but it's nothing to do with where it was published. If it was, if the author died in 63 it's in copyright for 13 more years. Now getting around that. Yeah, so moseying up and trying to make friends with the, the, the estates and the, the relatives, and that's the only way to do it isn't it. So get in touch with the estate and discuss and you may find that a family are just so delighted to have a book back in print they won't charge you anything. I've had that happen a couple of times. And it's, you know, not everybody wants the money. They just want the book back so people can read it that is sometimes as important, if not more. So don't worry too much about can I afford it is it going to cost me thousands of pounds because it won't, it really won't try just, you know, have a look, see what you can do and then negotiate. Yes, negotiation, for sure. And there's another technical question. Thank you, Kate says Miss, Miss McDonald, Dr McDonald mentioned that she was worried that another publisher would also republish the Zelda Fitzgerald book as it went out of copyright. If there was one more, more than one publisher doing so, would someone have to bow out or can multiple publishers release a book that has gone out of copyright. Hope that makes sense. Yes, if a book is out of, if a text is out of copyright, it can appear again in as many editions as the market was a publisher's think the market will support. So we have this when John Buchan came out of copyright after 50 years after his death because this was before you all changed. You have five separate publishers reprinting John Buchan's text like mad because he is a perennial best seller, and then EU law change and he went back into copyright. And so we have the bizarre situation of John Buchan editions, all over the place but he was out he was still in copyright. The point is, can the markets, can, can the market support multiple editions. In the case of Zelda Fitzgerald saved me the walls. I reckon another edition would be fine. I think four editions would be completely bonkers because it's one title only. And for a big name like Scott Fitzgerald himself. I'm pretty sure the estate have that all sewn up, but I think he's now out of or about to come out of copyright. And it could well be that the major publisher is like oh you be classics penguin Barnes and Noble classics New York review book classics they all have editions lined up of all of his works to come out as a big batch. We don't know, but was a name like that you can be sure of selling a lot with a lesser known name like Zelda, you can't be sure. So that was my concern, would our edition be swamped out as a foreign British edition in the massive heartland of the same country. And thankfully it hasn't been it hasn't been the case. Okay, so a question for both of you because I think both the British Library women's series and the handheld press books are both very elegantly designed and presented and very recognisable as well. So how important do you think having a unified design and an aesthetic consistency to that is in ensuring that books are recognizable and identifiable for for readers they thinking about the package of the design I know you talked a bit about the lovely images on the cover. Kate, but if you could talk about the whole. Yeah, the, the design was one of the things I tackled almost immediately. Once I got the company up and running, and I needed a designer because I'm an editor and print bar. I'm not a designer. And thankfully I found perfect designer almost immediately and she and I have been working together for every three years. But her background is book design as well as corporate design. So she and I were very clear we needed a unified series design for the handheld classics. So you've got the bleed off at the top. So the image at the top it goes right to the top of the card. But you've got a border either side and we have the title and the author names, but the spine in the back. I've got the color picked out from one of the colors in the cover here in the picture. So that's our series design for the other lists we have which is hand out research and hand out modern, the look is a little different. And that's important so the books can be seen on a table in waterstones if we could ever afford to pay that and look like they come from the same family they're going to lend each other the same authority the same. If you like this you might like that. It's important to have a family reassures the reader and makes them feel okay we know what's here we know what the parameters are. And it just looks gorgeous. I mean what is wrong with good design it's just a joy to behold it makes you feel positive and good and I want to hold that about the product that's that's our rationale. Yeah, I think I grew Kate on that and I for us. We've got a brilliant designer specifically just for the series and who we've been working very closely with and she came up with the idea of doing this wrap around kind of so that yes it's fully covered. And I mean I as a salesperson my main sort of concern when designing anything new or if the editors come to me and say this is a new design for a series is is envisaging that in a bookshop and is it going to stand out other words is the type going to stand out.  So I sort of said I think maybe we should keep that filled in and I and when I spoke to the buyers.  So it's things like that is it's kind of paying attention to your bias as well and thinking about where your books are going to be seen. Additionally, if you're going to go for more of an online audience you have to think about whether or not the tiny image you get, you know to, you know that your customers are going to see is are people going to be able to read it are people going to be able to look at that design and know that that's your series. So, and I think we had a bit of practice in that with the crime classics, because they are very much known for their series design. So we have the kind of pressure that we needed to do something really good with this series because we were going to be touched on our previous success essentially. Yeah. Great. Okay, a question here from Shristi who says, and I wanted to know if either of you feel that there is enough. If there is enough black Asian and other minority voices being heard in your sourcing and contextualizing. Do you have any books in the works for either of your your series. I don't, I don't publish any, I cannot find books, texts to publish in the handheld classics. I'm trying hard to get one in the handheld research list. I knew I was picked at the post last autumn because I had tracked