Editing the bestsellers and trend-spotting
Our speakers for the evening were Antonia Hodgson, Editor-in-Chief of the commercial division at Little, Brown Book Group, Jon Wood, Deputy Publisher at Orion Books, and Suzanne Baboneau, Publishing Director of the adult trade division at Simon & Schuster UK.
Why is the publishing community so dismissive of Dan Brown?
Over the last six months, whenever I’ve heard publishers discuss Dan Brown, it’s usually been in quite a negative tone. This is something that I’ve found quite surprising, since he is one of the bestselling authors of all time. Indeed, he’s the bestselling author of adult fiction (no, not the dirty kind, although Robert Langdon and Vittoria Vetra did get up to some tantric sex in Angels and Demons). He would be the bestselling novelist of all time, if it weren’t for Harry Potter and his shenanigans. Yet we pay him no respect for this achievement.
It’s not just publishers (apart from Random House) who don’t like Dan Brown. Independent booksellers don’t seem too enamoured of him either. Indeed, when The Lost Symbol was published, the blog of the Crow on the Hill bookshop offered all purchasers of the novel a free present: wrapping paper that had “shit present” written all over it. However, it’s not Dan Brown’s fault that such independent bookshops wouldn’t be able to make any profit from the novel, due the loss-leading discounts that the other major retailers placed upon The Lost Symbol.
One could very well argue that the Bookseller Crow’s opinion was justified, that Dan Brown just got very lucky with The Da Vinci Code, because all the readers were fascinated by the concept of Jesus’ supposed marriage to Mary Magdalene and the resulting bloodline, and that the rest of the plot was negligible in comparison. However, I’ve just re-read The Da Vinci Code, and my opinion is that it is a classic, albeit a slightly flawed one. In many readers’ opinions, Angels and Demons is Dan Brown’s best novel, although I must admit that its silly pyrotechnics do leave me somewhat cold.
So, why was I re-reading The Da Vinci Code? Well, for one thing, I like to be contrary, and thought that there was a case for producing an argument in defence of Dan Brown. For instance, I’d been unconvinced of J. K. Rowling’s merits until I’d read the 3rd Harry Potter, the sublime Prisoner of Azkaban, and thought that Dan Brown would be worth the benefit of the doubt. I’ve also just started a new paperback imprint, and so thought it would be a good idea to study the methods of the bestselling adult fiction author of the day to see if I could learn anything. So, I decided to publish a guide to Dan Brown’s latest novel, The Lost Symbol, and boy, did I learn a lot! It took more than two month’s full time research to produce Punked Books’ Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol: The Ultimate Unauthorized and Independent Reading Guide (ISBN 9780953317226), written under the pseudonym ‘Alex Carmine’. This was mainly due to the fact that Dan Brown did several years of research in writing the novel, a great proportion of which ended up in the text, since Robert Langdon is a university lecturer in his day job. The fact that Langdon’s a teacher is a great device that Dan Brown utilises well in his novels, since he can always interrupt the narrative with a flashback to a lecture that explains important concepts, with his students asking the obvious questions. In this way, Dan Brown gets away from the need for Langdon to have a dumb companion to explain everything to. Indeed, most of Langdon’s companions have skills that are equivalent to his, which allow them to discuss concepts at a more advanced level than his students. It also helps that Langdon is, like us, quite sceptical about the more outlandish worldviews of his companions (such as Katherine Solomon’s faith in the frankly weird field of Noetic Science).
Dan Brown is often accused of being a poor prose writer, which is curious, since he used to be a teacher of creative writing. It’s true that his prose can sometimes jar: on the other hand, it’s not as terrible as its commonly accused of being. Dan Brown often seems to be regarded as a lowest common denominator writer, but there are parts of The Lost Symbol that exhibit great subtlety, such as the quotation of Milton’s Paradise Lost in the novel, which makes most sense for readers who bother to have a look at this reference in more detail. Indeed, there are several other examples where Dan Brown makes classical allusions in this way, and appears to adopt the devices of more literary novelists. It could be argued that Dan Brown has reacted against the accusations of ‘dumbness’ by producing a novel that perhaps strains a bit too much to be highbrow (the long discussions about Noetic science at the end of the book aren’t all that enthralling). Since this is his first novel since The Da Vinci Code, it’s inevitable that Dan Brown would have been affected by the trials and tribulations of his success. For instance, Joseph Campbell’s concept of the hero’s journey, which was so enthusiastically adopted by George Lucas in the production of some of the best blockbuster movies from Dan Brown’s youth, would very much appear to have influenced Dan Brown in the writing of The Lost Symbol, especially since this is the first book of his that he knew would be filmed. There’s also a delightful perversity in Dan Brown’s rendition of the traditional fable of the young hero son who dares to take on his dark, forbidding father within The Lost Symbol, which I explain in more depth with Dan Brown's "The Lost Symbol" the Ultimate Unauthorized and Independent Reading Guide (which you can find via Google Books below). Having done so much work on The Lost Symbol, I’m convinced that although it may be slightly flawed, there is enough of quality within it to gradually eclipse The Da Vinci Code. I am sure that it will be one day recognised as being Dan Brown’s most mature work.
Kevin Mahoney
SYP Author Showcase
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Like many such things, Marcus realised he wanted to be a children’s writer while working in a book shop. He describes the experience of working in a bookshop as a positive one. In terms of it being a kind of precedent to a career in publishing/writing, it gives a great grounding in the industry. It is inspiring seeing the quality of books being published and gives you a high exposure to a lot of what is out there. It was this exposure though, that also made him realise that a lot of what was being published was not of that high a quality and made him consider that he could perhaps do better himself.
His next job was as a travelling salesman in books. Marcus described this as the perfect job for an aspiring writer – a job where you are not doing the actual job for 80-90% of the time left him with plenty of time to sit with his laptop in a car coming up with ideas. The first book he wrote was, by his own admission, a bit ‘rubbish’ - a sci-fi of sorts, involving a teleporter. He sent this to Egmont who, while not accepting it, did give some encouraging feebback. He then wrote two more books, after which he got an agent. She did not publish these two books however. It was a short story that he wrote for an anthology that got him his big break. Whilst it was not accepted for the anthology Orion picked up on it and commissioned him to turn it in to a full book.

SYP Conference 2009: Making an ImPRESSion
Given what the weather conditions were like on the weekend of the SYP conference, it was a sure-fire bet a lot of young (and not-so-young) publishers would be blowing about at this year’s conference at Oxford Brookes University. 'Making an ImPRESSion' was this year’s theme and impressions were clearly made on the 200 who came together for the event.
When you gather together like-minded people you’re bound to agree on most things, disagree on a few and offer varying opinions, but have a good time overall. That was clearly witnessed by something of a new, and hopefully continuing, trend at this year’s proceedings: jonny-on-the-spot Twitter coverage! Pardon the pun.
In case you're not familiar with it, Twitter is the micro-blogging site that challenges you to say what you are doing in 140 characters or less. This was a challenge taken up by many at the conference as witnessed by the ever-constant stream (some might say waterfall) of consciousness under the hash tag #sypconf09.
Many young publishers have embraced this form of social networking and put it to good use. The benefits of such a medium allowed those in attendance to virtually enjoy every seminar on offer without having to attend each one on its own. Of course, in a perfect world you would attend each one, but that wasn’t going to happen. If you then spread this out to the publishing community-at-large, your audience just went international! That was clearly the case judging by the 40 pages worth of ‘tweets’ the #sypconf09 hash tag held by the end of the day. That’s over 350 tweets!
Getting the event started with an opening debate on the ‘Paradigms of Modern Publishing’, the SYP secured something of a coup by having Penguin’s out-going Managing Director, Helen Fraser; Faber and Faber's Sales & Marketing Director, Will Atkinson; and Borders UK’s Category Manager, Michael Jones, present their thoughts on commerce, culture and the critical balancing game between the two. It was a great topic to get the ball rolling and minds fired-up with several thought-provoking points being made. Fraser spoke to the fact that books do not merely furnish your shelves, but furnish your lives, and Atkinson supplemented her argument by saying that publishers are still just businesses that must report good results to their board of directors, whilst also being the drivers of culture. Some books come and go, but others do make a lasting impact (I need not mention a certain boy wizard here and his effect on publishing!).
Over the course of the day, seminars revolving around the Economics of Publishing, Digital Developments, Design, CV clinics, Entrepreneurial Publishing and taking hold of your career were all on tap to take in, soak up and enjoy. Here’s a brief overview of what this member attended:
Economics of Publishing
Richard Hart, MD of Hart Publishing (Oxford), came with a single message for the seminar he lead: 'speculate to accumulate'. In doing so, he offered some insight and experience on what it takes to build a successful list, the mistakes to avoid in commissioning and the importance of investing in your staff’s development, interests and skills. In addition, you must ensure that a steady editorial hand is holding the tiller of your company. His advice above all else: learn how to read the balance sheet and sales reports!
Digital Developments
Continual changes in the marketplace and delivery of content is, without a doubt, influencing the way publishers are packaging their content. The effect of the Internet has been substantial and will only continue to affect the change. This was the platform that Chris Meade (Head of the Institute for the Future of the Book) and David Atwoll (Atwoll Associates) directed their seminar from.
The future will be shaped by the people who can see things afresh...like the book was one of the messages extolled to those listening (and tweeting). The book is becoming more of an experience rather than just paper glued together. Technology allows new and interesting ways to develop content; readers have changed the way that they read, so making sure you have compelling content is crucial. Meade said that “writers have been broke all along, so the possibility to make some money in new ways is good”.
Joining the Conversation on Twitter
Throughout the day, about half-a-dozen members continually tweeted the insights being presented and their own on the micro-blogging website. It was a great way to stay up-to-date on the seminars not attended in place of the ones you did, and created a substantial amount of facts, figures and web-links.
You can see the full conversation from the conference on Twitter here.
Particular thanks go to: @sashers, @LindsJacks, @JonSlack, @JulieJolie and, of course, @SYP_UK for all their Twitter coverage!

inPrint Society of Young Publishers Conference Report by Jonathan Davis is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
Kindling the debate: publishing audio and e-books
Canon Tales Presents 'Free?'
The SYP and JFL Search and Selection Careers Evening: How to get a job in the recession
London Book Club: September
September’s book club choice was The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The general consensus was that most people really liked the book, though many of us wouldn’t have picked it up if it hadn’t have been a book club choice. The cover was probably the main thing that people found off-putting – its brashness and typical ‘thriller’ look meant that it didn’t come across as the type of book many of us would usually pick up, so we were all surprised at how much we enjoyed it, though one reader mentioned that they had found it difficult to get into the book at first, as lots of information is given in the opening chapter. London Book Club: August
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As a whole, most people thought the story was quite sentimental, and thus we felt it was a book that would be enjoyed by women, but might not be quite so appealing to men. It’s also interesting that the screenplay adaptation does not actually appear to be quite as popular as the book itself.
Serena Alam
Generation Y-A: Publishing Teenage Fiction
Lucy Mitchell
The Rough Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
I was really irritated last year when I saw that Penguin had chosen Eoin Colfer to write the next Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy book. Irritated, because I’ve never really rated the writing of Eoin Colfer. I guess some kids may find a dwarf that consumes and defecates rubble to be amusing, but I don’t. Then again, I’m not a kid. Having written that, I do think my current writing style has been greatly influenced by watching and reading Douglas Adams’ work in my youth. Indeed, I’ve
spent many an idle moment thinking of how I would write the sixth Hitchhikers book… I’ve had visions of handing out copies of a book with “Don’t Panic” emblazoned in nice friendly letters on the cover to stressed city workers … Or depicting the final moments of Arthur Dent and Martin in a book called Paranoid Android… If I’d been responsible for drawing up a list of names to write the sixth Hitchhikers, then Robert Rankin, Jasper Fforde, Steven Moffat, David Walliams, and Mark Gatiss would have been on the list. Eoin Colfer wouldn’t have got anywhere near it. And I’m not the only one who’s dubious about Colfer – Penguin even noted the amount of consternation their choice had arisen amongst Hitchhikers fans in a press release in December – which is hardly a great selling point. And with a title like And Another Thing, I just get the impression that Colfer’s going to raid a very bare chest of jokes for this book. It’s not as if Penguin had to employ an in-house author for this project, since they recently chose Sebastian Faulks to write as Ian Fleming. In one of those idle moments, I’ve even been thinking of protesting outside the Penguin offices in my dressing gown, à la Arthur Dent. Seriously Penguin, don’t let Eoin Colfer write the next two books in this new trilogy!
Of course, Eoin Colfer’s original big bucks contract ran into controversy when Penguin did a special deal with WH Smith for the first Artemis Fowl book, allowing Smith’s to sell it in trade paperback format at £6.99 while the rest of the book trade were having to shift £12.99 hardbacks. A similar controversy occurred recently when Penguin did another ‘special’ deal that meant that WH Smith Travel would only sell their Rough Guide travel books. Competitors Lonely Planet had good reason to complain about this. Although I think they shot themselves in the foot by announcing almost immediately afterwards that they would be opening a Lonely Planet store at Sydney airport, which presumably won’t be selling any competitors’ brands such as Rough Guide. Of course, BBC Worldwide’s recent report regarding the losses at Lonely Planet gives a good indication why Penguin did this deal with WH Smith, as, according to Neilsen Bookscan, the travel guide market in the UK, US, and Australia has gone down by over 18%. You have to feel sorry for the authors, as demand for exotic travel plummets during such a bad recession.
It’s also gutting to see 100 jobs go at Penguin. As a member of the Society of Young Publishers, I know how tough it is already to get into publishing, and announcements of such large job cuts makes it seem even more impossible. Yet, having worked in the industry for a while, I can see from even my junior position that there is room for even more cost cutting now that Print on Demand has matured as a technology. We may even be witnessing the first signs of a decentralisation of the industry, as London overheads prove less tolerable. Indeed, the Internet means that you can publish from even the most far-flung places nowadays…
Perhaps Penguin could have saved some of their staff by not splurging so much money on Hitchhikers, as I’ve no doubt that the novel would still have been a commercial success had they allowed an unknown (and cheaper) author to take the reins. With Eoin Colfer at the helm, I very much doubt that it’ll be an artistic success.
Kevin Mahoney is the SYP Web Content Editor and the Publisher and Founder of Punked Books. Please note that these are his views only, and do not reflect those of the Society of Young Publishers as a whole.
Stena Line Wigtown Book Festival 25th Sep - 4th Oct
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This Autumn marks the 11th year for the internationally-acclaimed Stena Line Wigtown Book Festival. Taking place from the 25th September – 4th October in the scenic and unspoilt south west Scotland, this year’s festival promises to be one of the most successful and exciting yet, playing a key part in the Homecoming Scotland celebrations.
There is also a full children's programme including events from Babette Cole, Marcus Sedgwick, Alan Durant, John Fardell, Philip Ardagh and a special celebration of the Gruffalo’s tenth birthday with Julia Donaldson.
'The Story in the Picture': Illustrated Publishing
Considering that Elephant and Castle is widely regarded in London terms as a bit ‘out of the way’ for an after work mid-week meet up, ‘The Story in the picture’ drew a respectable audience of 40+ attendees. A mixture of SYP members, college students and staff, the attentive crowd met for a rare opportunity to gather wisdom from those oft-unsung and sometimes sidelined heroes of publishing - illustrators and their trade associates. Many spectators had notebooks at the ready, and rightly so. Illustration aficionados and novices alike took home valuable knowledge and advice from the event, which threw up some contentious issues, such as why are the British public so sleepy to respond to illustration/graphic novels when in Japan they are commonplace? Though it also enjoyed some moments of humour, most notably a discussion over why most female characters in graphic novels appear as characters straight out of teenage wet dreams.
Julius Weidemann (Taschen), a native Brazilian who has lived in Germany and Japan, opened the event with a quote that got people thinking:
‘While illustration is trying to convey a message, art is the message itself’.
Whether this means that illustration utilises art’s message to fulfil a higher purpose, or alternatively that art can speak for itself where illustrated literature which is annotated cannot, the evening got off to a strong start as the audience listened on rapt. Weidemann, whose most popular series include Web Design and Digital Beauties, went on to discuss the evolving influence that technology (and all its advances) have had on illustration. He said that in the 1990s, publishers were ‘empowered by technology as much as limited by it’, explaining that publications and illustrations were often propelled in different directions than originally intended as computers would shut unintentionally. This received an audible groan from the design-orientated audience, suggesting that Julius was not alone in this experience.
The excellently comicbook-villanesqueely-named Ilya Illkillya was a real highlight of the night, with many attendees discussing the points that he raised long after the event has finished. A comicbook writer and artist whose work has been published by Marvel, DC and Dark Horse, his discussion of Manga and debate of the term ‘graphic novel’, enlightened many an attendee. The originator of the comment mentioned above regarding female fantasy roles in most comic books (‘[Illustration shouldn’t be] just drawing girls with big eyes and blue hair showing their panties’), Illikillya won over the women in the audience from the get-go. Also describing the term ‘graphic novel’ as ‘a slight misnomer too liberally applied’, he explained that a novel suggests a ‘profound and complex structure’, which many illustrated publications, including his own, generally possess, but that some comic books should definitely not fall into the bracket of, at the risk of devaluing both comics and graphic novels by mis-classification. Illkillya also took the audience on a quick-stop tour through his own eclectic backlist, ranging from his acclaimed Manga Shakespeare series to Skidmarks; a publication that he originally printed on A4 paper and stapled together, which was spotted and published as a graphic novel in its own right. Illkillya also drove home the point that the Japanese see illustrated books as a viable alternative to ‘straight-print’ books, and all newsagents in Japan and trains are packed with graphic novels which are considered a ‘quick read’ and are often left behind for the next person to pick up and read. Still considered very much a ‘niche’ industry in the UK, illustrated publishing is still seen by the industry as for ‘few’ rather than ‘all’ and Illkillya suggested that a more outward-looking attitude from industry professionals could change the future and increase the distribution of illustrated/graphic novels.
