With Syntagma Media’s redesign currently underway by Thord Hedengen, it seems the right moment to declare our new business structure.

Syntagma Media will now have two operating divisions. The first, Syntagma Digital, will contain all our online properties — some 53 websites — including, three network magazines and the (currently) top secret plans codenamed, iSyntagma.

The second new division of Syntagma Media is Dial Publishing and will handle all print and other offline publishing and consulting work. This side of the business is set to swing into action in Q3 and Q4 of this year.

These changes will be progressively implemented and the present site developed accordingly.

We can now announce that the first title to be published by Dial Publishing in 2007 will be, The Syntagma Story — How a Cashstrapper Became a Serial Magazine Publisher by John M Evans.

Since Dial’s previous existence as an educational and textbook publisher, I’ve toyed with a number of scenarios for relaunching the business in the book trade. However, as Syntagma Media’s print publishing arm, it seems logical to start with the story of its creation, especially as Syntagma was started as an experiment in bootstrapping an internet business with the aim of writing a book about it.

Nowadays, with the plummeting cost of hardware, software and bandwidth, it is possible to build a substantial internet company using careful cash-flow techniques and funded by expertise and hard work rather than VC money. A credit card is vital in the beginning, but if you’re good at what you do and you have a sustainable vision, even that source of funding will fall away.

The book will delve into the secrets of internet success, both financial and technical. But it will mainly look at the flaws in the concept of “blog networks” and how the author converted the idea into a series of network magazines.

Dial Publishing is a project for next year, 2007, when it will become the print arm of Syntagma Media, currently an online publisher.

This site will keep those interested fully informed of progress on the project.

The reason for the delay is that our online Network Magazine, Syntagma, with its 45 websites, is taking up so much time. New partners in the business should open the way for our expansion into the print market in the new year.

Stay tuned for further information.

The Cornish Review

In 1972 Val Baker began a productive association with the publisher William Kimber that ultimately produced six further novels, nine collections of his own short stories and twenty three edited anthologies of short stories by such writers as Edna O’Brien, Alan Sillitoe, Hammond Innes, Fay Weldon, Winston Graham, Margaret Drabble, Daphne Du Maurier et al. In fact, a definitive listing of major British writers. These apart, he also found space in such collections for new, young writers.

Then, midway through the prolific decade of the sixties, Denys Val Baker launched a second run of the Cornish Review. Those were hopeful times, as Val Baker himself suggested: “…There was a new climate abroad and people had come to recognize that artistic ventures such as a regional literary review deserved some sort of practical support from Government…”

How far we have regressed from such optimistic times, with the abandonment of regional literary assistance, now followed by a national neglect of literature, is patent, But the second Cornish Review ran for twenty-seven issues and was never anything less that fulsome. Among poems and stories there were works by such as DM Thomas, now Cornwall’s most prestigious literary son, as well as by Jack Clemo, Charles Causley, Donald Rawe together with such figures of the Penwith literary establishment as Arthur Caddick, Frank Ruhrmund and W.S Graham.

There was also substantial exposure of the visual arts with reproduction of work by Bryan Pearce, Jack Pender, Peter Lanyon, John Miller and many more. The rich fund of material contained in the Reviews has still to be assessed.

Inevitably, Caddick had much more to say about this ‘Second Launching’, using Denys Val Baker’s own nautical connections to good effect:

And it was those Celtic cheques that made the Cornish Review even more authentic, because Denys Val Baker recognized the importance of professionalism in the literary world as in all the creative arts.

From Des Hannigan’s obituary in Peninsula Voice, Penzance, August 1984.

In Cornwall where visual artists enjoy the relative security of a supportive tradition, through established galleries, studios and workshops, to be a full time professional writer is to be something of an unsung hero. Denys Val Baker was such a man.

There are one or two others of course but what made Val Baker unique was his dedication to the writer’s trade and his marvellous and unselfish belief that there should be a “community of writers” in the same sense that there is a community of artists; that the written word should be as much a part of Cornwall’s culture as the visual arts and that both should be extended.

Too often of course writers are their own worst enemies. Introverted and subjective, they lack the gregariousness of the painter and the visual evidence of their work while, for those writers who succeeded, total withdrawal seems to be inevitable.

Denys Val Baker never hit the bestseller lists but had he done so, it’s a fair bet he would have achieved even more for the Cornish literary world and for that community of writers he so believed in. As it was, he did everything he could until circumstances overcame even his spirited support for the written word.

It was ironic that, coincident with his death, opportunities for literature were being further eroded by a philistine National Arts Council.

Des Hannigan. Obituary in Peninsula Voice, Penzance August 1984

Syntagma Media has just launched a great new blog by Steve Newman, Commissioning Director at Humdrumming, a new publishing house based in Stratford Upon Avon — Shakespeare and RSC country.

Steve starts off by telling us about the signing of bestselling American author, Allan Weisbecker, whose memoirs, Can’t You Get Along With Anyone? will be published by Humdrumming, probably next year.

He also heralds the long-awaited republication of Denys Val Baker’s joyous autobiography series, beginning with The Sea’s in the Kitchen this week. Be first to buy the book here.

There’s also an incipient deal underway with a very big-name British author. I had a hand in this at the early stages, but I’m not at liberty to name the name until a final deal has been struck.

All very exciting stuff. Stay tuned for more information.

There’s a post over on Syntagma about the future of the printed (written) word in an age of New Media which is forcing us down the road of more conversational communications.

It’s by yours truly so I deliberately avoided saying (writing) “interesting” post. You may judge for yourself.

It is really the second part of an earlier piece on A Code for Blogosphere Conversations.

Needless to say, I totally agree with everything said … er … written.