down a superb memoir by an author I can't name because another publisher now has the rights to that author's estate. I don't agree because I was two weeks too late to get to negotiations and aggravated me so much. I think the problem is, I don't know enough about what is out there because I'm white. I come from Northeast Scotland. I do not have the cultural background. I don't have the access. I don't have the connections. This is a heartfelt plea. If anybody out there knows of a text, a novel, short stories, nonfiction biography letters by the diverse market we're talking about, which is black BAME, Southeast Asian, whatever, that they think would work for handheld classics, please get in touch. I am handicapped by my own restrictions by my limitations. I'm very aware of it. So I'm asking for your help. Please help me expand the range in that way. We, like with what Kate said, we found it a challenge to find, to research and source a lot of BAME or Black and Ethic Minority fiction from these eras that we're talking about. But we really want to, and it's definitely part of our mission as a library and as publishing department. We're actually putting together a task sort of focus group of people from all different backgrounds who are going to help us in our search in the library's archives. So do watch this space because we are going to be massively diversifying the list in the next couple of years. Like, because we always plan quite forward in what we're doing. So yes, we're very excited. Yeah, and I suppose this relates to that question, a question from Sophie, which is that other than bringing forth a possibly forgotten history, what more can reprints add to the current social political conversations and can they create new ones? So that's a question of whether or not reprints can move forward conversations. Yeah, I think what I'm actively trying to do is normalizing certain groups. So I have quite a few titles on our list which are by lesbian, lesbian writers, because for me it's important to ensure that women who live with other women are just as part of the normal background, the default background of our society as heterosexual couples. It's a small thing, but the more texts we have in print, which have that kind of diversity, the better. I'm also making a very active push to have writers with disabilities. At the moment it's physical disabilities and to write about disability in the text, not as this is a story about disability, but here's a character who happens to have a physical impairment and let's just get on with it. So normalization is I think what we can bring to extending the acculturation of these things. Whether all these diverse elements will exist in the literature of the past, which is what I in British Library Publishing Specializing, that's a separate question, and we have to look harder I think. Yeah, we're out there. We just have to work at it and get them into print again. I particularly agree with Kate's response. We have to put the work into finding these voices. They do exist. They are there. We're not shutting them out. We want to actively republish them. And I think what Kate said about their being, and what I touched on earlier, that it's difficult within the early and mid 20th century, the predominant voices were for a lot of fiction and that were kind of publicized heavily were white and were seemingly straight white. But there were writers that were writing at the same time. And it's about finding the sources that lead us to those writers because they are there. It's just about uncovering. And that is something that we are definitely working on. Yeah, well that sounds really exciting for the future, I think. Just one more question, and just to conclude close about nonfiction works. This is focused mainly on fiction. This is from Fiona and really enjoying the women writer series among other and other reprints and wondered if there are any similar series with nonfiction works and is there a market for reprints of forgotten nonfiction written by women. Yeah, we're bringing out one this summer, Rose McCauley personal pleasures collection of estates which are divinely funny and witty and so intelligent. But also collections of letters and biography which is what we are beginning to specialize in with the handheld research list. So letters from the past and studies of women from the past, reliving their lives bringing their lives to the public gaze. So that's a very important part of what we do. Yeah, we without nonfiction we do tend to enlist the help of our curators to tell stories from the archive so I suppose in some ways our nonfiction is all about that so we publish a variety of topics. So we've got a book on sea shanties that's coming out next week, quite timely apparently because TikTok is apparently full of sea shanties stuff at the moment, but that wasn't planned, but that that was put together with the British Library Sound archive. And so we, and the maps archive have been fantastic we've done some really amazing maps books, and within all of our books we use our images from the archives but we also tell the story behind the images and why the library has them and that kind of thing. So, so yeah so we hope to continue doing a lot more, a lot more of that in, you know, yeah we publish as a say 50 books a year and majority is fiction we do have a small nonfiction list as well and they're all available on the field British Library shop. And if you wanted to have a look at what we have. Sure. Okay so that's it I'm going to hand over to Margaret a jolly in a second I just want to say huge huge thank you to Kate McDonald and to Maria for their amazing presentations and input into this session it has been so interesting to me to hear from you and I'm sure everybody else feels the same. So, over to Margaret. Okay, thank you also I want to really thank our wonderful speakers. Also to you DM for sharing and to the audience for joining the debate. Please come back at five o'clock today, where we will continue to explore these quite complex questions of how to do feminist business and how to do creative and ethical women's business. We'll be doing this in a workshop on making feminist comics, and bring your pencil and paper if you want to have a go doing it. Nicholas Street and will tell you exactly how and what to do as a leading comics scholar. And of course come back tomorrow to on Friday for our closing panel debate. If you miss anything all will be recorded and available on the British libraries website. So more about the business of women's words project check out our blog. Thank you again so much and see you soon.