Deirdre McDermott (Walker), the only trade publisher on the panel, has worked with illustrators such as Allan Ahlberg and is obviously passionate about illustrated publishing, possessing a lot of enthusiasm and energy onstage. Describing her mission statement as to ‘bring together words and pictures’, McDermott started her career as a picture book designer but ‘now I’m a publisher but really I’m still a designer... and I’m a big mouth!’. She stated that despite possible preconceptions about illustrated publishing, it’s still ‘all about story...everything is about story’, and described picture books as ‘a place where personal feelings and pure emotions can be displayed’. Interestingly, she also emphasised the importance of ‘leaving space’ in picture books, so that images and text can be absorbed properly by a reader and do not crowd each other out to cause confusion.
McDermott also introduced Kevin Waldron, an illustrator from Dublin whose first picture book, Mr. Peek and the Misunderstanding at the Zoo, was published by Templar in May 2008 and was shortlisted for the ‘Read it Again’ Cambridge Children’s Picture Book Award. Spotted by Walker Books by his illustrations in the Guardian newspaper, Kevin described his method as ‘I fill up notebooks [with illustrations] and keep going and going and going’. Admitting that he personally ‘didn’t get much out of it’ when talking about his degree in MA in Illustration and Animation at Kingston University, Kevin has nonetheless gone on to win the award for ‘best new illustrated book’ at Bologna Bookfair. A prime example of grass-roots productivity leading to successful and publishable titles, Kevin was humble, quietly amusing and passionate about illustration. He proves that if you’re good and you get your work out to where people can see it, the opportunities should present themselves to you in due course as long as you’re ready to take them up – encouraging news for any aspiring illustrators and, indeed, writers.
A brief question and answer session followed the speakers’ presentations and expanded on a few of the points already discussed. The audience gave a hearty round of applause, before quietly mobbing the speakers to ask for their advice and to thank them for their presentations after the event.
London Book Club: July
Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
For the July book club we took a ‘long drive’ down Richard Yates’ Revolutionary Road. We all really loved the book, and it generated a great discussion. There were a few newcomers to this meeting, and they all contributed a lot to the discussion, so I felt that the book had actually served as a very good bonding tool.
A major focus of our discussion was Frank and April’s relationship. We felt sorry for Frank. However, we did notice that there was a time when Frank used April’s secrets as a weapon against her, which is quite a despicable thing to do. April trusts her husband with her most intimate thoughts and instead of helping her to deal with these issues he very spitefully taps into her vulnerability!
We then discussed April's traumatic childhood. We also observed how she likes to be left alone and actively removes herself from a situation when she can no longer tolerate it. We were intrigued by the part towards the end of the book where she writes a letter to Frank and she makes the decision to actively omit the words ‘I love you’ from the ending. In many parts of the book, April is portrayed as the perfect woman. One of the other male characters, Shep Campbell, appears to be in love with the concept of ‘April the perfect woman’ (at least in his view of April).
Our book club also noticed that the couple always feels compelled to act in a certain way (particularly Frank). After Frank cheats on April with Maureen Grubbe, he becomes overcome with guilt and suddenly feels he must do the right thing (though perhaps this would have been to not cheat on her in the first place!). We discussed the theory of there always being a 'flower' and a 'gardener' in all romantic relationships. Frank always has to put things right when the couple argues, so he appears to have taken on the role of ‘gardener’.
The other prominent family that featured in the book was the Givings. Their son, who was recovering from a mental illness, seemed to be a random character that just did not fit in with the storyline at all. However, his mother Helen was very honest about her 'flaw' (as one book club member described it), and perhaps his character served the purpose of showing just how open Helen Givings was.
Finally, we also discussed our thoughts as to why the book was called Revolutionary Road. Most of us thought it was because the story was set at Revolutionary times. However, one person suggested that the meaning of the title was two-fold. The ‘road’ was revolutionary because of the endless circles that the couple appeared to be going round and round in; hence they appeared to be going through 360 degree revolutions. We also noticed how the surname of the main couple, the Wheelers, also very neatly tied in with the book title.
SYP 60th Birthday Party
On 18th June, the great and the good of the publishing world helped the SYP to celebrate their 60th anniversary in the stunning surroundings of the Underglobe at London’s Globe Theatre.
Guests descended the stairs into a moodily-lit and atmospheric party space, which included a large tree as a centre-piece. Images and videos of the SYP projected on to screens on the walls, giving a flavour of the society’s work.
The party was well attended, with guests from all areas of the industry filling the large and impressive space, networking, enjoying a drink and joining in the celebratory mood.
Angie Solomon, 2009 Chair of the SYP gave a speech outlining the role of the SYP and the benefits of becoming a member, as well as letting us know about some of the society’s forthcoming events.
She then introduced Andrew Franklin, Founder and MD of Profile, who was the guest speaker for the evening., As a former member of the society in the 1980s, Andrew was a fitting speaker to reminisce about the SYP, particularly due to the fact that he owes his very existence to the institution where his parents met each other. When Andrew was a member, the society was going through one of its less successful phases and looked to be dying out. Andrew emphasised how genuinely happy he was to see the institution now in such capable hands and doing so well as it reached its 60th year.
Food and drink flowed plentifully – mini-dishes of sausage and mash, and fish and chips in tiny paper cones were a quirky and welcome treat!
A large and impressive birthday cake was on display, and was cut ceremonially by the committee.
The party continued into the night, with shoes being removed by many, in order to take advantage of the huge dancing space and the DJ.
Here’s to 60 more years!
Publishing Now and Then
The Gennaro room at The Groucho Club was packed for the SYP’s retrospective overview of the publishing industry. Tied in to the society’s 60th anniversary celebrations, the event saw six former SYP committee members and current publishing luminaries share their memories of the industry with a receptive audience. Angie Solomon, 2009 chair of the SYP, started proceedings with a brief introduction to the society and the changes it has seen over the years. ‘Technology and society have moved forward, with a new permanence being given to people’s thoughts and experiences. The publishing industry has seen plenty of innovation and developments, not least ebooks, e-readers and the internet. New publishing companies and new retail channels have emerged.
‘The SYP itself has developed. It has survived economic and leadership crises, and made a reputation for itself as innovative and creative, with events such as Canon Tales.
‘It seems appropriate to have the event in the Groucho Club, founded by a group of leading publishers, including Liz Calder of Bloomsbury and Carmen Calil of Virago, as an alternative to the traditional ‘gentleman’s clubs’, which refused to admit women.’
Our first speaker was Norman Franklin, previously director and chairman of Routledge and Kegan Paul, and a member of the SYP from the 1950s. He started out in the book trade in 1949, and gave us a vivid description of the changing face of the publishing house. ‘Routledge and Kegan Paul was bombed by Hitler, but it survived,’ he said. ‘We had to use 8-pound lorries for the deliveries because the lane we were situated on was too narrow for bigger ones.’
‘At that time, most publishers had their own warehouse on-site. Collectors from the bookshops came in and picked up their orders at the trade counter and took them back to their shops in a sack! Invoice clerks were sent up to the looking-out floor, then came back down with the books and handed them over with an invoice. Our trade counter dated from 1890, when books would have been sold in sheets to be bound by the booksellers themselves.
‘The building had five floors – the basement was full of stock. The second and third floors were full of bins for looking-out books, and the loft was full of ruined books. We hauled books around by hand in a lift – it was good for the muscles!
‘Invoices were written out with indelible pencils – if you licked them your mouth went purple, but you couldn’t do carbons with a fountain pen.
‘Visitors were directed to the first floor, where the publishing office was – accounts, sales and the publishers. Accounts did everything by hand in huge ledgers. Monthly statements were usually completed by the 15th of the following months. People got paid after about two months, if they were lucky!
‘On the publishing side were the Managing Director, Editorial Director, Sales and Production Managers, typists, and the production department. Binding was done by binders, not printers, and nearly all books were hardcover. You’d print 3000, have 1500 bound and see how it went. Some binders would bind only 50 copies for us.
‘The staff arrived as office boys a the age of 14, then progressed to packer, invoicer, rep, and even further – you could still climb right through the ranks in those days. There were three and a half people in the sales department – one for the North (Grimsby to Aberystwyth), one for the South, the Suburban rep (who was the half), and the London rep (not Kensington or Hampstead). He called on booksellers every two weeks, carrying the books. The country reps visited their booksellers every six months, carrying jackets, blurbs and catalogues. We also mailed the catalogue to around 50 000 people, but I doubt it did any good.
‘Books were set in hot metal (until around 1976). It cost £10 or £12 a page. In 1976, it had gone down to £3 a page – that’s the effect of the revolution for you. The printer did the copy-editing for you, set the book and printed it. It took around twelve months from receipt of the manuscript to delivery of the finished book.
‘In terms of export, the most important markets were the Commonwealth ones. None of our people had ever been to America, but we did sell some books over there. The centre of gravity of English-language publishing was still London then.
‘In terms of editorial policy, we published any book that interested us – the list was an interesting ragbag!’
Next to speak was Patrick Janson-Smith, previously Publisher and joint MD of Transworld and founder of new imprint Blue Door at HarperCollins, who was a member of the SYP committee from 1970–3. He began by telling us that he had worked on the SYP committee with Gill Coleridge, who was also on the panel – of their peers on the committee, they are the only ones who are still in the book trade. Fond memories included the SYP 21st anniversary ball at Madame Tussaud’s.
‘The book trade was remarkably different then, with the era of buy-outs beginning,’ Patrick told us, listing a dizzying amount of circuitous buy-outs that left most of us reeling! His career began as an Assistant to the Export Publicity Manager at the University of London Press (then a division of Hodder and Stoughton), after which he worked at Granada Publishing under Carmen Calil. Granada was set up by Lord Bernstein in the 1960s, gathering together lots of independent imprints, including Mayflower and Adlard Coles. ‘It was the first ever conglomerate – the inspiration for today’s multi-nationals. I suppose what he was doing was buying respectability. That was of course in the days when publishing was still respectable – there weren’t too many celebrity biographies about.’
In the 1970s, Granada TV was sold to Collins, and in 1974 Patrick moved to Transworld. ‘Transworld was made up of two imprints, Bantam and Corgi, and was eventually sold to Random House to create the biggest publishing house at that time – the largest now is of course Hachette. It was a confusing but interesting time. I hope for books chronicling these seismic changes in the publishing industry!
‘At that time, paperbacks were sold as licenses for 7-year or other periods, from Michael Joseph, Chatto, Sidgwick and so on. It was a new thing to convert hardbacks to paperback in one publishing house. When this began to happen, it took a while to work out that Corgi’s sources were drying up!’
Patrick launched Black Swan in 1983, focusing on the B-format paperback. ‘It had taken me a while to work out that this was the way to go,’ he told us.
‘Over the past 60 years there has been a massive decrease in independent publishers,’ Patrick concluded. ‘The last 25–30 years have really been about the emergence of the big boys. In the previous 60 years, hundreds of imprints have disappeared, only to be seen on the shelves of second hand bookshops, which are also disappearing. But don’t despair, as lots of new imprints are appearing, including Blue Door! What goes around comes around, and here’s to the next 60 years.’
Gill Coleridge, agent at Rogers, Coleridge and White, was SYP chair in 1971, whilst working at Sidgwick and Jackson. She was junior editor at a history magazine that was bought by the company. She told of her promotion there to Sales and Marketing Director – ‘They just said to me one day, “when you come in on Monday, we’d like you to be Sales and Marketing Director for all the books”! So that was what happened. I had a department of three people. Most of the time, I was dealing with sales.
‘My boss found it rather difficult to have a woman on the staff. I was asked to leave the room in one editorial meeting when an American poet who had used a certain word was being discussed!
‘I had no one to help with the publicity so I had to learn as I went. I looked around at what others were doing; people like Liz Calder and Carmen Calil. I learnt a lot from my peers, and had to be quite brave. We published Edward Heath’s memoirs. No one really did signings then, but we hired a train and went to George’s Bookshop in Bristol, who bought firm sale, not returns, signing along the way. As signings were so rare, there was a big attendance.’
Book festivals were another area of her early career where Gill had to learn on the job. ‘I was expected to set up in Bedford Square, under a tent. The idea was that schools and the public met the authors. We put together a schedule of events with no budget, and charged 5 shillings for entry. 5000 people a day were expected to attend. But it was a success, and we had people like Barbara Cartland, Spike Milligan and Michael Holroyd in attendance. This was the beginning of book festivals – no one did them back then.’
Gill subsequently moved to Chatto and Windus as Publicity Manager. It was still independent, but was bought while she was working there. ‘There were 42 people on the staff, and I had a department of six people. One person was employed just to read the papers and cut things out to send to authors. My job was really to take out the literary editors twice a year to their favourite restaurants and to talk about our books and our catalogue and try to get the best reviewers assigned to our books. They were all male, all learned gentlemen – they were long lunches!
‘I also had to fix up interviews, though there were fewer then. We were allowed to read the interview and give approval in those days. We did lots of radio, and a little bit of advertising (which was marketing really) – posters, postcard, dump-bins in shops, that sort of thing. Book shops were expected to buy firm and to display the books.
‘I was nearly sacked three times at Chatto and Windus. The first time was when I got rid of the famous cherub colophon because I thought we needed a new look. The second was when I wore trousers to work, even though it was cold and I had ridden my bike to work. The third time was when we had a party – those were the days of regular parties – and I did a display of books at the first party I organized. “We don’t have real books,” I was told. “People will pinch them!” So I had to find dummies and rejacket them all.
‘We had lots of fun and parties at the SYP as well. I remember the 21st anniversary party at Madame Tussaud’s, and we held a New Year’s Eve party at Café Royale.
‘Marketing hardly existed in those days. The first really major marketing campaign was done by the first Marketing Director at Hutchinson, with Day of the Jackal. He purposefully left a folder marked ‘top secret’ in a taxi, and the plot became headline news. Everyone wanted the book then, it was really creative and innovative.
‘Communication in those days was by letter. We had no internet, of course, which is what has really changed publicity and marketing. Communication these days is instant, which creates lots of pressure. We thought that we were busy but it is nothing compared to now. There were hardly any agents around then: it was a different world.’
Next up was Nick Jones, founder of Strathmore Publishing, who was chair of the SYP in 1979. He began by reminiscing about when the SYP kitted out a routemaster bus and went to the Vauxhall factory at Luton to hand out books, though not very successfully. He showed us the artwork for the previous anniversary (30th). ‘The SYP is much more wise now – more organized and sophisticated.’
Nick went on to talk about his own career and how the SYP played its part. He displayed some covers of old copies of InPrint, which looked very different in those days.
At the age of 12, Nick became interested in printing and typography, so decided he might like to work in publishing. He studied Biological Sciences, so assumed that he would go into scientific publishing, but Thompson offered him a place on its training scheme, and he ended up at Michael Joseph, which was then owned by the Illustrated London News, which also owned publishers such as Hamish Hamilton. ‘The owner, Lord Thompson, had a stack of books on his desk from all his publishers, which he tried to read but never managed to get through!’
Nick stayed at Michael Joseph for three years, and then moved to Thames Television. He told us how publishing in conjunction with TV was more general then. ‘Now, we have to think of a book as the start of potential media interest, but then you could put out a TV series on gardening and 50 000 copies of the book would sell.
‘My next place of employment was the Royal Institute of British Architects. Hidden, specialist publishers like this are more visible now. You used to have to go to their shop, but now there’s the internet.’
Nick went on to set up Strathmore Publishing, which began as production and editorial services – ‘a gap in the market that came out of the last recession. Without the contacts I made in the SYP, I wouldn’t have been nearly so confident with Strathmore. We also publish audio books – the one bit of digital publishing that actually makes any money. Because the product is already digital, selling audio books doesn’t actually force the consumer into a different reading experience.’
Nick then read from the first issue of InPrint he wrote for as chair, in February 1979, where he ‘set out his stall for the year. We took our responsibilities seriously. Publishing is still about the same things – communicating from someone who knows something to someone who wants to know – but the method of delivery has changed.’
He also told us some of the subjects of speaker meetings in his year as chair, including Publishing and the Law, Rights, Don’t Forget the Author, and Publishing: A Job or a Way of Life? – to which Anthony Cheetham apparently replied ‘why do the two things have to be mutually exclusive?’ Nick’s parting advice was not to just publish books that you want to read – ‘the commercial part is great fun – getting the right mix is what it’s all about.’
Victoria Nicholl is Audio Editor at Orion, and was Chair of the SYP in 2005. The focus of her talk was technology and publishing. ‘I couldn’t do without it. When the e-reader came out in the US, I had to get one to know how it worked. But however exciting and easy to use technology is, it is a tool. People need to be aware of how to use it effectively. In publishing, people used to use typewriters, and colour books had to be stuck together – it was very labour intensive. If you wanted to know the length of a manuscript, you had to count it word by word – which is how I earned her pocket money as a child.
‘Despite the fact that computers have apparently made life easier, the abundance of options has actually increased our workloads. There are so many variations, it’s not whether to do it, it’s how – which social networking site, which program. Technology is now directing some of the decisions we make. Companies such as Sony, Lightning Source and Apple have made far-fetched ideas a reality. Even though email has made life ‘easier’ in theory, some companies are actually asking their staff to talk more.
‘Data storage has completely changed – no more floppy disks. CDs, DVDs, internal servers are all options. It is still expensive to store large quantities of data, but it is getting cheaper. Data organization is very important – the central database that feeds information to the outside world. It is still labour intensive, as someone has to enter the information, which is of vital importance as it will feed to places like Amazon, and will affect the way that people in the outside world see a company. Not all data records are created equal! The more information it holds, the better it’ll work. It may not seem like the most exciting task, but accurate data entry is actually extremely important.
‘In the end,’ Victoria concluded, ‘technology is just a tool, albeit a useful one. Publishing is a creative industry, and there is only so much we can do with technology alone. The ability to communicate successfully is the important thing.’
Last to speak was Suzanne Collier of BookCareers.com, who was chair of the SYP at least four times between 1989 and 1998. She started in publishing in 1983 at ‘premiere independent literary house Andre Deutsch. Diana Athill was the principle editor. It was run by Andre Deutsch, who was the sole owner. We published 80 books a year, including literary fiction, general fiction, non-fiction and children’s books, and around 40 people worked there. Authors and brands ranged from John Updike and V.S. Naipaul to Postman Pat.
