covers
Roth’s new
for new babies in the family, too.” When it comes to doing events around books, the owners are taking a “wait and see” approach. Ross has already welcomed illustrator Emily Fox, who created a window display around Fabio the World’s Greatest Detective (Bloomsbury), but Ross has not yet decided when he will back to hosting two events for children every month.
Radford has started up her tuition business, and will restart writing clubs this month, but hasn’t booked any authors for events, and Moser will “probably” restart her children’s book clubs as online events. Rosengarten has a full schedule of events planned up until Christmas, but is keen on running a hybrid online/ in-person model in the future. “So many schools can’t afford to pay for authors to come in or are off the beaten track, so we are working on providing virtual events,” she said. “Moon Lane TV will be carrying on as normal.” Moon Lane Books has been offering customers personal shopping experiences during the pandemic, and Rosengarten said they are also thinking about continuing to offer this as an option because “customers love having bookshops to themselves and we know we can make sales”. Karavia is planning on doing events with Ben Miller and Daisy May Cooper, who both live locally, but wants to wait until people can mix (and feel confident in mixing) freely. As she pointed out: “We would love to do more, but I want to wait until it’s truly safe and fun. It’s not fun if you’re telling people not to touch things all the time.” All of the bookshops said sales did slow down aſter the first week of reopening, because children went back to school, but reported that business is still steady. Botomley said: “Business has levelled and is in line with expec- tations, but it’s so nice to have people back. When we reopened last year everyone was in a huge rush and it was difficult to give customers time and atention. It’s much nicer this time around.”
TheBookseller.com
the movies, which starred Shailene Woodley and Kate Winslet. Roth began writing Divergent to
“blow off steam” at college, where she was studying creative writing, but mainly in the adult literary space. “It seems absurd to people that I can write a book at the same time as being at school, but sometimes when an idea really works, it gathers really quickly. I wrote it while finish- ing college, then revised it, got an agent and everything fell into place. Looking back, it feels ridiculous.” The books have since sold 945,839 copies altogether through Nielsen BookScan, with sales worth £6m, and 42 million copies have been sold worldwide, according to the publisher HarperCollins. Roth says she only sometimes
realises quite how successful she had been. When asked if it feels like 10 years have passed, she says: “It does and it doesn’t. It makes me feel a little old. I was a kid! I kept writing and I’ve written three novels since then, but at the same time it feels like it has just happened.” After Divergent, Roth wrote Carve the Mark and its sequel The Fatest Divide, about Akos and Cyra, young people from opposing cultures whose fates are intertwined. Moving on to something new was “really exciting”, she says, because she had learned a lot about the process of writing a novel through the Divergent series and says the world of Carve the Mark was constructed with “more detail and more thoughtfulness”. Before Carve the Mark was
Roth reflects on a decade of Divergent as HarperCollins lines up anniversary editions
V
eronica Roth is celebrating 10 years of the Divergent series with a set of anniver-
sary editions and an online “night in with” event for fans. Next month HarperCollins
Children’s Books will release Divergent, Insurgent and Allegiant, as well as the companion novel Four: A Divergent Collection, with new cover art from illustrator Victo Ngai, who created a poster for the “Divergent” movie. “It was my favourite poster,” said Roth, who spoke to The Bookseller from her home in Chicago. “When we started brainstorming what we might want on the new covers, I suggested
[Ngai] because I love her work. My editor had already worked with her on something else, so it was great.” The covers feature recognisable
landmarks from the Chicago setting of the stories, and can be laid side-by-side to form one continuous image. The books will be released on 1st June and will also feature new and exclusive essays by the author. The following day (2nd June)
Roth will be taking part in an online event about the series, organised by Fane Productions and hosted by Nic Stone, the author of Dear Martin. Topics up for discussion include what inspired the story, the impact the books had on Roth’s life and
published, some people claimed parts of the story came across as racist. Roth points out that those comments came before the book was out on general release, but isn’t defensive. “It is important to pay attention. I’ve learned a lot about critiques of my work. You have to try and keep an open heart,” she said. Her latest book, an adult sci-fi
novel called Chosen Ones, came out in paperback earlier this year and is set 10 years after a group of young people took down a “Dark Lord” figure. They are now adults and suffering from PTSD. Roth wanted to take the trope of the “chosen ones” and examine what happens to these people further down the line. “Conceptually this book was about what happens after your teenage years, where there is this big build to a crescendo, which for a lot of people is going to university or leaving home. Chosen Ones is about that. Life continues and is still valuable after that point.”
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Photography: Nelson Fitch
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