What's going on everyone Sam here with late in sports cards. We are ripping 22 top scrum update series baseball hobby 12 box full case break number 8 Pick your team style gonna read off a list of our names and teams We've got Allen M with the Orioles Barton L with the Diamondbacks Brian F Nationals Guardians Danny C Giants Ed B with the Phillies Edward L Rockies Eric R Braves Francis M Yankees Greg B White Sox Rangers Jim S with the Cubs and Blue Jays Joe H Mets Jonathan Q Red Sox Mark G Padres Mark K Marlins Matthew B twins Paul K with the Reds Philip W Dodgers Poe U. S Mariners Robert S With the Brewers that's Russell F athletics Ryan S Royals Ryan B Tigers Scott F angels rays Steven S with the Pirates Steve G Cardinals and Tony K Astros. Good luck here. Everyone. Let's do it What up Ken? Um best pull tonight so far would probably be the Gabriel Arias Gold auto out of update to 50, which is pretty solid Hey, Lacey Good God, that's a rough comparison. Eddie Lacey catching strays from spearful out of nowhere All right, we got Bowman draped up after this guys Looking forward to that see if we can pull a nice Jack see if we pull the Jackson Holiday Super Fracture Lacey went on a buffet tour. Yeah SV one is down to seven. Let's go guys Jaren Durand purple again guys if you are hockey fans, we don't do a hockey very often So if you guys can get those filled for forest tomorrow, that's gonna Trigger something maybe in rich and Lane's head saying hey, we can maybe do some more hockey So get those if you guys want to see more hockey breaks on the channel I would I would suggest getting those sold out. I bought a spot tomorrow. I'll probably bought it by another spot Sean was talking about checking it out. Yeah, yeah Yeah, the first one's got a seven already. That's not bad. Yeah Nicoladolo purple We can't talk about burgers without picking up cheese burger Eddie Lacey that guy was at cheese burger Purple Bobby Whit jr. I bought a spot just for that reason. That's what I'm saying. Ken, right? Ramon Urias. Yeah, man. I would like to more hockey on the channel for sure. It's a lot of fun I like hockey. I enjoy it. It's my first break She goes Sean can't afford it but a bunch of cases of Galaxy with his credit cards Let's talk about more hockey there we go Carlos correct the number one. Yes Wonder Franco rookie. I make sure I'm watching that tomorrow. I'll just watch You're gonna hear Of course, I'm gonna be here I Yeah for us that he bought the World Cup evidence case with your credit card say a Suzuki purple I feel like Scrooge Yeah, I'm an inch looks cool Lane. I'm an inch is gonna be clean off to watch that one for sure Jared Walsh Text me tomorrow if I don't remember feel like a hockey person now. Yeah Blue Logan Webb 275. No, it's 199 just kidding Purple Robinson Srinos simply big night shirt on and a sleeping cap.  That's what you wear A robe a full-on nightgown. Okay, Rob generation now That's just that You're still wearing a diaper Sean does have a Dan Reno onesie that it wears the bed Don't feed this guy's fire I Know I think you own multiple onesies Mickey Mouse onesies It's alright dude, it's a safe safe place here. Okay, Rob. That's what he's here Oh Lane said that floor should break. I'm an instant tuxedo Only were my bull bull jersey from now on John Gray Watching the dog Yeah, right, honestly Same indoors So I go down to New York City on the 26th and I have to walk around outside all day Jay rod force gonna be Mackenzie Gore Yeah, it does look cool winner classic It's awesome There's Ronzie Contreras on the a rookie auto for the pirates nice one there Pittsburgh There you go SG Jeremy Pena Davey nine degrees in New Jersey Good God.  Is that a new product? Oh You never got There's a Bobby wet rookie in there as well garbage team That Jayrod rookie Purple Royce Lewis debut for the twins Couple of Jayrods come out here the true Jayrod rookies, which is good. I'm J. Melendez. There's Brendan Donovan Every time someone wants Mike Purcell raise legend Mike Purcell Huh, I'm gonna go check that we're out actually right now. Let's see what Kyle ordered. No shot. That's sick My dad on a card Checking out now. All right We got some good good personal so far Barry Barry ordered another one after last night there too. Oh, yeah, Bryson stop Let's go the Barry get Optic and three-prison choice basketball Barry's been on such a heater man Mackenzie Gork Bryson stop purple something I don't rip off Calvin Fautcher For the raise rookie auto nice one there Tampa, Nick Povetta Cole Sands, I think so. Yeah, he'll be in probably 23 regular moments. Yeah, you know the first one of the second one William Woods, I'm not a bowman draft order. I've been waiting. Yeah, we got bowman draft after this I'm excited for group breaks is at least I think we have like one or two personals of bowman draft so far Maybe I mean we might not even have one to be I know Matt was here doing personals Baseball personals earlier today earlier today. There's a O'Neill cruise. So, um, he might have knocked out some of the bowman drafts Already, but we'll see Corey seager hunter Dozier. Oh, that was Hunter green Hunter Renfrow Yeah, it was Shane boss purple they're probably considered an error Jay, but they're probably less desirable than if they were just normal. I'll can't make mine Josh Winder Can I do that oh Yeah, I did I did I did actually like what There's Jeremy Pena I got mad at me for something Second box of the same thing Now he's checking out base Oh boy here we go Prism racing interesting. I'm in I'm so in That is gonna probably be my second box of that I've ripped and I pulled the Kevin Harvick black finite auto out of my first one So I'm one for one so far on prism racing Stephen Kwan, I mean it's it looks nice Yeah, it looks fine now there's no dust where the dust was Say it is they should be they should label it as a vacuum Alutomous on the purple Your diaper to take circulation to your brain JPC is yeah, and see racing is cool And see racing is really cool. Honestly. I like Chronicles racing me pull some good stuff out of that Nick Allen like he pulled a couple Richard Petty autos. I don't remember. I don't remember who it was for It was a while ago. It was like when I was top-loading still and doing personals at night. It was really a long time ago Jack Sawinsky Joe Ryan purple. Oh Yeah, chrome dust place could be made out of chrome dust at this point layers Ooh the 25 Spencer Torkelson generation now boom There we go Detroit Who's got the Tigers that is awesome, man. It's going to Ryan be right Yeah, that is 19 out of 25 nice one there on the torque you got that mag for it Brendan Marsh Really cool torque right there. Juan debut purple ordering Don't sign me up Kevin Smith purple there you go Kyle Kevin Smith We're gonna pull a Kevin Smith out of prism racing for you Kyle Purple Edward Cabrera. We'll just throw in a Kevin Smith auto for you set Luga Josh Lowe Marcus Strowman might as well J rod debut Ross Ross Chastain John Durant. Are you talking about the first J? Are you talking about the Bowman Chrome first? Jeremy Pena Gabriel Arias Generation of water felon watermelon farmers Ross Chastain purple Wanda Franco, huh prism racing as mongas this Since Kyle ordered is probably where we keep all the like the building