‘Andre Deutsch was fierce but fair, and was a great friend to his employees. I always addressed his as “Mr. Deutsch” – this wouldn’t happen anywhere now. My job was office junior. My timetable included work in every single department, and I helped out wherever was necessary. I covered reception at lunchtime, franked mail, and delivered parcels to Bedford Square, which was the hub of the publishing world in those days.
‘After a year, Mr. Deutsch sold 50 per cent of his shares in the company to Tom Rosenthal, and they became joint managing directors. The first time I saw Tom I didn’t know how he was, so I stopped him on the stairs and challenged him – he just said “I’m the new managing director”! I couldn’t believe I’d done this – this was a time when people were being fired left, right and centre from publishing so I was a bit worried!
‘Our offices were in Great Russel Street. The top floor had to be kept as residential accommodation, so the publishers entertained in the dining room of “the flat”, and were catered for by Andre’s personal chef, Pierrot.
‘We reused every envelope and jiffy bag, had low watt bulbs in the loos and I delivered parcels by hand to save money. We walked everywhere and never took a taxi, though when Tom started he took taxis and even dined out!
‘In the basement were rotting royalty statements, cockroaches, and the editorial department, excluding Diana Athill! The photocopier was also down there, though there was no feeder or sorter. I remember having to photocopy a 1000 page manuscript six times for an editorial meeting – it took me three days! But at least it meant I could read what I was photocopying, and I actually learnt from it.’
Suzanne rose through the ranks at Andre Deutsch, and at one time or another worked in pretty much every area of the publishing industry. ‘Eventually, Andre Deutsche became Tom’s company, but whenever I lined up the letter-head paper I looked at the name at the top – Andre Deutsch – not the directors’ names at the bottom. I was there for seven years, from when I was 16, when I left school. Six years later, I was the youngest person ever to chair the SYP. I couldn’t have achieved this much at any other company – at Andre Deutsch I was encouraged at every single turn. One of the children’s editors, Pamela Royd, knew that I wrote poetry, and asked to see it. She sent it on to one of the children’s authors, who sent me a lovely letter back – it was actually Michael Rosen. I hope for the same opportunities and encouragement for everyone here.
‘I started giving careers advice when I was at the SYP, which lead to me starting BookCareers.com. I did my first salary survey in 1995 – and I really feel strongly that these things need to be spoken about, to get you all the salaries you deserve.’
Finally, we returned to Nick, as the visual aspect of his presentation had been interrupted by a technical hitch. He showed us pictures of Foyles then and now to illustrate the difference in bookselling these days, as well as an image of Waterstones, which ‘revolutionised bookselling. The vision was to make books sexy and put them on the high street. Foyles had to respond.
‘During the 70s, you had to apply to a government department to put up the price of a book. Now it’s hard to track prices, what with three-for-twos and other promotions. The supermarkets never got involved until the net book agreement ended – it was a different world. Now, Amazon sells 85 per cent of the 12 per cent of books that are sold through the internet.’
The evening concluded with questions from the floor, including whether there are too few men in publishing and whether it should be acceptable to use work experience people for long periods of time without paying them. As always, debate could have raged on for the remainder of the evening, but instead we moved on for some valuable SYP networking over drinks, after the presentation of the new SYP60 website by Jon Slack and Bhav Mehta.
The International SYP conference
The first ever International Society of Young Publishers Conference took place at this year’s London Book Fair. It was an opportunity to bring together young publishers from all over the world, and with six panellists and around seventy young publishers in attendance it was an exciting venture.
The conference was a huge success, as the session discussed how our foreign counterparts run their own young publishers’ societies and opened communication for future international ventures.
Chairing the discussion was Emma House, International Director of the Publishers Association. On the panel we had the SYP’s very own Jon Slack, SYP Chair 2008 and International SYP Co-ordinator, and Louise Rhind-Tutt, SYP Chair 2006 and Publicity Manager of CCV, Random House UK. Also speaking were Gesa Jung, co-chair of Junge Verlags Menschen (Young Professionals in Publishing) in Germany, Henrik Ægidius from Ægidius Publishing, former honorary treasurer of Forening for Forlagsfolk (Danish Association of People in Publishing) in Denmark and Chris Gruppetta, the Chair of International Young Publishing Entrepreneur Award (British Council) and also Director of Publishing at Merlin Library in Malta.
After a short introduction from Jon, the conference began with the premiere of the new SYP video. The brand new video contains information and images about the SYP, as well as some fascinating photographs taken by past and present members. The photographs included those from the boating trips, picnics, conferences and highlighted the friendly, social atmosphere of the society.
We then heard from our speakers, who all ran their own publishing societies in their respective countries. There was some interesting discussion on various issues relating to international publishing, as well as the issues facing different young publishers.
We all know about the recession and the credit crunch, but Louise Rhind-Tutt raised the issue of financing a publishing society. She was chair of the SYP in 2006 and she told delegates that when she took over as chair of the SYP there was no money in the treasury, so they had to market the society in order to get money through membership and events.
Another issue raised was how publishing societies are started. Gesa Jung from Junge Verlags Menschen discussed how the society she belongs to in Germany came into being. Their society began through a series of informal social events during which they realised the importance of contacts and networking – they subsequently set up their own society of young publishers.
Our panellists also discussed getting local businesses involved in publishing societies. Chris Gruppetta mentioned that in Malta the publishing industry is very small, and so it can be difficult to get a society running. However, Henrik Ægidius was enthusiastic about how, in his experience, local businesses have allowed members to learn more about the industry, leading to some important connections being made.
In the second half of the conference the floor was open to delegates, who were representing countries including India, America and the far reaches of Europe. The discussion began with how other countries could set up their own equivalents of the SYP. Most of the international delegates agreed on the importance of having their own SYP – the main benefits being the ability to network, make contacts, learn more about the industry and generally make new friends.
It was encouraging to see how many delegates were in attendance at this year’s first international conference. The work that the SYP does is clearly spreading throughout the world, which is an exciting and encouraging thought! It will be interesting to see what happens in the coming years, as now the connections and discussions have began between UK SYP and the rest of the world.
Kathryn Langley
Publishing Now and Then
The InPrint Online review of Publishing Now and Then, our first event to celebrate the SYP's 60th birthday, will follow shortly. In the meantime, you can download a podcast of Suzanne Collier's talk, read Patrick Janson-Smith's article in BookBrunch, and there is a copy of Nicholas Jones' talk below. Both Suzanne and Nicholas are previous Chairs of the SYP. Suzanne Collier is the Founder and Business Manager of BookCareers.com, Patrick Janson-Smtih is Publisher of the new HarperCollins Blue Door imprint, and Nicholas Jones is the Founder and MD of Strathmore Publishing.
Here is Nicholas Jones' talk:
My brief today is to talk about what the SYP was like in my time, and a little about my own career and the part the SYP played in it, and a bit about how publishing has changed, with specific reference to prices. It really concentrates the mind trying to pick the important, the trends, from the minutiae, and also trying to point to things the Society might like to note and respond to.
I decided to a good approach would be to look through the copies of InPrint from my year, but before then I want to give a straightforward background, so you know what experience underlies what I say. Some of the moves I’ve made and choices I’ve taken might seed ideas about possible career paths in the minds of would-be and recent entrants in this audience, so I hope a little autobiography will be useful rather than indulgent.
From an early age – 12 or so – I had been interested in typography and printing, and owned a small letterpress printing press – a technology almost completely irrelevant today, but it gave me a headstart in getting publishing companies to talk to me when I applied for jobs. I’d studied medical science at university, and scientific publishing seemed a good combination of those interests. However, the Thomson Newspaper Group – early entrants into electronic publishing and now part of Thomson Reuters, then owned several book publishing companies and ran a general training scheme. So I worked for Michael Joseph – who are now part of Penguin. After three years there, I moved to Thames Television, the largest company of a then federal ITV, to publish books based on their programmes. Those were the days when a 7-part history of English Gardens could be shown on ITV1 (of course there wasn’t a ITV2 then) and get an audience of 7 million! The accompanying book sold 53,000. After that, I spent 8 years with the Royal Institute of British Architects, producing books for architects, but also responsible for their specialist bookshops; then in 1995 I established Strathmore Publishing to be an editorial and production services company. In 1995, the publishing industry was just coming out of a recession and many firms had over-contracted, so needed assistance as the lists grew again. I could put to use my technical knowledge of print.
Since we are celebrating 60 years of the SYP, I want to say that my involvement with it has proven invaluable in making contacts which have founded great friendships and been a steady source of work and opportunities.
Although Strathmore still produces printed books, we have found a particular niche in recording audiobooks, which having once been a product solely for the visually impaired now find themselves centre stage as, to quote a senior executive at Random House last year, audiobooks are the one bit of digital publishing actually making money.
That prompts a comment: because they are already digital, selling them online doesn’t require the audience to accept a fundamentally different reading experience, which is still the case with e-books. So it is interesting to note that in America, whose experiences often predict our own to a great extent, has seen the sales of audiobooks as physical product (i.e. CDs) fall by 21 per cent, and downloads are 15 per cent of sales by volume, perhaps 10 per cent by value. The SYP might like to consider if and how e-books are going to achieve that – the US figures indicate that last year they were a mere 0.1 per cent by value.
So, as I said, I dug out my old copies of InPrint. In the February 1979 issue I wrote a piece outlining my ideas for the year. I quoted from Ian Norrie’s wonderfully comprehensive history of Publishing and Bookselling, which had been published in 1974, and although that is now mostly of historic interest, it is good to see that Tuesday last week saw in BookBrunch a review of his just-published memoir, The Business of Lunch: A Bookman’s Life and Travels. Ian ran the independent High Hill Bookshop in Hampstead for thirty years – indeed, I briefly worked there, a placement arranged by Michael Joseph, whose training scheme was admirably comprehensive.
Here’s what Ian wrote 35 years ago:
“The Society of Young Publishers was formed in 1949, reflecting the postwar determination of a new generation to make a better job of it than their fathers had.”
That prompts a little diversion: note the I’m-sure-unconscious sexism in that statement – it was pretty much true in the prewar days than men ran publishing, though now, according to Suzanne Collier’s recent salary sample, it is an industry with more than 80 per cent female staff. When I worked at the then independent Michael Joseph, the Chairman and half the board of directors was female, but I think that was unusual. It seems – and maybe Suzanne will tell us more later – that what gender you happen to be is still an issue which influences your pay and progress in the industry.
The SYP took its responsibilities seriously. You’ll see in that same issue a piece about trying to establish a publishing creche.
Anyway, Ian continued:
“The Society provided a regular platform for the new entrants to the trade from which they could air their grievances and make, in their turn, recommendations for curing its chronic sickness. The subjects of their meetings dealt with the necessity for more and better bookshops, co-operative advertising, the death of fiction, broadening the market for books, and so on.”
Reading that now, I realise that what publishing is fundamentally about - communicating ideas from those who know to those who want to know – hasn’t changed all that much. But the way we create what we sell, how we sell it, and how we make a living from this activity, is fundamentally different. Victoria Nicholl is going to be picking up this aspect, the technological revolution, in the next section tonight.
The first speaker meeting was Publishing and the Law – well, copyright protection has become a hot issue in a way that no one might have foreseen then, but some bon mots remain worth quoting: a partner in Goodman Derrick – a practice which today specialises in media rights clearances for the digital world – remarked: “publishing contracts tend to be pretty general documents, which is OK if the book succeeds, but disputes arise if either party feels the other hasn’t fulfilled their part of the bargain.” As true as ever.
In introducing that meeting, I quoted from an article by Anthony Burgess – author of A Clockwork Orange – which had just appeared in the Guardian.
“If to publish is to make public, then you can publish – if you’re not too ambitious or greedy, without publishers. Not even in the days of Shakespeare or Dr Johnson was it necessary to have a Faber or a Heinemann.” He goes on to argue that “publisher and author have a sense of distrust and grudging mutual admiration. Both sides want books to sell, but they want them to sell for different reasons: for their intrinsic excellence the one, for their intrinsic saleability the other. Soon the question may be asked: what exactly is a publisher? And the answer could be: not Macmillan or Gollancz, but a boy or girl with access to an electric typewriter and a Xerox machine.”
I think Burgess is rather high-minded – many authors are mostly or even entirely interested in saleability and money – but the principle is probably true, and though the technology has changed, the idea was – as so often with his ideas – remarkably prescient. The US journal of the booktrade Publishers Weekly reported just yesterday that for the first time the number of self-published titles in the US – 285,000 – topped the number of traditionally published titles – 275,000. That change has been facilitated, if not entirely driven, by new technologies.
In April, the subject was Rights. Nicholas Kennedy from Marshall Cavendish was forthright: “If you’ve haven’t got rights, you have nothing. You editors are making a physical product for the selling of rights. We, who sell things, are the financial lifeblood of the firm.”
I am reminded of a remark I remember from Dick Douglas-Boyd, then Sales Director of Michael Joseph: “The Editorial Department’s job is to find good products for the sales department to sell.” At the time, he said it jokingly (it was at the Christmas party), but now, I suspect that really is the case – no doubt those with recent experience in trade publishing will confirm.
Also in the issue of InPrint reporting that meeting is a first notice of the SYP Handbook – which was gradually to become Giles Clark’s standard work Inside Book Publishing.
In June, we discussed: ‘Is Publishing Just a Job or a Way of Life?’ Speakers included Anthony Cheetham – now where did he go? – and the heads of Hutchinson and Chatto (both now part of Random House). I note from the write up that “Anthony Cheetham found the question irritating. ‘I really do not see a contradiction between the two. There is a very British point of view that somehow the world owes us a living and we don’t have to be professional about it.’ ” Still true, I wonder? Is the desire to work in publishing still keeping down salaries (Suzanne??). He goes on to say that you musn’t want to publish only books that you yourself want to read (though, he says, “that approach can work well – look at Thames and Hudson”), but that “the whole commercial process can be great fun; getting the right mix in its infinite variety.”
The July meeting examined the importance of picture selection. We were honoured to have Harold Evans, then editor of the Sunday Times, before he and Tina Brown went to the States. Imagine a time when photo libraries were hundreds of filing cabinets, and retouching required the skills of an artist with an airbrush. Now, pictures can be selected almost entirely online – another fundamental change in the process of producing books which I suspect most of those in this room will have taken for granted.
September saw a discussion of direct mail. Still relevant, even if the medium is more likely to be e-mail. Interestingly, one of the speakers was Marketing Director of the Folio Society, an organisation flourishing today because it offers books primarily as objects. That reminds me of an article in the Guardian only last week commenting on the current trend of retro books – things like the Dangerous Book for Boys – which depend for their appeal on the look perhaps more than the content.
October discussed whether production standards were declining. The impact of technology again. And ever-increasing paper prices. And falling print runs making it difficult to amortise the origination costs. All in all, plus ça change.
November saw a discussion called ‘Don’t Forget the Author’, which included Thomas Pakenham, author of The Boer War and subsequently the ‘Remarkable Trees’ books, Jane Aiken Hodge, humorist Miles Kington, and publisher Christopher Sinclair-Stevenson, then at Hamish Hamilton – which is now Penguin – and both author and agent. That takes us neatly back to Anthony Burgess – though the meeting seems to have been amicable enough. Authors concluded they did need publishers – so that they could concentrate on writing while the publisher got on with the production and dissemination of what the author wrote.
So the principles of publishing are very similar, but the landscape in which we operate has changed completely.
Bestseller lists are now the lifeblood of publicity and marketing, but the Sunday Times list began in 1967 with a sample of only 18 shops – and that was a survey by phone. It was often said that the list was books the shops wanted to sell (or which they had subscribed lots of) rather than what was actually selling. One London evening paper sampled only Foyles and W. H. Smith! It wasn’t until 1976 that an independent organisation was set up to generate bestseller lists based on the systematic collection of sales info. based on more than a hundred shops. Computers and EPOS, and the entry of Nielsen Bookdata into the market have transformed that – the charts are now based on 8,500 outlets. But has that very accuracy reduced the range of books available by making publishers chase what they perceive as successful genres at the expense of originality?
Were books good value for money then? Are they now? The best price statistics I can find show that with a base of 100 in 1974, prices in general were up to 223.5, and by 2008, up to nearly 850. Book prices are hard to track, but an average novel was about £3.50 in 1979. The average now is about £12 at actual selling price (though £15 or so rrp), showing that books have broadly kept in line with the RPI. But of course there has been a fundamental change: the Net Book Agreement, which existed from 1900 to about 1995 is no longer active. It prevented anyone selling books at less than the price set by the publisher, allowing, in effect, cross-subsidy between popular bestsellers and worthy or experimental material. The agreement went gradually: once a few firms (led by Hodder Headline) ignored it, it became unsustainable, though it was not formally abolished until March 1997. Interestingly, it has been successfully defended in 1962, when the idea that ‘books are different’ because each is individual was accepted by the Restrictive Practices Court. But market forces can be more powerful than courts.
The revolution on the High Street brought about by chain booksellers like Waterstones is remarkable – some of you may remember the arcane system (at Foyles) by which you had to queue up three times, once to get a bill for your books, then to pay at a separate cashier, then collect the books. The only other place where that happened, to my knowledge, was the GUM store in communist Russia.
So bookselling has undergone a revolution since 1979. Supermarkets accounted for no sales in 1979; 4 per cent of total consumer market (tcm) in 2000, 8 per cent by 2008. They entered the book market entirely because of the abolition of the NBA. And then, of course, there is the internet: Amazon was founded in the US in 1995, operated in the UK from 1998, and now has 85 per cent of the UK tcm which is 12 per cent of booksales and rising fast.
I want to end with a comment I heard recently which I feel neatly summarise what publishing ought to be: “The process of reading should be seductive, interesting, worthwhile, tempting.” Who said it? Paul Le Clerk, President of the New York Public Library. It’s absolutely true, I think, of printed books – though it must be added that he said it in response to a question about whether he enjoyed reading e-books. It was, he said, entirely possible to meet those requirements with a Kindle.
These are interesting times – but then they probably always have been, and the SYP will continue to be forum for discussion and for sharing knowledge. It seems to be in very good hands.
London Book Club: May
Just one month after the 70th anniversary of the publication of The Grapes of Wrath, our book club met at Waterstone’s to discuss the John Steinbeck classic. The book, which is set at the time of The Great Depression, was originally published in
Although the focus of our discussion was primarily The Grapes of Wrath, most of us had read Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men when we were at school, and so we could not help but to compare and contrast the two books at various stages of our discussion.
We found the first 100 pages quite tiresome, but we thought the story got much better when Tom Joad (who is the first main character that readers are introduced to) goes home and is reunited with his family. Someone recollected that the storyline of Of Mice and Men was also quite slow to begin.
We did feel that halfway through the story, Tom Joad’s character completely changes. There were some other real ‘characters’ in the book: an ex-preacher who causes quite a stir at one of the camps, and also Uncle John, who on meeting the ex-preacher finds it hard to contain details of his ‘immoral past’. Then there’s Connie, who on first inspection appears to be a loving husband and dutiful son-in-law promising to build a better life for his wife and unborn child, and then later on lets everyone down by disappearing. The relationship between Tom’s parents is beautifully described. Steinbeck highlights how the couple have known each other for so long that they are able to control one another’s behaviour, and prevent the other one from becoming too strong-willed.
We noticed how the Depression led to a detachment of men from labour, and felt that this parallels current times where many people are finding it hard to get a job. There was a huge emphasis on the mother looking after her family. However, because the women were doing the housework and looking after the children, when the men became unemployed, they no longer had a role. We noticed how this domination by the female sex throughout the book is a sharp contrast to that in Of Mice and Men, where the focus is on the male sex (the only female in the book being Curly’s wife).
We were still a bit baffled about the difference between a depression and a recession (and I imagine it’s something we all should know in light of the current climate!). However, after a few minutes of debate, we came to the conclusion that a recession is when the banks are having an economic crisis, and thought that perhaps a depression is possibly the next stage after a recession. It’s ironic how in The Grapes of Wrath, the economic crisis causes problems for the bank, but with our situation the bank is actually the cause of the economic crisis.
Quite a few people felt that there was a sense of repetitiveness throughout the book. The storyline seemed to consist of an endless cycle of driving, finding somewhere to camp, looking for work, having to move on and then start driving again. Also, Steinbeck appeared to have used a technique throughout the book where he would make a sweeping statement about the kind of suffering that all Okies (nickname given to people from
The setting for Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath is a farm or farmland. However, in contrast to Of Mice and Men, which is a hopeful story about the ‘All American Dream’, in The Grapes of Wrath there is no mention of the ‘All American Dream’!
A recent article on the BBC’s website states that The Grapes of Wrath is actually included in the American Library Association’s list of the 100 most frequently banned or challenged books. People were put off by the amount of detail that the book goes into. When the book was published, business was booming in
We were fascinated by the hatred for the Okies for being the outsiders and foreigners to
Before I had finished reading the book, someone else on the SYP committee had told me that there was a sad part towards the end of the story. Everyone who’d managed to get as far as the end (it’s a long book!) felt that the ending was quite shocking, and disturbing in a Little Britain-esque way. One can only imagine that the reason this part was added to the story is again to build on the concept of the generosity of strangers. Perhaps this shocking ending is another of the reasons why the book was banned.
We were a little puzzled by the title of the book, although the family did end up picking grapes when they went to
Graphic Novels and the Rise of Manga Publishing in the UK
It was sweltering inside, and a gorgeous breezy evening taunted us from the other side of the window. Few people attended the Manga publishing talk, but maybe it was only going to be the geekiest of us anyway.
A shame, if so – both speakers represented an atypical, down to earth subgroup. Emma Hayley was the founder of Self Made Hero, best known for its Manga Shakespeare series. Lizzy Spratt commissions graphic novels for Walker Books.
Manga is growing. According to Emma Hayley, the market for it doubled in size between 2005–7. In 2007, Japanese Manga accounted for 70% of graphic novel sales, although its UK share was a more modest 15%. No longer a pursuit for Japan-obsessed geeks, it’s now a pursuit for multicultural geeks of all flavours. Fun fact – the fastest growing manga genre is Yaoi, male-on-male homoerotica that’s most popular with adolescent girls.
But today’s speakers were more family-friendly. Both their booklists are largely pitched at children and young adults – Walker’s specifically so, SMH’s out of a pragmatism born of GCSE literature syllabi. Emma compared Manga Shakespeare to Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation of Romeo and Juliet. Each story is modernised, at the least. The star-crossed lovers court and die under Tokyo’s skyline. Hamlet is cyberpunk. The original texts have been pruned to suit the format, but otherwise left untouched.
For those who thought pruning Shakespeare sacrilegious, Emma showed some earlier graphic novel/Shakespeare experiments from the 1950s – bloated monologues delivered by pompous caricatures who were almost squeezed off the page by the enormous speech bubbles they competed with. Manga Shakespeare unquestionably showed more respect for the artist and medium, letting the pictures create as much of a narrative as the text.
In fact, Emma ‘didn’t want the series to be associated with Shakespeare’ – rather, she wanted it to ‘shock’. The enterprise has been one of English publishing’s recent success stories. Self Made Hero sold out of their original (undisclosed) print run within six months. Emma also won the UK Young Publishing Entrepreneur of the Year award in 2008.
Next steps on her path to world domination, she says, are developing their Eye Classics series (other literary works set to more Western illustrations) and moving into graphic biographies – starting with Johnny Cash.
It turns out that Japanese follow the educational logic of manga even further – Emma said that you can find manga maths in Japan, if you search hard enough!
If you’re thinking about writing or publishing manga yourself, Emma recommended seeking artists at Sweatdrop Studios, a UK-based collective of mangaka (artists).
Someone asked about the creative process itself. It sounded comparable to a play, albeit with more feedback – the author/editor puts together a script of sorts, which could be stuffed with directions or left solely to the artist. The artist fills in the blanks, and then they negotiate over any disagreements, before producing the final product.
Up next was Lizzy Spratt. Her talk contained less factoids than the first, and focussed more on her own company, with less emphasis on the industry as a whole. Walker publishes children’s books, and is no stranger to dense illustration, having published the legendary Where’s Wally? series.
Lizzy was starting a graphic novel list, and most of the talk focussed around its forthcoming and newly published titles. These included Skim, a graphic novel for young adults dealing with depression and suicide; Outlaw, a Robin Hood interpretation; Vermonia, a manga series/computer game crossover and Salem Brownstone. The latter is one of Lizzie’s first books for Walker, and obviously her pet project. In a real coup for a unknown author/editor team, it’s been endorsed by Alan Moore, author of V for Vendetta and Watchmen, and god of Western graphic novels.
The warped, gothic look of the book led to a discussion of age ratings on books – a pointless exercise, Lizzy claimed. Even without sex or violence a text might not appeal to younger readers, but why tell them not to read it?
Getting Ahead in Publishing
A room of hopeful faces rose early for the Society of Young Publishers’ 9:30am seminar on ‘Getting Ahead in Publishing’, which kicked off the London Book Fair on Monday morning. Those among us looking for the secret to getting a foot in the door in publishing were eager to hear the advice of the panel: Kate O’Connor, Executive Director of Skillset; Desmond O’Rourke, Treasurer of the UK Association for Publishing Education and Director of the MA in Publishing at LCC; Nancy Roberts, Production Manager at Dorling Kindersley; and Gavin Sharrock, Journal Publisher at Wiley Blackwell.
There were no revelations, it must be said, as to how one can get in and move up in the industry, but there were quite a few helpful and optimistic tips to help aspiring publishers at every level.
Education
Both Kate O’Connor and Desmond O’Rourke spoke about the importance of qualifications and the many ways in which they can be attained. From short courses in specific areas of publishing with the Publishing Training Centre; more general postgraduate courses at the likes of Oxford Brookes and Stirling University to more specific, production-geared courses, there is something to suit everyone’s tastes and budgets. O’Rourke has run a very successful initiative with the Arts Council to provide ethnic minority graduates with MA scholarships, and internships within several of the major UK publishing houses. Getting into a company and doing hands-on work can often be a means to making yourself indispensable: Nancy Roberts hosted an intern at DK and when the internship ended, immediately hired her as a permanent member of staff.
Getting the job
Roberts emphasised the importance of making your CV stand out from the pile – jobs advertised in the national press can attract up to 2,000 applicants for a single position. How can you make yours jump out? A snappy mission statement that can be quickly read can help to convey your message if you have something particular you want to highlight, but make it individual, not general. Of utmost importance is checking for errors: any CVs with typos will be thrown straight in the bin. Consider registering with a recruitment consultant as well as applying for roles directly: they know the industry well and can help get the good CVs straight to the publishers.
Some words of wisdom
Gavin Sharrock has worked in journal publishing with Wiley since the beginning of his career, and his succinct advice pertains to everyone in the industry, whether you’re getting your first job or seeking a promotion or change of role.
1. Don’t do anything stupid
2. Try to stand out
3. Stack the odds in your favour
To elaborate on these wise words, Sharrock says that you should be prepared for seemingly simple questions in any interview, like ‘Why do you want to go into publishing?’ Loving books is not enough, but you must be passionate about what it is that drew you to publishing. Think about it, and know what you’re going to say before you get there. Standing out and stacking the odds in your favour go hand in hand, and there are so many simple things you can do online that will help with this: getting a profile on LinkedIn helps with networking and making contacts, and using Twitter keeps you up to date with current news and allows you to become part of the online community of publishers. Read related blogs, or write your own, and whatever you’re doing online, shout about it on your CV - as long as the content is appropriate for employers’ eyes.
A lot of very helpful advice then, from a panel remaining realistic but positive about the future for young publishers in this exciting, challenging time.
Elaina O'Neill
Bring-A-Friend Social
It was a great chance for everyone to meet the committee and find out more about our 60th anniversary plans, plus there was lots of talk about the upcoming London Book Fair! The networking was helped along by plenty of free wine and nibbles. Keep your eyes open for forthcoming socials planned later in the year…


Canon Tales: Chapter 2
After last year’s huge success, Jon Slack and Doug Wallace decided to take Canon Tales into the second round on 21st April at the London Book Fair 2009. The former chairs of the SYP (2008 and 2007 respectively) invited 12 guest speakers to share their publishing stories, be it about how they got into publishing, what inspires them, or simply what makes this industry as creative as it is. Their stories were accompanied by a backdrop of 20 images per speaker, each shown for 21 seconds, thus giving each speaker 7 minutes in total.
After a brief introduction it was time for the first speaker of the evening to take the stage: Peter Collingridge, managing director of Apt Studio. According to him he only got to where he is now by failure, and therefore encouraged the audience to fail enthusiastically. His slides showed pictures of milestones in his career and how each failure bore a new opportunity. Personal pictures and anecdotes about his time at university and trying to be a Hip-Hop DJ among other things made for a very entertaining start to the evening. He ended his talk with Beckett’s famous words: ‘Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.’
Next up was Reg Wright, director of Hothouse Fiction. He, too, talked about failure and how it can inspire creative need. Showing pictures of Hothouse titles, he explained how they conduct research and work closely with authors to develop ideas and turn an original idea into a great manuscript, leaving the audience to decide whether the type of research they do falls under science or is in fact creative.
If you want to know what it’s like to give a book to the Queen you should talk to Jamie Byng, MD of Canongate. Showing pictures of Canongate’s original logo and how it changed, as well as pictures of writers he works with and covers of landmark titles, he talked about Canongate’s different ‘canons’, ranging from alternative over black to pocket canons, where they succeeded in making the Bible new and accessible. He ended his passionate talk by stating that ‘it’s not about you, it’s not about Canongate, it’s about books’.
Rebecca Lee graduated from City University last year where she did her MA in Publishing. She talked about her route into publishing, which was paved with an ‘overkill’ of placements, and about the invaluable insights one can gain from seemingly endless filing duties. While some people say that in London you are never further than three feet away from a rat, Rebecca claimed that that’s true for publishers as well.
The next speaker was Peggy Vance from Dorling Kindersley. In her very energetic talk (at one point there were sweets flying through the room), she introduced the audience to DK’s upcoming title All This Makes Life Worth Living. Sample pages from the book included images of a Penguin paperback, Jimmy Hendrix’s guitar, a UN peace keeping helmet and Monet’s glasses, to name only a few.
Roger Bratchell, marketing director at Random House, started his talk with Philip Larkin’s Cut Grass, which got him his first job in publishing. His slides showed pictures of colleagues who have inspired him over the years, logos of imprints he has worked for and how they changed, as well as some of his recent projects, such as Mark Haddon’s A Spot of Bother.
After a short intermission, during which everyone had the opportunity to grab a drink, it was time for the next speaker: Cory Doctorow, a science fiction writer and journalist whose talk addressed e-books and piracy. Remembering the endless hours he spent producing mix tapes in order to impress girls as a teenager made him realise that people who try to get his novels online do this because they love his work not out of spite. His novel Down and Out of the Magic Kingdom was the first to be published under a creative commons license at the same time as it was available in stores.
Hannah Griffith opened her talk with a picture of the library next to which she grew up and took the audience on a journey through her life as a book-lover. Having learned everything there is to know about life from Mills and Boon, she started The Literary Consultancy and is now director of paperbacks at Faber and Faber. Her talk acknowledged both the literary aspect there is to publishing and the number-crunching aspect of brooding over BookScan figures and the like. Fortunately though, she said, she is lucky enough to work with authors who remind her that ‘it’s about writing, not selling’.
At this point the audience had the opportunity to get the inside scoop on what it’s like to be a cover designer from Jon Gray. After having apologised for the fact that thanks to the nature of his job, he doesn’t speak to people much, he gave a very generous insight indeed on the life cycle of some of the covers he has worked on. From initial pencil sketches to the final cover he explained how some made it and others were dismissed, and how things like changing the title of the book can make hours of work undone. He didn’t shy away from showing unsuccessful proposals and delivered a very entertaining presentation.
Helen Conford, editorial director at Penguin, talked about the reasons why she gets up in the morning and what she likes to think about. Her musings about the physical nature of books and on how they have the ability to reach all parts of life brought across that reading is about discovering something new – of whatever nature this might be. Hand drawn sketches of rabbits and, of course, penguins accompanied her talk.
Next to speak was Alison Baverstock, who runs the MA in Publishing at Kingston University and is the author of numerous books, including How to Market Books. She talked about her background in art history and how reading a painting can be very comforting. She chose to show pictures of things that inspire her (exhibitions such as Rothko, the sea, London buses and 1930s buildings for example) and why this is the case. Her advice to the audience was: ‘Have lots of children, they are a fantastic source for publishing’.
The last speaker was Joe Dunthorne, author of fiction and poetry, who told a very personal canon tale about growing up in Swansea, and shared his memories of playing computer games, Christmas as a child and his first band, Peanuts Are Bad (the name being inspired by his allergy to the same). He then talked about his move from lyrics to poetry and even recited a stanza of the first poem he ever wrote. With his first novel, Submarine, being based on his own life, he shortly realised that he would have to steal other people’s lives for his second book and is currently pursuing this. What he likes most about writing is that it takes him to places that he wouldn’t normally go. Due to the lack of a Welsh team, he also plays for the England Writers’ Football Team.
The variety of these talks and the various images the speakers chose to present show what a wonderfully manifold industry publishing is. Jon Slack and Doug Wallace concluded the evening by thanking everyone who had contributed to the smooth running of the evening and reading out a few of these now so fashionable tweets that had come in during the presentations. As always with SYP events there was plenty of opportunity to network and meet new people over a few drinks and everyone agreed that it was a thoroughly entertaining and stimulating evening. Bring on round 3!
Monika Muller
London Book Club: April
Pre-London Book Fair Seminar on Indian Publishing
The SYP’s Pre-London Book Fair Seminar took place at the British Council, and was introduced by Group Exhibition Director of the LBF, Alistair Burtenshaw with an overview of the fair. Now in its 38th year, the London Book Fair is a ‘global publishing platform’ for all those working in the trade, and is, according to Burtenshaw, ‘primarily about trading foreign rights’, as well as domestic selling and networking.
Last year, the fair saw 906 official exhibitors, and over 28,000 publishing professionals from 110 countries, which gives an idea of the ‘scope and scale of possibilities for doing business’ at the LBF. Alistair went on to speak about the fair’s market focus programme, the aim of which is to ‘strengthen cultural relations between the focus country and the rest of the world’. The idea came about six years ago, and enables publishers to take advantage of trading links, business possibilities end education opportunities, as well as exposing new writers from the focus country.
This year, the focus country is India (past focus countries have included Australia and New Zealand, Mexico and the Arab world). A partnership of organisations, including the Association of Publishers in India, the Indian Council of Cultural Relations, the Federation of Indian Publishers and of course the British Council, has facilitated five official pavilions and 86 Indian companies to attend the LBF.
But, as Alistair went on to discuss, ‘why India, why now? India is the second fastest growing large economy in the world, with great linguistic diversity (23 official languages), and the Indian diaspora in England also provides lots of opportunities. Moreover, India is the sixth largest book market in the world, and the third largest English language book market in the world.’ He encouraged SYP members to experience India at the LBF, through the professional seminars, cultural events, author sessions and networking opportunities provided. See the British Council website for full listings.
Next to speak was Kate Arthurs, from the literature department at the British Council. She spoke about the 45 writers who are coming over from India to attend the LBF this year, some well-known and some up-and-coming. ‘Many haven’t yet been published in English, but we hope they will be,’ Kate told us. The British Council have organised a series of 10 seminars at the LBF, covering the main issues in Indian publishing at the moment – subjects include fiction, identity, cinema, diaspora, translation, conflict, different genres, the battle for the Indian reader, the literature of ideas, bestsellers and popular writing. Kate concluded by urging the audience to visit the four literary cafes, which will all involve Indian authors.