blocks for the And the grilled cheeses purple says our anandas The most recent I would still say probably the top strome rookie J I do like Legos Purple Elliott Ramos Shelves of Lego cars there we go Sean's face when he's when he read that Kyle Adam Hasley just a sheer look of disappointment like the Pena debut on top. Are they like the the ones are like actual cars? Like I know they had like like a like a GTR or something like that Adam Frazier Okay, that's cool the technic set so they're like actual cars like actual like Lamborghinis and stuff That's pretty cool 830 piece McLaren. I Made on that for sure Sean is not happy with you Sean is not happy with you Kyle Royce Lewis rookie I'd be I'd go to Legoland Saying that's like some sort of bad thing. I don't lay on I would what William Woods, I'd have to go with some other individual Torkelson debut Sean is anti-enjoying things Sean is anti fun and and hates happiness and all that kind of stuff Nope Royce Lewis refractor 299 nice one there For us do you like Legoland I bet for us like Legos That's it buddy, that's all I want to do put me on the water Jeremy Pena Well, do you like Legos in general force together and have a party I'd be down to go with for us to Legoland You need kids to get it Dang O'Neill cruise their little skeptic Okay, I like the architecture sets. I really do like those Bobby Whit jr. And Bryson Stott need a legit legit Millennium Falcon we have that true if you bring me in there. I'm technically a child, so I'm gonna keep your kids away. There we go bring Rocco perfect easy Child Can't go to Legoland a hammer some beers go after That'd be fun Like some ski ball Heather and I are actually going to David Buster's tomorrow Scoping it out to see if we have which one the one that we went to I don't think there's one closer than that because I still have a I still have a bunch of game I can't use it all. Yeah, there's a Tyros strata to one 250 Yankee legend. That's going to the Giants Pre-game Legoland. There we go Yeah, let go Star Wars. Oh, that was such a good video game That's a great video game. That is a classic That is actually legitimately a classic I played when I was like eight and I just got the remaster version from my Xbox like Half a year ago or so played a bunch of it And they made a new one It's really cool. It's awesome. I want to do that. You should No Should We got some people with issues Diverse Jose Glacis do the eats everything See Kyle's gonna buy a Lego F1 and build it on Christmas. There we go. It's gonna buy a Lego F1 We can we can come to an agreement to get you to play with some Legos I didn't ever say I was gonna play with Legos. I was gonna go to the bar There's a bash up this happens to be Legos I knew you're gonna get some legos.  I know honestly Honestly, I've had it Andrelton Simmons, we're only three breaks in John's on Already had it, you know, I'm thinking about how cold That's true Got you it's definitely got you rattled but I'm sure 42 years. I don't own My whole family all my life came to Florida, right for Christmas. I am unhinged I'm a mega blocks. Oh, yeah She did get something that may be similar to that for my mom Putties in short work well on the Gold is casuke Kato 250 nice one there for the blue jays When the last team's taken you go good drum Paul I have It's gotta be Honestly when I was living in the Northeast I was in shorts pretty much year-round Like Like when I was in when I was in if I kind of get to like it would get to like 10 below sometimes I'd still be in shorts in my house. Dude. I'm looking at one in South Florida. I can't go Yeah, honestly wonder rookie Step on a squeaker at night. Yeah freak out. Oh, yeah, that's always terrifying in the Xbox Grab some water Well the torches and up there for everybody to see Purple all say a Suzuki for the cubbies. That was a George Kirby refractor by the way to 299. No Yeah, it's a 299 extra card in there plus a jaren to ran purple Oh, yeah, absolutely Bobby Whit purple that's a great gift Hey And a small amount of e-bucks can really like Oh, yeah, it's like a clown nose minefield is Brandon Marsh. Honestly sick. That's funny What kind of dogs Carl I can't wait to see my dog. I love God I'm so excited to see my dog when I get home. I miss her so much. Whoo minus 20 Alec Thomas, but that's crazy. Keep that one for yourself. They're Jay Not super jealous there sick Jay rod Torque Best fast foods sandwich go Oh, man, are we talking? Chihuahua is nice Yeah, Nicoladola, but they're so funny man Yeah, so much energy to a lot of the times and they're loving it. Oh, yeah Really, yeah, my parents for every pain your rookie baconator. Ooh, that's a good call JPC is Didn't go on Four boxes to go That one's got I'm not a huge fan No, that's a good one O'Neill cruise rookie purple Torkelson debut Brendan Donovan Yeah, not a ton of Bobby with purple yet. There's been a few a couple Australian shepherds. Say, yeah There Rod refractor to not number Purple Boa brisk We have one in Orlando. Yes. Hell yeah, Ramos. I've never been it's like a Chicago place like hot Italian beef That's kind of what they do like the sandwiches. Yeah Got auto colesanos It's gonna be for the twins not numbered It's a little speck of dust I think on there. Yeah, it looks like dust I was have Sean wipe it off for you. Can't see gore purple dogs of the best Yeah, dogs are awesome. I can't wait to see my dog Jeremy Pena. What's your dog's name Molly? He's awesome. Yeah, not like a two-pound toy poodle. She's like a little bit She's like in between a toy and a mini. She's like 14 15 pounds.  That's awesome There you go James. I love that dude. Our stack of ace don't fall over pools Crispy chicken king from Burger King. I did kind of like that the chicken Bobby wit Understandably so though James understandably so Man Eventually, I'm gonna get my own. Oh, yeah Royce Lewis purple You How are you gonna train them to attack other people when you're the like main poster child Just take a look at Donnie and Bryson Bryce elder that's number eight Yeah, third one. Yeah, read Detmer's purple Thomas purple for the Diamondbacks Nick Plummer Oh Yeah, there you go god Bowden Francis or Bowden Francis for the blue jays on the rookie auto not numbered. We're just doing well now Matt brash purple and that's a ball a Bobby wit purple debut Lucius Fox with the city Connect Jersey Taylor Walls Connor jill Luke Williams rookie for the Marlins Bobby way rookie Maranachia and last pack of box time Jeremy pain. Yeah, and CJ Abrams, baby Then me possibly I always gotta have throw the possibly in there for sure Last but not least the car Carl sometimes purple Gabriel Rice No, I know it's wild Depends on what mood she's in I hear that Nick Allen Johan Durand Steven Kwan purple Strowman Wander purple Joe Ryan for the twins We got another auto coming up of Cam Allured That's for the Pirates nice one there. Cam Allured Who did Carl just said? That's funny I heard that Kevin Smith Drew smile Jayrod rookie Yeah, what kind?  