Andrew Senior, Head of the Creative Economy Unit at the British Council then gave us a brief introduction to the UK Young Publisher of the Year (UKYPE) award. The international young publishers award has been running for six years, and the UK version is now in its third year. It resulted from ‘a demand from senior figures in the publishing industry to recognise talent and innovation’. Twelve finalists were whittled down to a shortlist of six, who took part in a study tour of the Indian publishing industry, about which they would speak to us tonight. These finalists, Andrew told us, are also part of a larger scheme of ‘new ways to create interaction, meeting with finalists in other creative areas, such as film, performing arts and design, thus ‘bringing together engines of the creative economy’.
Simon Littlewood, International Director at Random House, introduced the core of the evening – the UKYPE finalists. Unfortunately, James Bridle, founder of London-based Bookkake, was unable to join us, but the panel comprised of the five remaining finalists – Peter Collingridge, Founder of Apt Studio in London; Lucy Luck of Lucy Luck Associates; Davy Nougarede, Director of Heavy Entertainment in London; Nii Parkes, Senior Editor at Manchester-based Flipped Eye Publishing; and Jessica Purdue, Rights Executive at Orion Publishing Group.
Peter was first to speak about his experiences of both publishing and India. He is ‘not technically a publisher’, though his first job was as an unpaid intern at Canongate. His background is in literature, art and design, and he quickly realised that what interested him was creative marketing for books. When he discovered the internet, he knew this was what he wanted to do. Canongate was one of the first publishers to have a website, and so was an ideal place to start. After Canongate, Peter worked for a film company, and then set up Apt, a design and marketing consultancy with a specific focus on publishing and the arts.
Peter’s ‘enduring image of India was mobile phones’. Having travelled to India 15 years ago, his impression of publishing there was of a pirate industry. However he emphasised this ‘couldn’t be further from what we saw this time. The infrastructure is staggeringly advanced, and they are going through a golden age editorially. There’s not a lot of computers, especially in people’s homes, but everyone has mobile phones. 114 million mobile phones were sold in 2008, and they’re the perfect pocket device for reading on. There’s the potential here for reaching people in India who might not usually be accessing books – a healthy market and a hunger for reading.’
Next to speak was Lucy Luck, who started her career as a literary agent at Rogers, Coleridge and White when she was 23. Eight years later, though it was a ‘scary prospect to sit alone and say to authors “I know this is good, and I know where to sell it”’, she decided to start her own agency, primarily representing young authors. One of Lucy’s reasons for setting up her own company was to get involved in selling foreign rights; something she hadn’t been able to do until this point. Lucy pointed out what an interesting issue territorial rights is at the moment, especially ‘with countries like Australia wanting to be seen as an area in its own right, as well as places like South Africa and India’.
Being aware of the opportunities for distribution in India, Lucy wanted to find out more about the potential market there, so entered for the UKYPE award when she saw it advertised. ‘There are very few, if any, agents in India, but they are just at the beginning of the trajectory. There is a burgeoning of new Indian voices, and the multi-nationals have started their own concerns there and are competing against local publishers. India was mainly an educational market, but there is a new appetite for literary fiction.’
Lucy went on to speak about the ‘particular type of person’ who has traditionally made up the book-buying population in India. ‘They have to have a disposable income to spend on books. There is no internet trade, and the bookshops need work, but this is all changing.’ The Jaipur literary festival is a sign of this – ‘it is four years old, and full of editors from multi-nationals and local publishers talking about the issues in Indian publishing. There are opportunities – they are limited at the moment, but they are there.’
Davy Nougarede’s first job was on an international newsdesk in California, after which he worked with digital content at Thompson. He encountered real problems within the industry with producing quality digital content, so decided to set up his own business six years ago. ‘Audio books are seen as the runt of the publishing sector, but I carried on knocking on doors and pushing it. They’re not just for the visually impared – I really believed there was a market – look at Book at Bedtime on Radio 4 for example.’ His company started out producing 7–10 audio books a year for one publishing house, and now publish 220–250 audio books a year for 19 publishing houses.
Davy spoke of the ‘huge demand in India for publishing and digital content’. On the trip, he met many publishers and readers who expressed an interest in the audio format. ‘However, the difficulty is getting books out there. To Western distributors the system in India probably looks chaotic, but it does work. Book are sold door to door, at traffic lights, or you have to go to the counter and ask the bookseller. I don’t take the retail system in Britain for granted anymore!’
Several aspects of the Indian publishing industry came as a surprise to Davy – ‘unlike the British publishing industry, it is not predominantly female, they don’t seem to gather information or have databases, and they don’t like transparency!’ Also, Davy told us, he had assumed that lots of people would speak English, but only 20 million out of 1.6 billion people do, shrinking his potential market fairly quickly. He was also surprised that only a quarter of the population speak Hindi. ‘As a publisher, you have to deal with regional preferences and languages. The literacy rates are low too – a third of the male population is illiterate – but this could be a great opportunity for audio books. Even though people can’t read, they might still want access to literature – the country has a long history of story-telling.’
Davy aims to develop audio, make it available to the Indian market and to find ways to reach that potential audience. He agreed with Peter that ‘mobile phones create a massive market – they’re perceived like a laptop in India.’ Audio also has the advantage of low set-up costs – ‘how do you break even with a print-run of 300 copies for a local market? Audio works differently, so can be sold at a low price-point and matched to the appropriate market.’
Nii Parkes publishes poetry and literature. His aim is to ‘get literature out there cheaply’. He began his career teaching and writing, went on to become a development manager for a multi-national, and set up Flipped Eye eight years ago.
Nii went to India ‘looking at the market for opportunities. The market for literature in English in India hasn’t really developed. It is driven by population growth and transference – so if a father has a love of literature he might pass that on to his children, but this means that there is an inertia in the market; a coiled-spring effect. But this also means that there are opportunities to develop that market.’
Nii went on to discuss market appeal. ‘In Britain, books that are tie-ins to films are really popular, but this doesn’t really happen in Bollywood at the moment. But when it does, the market will grow. We need to use local appeal as well – so you could interview the author about their English-language book in a local language. Also, the education market will decrease as the population decreases. Non-academic, non-fiction is becoming more popular.’
Nii’s final point was about pricing. ‘In India, if the price-point is lower, the books sell better. The threshold point is really important. Attention needs to be paid to disposable income, and also to the distribution of English readers – they’re all over the country, not just in one place. We need to get the product to that market. It’s a market that will pay huge dividends for publishers willing to engage in a long-term plan.’
Our final speaker of the evening was Jessica Purdue. As someone who sells foreign rights, she was very interested in India as ‘the third biggest market for English language books after the US and the UK. Hindi is the dominant language – 28 per cent of books published in India are written in Hindi, but next is English, with 20 per cent.’
Jessica also spoke about the fact that the type of book varies from language to language. ‘For example, Hindi plays are popular, whereas a lot of locally-owned companies publish folk tales and religious titles, which is perhaps something to do with the oral tradition. English language books have traditionally been seen as something for the literary upper class, but this audience is widening and diversifying. Commercial fiction and self-help titles in English are becoming very popular. There is more translation between regional languages and from regional languages into English. Children’s books are popular, and you see lots of pirate editions of Harry Potter!’ The Indian market ‘needs to develop’, according to Jessica, in order for publishers there to buy translation rights from British publishers with any regularity, ‘but it does happen – Harper Collins are translating The White Tiger into Hindi.’
The speakers were followed with questions from the audience on a variety of topics, from the pirate industry in India, to how many people are actually reading books on their mobile phones. The evening provided valuable insight into Indian publishing and highlighted why it is such an interesting choice to be the market focus of this year’s London Book Fair. The UKPYE winner will be announced in a ceremony at this year’s fair on Wednesday 22 April.
Lucy Mitchell
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thesyp/sets/72157616888667673/show/
Defining censorship
The end result is perhaps one of the most positive outcomes that could have emerged, given the circumstances. Atwood decided to appear at the festival via video link. In addition to this the issue of censorship was discussed directly at the festival during a hastily arranged debate on the topic organised by PEN. Strangely, Bedell’s book was not even mentioned during this debate but, more importantly, it did highlight the very real problems that are faced by some writers in the Middle East. As publishers it is important not to undermine the dangers of accepting restrictions imposed on the written word. With such a serious issue it is equally important to draw a distinction between what amounts to censorship and those actions that are better defined as editorial judgement.
Claire Robertson
February Speaker Meeting Report
The first speaker meeting of the SYP year jumped feet-first into the hot topic of the hour – the Credit Crunch. More specifically, the evening, organised by new SYP committee member and social secretary Nicki Crossley (Orion), focussed unsurprisingly on the impact that the dreaded C.C. is having on the book market and how the economic downturn may affect aspiring young publishers’ current jobs and futures. The event’s attendance illustrated how important the topic is to SYP members and non-members alike, as all ages and professions filled Foyles’ Gallery and latecomers either had to find makeshift seats on the floor or against the walls as all chairs were filled by kick-off at 6.45pm.
The evening began with some helpful (and sometimes mind-boggling) facts and figures from Reeta Wilson, Publishing Accounts Manager for Nielsen Bookscan. Providing a statistical grounding to the evening’s discussion, Reeta offered an insight into the sheer numbers that are technically the beginning and end of all publishing and book sales activity in the UK. She told the audience that in 2008 alone, 236 million book units were sold in the UK. Interestingly but somewhat unsurprisingly, she also pointed out that the top five thousand titles in the Bookscan charts accounted for 54% of the year’s sales, emphasising at the same time, as well as later in the evening, the importance of the ‘Long Tail’ both to support core bestsellers and to encourage more unlikely hits to emerge from a list. Reeta went on to say that 2008’s book sales were down by 5.5% on 2007’s, despite volume sales being up by 2.3%. This was down, she said, to heavy discounting which, especially around the festive period, saw the market ‘devalue its products by 500 million pounds’. As the audience audibly groaned to hear the stark reality of the already-much-debated discounting situation, more disappointing statistics were unfortunately to come.
After describing trade non-fiction by saying ‘what happens here drives the market’, Reeta went on to state that it was the ‘only area [or genre] that was in decline in 2008’. Although this statement could also be read positively – that all other genres were not experiencing downturn in 2008 – she also went on to explain that November 2008 was ‘down at the most crucial time – down 17% on last year’. Commenting briefly on the fact that ‘[book] cover price is going up but discounting is bring the price down’ to a few select giggles from the crowd, Reeta ploughed on to 2009. Despite the worrying figures that show that so far in 2009 book sales are down 1.6% by value and down 8% by volume on 2008, Reeta ended her presentation on a positive note, urging the industry professionals in the audience that ‘you can do something about it’. Asking questions such as ‘Are you capitalising on media coverage?’ she stressed the importance of ‘making the most of what’s coming’, ‘setting realistic targets’ and perhaps most important of all: ‘if you don’t keep your eye on the ball you’re going to lose out’.
Next to speak was Mark Rusher, Trade Marketing Director at Orion Publishing Group. Fluent and seemingly at ease speaking to such a large audience, Mark focussed on how harnessing the potential power of marketing in difficult times is of great importance and how the role of (especially ‘young’) publishers responsible for marketing in any organisation is to emphasise this importance to their employers. Also, he stressed, it is their prerogative to find clever, cost-effective ways to best use marketing spend and resources at a time when the ‘powers that be’ may be tempted to scale back on costs and even staff in an area/department of which it is ‘hard to quantify the value’ – there are often no tangible direct results from marketing activity. Mark talked about how today’s consumers are ‘price sensitive, prepared to shop around and respond to direct marketing’ and that marketing personnel ‘need to be clever’ to tap into the whims of the consumer and drive initiatives such as ‘encouraging shops to do lots of local events’. He also, interestingly, discussed the opportunities that the C.C. may be actually opening up for book marketing, for example on TV: ‘terrestrial advertising has now become a financial possibility’. He also made the audience laugh by ending his slot by saying ‘I was a teenager in the early ‘70s when England was really f**ked’, speaking from experience to reassure the young publishers in the audience that ‘it’s not necessarily going to be so bad’.
The last speaker of the night was Eunice Paterson, Project Manager at Sage Publications, an educational publisher. Paterson took a slightly different tack and focussed on the moral and ethical responsibility a publisher has to their suppliers and service providers. In a convincing argument, she explained how she would not necessarily automatically go for the cheapest price when choosing services such as printers, as she felt a responsibility not to demand the price to be driven so low that those printers then ran the risk of going out of business, even if their production costs were also unavoidably rising. Stressing that ‘best practice is always best practice in good times and bad times’, she went on to expand on this, saying that ‘we’ve got to keep trusting each other and building relationships’ so that businesses at all ends of the publishing spectrum know and support each other to keep the industry alive and operational from a basic level. Concentrating mainly on the importance of structuring strong foundations and inter-business relationships, she explained that a best practice code now may be tomorrow’s insurance against potential disaster: ‘if you’ve built up relationships, those people aren’t going to let you go down the pan’.
The evening provided lively discussion, with three different enough perspectives on the panel to provide the audience with a great deal of food-for-thought. With at least fifteen minutes of very animated Q and A afterwards, the topic clearly got the speakers and audience involved with the subject, and the variety of opinion and viewpoints provoked some impassioned debate.
Rebecca Fenton
Review of the 2009 AGM
The 2009 AGM was a spectacular way to open the SYP's 60th year. Committee member Rachel Menzies came up with the original idea of a Publishers Q&A, and the 2008 Chair, Jon Slack, was as instrumental as ever in establishing a stellar cast: Will Atkinson (Chair of the Independent Publishers Guild and Sales Director, Faber & Faber), Bob Campbell, (Senior Publisher, Wiley-Blackwell), Mike Clarke (Head of Libraries, Camden), Helen Fraser, (Managing Director Penguin and Chair of the Environmental Action Group), Simon Juden (CEO of the Publishers Association), and Graham Rand (President of the Booksellers Association). The panel was chaired by the very witty Sandy Balfour, who is an author, as well as writing for the Guardian.

A wide variety of questions came from floor, concerning topics such as the Net Book Agreement, electronic copyright theft, diversity in publishing, and the fate of independent bookshops. As an ex-Amazonian, I was particularly interested in the following question: "How can chain and independent booksellers work together to prevent Amazon from completely dominating the book retail industry?" Simon Juden's practical response was to say that they couldn't, since that would be illegal, and Sandy Balfour commented that while he ideally wanted to support independent bookshops, when it came to the buying of books, Amazon's fast and competitive service tended to win the argument for him. It's a pity that there was no opportunity to put points forward from the floor, but we only had one roaming mike, limited time, and besides, our expert panel covered every issue in great depth.
Then came a part of the night that I was perhaps not so eagerly anticipating, for, in a first for the AGM, there were three candidates for the position of 2009 Chair, myself included. I was first up to speak, and I thought my speech went well, despite my legs shaking slightly - people laughed in the right places, although there were a few good-natured boos when I mentioned that I had previously worked for Amazon. However, I was then blown away by the depth and quality of the speeches from my competitors, Angie Solomon and Julia Wells. So, I wasn't totally surprised when Angie was elected as the 2009 Chair, and Julia as the Vice Chair. I think it was the correct decision on the night, and I'm sure that they'll be a very strong team..jpg)
The AGM was also the opportunity to meet the new committee members, who were all voted into their new offices. It was also the chance for me to speak to Nicholas Jones and Giles Clark, as I had been previously worried that they had regarded me as very rude when I arrived late for their seminar at the 2008 Conference, especially as I had seemed to be texting throughout, when I was actually jotting notes down into my PDA! Suzanne Collier, Business Director of bookcareers.com and a sponsor of the AGM, then stood up to give a speech to celebrate the 21st anniversary of the first time that she became Chair of the SYP (and her record of having been Chair most often will never be bettered). Angie got down to business straight away, as she met the new committee members. Later on in the evening, I overhead one former Chair congratulating Jon Slack on the success of the night: in her opinion, the AGM had been bigger than some previous conferences! A splendid time was had by all, and it's gratifying to relate that the SYP is in some very safe hands.
Google: This site may harm you
At the recent SYP AGM, I was amused to hear Amazon described as a 'monopoly'. As a former employee of Amazon, I have mixed feelings about the company, as I had both good times and bad times there. Generally, I think I prospered there, and they are currently selling my debut novel, A Fame of Two Halves, at a very good price. But my view is tempered by the fact that I believe that there is an even more dangerous monopoly out there. Amazon, after all, is just a retailer, in a marketplace that is still very competitve. Google, on the other hand, as the leading search engine, arguably controls access to the world's knowledge, which is far more valuable.
My fear of their power was the reason why I was so angry this afternoon when I tried to access the SYP site via Google. I was alarmed to see a very prominent warning message which informed me that the SYP site could harm my computer. My panic subsided after a few moments when I discovered that the BBC website had the same error message attached to it. Oh, and, in a very humorous aside, I must report that Google's own website had the same error message attached to it, which will make the company look even more foolish. A report on CNET suggests that "this problem was caused by an outage at StopBadware.org. If so, Google needs to rethink its failsafe strategy for this data source". I'm glad to announce that things have gone back to normal, and that Google no longer regards the SYP as being a menace to anyone's computer.
When Google first came along, I loved them, as they gave high rankings to my literary website Authortrek, and awarded sites that had the best content, and were generally far less snooty about what they listed than AltaVista. However, a decade down the line, I now dislike Google immensely, for simultaneously downgrading the search rankings for all of Authortrek's subsidiary pages overnight with no explanation. They're also incredibly difficult to contact. I succeeded on contacting them and complaining about this on a previous occasion, and the ranking of my subsidiary pages were restored for 6 months. However, I am tired of having to go through this process, tired of Google effectively denying passing visitors to my site, tired of feeling powerless at Google's expense, so tired that I am now letting the site run down, especially since I never got enough revenue through my Google ads. These Google ads are also not what they're cracked up to be - if I search for the amateur author 'Peter Reiling' on my site, I don't expect to see adverts for 'Garden Railings', but this is what Google delivers to me. I got so fed up with Google a few years ago that I wrote a poem about them, which neatly expresses my feelings about the company:
To Canoodle Google
I loved you to bits
When you first started
Giving me a hit.
With every beholden click,
I gave you a golden tick.
I didn’t know who you were at first
But you came through
When the bubble burst.
And soon everyone on Earth
Knew who you were.
You rode through the surf
And you gave birth
To many pages of worth.
But now everything seems to be worse.
Going public seems to have been a curse.
It was you who said, honey,
That you could make money
Without being evil.
Do you even care
About Tiananmen Square?
I gave up everything for you,
And now you treat me like poo.
I never thought I’d see the day
When you’d make me pay
To be the number one on your list.
You make me regret
That we had ever kissed.
You used to be my best mate,
We even went on several dates.
But now my love is late,
And has turned into hate.
You look at me with baby eyes,
But now I see they’re full of lies.
You bend down for a kiss
But I no longer wish
To canoodle Google.
Kevin Mahoney is the SYP Web Content Editor, and the author of the novel, A Fame of Two Halves, which fortunately does not contain any of his poetry.
SYP Committee Member publishes debut novel
SYP Web Content Editor Kevin Mahoney has just had his debut novel published, which Joanne Harris, of Chocolat fame, has described as "a tremendous first novel - wry, funny and clever. I hope it's the first of many". You can read the synopsis and an extract from A Fame of Two Halves below.
Buy the paperback edition of A Fame of Two Halves from Amazon.co.uk (only £6.99 if you choose the Super Saver Delivery option). Or, you can buy the e-book edition for only £2.99 from Kevin's literary website, Authortrek.com.
A Fame of Two Halves synopsis
For Elliot Gold, manager of the Duxford Ducks football team, life seems to be going from bad to worse. His job and his marriage both face imminent demise. He pins all his hopes on winning one last match.
But Elliot Gold is not a lucky man…
Drowning his sorrows with his parents in Malta, Elliot is suddenly offered a chance to resurrect his football career with a team he renames ‘The Maltese Falcons’. With the inspirational music of Spandau Ballet racing through his veins, Elliot attempts to reinvent himself. Will he woo the lovely Silvia? Can he save his parents’ marriage as their union also heads for the rocks? Will he ever win again?
An Extract from A Fame of Two Halves
Elliot Gold stared at Doctor Tell's ceiling. He was used to the sight. He saw the Gucci doctor once a week, and told him all his woes. Elliot had tried to persuade the team to join him in a group session, but neither they nor Doctor Tell had agreed to it. Doctor Tell had a reason why, but just wouldn't tell. That was probably where it all began to go wrong, Elliot thought. Prior to that had been his revelation to a journalist from The Sun that he had learnt all his training skills from Duxford State Circus when he was a lad. Until that moment, Elliot’s timing, his ability to read the game and life itself had been perfect. Elliot had held the complete respect of the team. No one had ever questioned him before that. Not long after, with his confidence in his own abilities low, Elliot had sunk to introducing the long ball into Duxford’s game.
If truth should be told, as it should be in Doctor Tell's office, Elliot had only devised the tactic because he had heard that all first team players at Wimbledon regularly saw a psychoanalyst (and what better club to emulate than one which had come from nowhere?). So, Elliot had decided that Duxford United could do with some of the same mind quackery. He would have tried anything to have healed their confidence, and what better way than to confide their woes to a pro?
It never had occurred to him that the real reason why Wimbledon players went to see the men in white coats was that they were all nutters.
Doctor Tell's ceiling was fascinating. To the casual observer, the black and white blobs on each tile merged into a meaningless jumble, but to Elliot, they signified something far different. One of them had a semicircle of black with a curved swirl of ebony in the middle. It was obvious to anybody but a referee, Elliot reasoned, that this was Graeme Souness. To his left was a lanky and quite unpronounceable piece of soot - Kenny Dalglish. Another had a wispy effect - definitely the late Bob Paisley. And the one with the bold black strokes? Shankly. Frankly, it had to be Shankly.
He should never have listened to that man. What was his name now? That man he had met in the Duck and Cower? Mister Chadwick - that was it. One might well have taken advice from Mister Spud. And fancy ever trying to emulate Wimbledon, Liverpool's bogey team. No wonder Liverpool's majestic crowned heads stared balefully down at him from the ceiling.
"How are we today?" the impeccably dressed Doctor Tell asked.
"Oh, fine," Elliot lied.
There was something about this room that reminded Elliot of the confessional: it was the bars on the window. Whenever a priest asked if he had sinned, Elliot had seen fit to invent a whole litany of crimes, falling just short of mass murder and littering. He hadn't wanted to disappoint the priest, since he could never remember them anyway, they were so numerous. But you just had to say something in that situation. Okay, so lying, and thus committing another sin, was not an ideal solution, but saying you hadn't sinned at all was positively sinful in Elliot's eyes, even if you hadn't. Still, he had only been a practising Catholic till the age of ten, and then he'd only gone to confession with his class. That was when you proved how hard you were by how long you took to do your penance.
"How's your schizophrenia coming along?" Elliot asked.
"Very droll," the Doctor commented, although it was at least the thousandth occasion with which he had encountered the remark. "You know, Mr Elliot, the one danger of psychoanalysis is that the patient and the therapist will swap places. In your case, however, I believe we are quite safe."
"Well, I certainly keep you in business, Doc. I'm your best customer."
This was a slight fib on Elliot's part. He was, in fact, Doctor Tell's worst client. Doctor Tell resisted imparting this news to his client in case it made him depressed. He didn't want Elliot to get any worse.
It was hardly fair, Elliot reasoned to himself (thus making Doctor Tell redundant). Thank God he hadn't heeded Chadwick's other advice though: to hire a ballet dancer. Elliot couldn't see a weak little lass running through their SAS fitness regime, let alone lead it. But then again, Elliot had come to maturity in the late seventies, when no one had heard of a feminist movement, apart from the defenders at Arsenal.
"I believe we were talking about your recurring dream last time..." the Doctor began when he got tired of watching Elliot's eyes dart about the ceiling. Doctor Tell's mother had always told him to be suspicious of men whose eyebrows met, and it was in this way that Elliot became prime suspect on the many occasions when Duxford’s homicide squad had been forced to consult the good doctor.
Elliot leaned back in the couch.
"Well, now,” Elliot said, even although he wasn't. Otherwise he could have gone home. "I'm in a garden."
"What kind of garden?"
"I dunno. It's not a very green garden."
"And why is that?"
"It's summer. It's too hot to be green. There's hardly a blade of grass. The earth is so scorched."
"Is this an English Summer?" Doctor Tell asked incredulously (having been brought up at a time when there was no talk of global warming).
"No, it's abroad."
"What country?"
"I don't know," Elliot lied. He could never actually remember his dreams, but he did have some quite vivid memories. One that especially shone in his mind was that of a childhood holiday in Malta. It was the first time that he had ever been abroad. Ah, he could remember it as if it was the day before yesterday, perhaps even last week. The sun had seemed so bright there, and the people so pleasant. It was a million miles away from England on a wet May morning.
Elliot liked to think of his childhood. He had been a happy child. Life had been so uncomplicated then. There were times when he wished he could return to that state, to have no worries in the world... To see the world beneath from a small womblike shell in the sky, just as that bloke did in 2001: A Space Odyssey… Perhaps that would be what old age would be like, having brunch in a Georgian palace with good acoustics.
"It was somewhere in the Mediterranean," Elliot continued. He liked the name - Middle Earth. To him, it seemed solid, firm, and Tolkien.
"What are you doing?"
"I am sitting on the ground. It is warm, reassuring. There is a little brick wall running along the path. At the bottom, in a crack, is an ants nest."
"What are these ants doing?"
"They are scurrying along the ground. They are carrying tiny leaves. I put my finger in their way. The ants just walk around. I squash some."
"You kill the ants?"
"Yes. There are very many of them. They are like the ones in our self catering apartment."
"Is the apartment infested?"
"No, they just marched up and down one bit of wall. They are living in their own world, totally unaffected by my presence. It was a beautiful sight - a moving wall."
"Where are you now?" Doctor Tell prompted after a slight pause.
"I am in the garden again. I squash some ants."
"What kind of ants are these?"
"They are worker ants. As soon as I kill some, bigger ants arrive on the scene."
"What are these new ants like?"
"They have pincers on their head. They attack my finger by pinching it. Little ants hang off my fingers with their pincers."
"Does their bite hurt?"
"No, the pincers are too small."
"What do you do now?" Doctor Tell enquired.
"I retaliate."
"You kill more of the ants?"
"Yes."
"Please continue."
"Soon there are very many bodies on the ground."
"How do you feel?"
"I am enjoying it. Pretending to be a great warrior."
Doctor Tell clicked his fingers. It was his method of signifying some kind of closure. It stemmed from his days as a stage hypnotist, from the time when he had very nearly been disbarred from the Mind Benders Association.
Elliot sat up and teetered on the edge of the couch. He found it very comforting to swing his legs in his posture, but Doctor Tell wasn't about to give him a big push. He left his real swinging for the weekend.
"So, what was that all about?" Elliot asked brightly.
"You tell me."
"No, you Tell, me Elliot."
"Your humour will be the death of me, Mr Gold," said Doctor Tell as sternly as he could. "Well?"
"I haven't the foggiest," Elliot said uneasily. He hated psychoanalysing himself; it made a mockery of paying Doctor Tell.
"Is it not possible that you feel yourself surrounded by enemies, and that you wish to strike back in some way?"
"What enemies? I don't have any enemies," Elliot said worriedly. But hadn't he seen someone walk past his house with a bazooka the other day?
"Perhaps ‘enemies’ is the wrong word. Your critics, shall we say? Is it not true to say that your have more than your fair share of critics in the professional and amateur press?"
"Amateur press?" asked a mystified Elliot.
Doctor Tell waved a copy of The Sucks in the air.
"Ah, the fanzine," Elliot said as the light slowly dawned. "What does it say?"
"You mean you haven't read it?"
"I write the weekly programmes. What do I need to read that for? I mean, I pick the teams and all that, so presumably I know what I am doing."
"Well, according to this rag, you don't."
"What!" cried an outraged Elliot. "Let me see that!"
"Are you sure? Some of it is quite virulent," Doctor Tell warned as the fanzine was snatched from his grasp.
"’Elliot Gold, you should be sold! Always believing you’re indestructible. Well I’ve got news for you, mate’" Elliot read. "They can't sell me, I'm the manager! And why are all the pages stuck together?"
"Amateur press," Doctor Tell reiterated as he prised the fanzine from Elliot's grasp. It was his professional opinion that Elliot shouldn't see all those old photos of his wife. Especially not the nude ones.
"I don't care what they have to say! I'll show them!" Elliot said furiously as he stormed out of the room in a way he’d last done when he was twelve. He’d been seeing Doctor Tell for a very long time.
Doctor Tell leant back and formed his hands into a steeple. He was highly skilled at metamorphosis.
"An excellent analysis," he muttered evilly to himself, which only bearded Machiavellian men in good suits can really pull off.
A Fame of Two Halves is a Print on Demand book, generated by Lightning Source. Click here to read Kevin's recent article about the SYP Study Tour to Lightning Source. The paperback edition of A Fame of Two Halves was published by YouWriteOn.com, in association with Legend Press. Click here to read an article about the founding of Legend Press that Tom Chalmers wrote for the SYP. SYP members can also read Kevin's account of how the book was published in the next edition of InPrint.
To contact Kevin, please email him at editor@authortrek.com rather than the form below. Click here to go to the SYP homepage.
SYP Conference: Publishing Career Development
A slight technical hitch meant that I was late for the Publishing Career Development workshop. Unfortunately, the doorway to Malet Place, where the workshop was held, could only be opened by a key card, or by somebody standing inside it. The marshal inside the doorway just before this workshop happened to be me, and regrettably, the person who was supposed to be covering me arrived late. Still, such minor crises will always happen at any conference. I just hope the speakers did not think I was too rude – I was not texting throughout the workshop, but writing my notes into my mobile phone pda (from which I’d just been reading an e-book edition of A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man – all very Web 2.0!)
Nicholas Jones, Managing Director of Strathmore Publishing, began the session, saying that all people working in publishing
have to be a marketer to enthuse their sales directors. He then went on to say that it’s useful to know what kind of roles that you prefer to play on a team, mentioning Dr. Meredith Belbin’s Team Role Theory. Nicholas related that Nielsen has transformed the bestseller list, as it's now so accurate, and that the value of books sold is going up and up. However, one of the most important aspects of career development is keeping an eye on what’s currently happening. For instance, many of our customers now derive from the new iPod generation, and are accustomed to devices that do many things. Nicholas stated that there are about 40,000 titles that make up iTunes sales (which is much the same number as you can find in a traditional high street bookshop). So, all the money's still in the head, not the long tail. According to The Register, Chris Anderson’s Long Tail theory, which suggests that businesses will sell less of blockbusters in the future and more of less well-known items, is seriously flawed. However, to counter this, Mark Thwaite, Managing Editor of The Book Depository, stated in the conference’s opening session that his company are finding the long tail to be very profitable indeed. Nicholas continued on his theme by stating that just as bands are now making money from touring and playing gigs, so authors are making more money from the literary festivals circuit. He then went onto discuss the concept of Disintermediation – i.e. “cutting out the middle man”, which could have disturbing implications for publishers, as we are the middle men that could seemingly be dispensed with in this new Web 2.0 world. However, publishers add value, and are very good at communicating with their audience. New technologies such as Print on Demand mean that there are now more than 100,000 titles published a year, whereas it used to be more like 30,000. There is also the example of audiobooks, which have been transformed by digital downloads (so much more convenient than messing around with 20 audio cassettes while trying to listen to an unabridged book). Giles Clark, author of Inside Book Publishing, then stated that only half a dozen European publishers control the mass market.
Now, the tendency is to licence content, which is a move from a product-based model to a service one. And unlike other careers you could choose, you can get more responsibility in publishing early on, although usually with much lower pay.
Suzanne Collier, Business Manager of Bookcareers.com, has given careers advice for the last 20 years, and so she also proved to be an ideal speaker on the issue of career development. Suzanne stated that publishing's main aim is to make money. Publishing is now in the most exciting phase ever with digital, and asked the delegates to question themselves - how will they cope? One of the most important things you can do is to improve your publishing skills. If you want to work in editorial, make friends with the editorial department. She also advised delegates to keep an eye on current affairs, so that they would have ideas for future books. You mustn’t be shy in pushing yourself forward at work, to volunteer. It’s also always worthwhile seeing if you can come to an arrangement with your employer for them to pay for your training. You must also invest in yourself, to improve your computer skills, speed-reading, and business sense. If you want a promotion, it’s always a good idea to read your company's business plan, to see where they are expanding. At the end of the day, when you’re seeking to advance, what you are doing is marketing, and the product is you. If you're not getting any interviews, then it’s probably down to your CV, so make sure that you have someone else check it over for you. Most of all, though, publishers want enthusiastic employees.
So, although I missed the beginning of this workshop, I did get a great deal out of it. One of the delegates I spoke to told me that some of the other workshops did not tie in very well with the theme of the conference (Publishing 2.0: The Reader Revolution), however I am glad to report that the Publishing Career Development workshop most definitely did.
SYP members can buy Giles Clark's Inside Book Publishing for a discount - click here for more details.
Kevin Mahoney
It's Still Day One
10 years of Amazon.co.uk ‡ Amazon's labour relations ‡ Amazon's relationship with publishers
Ten years ago, I was working in Ottakars in Slough. I had just finished my Masters degree, but was still uncertain as to what to do next as a career. However, I was certain that I did not want to work in bookshop management. And then something miraculous happened: Amazon.co.uk opened up in my hometown.
It seemed like an ideal fit for me, as I was very much into the Internet, and had recently created my own website. Amazon also started out selling solely books, so my bookshop experience would no doubt come in very handy. I came through the rigorous interview process and was offered a job. Being quite a loyal person, I decided to stay on at Ottakars over the Christmas period, and joined Amazon immediately after (so I only participated in 6 of the legendary Amazon Christmases). When I arrived, they weren’t quite sure what to do with me, as they’d forgotten that I was due to start work that day! My heart sank as I was asked to come back the next day at 5am to work in the Receive department. Fortunately, I was just as quickly bumped up into the Special Receive department, as I was told by one manager that I was probably the only one of the new recruits “who’d seen a book before” (this manager is now working as the CEO and founder of The Book Depository).
My family were rather sceptical about my new job, especially it involved that new-fangled Internet thingy. They were also quite doubtful that I would make any money from one of the perks of the job, the Amazon stock options. Most of all, they, like many people at the time, were dubious that enough people would trust an online store with their credit cards (the same people now are probably saying that they will never read an e-book, but the success of Amazon shows that such attitudes do change over time).
So, I was there at Amazon in the days when managers were fazed about the task ahead of them, unsure of how they were ever going to fill up that warehouse in Bestobell Road, Slough. Then again, Amazon was quick to adopt new markets, such as DVDs, and was able to successfully jump on the Harry Potter bandwagon with the release of The Prisoner of Azkaban. Being at Amazon had its ups and downs, but I very much subscribed to the dream of “work hard, have fun, and make
history”, especially as my first degree was partly in History. I remember popping out at work to witness a solar eclipse, but what was happening in the warehouse could equally be seen as being amazing, as Amazon became one of the fastest growing businesses ever, and in a whole new sphere to boot.
Although, I did have one big frustration in those early days, in that Amazon wouldn’t say boo to a ghost. Publishers regarded Amazon warily, not sure what to make of this new initiative, and were slow to make deals. Which meant that we were very reliant on wholesalers such as Gardners. One of Amazon’s most significant maxims was the importance of the customer: they had to come first. Unfortunately, this could sometimes conflict with the terms and conditions of our suppliers. I remember the Special Receive team being called into a meeting with a Gardners rep, who was visibly very angry with us, as we kept returning special receive books as damaged. He waved around one particular book at us, which had a boot print on the inside cover, and accused us of having kicked it around the warehouse. We weren’t allowed to protest in this extraordinary meeting, but I felt particularly aggrieved as I had been the one to take the book out of its Gardners’ tote, footprint and all, and had damaged it out as I was pretty sure that there was another copy of this fairly new book out there sans-footprint. Nevertheless, the Gardners rep had a point: we were sending back too many special receive books, but the manner in which he made his point was wrong. Yet he could afford to be aggressive with us, because Amazon as a whole was dependent on Gardners at the time.