That's gonna be fun, dude transcendent baseball One of the big ones right there Gonna be Absolutely insane I'm gonna get nutty Ray Meltopia Jeremy Pena purple for the Astros I guess technically Jay Yes, and no Yes, sir. Carl transcendent next week Bobby weight rookie Get close and close to the big boy breaks. Oh, yeah, dude Uh, George Kirby for the Mariners and purple We're getting 20 cases of transcendent I'm gonna make 100 Yeah, it's gonna be awesome. Wow That's really cool. Yeah, I'm really excited That's it. That's all they make Jose Miranda. Yeah every year they make it once a year. That's it. That's it Oh, yeah, oh and Miller. Oh, yeah, there's a lot of really nice stuff Jayrod debut Miranda Miranda Hunter green purple George Kirby debut I'm with you Jay. I'm no I'm not anywhere near big boy stuff either. I like my $30 top's hockey break Or not tops upper deck hockey break tomorrow So I'm looking forward to that force better pull me something or you're gonna get slapped purple Jesus Sanchez and last Pack of the Kenzie Gore trevor story that'll do for the break guys do a quick recap here. We had autos pirates is Kim allured that's bowed bowed in france's blue jays cold sands for the um twins Uh, casuke kato to 50 for the blue jays Calvin fautcher for the rays ronzi contraris pirates And spent a torquelson on the generation now at 19 out of 25 I'll do it for the break. Thanks again everybody for the fill next up. We got bowman draft random team style


Hello, everyone. Welcome to this talk on responsible AI in banking. Artificial intelligence or AI has remarkably improved our ability to predict outcomes much more reliably than ever before. The progress and availability of these tools in a simple and scalable way have meant that businesses can have far deeper insights and look forward capabilities than, say, 10 to 15 years back. Used in the right ways, these capabilities can enable businesses to provide far more relevant offers and better experience to their customers. This has enabled businesses to improve their revenues, improve NPS scores of their products and services, and generally establish a more trusted relationship with their customers. However, as with all great powers comes greater responsibilities, we need to be mindful of the dangers and the pitfalls which we may come by if we are not careful. Many advanced machine learning models are not as transparent and easy to understand. They can encapsulate a lot of complex logic. And between the crevices of these complexities can lie dangerous biases and bugs. They can hide seemingly innocuous but potentially illegal and unethical reasoning. In order to be responsible users of this powerful paradigm called AI, we need to be on the top of and in control of these risks. The good news is that in recent years, there has been a number of different tools and techniques which have come by. And these can enable us to control and mitigate these risks. All the while, we can focus on improving revenue and continue to get our customers' love. So in today's talk, we will be exploring some of these tools and where and how we can use them to stay safe. So with that, let's introduce ourselves. I'm Ronadip Chatterjee. I'm a data analyst specialist working in Google Cloud. I'm based in London and I mainly work with financial services customers. And then Christos Anichtos, a machine learning specialist working for Google Cloud, also based in London. Let's look at a story to guide us through this talk. This is a work of pure fiction, but any resemblance to the real life is intentional and not merely coincidental. So our two friends, Jess and Nick. No, they're not a couple. This is not a romantic story. Let's see what happens next. But let's consider our two friends, Jess and Nick, two young professionals. They don't know each other and they are both dreaming about buying their first homes and getting on the property ladder. So they don't know too much about mortgages and credits. And though they have had a few years of pretty steady relationship with their banks, mainly through current accounts and some deposits. So here on the top on this slide is Jess. No, she's not always upset.  So she is fine. So Jess has been working for the last three years and has had a pretty stable job. She banks with Conce bank and she has had a steady relationship with the bank for all of this time, mainly through her current account and some savings.  And not knowing much about mortgage, she just approaches her normal, everyday bank, Conce bank for the mortgage. And down here is Nick. So here on the other hand is a little bit more adventurous. So he likes the idea of being independent and having his own business. So he works contracts for the money and is saving and also slowly building up his business, mainly working in between contracts and additional money that he's getting. So he has also been working for the last four, five years and has been lucky to get regular work. And he banks with Tellubank. And again, all this while the last four, five years he has had a steady relationship with Tellubank. So coincidentally, Nick also decides to get onto the property ladder and he's also attracted by this nice apartment block that's coming up. And he also plans to buy a flat there. So he's slightly more savvy than Jess about finances being in business and all that, but he's very busy and he doesn't have time. So he just goes to his standard bank Tellubank and requests for mortgage. Now both Can't Say and Tellubank use instant mortgage approval processes using AI engines to encapsulate their mortgage approval process. So as in every nice story, here comes the twist. Jess's mortgage application gets rejected by Can't Say Bank. And true to their name, they haven't provided a reason. They said they can't say the reason for the rejection. It's against their company policies. So Jess is left wondering why she doesn't know what she can do to get that mortgage and she's really disappointed that she cannot get onto the property ladder and she cannot buy her dream home. Neither does she like her bank anymore because of the unhelpful attitude that they have shown. Now looks can be deceptive. Even though we see here Nick is smiling, but his mortgage has got rejected too. But he has some reasons for being a little bit happier than Jess because his bank has told him the key factors that affected the decision. Like his credit score is too low. His monthly outgoings are too high for his income and maybe the period left in his current contract is too short. And what's more Tellubank has told Nick how he can improve his chances of qualifying for that elusive mortgage. So now he can plan his next steps. He can prioritize what he wants to do and he knows exactly what sort of steps he might take in order to go on to the property ladder and own his dream home. Now let's imagine Can't Say Bank picks on board Jess's feedback and realizes that they are losing their customers trust and customers are not happy and going to their competitor Tellubank. So they quickly crank up some transparency features in haste without due consideration of the risks. So what can go wrong? Well, problems or weaknesses in their models can manifest in many damaging ways. Maybe they had some issues with the input data that was used to train the model and now the model is biased against women, for example. Now was it intentional of the bank to do this? Is it even ethical? There can be other unintended behavior as well if we are not careful. For example, the model might say that Jess's income is too low. Now that might be the