Amazon did actually fill the Bestobell Road warehouse fairly quickly, so in the Summer of 1999, all associates were called into an “All hands” meeting to be informed that the company was opening a new distribution centre in Milton Keynes. We were invited to come along, and no doubt many like me were persuaded by the generous relocation package. I continued to
prosper in my Amazon career: having been promoted to tier two while in Slough, I became a recipient of the Amazonian Award in May 2000 (a trophy in the form of one of Amazon’s infamous “doordesks”), and eventually became a Customer Service Liaison. And although Amazon still wasn’t making any money, it looked as though it had survived the bursting of the Internet bubble.
On September 11th 2001, all associates were called into another All Hands meeting, to be told that two planes had been flown into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. Since Amazon was an American company, we were told to be more vigilant, and although one of the plane hijackers had been trained at nearby Cranfield, the distribution centre was fortunately only subject to hoax bomb threats over the next few years.
Click here to read more about Amazon's labour relations during this time
SYP Conference: Editorial
First to speak was Gurdeep, Commissioning Editor for the Language and Linguistics list at academic publisher, Continuum. Gurdeep’s editorial career so far has taken him from Editorial Assistant at Robert Hale Ltd to Assistant Editor at SAGE before his commissioning role at Continuum. Gurdeep gave those starting out on the editorial ladder advice on the skills you need to develop in a commissioning role and exactly what the job entails. He explained that proposals are “the meat of commissioning” and how publishing is about business just as much as pleasure and personal taste. It is fundamentally based around about profit and loss sheets, and finding those books that can make a profit as well as making a difference. He noted the importance of the 60% profit margin, understanding the market and spotting gaps in it, and delivery of a coherent plan of action amidst differing opinions.
Sara O’Keefe then spoke from a commercial publisher’s perspective about her work at Orion, part of Hachette-Livre UK. Sara’s path to Commissioning Editor spanned 6 years, moving from Editorial Assistant at BCA to Assistant Editor at Orion and then Editor, and ultimately, Commissioning Editor. She pointed out that, while fiction can be divided into the categories of literary fiction and commercial fiction, there’s a great deal of crossover between both departments in terms of content and approach. “Commercial fiction is not code for badly written or down-market fiction” she explained and cited the main difference to be that commercial fiction is usually narrative driven.
When working on commercial fiction, Sara explained, the question to ask first and foremost is, “Does it make me want to turn the page?” Although working as an editorial assistant can mean a role dominated by administration, Sara gave some top tips for making the most of this time, including: keep an eye on the bestseller list in order to track publishing trends and anticipate new ones; be aware of the packaging of different books and how they are marketed; analyse the market, and of course, “read, read and read some more”. She concluded by explaining the importance in commissioning of building a vision for the book in your mind, maintaining that vision when others may try to sway you and ultimately getting others to support your vision too.
Gurdeep and Sara then went on to answer questions from the audience, giving practical advice on getting ahead in editorial before we all headed to the canteen for a well-deserved lunch.
SYP Conference: Marketing and Publicity
London SYP Speaker Meeting - Publicity: Staying in the Public Eye
Why Does Jonathan Ross Say These Things?
Georgina Baillie, the young woman at the centre of the controversy surrounding the lewd remarks left by Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand on Andrew Sach’s answer machine, has now called on the BBC to reinstate both their stars, saying that their punishment was “out of proportion”. Unfortunately for both Ross and Brand, Baillie has chosen a very bad day for disseminating such good news, as unfortunately, that little local election thingy across the pond has hogged up all the headlines, unlike the days when Baillie had previously called for their heads. Whether you like Jonathan Ross or not, you may have some sympathy with him, especially when you consider the fact that John Cleese regularly verbally, physically, and racially abused Andrew Sachs all the time in the seventies, and nobody ever complained.
The most unfortunate part of the affair (especially if you’re a book publicist) is that Friday Night with Jonathan Ross has now been taken off the air in the run-up to Christmas, the most important part of the year for promoting those book-type things that we all love. A Bit of Fry and Laurie once declared that the most important part of comedy is timing, and Jonathan Ross’s timing here was diabolical. Unless, of course, he was aiming for a good bit of ironical, black comedy. As you may not know, Jonathan Ross has a book out at the moment, the rather aptly titled Why Do I Say These Things? (although I suspect the paperback edition – if there is one – might have an expletive added to it, along with “the”). At first, the cynic in me suspected that this whole Sachs scandal was a publicity stunt to promote Ross’s book. If so, it’s one that’s backfired magnificently, as The Bookseller reported today that sales of both Ross’s and Brand’s books have fallen dramatically in the wake of the controversy. No doubt Ross is wishing that the little chimp on the cover had held onto his mouth a bit more firmly. Yet, I suspect that Ross’s real sin was to have made an ass of himself during these current inclement times. Ross’s £6 million a year salary was controversial enough during the boom years, so it’s clear that it wouldn’t be tolerated for long at the start of what some commentators believe could be the worst recession for generations.
So, Ross and Russell have now, inappropriately enough, damaged their ‘brand’ names for who knows how long. The only winner appears to have been the burlesque dancer Georgina Baillie, who may one day get a book deal out of it. However, let’s hope that no other book sales will have been damaged in the meantime in the publicity void left by the suspension of Jonathan Ross’s shows.
Kevin Mahoney
SYP Meet the Committee Social
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Lightning Source Study Tour
The Lightning Source Study Tour started bright and early on the morning of October 1st. About 25 people turned up, a very good response to the SYP's first Study Tour for many years. The attendees came from a variety of publishers and backgrounds. There was a small editorial coterie from Springer, who were eager to learn more about Lightning Source, a company with whom they do much business. Ashley Lodge, HarperCollins' Corporate Responsibility Manager and Chair of the Publishers' Green Network, was there to learn more about Print-on-Demand's green credentials. Suzanne Collier from Bookcareers.com, was another of the luminaries present. I, for one, was looking forward to returning to Milton Keynes, where I lived for many years while working for Amazon. Indeed, I was delighted when we passed my former place of employ, Amazon's Marston Gate Distribution centre. I texted one of my ex-colleagues, and told them that I was on a Study Tour to Lightning Source, whereupon I was informed that Marston Gate was now doing Print-on-Demand. Perhaps Lightning Source had a competitor in their midst? However, I soon concluded that Amazon's POD1 facility was more likely to be aimed at self-publishing authors, rather than publishers.
We were warmly greeted upon our arrival at Lightning Source, and after we had been refreshed by coffee and biscuits, Commercial Director Suzanne Wilson-Higgins gave a presentation about the key facets of Print-on-Demand (see copy of her PowerPoint talk below). Suzanne went onto explain that Lightning Source operates on a business to business model, and and that they discourage approaches from self-published authors, referring them instead to publishing services companies such as Authorhouse, who are also based in Milton Keynes. Tim Davies from Authorhouse then went onto talk about the phenomenon of self-publishing, which has increased exponentially in the US (see a copy of his PowerPoint presentation below).
Next, we were lead on a tour of the Lightning Source warehouse, which was every bit as chilly as I remembered Marston Gate to be. Much of the warehouse was empty, indicative of Lightning Source's confidence in their ability to win new orders and to expand their business. We saw several state-of-the-art printers in action, fed by massive bales of paper. The paper was then subjected to several chemical processes to ensure best quality. However, much of the procedures involved manual handling by well-trained staff rather than being wholly dependent on the mechanisation that we had imagined to exist prior to the tour. I was interested to see that Lightning Source was fulfilling orders to Amazon at Marston Gate, confirming my impression that Amazon's own POD process is aimed more at self-publishers rather than Lightning Source's business to business approach2. This point was then reinforced by Lightning Source's Managing Director David Taylor, after we had then been treated to an excellent lunch. David was most amusing as he ruminated on the differences between Lightning Source's bases in Nashville and Milton Keynes, as he rounded up a very enjoyable day.
1). ”POD” - acronym for “Print-on-Demand”
2). However, as I've just read on the thetill.co.uk, Amazon.co.uk's POD service has clients such as Faber & Faber, John Wiley, Cambridge University Press, and HarperCollins - you read it on the InPrint Online first!
Kevin Mahoney
SYP/JFL Digital Skills Evening
The SYP/JFL Digital Skills Evening started with an ironic delay, as when we tested the technical equipment, we discovered that the only laptop at hand wouldn't fire up Nicholas Blake's presentation. It would not be the last time during the evening when SYP Chair Jon Slack had to show off his own digital skills as he laboured to get the recalcitrant laptop to fire up. Having spent enough time in front of my own PC for the day, I wandered back out to the excellent nibbles and drinks laid on by the evening’s co-hosts, JFL. The temporary absence of a more traditional technology (a corkscrew), did not delay my consumption of a splendid glass of wine.
Ros Kindersley, JFL’s Managing Director, was the first speaker, and began by saying that two years ago, JFL were beginning to be approached by publishers asking them to fill new "digital" vacancies. Since these skill sets were so new, Ros and her team were wondering about how best to go about filling these jobs. She began by relating the well-known detrimental effects that digital had on the music industry, before discussing the birth of the e-book. Of all publishing departments, Production seems to be particularly affected, with new mediums such as CD-Rom or downloads to deal with. SEO* skills and a basic knowledge of html seem to be the main requirements for this new digital environment. She concluded that recruiters are looking for candidates that have the imagination to make best use of this digital world; along with the responsibility to monitor content they create, such as online forums.
Chris Meade, Director of the Institute for the Future of the Book, said that those who are creating digital media are disappointed by the e-book, whose format is still quite conventional. Where does Publishing fit in this digital world? Isn't something new going to emerge, to take Publishing’s place? Chris then quoted Bob Stein’s counter argument: “far from becoming obsolete, publishers and editors in the networked era have a crucial role to play. The editor of the future is increasingly a producer, a role that includes signing up projects and overseeing all elements of production and distribution, and that of course includes building and nurturing communities of various demographics, size, and shape. Successful publishers will build brands around curatorial and community building know-how AND be really good at designing and developing the robust technical infrastructures that underlie a complex range of user experiences” (from Bob Stein’s Unified Theory of Publishing). Chris doesn't think that traditional publishers are in the best place to deal with this world, and said that folk such as the organisers of the Small Wonder Short Story festival are more equipped to deal with digital, as they are accomplished at online networking. Writers think they can now dispense with agents, but they still need to call on marketing and editing skills. Chris Meade concurred with Ros when he said, “the digital future is there for people who can think afresh”. He continued to say that books of the future should be more engaged with their audience, but also that e-books need to be more focused, and not attempt to cover everything, a la Wikipedia.
Nicholas Blake, (the Editorial Manager of Picador and Digital), started by saying that editors don't need new skills, but they do need new knowledge. Nicholas joined the industry a couple of years before the web was developed. So, despite seeing a lot of changes in the industry, he said that the editorial processes are the same as they were twenty years ago. Macmillan are publishing their e-books with the same quality of attention as their paper cousins. Nicholas said that although e-books seem to be cheaper than traditional products, they could often be more expensive, as they involve a lot of additional work that is not immediately apparent to the reader. Yet Macmillan would be appearing to do things right, as their digital products are the second most popular on the new Waterstones e-book store.
We then had a mini technical breakdown, as the laptop went to sleep again, although it did soon revive with Jon’s help. Nicholas showed us an e-book with an index, and said that it cost could 20 cents per link according to some pricing models; sometimes the extra cost is built in, as with Picador's current converter. Some e-books are better designed than others, which Nicholas revealed by showing off examples of the good and the bad. Nicholas went on to say that you don't need to know html, you just think more carefully about how your content will look in its new format. He then gave us some examples of ebook layouts, starting with Doctor Who (Pocket Essentials - click here for screenshot), which has a "clear layout, helpful bookmarks, italic and bold all converted successfully; but the index is not hyperlinked so is useless". Nicholas moved onto an edition of A Passage to India (pub. Rosetta Books - click here for screenshot): "no sign of any thought. Meaningless emblem to go with the chapter heading, every paragraph is full out, no italics for book titles, basic typesetting mistakes".
Then the projector started playing up! Nicholas continued by advising that you have to pay attention to the metadata to provide a good reading experience. The Sony Reader has a whole set of fields that the editor can enter, but Nicholas warned against making elementary mistakes, such as stating that the Irish author John Banville is writing in British English, as this simple error may prevent readers from finding the book in the e-store. So as long as you’re good at filling in forms, you should do fine.
Then the floor was thrown open to questions. An audience member asked Chris what he thought of Amazon's relations with say, small publishers. Chris said that such publishers have other avenues to explore online, to avoid being trapped in unfavourable and possibly monopolistic terms.
Ros then went on to reassure everyone by saying that the publishing experience is more important than having these new technical skills. People with more technical skills are being brought into Publishing from other industries, especially with regards to Marketing, rather than Editorial, but a lot of such digital work is outsourced. Ros observed people in Publishing are more or less training themselves, by participating in online social networks etc. Nicholas was asked if it was possible to transfer illustrated content to e-books, to which he said yes, but you have to adapt it to maximise your content. A member of the audience then pointed out that there is a lot of help online, which started off a lively debate in the audience. Chris contributed by saying that most of the recruiters placing ads won't necessarily know much about these new technical skills, and that there is possible room for negotiating with employers if you don’t have all the technical skills requested in a job advertisement. Another audience member pointed out that the SEO practices recognised by Google involve quite simple editorial skills (although Google is perhaps a tad more monopolistic than even Amazon, methinks, but that’s a much bigger debate).
This is the only time that I’ve seen a debate break out on the floor of an SYP event, and I think this is probably because we are all of us feeling our way into this new digital world. With some many new avenues to explore, we can only really find the way to our goals with the help of others. Which, appropriately enough, is all very Web 2.0.
*SEO = “Search Engine Optimisation”, i.e. the art of getting your website ranked higher than your competitors’.
Click here to read Nicholas Blake's notes for his talk.
Kevin Mahoney
A Practical Guide to the Frankfurt Book Fair
Canon Tales: Promoting Creativity in Publishing
Farewell to Walkies
Another huge success for the BTBS, many people in the publishing world will be sad to say goodbye to “Walkies” but BTBS chief executive David Hicks has said he wants to seek an alternative way for fundraising in future years. Let’s hope it’s as enjoyable as this jolly jaunt round London has proven to be.






Pirate Punting and Pimms on the River Cherwell

Hitting the bank more often than a Wall Street trader, the piratical punters of the SYP ambled, nay slumped, up the Cherwell in search of distant lands.


In the time it took to consume hearty portions of their grog rations the cartographers on board duly noted the discovery of the Marston Ferry Road; an occurrence so grandiose in magnitude that the band of swarthy, moustachioed men and women banked purposefully to admire this natural beauty amongst the rolling hills and meadows.

Avast, the Jolly Roger was raised! Camaraderie swelled amongst the fleet, joyous at the arrival of their destination without loss of limb or life. The booty from previous expeditions to supermarkets was shared out according to want and need and, when each was satiated, the journey home commenced.

The wind was favourable as experienced hands punted and paddled home in half the time. Crowds gathered. Ropes were thrown landward. Boats moored. The party commenced. Quiche, olives, pastries and Pimms. Pirate songs could be heard on the air in surrounding townships before the sun began to set and the pirate punters became publishers again.

London Speaker Meeting: Book Production - A Matter of Ethics?
- Preparation of the magazine – Kiddlington
- Typesetting – India
- Printing and distribution (hard copies) – UK
- Online hosting – US
- Ecological footprint (the physical space needed to support enough plants to produce the energy needed to make the product)
90,000 Make Hay (even when the sun doesn't shine)
The Guardian have covered the event pretty much faultlessly, and I would urge you to read the write-ups and watch the podcasts if you didn't make it to Hay this year. But I will give a run-down of a few of my favourites which will be posted here over the coming weeks.
The 2008 Annual SYP Pub Quiz
The 2008 annual SYP pub quiz, in aid of book trade charity BTBS, saw 26 teams (some 190 publishers, agents and friends) battle it out over seven rounds at Tiger Tiger on London’s Haymarket. A venue used to seeing dance floor grooves and lamp-lit passion became the province of bookish pursuit of points for prizes. My team, led by last year’s Chair Doug Wallace, were perched close to the bar, a precarious place for any publisher.
The occasion was set up to raise money for the BTBS: the SYP did just that, trouncing last year's £320 with some £1500 through team registration and raffle sales on the night.
The beloved wooden spoon was 'won' by The Hybrid Embryos from Reader's Digest, finishing with 27.5 points.
In second place, flashing their publishing credentials with highly animated vigour from the back of room, were The Bookseller on 47.5 points, who were presented with gift-wrapped champagne and chocolates kindly donated by Waitrose Food and Home Canary Wharf.
First place came from the Random House quarter: we had 'International Rescue' trumping at the top on 48.5. They graciously accepted their four bottles of red and four bottles of white, again as donated very kindly by Waitrose Food and Home and by now probably strewn across Haymarket.
On that note we'd like to thank the many sponsors who contributed to some fantastic raffle prizes and helped us pull in over £500 in ticket sales on the night!
Thanks must go to the SYP members on the pub-quiz sub-committee, who put in a solid amount of work leading up to the night with good humour and were impeccably pleasant and efficient on the night. This was a huge undertaking and it came off really well: here’s to the SYP!
LBF Seminar 2008
The Marlborough Room was packed tighter than the Northern Line at rush hour for the ‘Getting Ahead in UK Publishing’ seminar. Alison Baverstock (Chair) kicked off with a bit of a general knowledge quiz. Unfortunately not one person in the room was able to answer why the date was a special one. Apparently it was the anniversary of the titanic film, I mean disaster. Alison is a senior lecturer on the Publishing MA course at Kingston University. She began her career in publishing before moving into the realms of education and writing. Her first book, How to Market Books is now in its fourth edition and is often referred to as the ‘bible of book marketing’. Alison launched her brand new title, How to Get a Job in Publishing at the end of the seminar.
Planning was the first topic touched on in the context of publishing. In other industries, such as finance and the public sector, a considerable amount of time and money is spent on career planning; management training, for example. It was also highlighted that skills gained in publishing, especially in the smaller independents, are varied and transferable. So if you embark on a lowly-paid career in publishing, fear not, you won't be left with no other options if you decide to take your career in a different direction. Options such as literary consultancies, charities and libraries were cited here. Publishing is essentially entrepreneurial, consistently producing a product to match contemporary needs.

(l to r) Iain Stevenson, Ros Kindersley, Jeremy Trevathan
Iain Stevenson opened with a charming anecdote reflecting the sheer overwhelming feeling of awe at events such as the London Book Fair. Iain is Professor of Publishing at University College London (UCL). Iain began his career in 1977 as Publisher for earth sciences, moving to head up Macmillan Reference Books in 1985. He then jointly founded pioneer environmental publisher Belhaven Press, and acquired and ran Leicester University Press concurrently. In 1997, Iain joined the newly privatized Stationery Office as Publishing Director, and has been involved in publishing education since 1999.
Iain explained that education in publishing was a fairly new phenomena, since just over 20 years ago Oxford Brookes University opened their doors to the first MAs in publishing. Iain concurred with Alison's previous observation concerning the lack of career planning in publishing, and that at least for now, this is something people working within the industry will have to take into their own hands.
Iain submitted that there were three golden rules about 'getting into publishing': First, flexibility. You have to be flexible in publishing, in attitude and skills, and this will make you valuable. A lot of people who start off in say, sales and marketing, might later transfer to the editorial department, or move over to rights management.
Second, developing a sense of professionalism. Publishing is an extremely complex business, that's right, a BUSINESS. A business in which profitability is important, and as such you might develop skills in accounts, or better still, you might learn these skills now in preparation for when they are suddenly needed. Familiarise yourself with balance sheets and costings, know what an ISBN is (you don't need to remember what it stands for, but you need to grasp the concept of how they work and why they exist). Develop a suite of professional skills and continue to build on them. The basic skills such as those mentioned above will always be needed, but publishing is an ever-evolving industry filled with intuition and risk, and the best way to sell books and to promote good writing among authors can change over time too.
The third rule to keep in mind when approaching a career in publishing, Iain advised, is to develop a network. Socialise; introduce yourself to people working in publishing, get involved with book clubs and societies like the SYP. This is especially important if you were interested in becoming a literary agent, knowing who does what and for who, and being familiar with commissioning editors’ favoured styles and subjects is absolutely vital.
Ros Kindersley, Managing Director of JFL Search & Selection, began her career as a publicist for Quartet Books before joining the Arts Council for a year. She approached JFL for a new publishing job and was instead offered a job as a recruitment consultant by Judy Farquaharson. Following Judy’s retirement, Ros now runs the company, and with the support of her team recruits for all mainstream publishers and a broad range of organisations including charities, NGOs and major corporates.
Ros was an english literature graduate in the 80s, and perceived the art of publishing through rose tinted glasses and was shocked to find that although different from many industries in countless ways, ultimately publishing is a business, it has to make money, sell books. Ros dispelled the myth that 20-odd years ago, the majority of people in publishing had a private income. Although she admits that the poor wage at least played a part in her decision to leave her career in publishing to go into business with JFL, Ros says she realised that the aspects of publishing she most enjoyed were still prevalent in this job: like-minded people, the thrill of the chase and negotiating.
Ros went on to share her professional recruitment wisdom, touching on key areas like work experience (it's invaluable - if you can afford to do it, do it, if you can't afford to do it, and you're sick of rejection letters staring at you when you walk through the door every evening, use your annual leave). Network; go to book clubs and events, join the SYP or uni groups that are publishing related. Develop skills (depending on what area of publishing you want to get into, these skills will differ, but as asserted earlier, the more flexible you can make yourself the better). Ensure that your CV is immaculate; ask a friend to proofread it, and highlight your achievements and your unique selling points. If you get to interview stage, always follow up with a 'thank you email'.
Jeremy Trevathan, Publishing Director at Macmillan, anchored the meeting. He reinforced what Iain stated earlier about the kind of person you need to be to get on in publishing. Personality goes a long way (as John Travolta once said); intuition and emotion are key factors in the business of publishing, factors that it’s generally advised to put aside in most business contexts. You need to be adaptable, curious and adventurous. You need to be bold enough to submit ideas that are close to your heart, and have the resilience to take the criticism that may follow. You need to be stimulated by having too much to do, and the stamina to cope with it.
Jeremy also reinforced the idea that once you have your foot in the door, there's room to maneuver in publishing. He spent a decade in the production department, before taking a demotion to move into the realm of rights for a further 10 years. He then decided that he'd like to give editorial a try, and 8 years in he's happy there, for now.
A career in publishing can be extremely flexible. It's easier than a lot of jobs to gain part-time employment, and once you have experience and contacts you can freelance pretty easily. Who you know, and who you're on friendly terms with, can mean a lot. It's a sociable job, so if you don't like socialising, you should probably steer clear of editorial and marketing.
Q and A [but really just A because I can't recall the Q]
· Publishing MAs have a severe shortfall of places compared to the number of applicants, so if you're serious about applying, treat it like a job application.
· If you're thinking about getting a nice well-paid job and then moving across to the joys of publishing, it IS possible, but it'll be easier to deal with the shocking salary expectations earlier rather than later.
· You should expect to spend between 6 and 18 months in a low-level position, and that's if you're assertive.
· It's ok to have a glitch (glitch noun informal 1 a sudden malfunction or irregularity of equipment, 2 an unexpected setback in a plan) on your CV, as long as it's nicely cushioned by some impressive work experience and longevity. Just frame it in positive terms of what you've learned from the experience.
· Don't fear your annual appraisal, use it your advantage! Tell your employers why you are an indispensible member of staff and what you have brought to the company. You have to make your own chances and take the initiative in this business.
· It's useful to know digital techniques, but only learn them if you're willing to use them.
· If you are applying for a job in London and you live outside the capital, it might be an idea to use a friend or relative's address when applying for jobs.
'Darling, never judge a book by its cover!'
Young Publishing Entrepreneurs - Shortlist Revealed
Goldfish Website Launch
Thursday 13th March 2008 saw the launch of the Goldfish online journal at the Swedenborg Institute in London. When I first heard about it, I naturally assumed that it had something to do with the credit card company, so I wasn’t quite sure why I’d been told about it. But it only took a few minutes’ research online to find out that Goldfish is actually an online repository for compositions from the MA in Creative and Life Writing at Goldsmiths College, University of London.
Since I run my own literary website in my spare time (Authortrek.com), I am always on the
lookout for talented new writers, so I quickly decided that I must attend the launch night. I’d previously been to the Swedenborg Institute for the launch of Legend Press’s second short story anthology, Seven Days. It’s a great place to hold a launch, being well lit with veerings towards neo-classical design that make any reading look classy. Looking at the name badges in the reception area, I was very impressed to see that a variety of literary agents and publishing bods would be attending. I’m naturally quite shy and find it difficult to approach people at such events until after I’ve had a few sips of wine, but there were a few ‘meeters and greeters’ there, such as Amy Sackville, who soon put me at my ease and told me more about the event.
Then it was down to business, as eight writers from the course read from their work. Amy Sackville read an intriguing excerpt from her yet untitled novel about the Artic. Ben Holden had everyone gripped with Mynatour, a poem about a man
transformed into a starling. Patrick Hudson revelled in his rich literary voice as he read from his novel, Everybody is the Star of Their Own Movie. There were some extracts from the Life Writing students, which, although they were read well, I wasn’t quite so interested in, as my main focus will always be fiction. Although I’m fairly well-read, this is the first time that I had contact with Life Writing per se, and I couldn’t really see the application for it, aside for some probable cathartic release for the author (all the Life Writing extracts were far too humorous to be considered as Misery Lit!).
Just as I thinking about leaving, Roxanne Bibizadeh discerned my intent and intercepted me. Many writers are self-effacing and too shy to promote their work, so it was refreshing to see so many new authors such as Roxanne ready and willing to endorse their writing, and this self-belief must obviously derive from the tutors at Goldsmiths. Roxanne told me that the extract she had read out was a short story about the widow of a suicide bomber – which surprised me, as I had
evidently missed these details. However, the great benefit of attending a website launch was that I could check out her excellent story The Bride of Death online, and not feel so stupid after all when I discovered that the most salient parts of her story had not been in her extract.
All in all, it was a great night. Indeed, I was in the presence of one author when an agent came up to her to congratulate her on her work and to ask her for a submission. That was, after all, the whole purpose of the night. Everyone was having so much fun that hardly anyone wanted to leave for the pub! I also made some great contacts on the night, and will be undoubtedly watching the progress of some of these great writers in the future.
Kevin Mahoney, with photos by Isha Marquez
Orange Prize Attacked: A Question of Sexism?
Returning to the constantly controversial issue of the Orange Prize, in answer to the question of ‘Why isn’t there a similar prize for men?’, the organisers baldly state ‘because no-one has, as yet, put in the time, creativity, effort and enthusiasm necessary to start one up and keep it going.’
Lucy Mitchell
Speaker Meeting - January 2008, Editorial Trends
The Bearded Tit, that ‘Gut Feeling’ and the Dangerous Lure of Richard and Judy: Society of Young Publishers Consider the Reality of Publishing in 2008
Sarah Jones reports from the first Speaker Meeting of 2008
SYP members and committee congregated at Foyle’s on Wednesday 27th February to listen to the first talk of an exciting line up of Speaker Meetings for 2008. ‘Publishing Trends: Editorial Forecasting’ was organised by newly appointed Speaker Meeting Representative, Ragna Heidweiller and given by Daniela Schlingmann of Daniela Schlingmann Literary Scouting, Ken Barlow of Ebury Press and David Shelley of Little, Brown’s Sphere imprint. After the usual pre-talk catch ups, a revitalising glass of vino and a charasmatic introduction from Ragna, members settled down to hear from the experts what skills will be required for editorial forecasting at the dawn of 2008.

Schlingmann pinned down what she called the ‘matchmaking’ process of finding, for a particular publisher, a suitable foreign title to purchase for translation. She said: “Finding the right book project is one that requires sharpened skills of perception and awareness that each country has a unique market.” A lot of the decision-making process was guided by what Schlingmann referred to as trusting that ‘gut feeling’. Schlingmann stated: “The ‘gut feeling’ is not something that can be actively learnt, but something a good publisher will develop over time.” Schlingmann also commented on the aggressively competitive relationships that are perceived to exist between fellow literary scouts. She stressed that in the UK this is not the case and literary scouts live in relative harmony. She added, “Only at London Book Fair does the atmosphere get a little more heated!”

Barlow, who works on non-illustrated non-fiction, stated that a lot of what goes into book publishing is about making snap decisions. He said: “The most important thing is finding a product which stands out. Being objective is important. Being realistic about what is going to sell is essential”. Barlow described how publishing is primarily to do with prioritising: “Identifying and understanding previous successes and failures will help this process”. Barlow elaborated on Schlingmann’s point that each country has its own market: “Some books do not travel well. They might have been a massive success in the US, but not all American books do well in the UK – different cultural values and different ideas about humour. For instance not every country is going to go nuts for The Bearded Tit!” Barlow recommended that above all a good publisher should be proactive and think ahead of their competitors, adding that “It is acceptable to follow external trends, but taking a new spin on it will give your concept more resonance.”
Shelley highlighted that intuition was the key to assessing the potential for a new book. He said: “You can tell when a book is a good idea when you can visualise it as a product. You should be able to see the cover and the blurb in your mind’s eye and imagine the sort of marketing campaign you would use”. He pointed out that the book trade responds to a confident arrival and remarked that self-belief is fundamental. Shelley disputed the current editorial trend for commissioning titles with pound signs and ‘Richard and Judy’s Book Club’ in mind: “The Richard and Judy effect has had a compulsive effect on publishers like Orion who dangerously spent their budget pushing Diane Setterfield’s The Thirteenth Tale based on the conviction it would be chosen for ‘Richard and Judy’s Book Club’ only for it to fail.” Shelley claimed to be a firm advocate in publishing a book for traditional reasons: “Publish a book because it is brilliant!” He also stressed that above all one must keep as sense of proportion: “Failure is part of the game. You have to get back in the saddle and try again.” Lastly Shelley stated that the key to success is to keep a good business head and contests the common misconception that an editor’s job is solely about creativity. He said: “You need more than a love of stories and language. Commercial awareness is mandatory. You must nurture the ability to match figures to your ideas.”
The Society of Young Publishers looks forward to a range of talks from publishing experts over the forthcoming months. After an influx of surprise offerings from the likes of Madonna and Katie Price, the topic for March will be ‘Children’s publishing: The age of the celebrity author?’
Careers Conference 2007 - Lunchtime Guest of Honour: Gordon Graham
'It's Going To Be A Big Year!'
New Social Secretary Angie Solomon is sure to have some exciting events lined up, and with three fresh speaker meeting Coordinators, keep your eye on Facebook, the SYP website, and press and publicity emails for upcoming SYP activity.

SYP Careers Conference - Alison Baverstock's Ethical Marketing Workshop
Alison Baverstock’s first book How to Market Books, is often referred to as the 'bible of marketing' so we were grateful to her for leading the marketing workshop at the SYP conference. She began by raising the point that it is hard to make the word ethical make sense in this context – is ethical marketing an oxymoron? In many ways perhaps it is – in the world of marketing where departments spend huge sums of money where the benefits or effects are not easily quantifiable.
However Alison argued that in today’s climate where younger generations are growing up increasingly ethically aware, which will in turn lead to a new band of consumers who are more demanding on businesses, no department will be left unaffected.
Alison urged us, as young publishers to take responsibility for this change. She touched on the issue of author treatment, and being respectful and paying fair amounts for work. She also urged us to be discriminating about the kind of books that we actually publish. For example, don’t we have a moral duty to provide quality goods, and to not make assumptions about consumers? (She used the opposite example of the influx of ‘ghost-written’ celebrity biographies that are currently saturating the market and are often pulped after poor sales).
Finally she made the point that in marketing there is often a trade-off between being environmentally friendly and getting the job done. Sometimes an email just won’t suffice so posting flyers is important. What about the waste of paper from the books that don’t sell? The carbon footprint of flying across the world to attend conferences?
Obviously things won’t change overnight but if young publishers can even make the smallest changes to respect authors, respect consumers and respect the environment then the world of publishing will be better for it.
by Kate Hind
Careers Conference 2007 - Literary Agent Workshop
In the literary agent workshop, Pat White gave a fascinating insight into the role of a literary agent and their place in the publishing industry today. Entering publishing as a secretary for Simon and Schuster in the late 1950's, Pat moved into their rights department before moving to London where she remains to this day as a director of Rogers, Coleridge and White Ltd looking after the children and illustrated list.
White began the workshop by asking delegates what they thought the role of a literary agent was before giving her own definition - a gatekeeper between author and publisher who is somewhat of a solicitor and a nanny for the author, delivering both good and bad news. Therefore, excellent communication skills are key for any literary agent.
These people skills are paramount, especially when it comes to talking authors through exactly what has been offered in a deal. In doing this, it is important for any agent to establish why a publisher has offered the deal they have although in her experience she has not always found publishers forthcoming with this information.
As well as being a good communicator, White believes that an agent has to have a broad spectrum of knowledge and needs to know aspects of the industry like production and publicity. In agenting, however, people often become specialists and Pat believes that to be an agent one must develop their own sense of taste.
Backing her own tastes is one of the things White loves most about being an agent but told delegates that an agent is basically a sales person with no editorial input and this is why the author-editor relationship is vital as editors spend less and less time on books.
White was also keen to dispel the image of the literary agent as a money-grabbing mercenary, highlighting that often the highest deal offered to an author is not necessarily the right deal and other factors must be taken into account.
In this respect, she described her frustration at the trend for handing out large, unearned advances to authors as when these are not justified and sales do not meet expectations, subsequent smaller advances can greatly damage the author's happiness and an unhappy author is an agent's worst nightmare.
Overall, this workshop gave those in attendance an interesting glimpse of an agent's life and increased their understanding of this oft-misunderstood role.
By Tommy Douglas
Careers Conference 2007 - Magazine Publishing Workshop
Leander Reeves began an interesting and entertaining magazine publishing workshop by telling delegates that success in the magazine business was very much dependant on the type of personality each individual possesses.
With a decade's experience working in the magazine publishing industry and now lecturer in the subject at Oxford Brookes University, Reeves expertise was evident as she gave those in attendance a rundown of magazine publishing today.
The industry was in good health, she said, highlighting the fact that the majority of British adults still buy a magazine on a regular basis, especially women and those in key demographic areas. These magazines are read on average by 4 people and for 54 minutes each.
As such, magazines perform several functions for their readers; offering a shared society, sense of belonging whilst also representing a form of tension release.
To flourish in this industry, Leander told delegates that certain basic skills are required including planning, writing, production, design and the ability to market and promote.
Therefore, for anyone wishing to enter magazine planning she urged them to see their career like a game of chess, viewing each position or development experience as a move towards a desired goal.
The best preparation, Reeves suggested, is to develop a personal website and utilise this to build experience as when it comes to looking for employment, magazines look not just for qualifications but proof of what an individual can actually do.
This is the reason, she insists, that gaining skills in Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe InDesign, QuarkXpress and Dreamweaver are essential for anyone entering the world of magazine publishing so they can cope with the broad spectrum of work this involves.
Overall, Leander Reeves presented a highly entertaining and informative workshop that provided many valuable insights into magazine publishing whilst giving delegates a clear idea of the requirements for entry into this industry.
By Tommy Douglas
Bar Red Taken Over
The SYP Committee arrived recently at London's Trendy Bar Red on Beak Street in style as the wine flowed and various young publishers got talking to existing members of the Committee - with a view to perhaps taking the roles that will be vacated in January. Angie Solomon from the Committee was the organiser, and by all accounts, much fun was had by all. Newshound, of course, remains doggedly impartial.
See what I did there?
NH