result of skewness in data. Maybe the data that was used to train this model had a whole lot of data coming from New York because there might be more customers based in New York for this particular bank. Now what the model has learned here is that the average salary drawn by New Yorker is the standard salary for even smaller towns. And so when Jess applies for the mortgage, even though her salary might be quite fine for this apartment that she is looking for, the model has wrongly rejected her application. And there could be other things as well. Like it might be discriminating based on physical disabilities, which may be completely unintended and might even be illegal in some jurisdictions. It might be considering completely absurd factors like whether somebody is a coffee drinker, say for example. And this might be the reason because absurd data has not been removed from the trading data and due to some coincidental patterns in this data, the machine has actually picked up that as one of the significant factors. So in order to ensure that such unintended behavior is not passed on to the AI models, a robust machine learning model lifecycle needs to be established with the right software and organizational checks in place to ensure consistent and intended results. Internal processes in AI, such as AI project governance, for example, can establish an ethics approval process where when there is a new idea for using AI. And then data scientists, analysts and managers, they need to be educated on the concepts of ethical AI, risks of biases and bugs, and potential negative outcomes that can come out of not being careful. Additionally, we need to put in a framework in place that ensures that all the right controls and checks are in place when a model is built. For this framework to work well in a scalable way, we need to leverage tooling and techniques. Hence we need to invest in tooling. At Google, we innovate and create tools that can help understand and validate data in ML models. We open source these tools as we want to enable the AI community to build products that are ethical and responsible. We open source tools for data exploration, model analysis, explainability and reporting. In the rest of the talk, we will take a look through some of these tools and techniques that can be used to adhere to responsible AI principles. As an example of principles that can guide the use of AI in a responsible manner, here we show Google's AI principles. This can be accessed online by going to ai.google forward slash principles. There are a set of objectives against which we assess our AI applications. For example, AI applications should be socially beneficial and avoid creating unfair bias. They should be built and tested for safety and accountability should lie with humans. On the other hand, they should not be used in applications that are likely to cause overall harm or that violates internationally accepted norms and human rights. Every organization that uses AI should create their own set of principles based on their ethics and beliefs which they should honor. With that, I hand over to my co-speaker, Christos, to take us to the rest of the presentation. Thank you, Rana Deep. Let's see how we can leverage responsible AI in a machine learning lifecycle. A typical machine learning lifecycle consists of several steps that take care of data ingestion, data analysis, training of a machine learning model, deploying the machine learning model, and then assess the model. Given the previous example of a loan application, then we can first of all gather previous loan applications' data and the outcomes. So if the loan was approved or not, we can do data analysis and feature engineering. Then we train the loan approval model and we evaluate that the model is accurate enough before we put it into production. Then we deploy a machine learning model into production and then after that, when there is a new loan application, we can send the application details to an API, for example, and get back a prediction that says if an individual should be approved or declined alone. With that in mind, let's revisit the scenario of bias. How could we ensure that we do not introduce bias in our data? Responsible AI expands beyond explanations or suggestions. In this scenario, we can see that the model is biasing based on gender. Why is gender so important for a loan approval? One should wonder why gender is even part of the equation. Do we discriminate? You need to ensure that AI models perform in an ethical and responsible manner. Of course, you do not need to do that simply because the end user can see the explanations provided by the model. You need to create a fair environment for your customers regardless if they know how the decisions are made or not. Biases can exist in data. For example, selection bias is when a selection of data points happen without proper randomization. Let's now go back to our loan application use case. Imagine that we're training our machine learning model using loan applications from a pool of New York applicants only. This might result in misrepresentation of applicants in other cities as our AI model will not know much about those people. Another example is when historic data include marginalized groups that were treated unfairly in the past and had their loans declined. By the use of such data, the AI model will naively learn to discriminate those groups. So to sum up, biased data introduced to an AI algorithm will produce a biased machine learning model. Of course, another issue that can be introduced is the one of unintended treatment. When we are analyzing our data and creating features, we can use tools that can help us better understand our data. For example, facets. Facets is a tool that we use in order to slice and dice our data. Notice that this can be used before we build our machine learning models. You can also use it when you want to analyze your data without building machine learning. Simply load your data and explore. What you can see in this animation is how easy it is using facets to explore different age groups from your data. You can visualize ages in different baguettes, color code based on relationship status and split based on martial status. With this approach, you can easily tell if there is a group missing. What if you have no data for people between ages 6 and 70 years old, an age that a lot of people retire? What would your model assume for this age group? Would it be accurate enough? Lastly, facets is a tool which you can use for both structure and unstructured data. So you can visually explore images and text. This might discriminate indirectly, like the fact that our customer receives a disability allowance. The reasons may vary. Whether there is bias in our dataset or an underrepresented demographic group, the problem is still there. While we train our model, we need to ensure that it is performing well overall, but also for different slices of the data. We need to be sure that it's treating all groups fairly, and for that we need fairness indicators. Fairness indicators allow you to explore how your model performs with different groups of data. In these examples, we see the false negative rate for three different ethnicities, A, B and C. Assuming that these data are for our loan application use case. What this chart tells us is that our AI falsely declines loan applications of ethnicity C way more often than other ethnicities. The same we can check for age groups, genders, disabilities and so on. Not always the results would be unreasonable. Some attributes might be relevant. It is reasonable to reject very big loans of individuals with very low income, because those might be of higher risk. But how about ethnicity? We need to do more investigation in order to understand the reasons and if unfair treatment is introduced. Another concept we can use to better understand our models is accessibility. Explanability is a process of understanding how and why a machine learning model is making predictions. And it happens during modeling and prediction phase of the machine learning life cycle. Explanability is a concept that you can apply with different modeling techniques. And it is also applicable when you're using state of the art deep neural networks. As mentioned, explainability is a tool which you can use during model training as well as during prediction time. That is when the model is deployed in production. So back to the example of our coven drinker. Yes, maybe this attribute should be part of the model. But for the purpose of this presentation, assume that this was not filter out and then made it into the model training step.  When looking for each predictions individually, we're referring to local explainability. If we then aggregate all the predictions together and average the impact of the features, we get what we call global explainability. In the first example here, you can see that the loan was declined mainly because individual applied drinks coffee. Capturing that early, we can understand why and fix such defects. Additionally, by serving explanations to the customer, you give them the right to dispute any decision and escalate to humans in order for their application to be revised. In the second example, we can see that another loan was rejected this time because of gender. The reasons may vary, as I said earlier, not enough data or maybe biased in the data. Maybe the aggregation was problematic. Either way, capturing these allow us to investigate further. Another important asset in your toolkit is the what if tool. This is another open source tool that, with the help of explanations, allows you to explore data and their predictions. Compare with previous model versions and finally test different what if scenarios. Looking at an individual whose loan application was declined, you can check different scenarios. For example, what if their age was 50 instead of 38? How does this change the prediction? Would they now be approved for the loan? The what if tool helps you answer all those questions. And finally, the last piece of the puzzle is to be able to retrospectively evaluate your model performance after it is deployed to production in order to ensure it is behaving. Additionally, you need to look predictions explanations in order to be able to debug and report. And for this, you can use continuous evaluation. Continuous evaluation is more of an architecture decision than an open source tool. Having said that, CoolCloud has a ready made solution that you can use when you deploy your models. Continuous evaluation automatically logs all predicted attributes for a machine learning model and allows you to complement data with the truth at a later state. Either by using human labelers or by having feedback loop from a given platform. For example, if you're automating loan application processing, you should look 100% of the predictions along with their explanations. You can then loop back the customers that disputed the AIS decision and want the dispute. So we now know how responsible AI fits the machine learning life cycle. During this life cycle, there are multiple steps. We explore data, we analyze data, we train models, we push models into production. We have tools that we can leverage during the whole process. Those tools can help us understand our data, our model, and how the models perform, how accurate they are, and if they discriminate between different slides of the data. And with that in mind, let's get back to run it. Hello again. So let's wrap up the story. So coming back to the story, let's see what happened to Jess and Nick. So it so happened that Jess and Nick, they bumped into each other on one of their visit to the estate where they were looking to buy their apartments. And Nick, smart guy, he stroke up a conversation with Jess, and then they both started chatting and went for a coffee. And during their coffee, Nick told Jess about his experience with Telubank. And that gave Jess a direction. Now Jess knew that there was somebody out there who can help her. So Jess now went to Telubank and applied for a mortgage and got some reasons of how she can actually make things work better. And eventually they worked hard towards getting the mortgage and eventually got onto the property ladder. And that made her smile. But again, being lazy, I couldn't find a smiling picture of her. So that's why she still looks glum here. And Telubank was actually able to expand their business by getting a customer from Consay Bank, Jess in this case, and also by increasing trust on their own brand by their own customer, Nick in this case. As for what happened next, we'll leave it up to the audience to think about how you want to end the story. Thank you very much for being with us and look forward to seeing you somewhere sometimes again. Thank you.


The last one, and I think the most important one for our time, is that he said, one of the things about the people of Shaqawa is that they are shameless. They have no hayah. We're living in a culture that being a modest, being shameless is actually praised. A lot of our young people are following people on Instagram and on Snapchat and on all of these social media shameless people and they think that it is cool, they think that this is good but they don't know that this is the greatest trick Shaytan ever had under his sleeve and he unraveled it and he opened this master plan in our time. He's been trying to do that all his life. Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said, Al hayah minal iman, that hayah is from iman. Modesty is from faith. In other words, if you have hayah you have iman. If hayah goes in hadith, he said your iman goes with it. They're intertwined, they're connected together. You can't separate modesty and faith. And the trick of Shaytan is that he doesn't want to take your dean away because he knows, you'll fight him. But if he takes your modesty away, he knows that the dean goes with it. Inna li kulli dinin khulq, the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said, Every religion, every dean had a characteristic. Every dean, every religion that came, every dean, every prophet has brought a message and it had a characteristics. Inna li kulli dinin khulq, wa khulq al islam al hayah. In that characteristic, that dominant characteristics of my religion al Islam is hayah. Modesty is the dominant characteristics of this religion. And if we have that, we have faith. And our iman will be strong. And if we don't, our iman will go out with our hayah. I'll say this and ask forgiveness from Allah.


What's going on guys welcome back to the channel critical overload here. We're gonna be talking about terrifier 3 in this video here today We're gonna be talking about Sienna Sienna's dad some rumors regarding what actually we're gonna dig into regarding her backstory This time around and also this new character that causes problems with Arthur clown in a bar So they really only shared this look at art the clown from the set of terrifier 3 on his Instagram earlier today No idea what's going on in this photo But I just wanted to show it to you all before we dive into an alleged sequence that plays out during terrifier 3 So from what I've heard Terrifier 3 includes a sequence with a man named Eddie and another person named Charles or Charlie It's at a bar and they toast to this person named clowny. Clearly. This is art the clown Art starts causing trouble and Eddie threatens to beat him with a bat if he doesn't leave Apparently this sequence also includes art peeing on someone So it's nice to see that he's still just as sick as ever My best guess is that Eddie won't last long if he's trying to start a bar fight with art the clown and he has a bat in his hand So we'll just see how that sequence plays out when terrifier 3 drops But someone named Eddie is gonna get into a scuffle likely with art the clown in a bar Why art is even in a bar is beyond me But now let's talk about some comments Damien Leone apparently made on the director's commentary for terrifier 2 that he regrets because it Reveals too much in his eyes and kind of sheds light on where terrifier 3 and terrifier 4 could have been going now This was posted a year ago from an hour deleted Reddit user But others who have heard the commentary have also spread similar comments so Apparently the little pale girl is the entity that resurrected art Damien explained that she is sort of a demonic creature taking the form of Emily Crane one of arts victims And she is only seen by art Sienna and Jonathan because they're cursed by art and her and Sienna and Jonathan are kind of undergoing Divine intervention when she cradles arts head. She basically chooses to possess Vicki and give birth to arts head They're saying they assume she came up with that plan and Vicki will be caught in the throws or in the throws of this situation and be forced to reckon with in Terrifier 3 be a force to reckon with in terrifier 3 and potentially T4 Damien also stated it's very important that it was just arts head That was alive and not his body so they think that I'll be a huge part of T3's plot Damien also stated that Sienna's arc and terrifier 2 is important going forward in her dream sequence at the clown cafe Damien commented that it was a sort of divine test to see if she would choose to fight art Once she did choose the divine basically baptized her sword and sealed her fate He also stated that when she died she had gone through a hell portal in the crypt and her physical body was in that red Coffin but her soul was eternally in her own personal hell But since art didn't realize the divine's power in this situation it resurrected her Damien said it cannot kill her Senses her own weapon and similar how art was resurrected in T1 and now is immortal and says in supernatural So is Sienna that's very big to know he said it gave her extra powers and that she was on the same playing field as Art going forward. He also did say That her father was a vessel to the divine and while she was seen While he was seeing visions from the good counterpart of the divine evil basically sensed it and gave him his tumor made him go crazy And basically kill himself so That's that is a lot to be revealing if if he actually did say all that stuff But if those of you who have listened to the commentary you probably know a little bit more than me and Ken vouched That he a hundred percent said those things However, let's now shift gears into Lauren Lovera's comments and talk about Sienna Lauren teased us Digging further into Sienna during terrifier 3 also when her return was announced She said I'm thrilled to be returning to terrifier 3 Damien's vision for my character was special And now he's set to take it in an entirely new level new level It's been surreal to witness the immense connection and support for fans for Sienna and I applaud Damien for introducing a strong Female character the angel dress heroine who gets to face off against art the clowns merciless ways I can't wait for you to see the next chapter of Sienna as Damien dives deeper into her backstory Now we have an idea of what their backstory is There's a hundred percent a flashback coming for Sienna's childhood in terrifier 3 It's a scene between her and her dad where she discovers the drawing of the angel warrior that we saw her dressed as in T2 The scene is mostly baby Sienna playing with her dad joking about not taking a bath in three days And then she makes a comment about how his superhero drawings are always boys like this character named blaster man That he apparently draws a lot and he never draws supergirls So Sienna's dad was obsessed with comic books as my takeaway He drew the angel warrior princess to satisfy Sienna's need or desire to want to see a supergirl But knowing what we do from terrifier 2 he probably already knew she would grow up to be this angel warrior anyway He even tells her in the sequence. I think you'll grow up to be just like her Jonathan I remember in T2 Showed Sienna a drawing of her wearing the costume and holding a head during T2 like a decapitated head Her father definitely did not show this drawing to a little girl So this now confirms he must have kept drawing the warrior as Sienna over time likely that's the likely safe assumption But this flashback will show us young Sienna discovering the costume drawing and seeing her interact with her father the costume itself The angel warrior was simply created to combat the blaster man He kept drawing but there's obviously a lot more going on to it now We also I will say know that they are casting for a young Sienna But they may have already locked one in but this is a cool flashback to expect in terrifier 3 Since we know that Sienna herself was prepping the costume throughout Terrifier 2 and she ended up donning the costume as we all saw in the final act But let me know what you guys think about this down in the comment section below if you haven't already Of course make sure you subscribe turn on post notification. You never miss a video in the description I'll have links on social media accounts. I am on Facebook Twitter and Instagram You can message me there to let me know if there's any movies news or if you'd like me to cover in the future And with all that in mind guys, I will see you in the next video