Me And My Big Mouth

Archive: The Bookseller, January 2011

Here's my most recent Bookseller column which I don't think ever made it on to their website.

If you don't have time to read it here's the short version: most books that are sold don't get read and we shouldn't really worry about it.

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I write to you as the newly crowned Bookseller Fantasy League Champion for 2010 [pauses for applause]. Those who took part may want to know my winning strategy so they can emulate my success in 2011. I could claim that it was down to my sixteen years experience as a retailer – the old boy’s still got it and all that – but the truth is far simpler.

Mine was the only team, I believe, that included the top three bestselling books of this Christmas – Jamie Oliver, Guinness and that bleedin’ meerkat. Most people could have predicted the first two but the last was somewhat of a surprise hit. It will certainly have come as a shock to Horace Bent, the competition organiser, who included it as one of the cheapest selections on the original entry form. He won’t make the same mistake next year with Churchill the dog, the Go Compare opera singer or whoever else may jump on the publishing bandwagon, I am sure of that.

But apart from being the most popular titles in our nation’s bookshops this festive season, these bestsellers have another thing in common – like all books, many copies will receive no more than a cursory browse, never to be opened again.

We can be very precious in our industry, hence all the stuffy ‘what is the world coming to?’ comments when A Simples Life first took off, but we often forget that a book sold is not necessarily a book read. At Christmas, books are just one of numerous options for people purchasing gifts. Of course it is great when someone presents us with a wonderful book that we go on to love but, more often than not, a book for Christmas is just a convenient option to tick someone off the list: Nigella for mum, the new Clarkson for dad, a Blue Peter annual for the kids. Job done, at least it is if you are purchasing purely for stereotypes.

And let’s be honest, a huge proportion of these Christmas books will be left to gather dust alongside the bubble bath and dodgy after shave of this past festive season. But, and here I finally get to my point, this really doesn’t matter. I would even go as far as to say that it is vital we continue to publish books that lots of people will flick through once or twice and never turn to again. Our very livelihoods depend on books being viewed as viable gifts, no matter what the recipients do with them.

Take away all the books that will never be read and British publishing would collapse overnight. It is, after all, the thought that counts, especially if that thought gets some much needed money into bookshop tills. Now, where’s my bloody prize? ;

Archive: The Times, August 2006

This is a piece I wrote for The Times just after leaving Waterstone's in 2006. It is fascinating to see how much has changed since then, and quite how much has stayed the same.

The book world finds itself in a bit of a mess. The past twelve months have seen round after round of in-fighting that has, at times, resembled the bitchy battle between the Cybermen and Daleks in the Dr Who finale. We have seen agents turn on publishers; the president of the Association of Authors’ Agents describing them as ‘children with attention deficit disorder’. Watched publishers jostling with each other for the coveted position of biggest in the UK, currently held by Hachette (having bought up lots of smaller companies in a recent feeding frenzy). And seemingly everyone in the industry attacking Waterstone’s when they announced their intention to buy Ottakars.

You could be mistaken for thinking that ours was a spiteful and vindictive business and that would be a shame. It is actually populated by a friendly, creative and vibrant group of people who care passionately about books and reading. Sure, they can be overly precious at times but with some justification. You can pop into a high street store and walk out with a work of art that could change your life for under a tenner. There is no other industry or artform where you can do that and it deserves to be protected but that doesn’t mean it should stand still and resist all change.

I have been described on more than one occasion as ‘the most powerful man in publishing’, something that will look great on a CV (and I am considering having it trademarked) but which is clearly nonsense. If there is an individual with real power it is you, dear reader.  Publishers and retailers alike would kill to find out what you are going to read next, which books you will recommend to your friends and what design of cover will make you pick up a book in the first place. You are the creator of word-of-mouth success. It is a power that gives you huge clout in this industry and one that you can use to change it.

If you are unhappy that your local Ottakar’s is now a Waterstone’s, don’t shop there. If you think that supermarket knockdown prices are killing independent bookstores then resist the urge to pop a thriller in your trolley next time you are in Asda. Retailers are obsessed with market share and it wouldn’t take many of you to vote with your wallets to put the wind up them. When market share drops retailers change what they are doing.

Publishers have a similar obsession but theirs is with chart positions. Being in the Top 10 or securing the number one slot is the be all and end all for many.They will spend fortunes on marketing and discounts, often up to 70% off the cover price, just to ensure they get a high chart place on week of publication. 

They are also becoming more and more excited by short-term success, signing up authors who are only ever going to deliver one book but will do so in a frenzy of paparazzi flashbulbs. This Christmas you won’t be able to move for celebrity biographies (I use the word celebrity in the loosest sense), and this current passion for pop culture is at the expense of building the careers and readership of a fine array of wonderful authors. 

If this bothers you, if this trend makes you uncomfortable, then once again you have the power to change things. When you are out shopping don’t hang around the front of store checking out the 3 for 2 tables and money-off shelves, give yourself a bit more time and explore further into the store to find something different. Better still, grab a bookseller and ask them to recommend something not on the bestseller lists. You are almost certain to end up with something original and more than likely better than you would have otherwise. 

Another factor stifling new talent in this country is the agent-publisher model. Agents take on authors they think have commercial potential, spruce them up a bit and then tout them round the publishing houses looking for the highest bidder. Some agents have such big reputations that editors will drop everything to attend to their submissions. As a system it can work very well and has produced many of the best books of the past twenty years but it is such an established arrangement that it has a stranglehold on our industry. We have reached a point where many big publishers source 95% of their new books from agents and many of those agents no longer view unsolicited work. When you have such a rich seam of new writing in this country, much of it just a few clicks away on the internet, this is a travesty.

So while the major publishers continue to write out cheques with many zeroes it is the independent publishing sector that are doing much of the innovating. Some of the best fiction being published today is coming from places such as Maia, Marion Boyars and snowbooks. More established ‘indies’ in the form of Profile and Canongate are challenging the big boys at the top of the bestseller charts. And outfits like my new employers The Friday Project are sourcing talent and material from across the globe through the internet, bypassing the agent system almost completely.

The music industry, in which I worked for over a decade, has a thriving independent scene that is feted, applauded and supported by the media. It is diverse and eclectic and its audience actively seeks it out. The same cannot be said for publishing. Small independent publishers are rarely reviewed in the broadsheets even though their books are frequently as good as those coming from the big publishers. It is hard, often impossible, for you to find out which books are coming soon and whether they are good, bad or indifferent. This dearth of support from the established media has led to some wonderful resources on the world wide web as disgruntled readers take it upon themselves to debate, discuss and enjoy new writing.  You are going to find more of interest at www.palimpsest.org, www.bookandreader.com or www.spikemagazine.com than you will in many weekend book sections, present company excepted.

Of course, it is entirely possible that you find yourself unaffected by the ongoing publishing shenanigans. You may indeed be delighted with the shelves of books that greet you as you enter your local high street store. The broadsheet press could very well have your tastes bang on the money and prove to meet all your reading needs. If so, fantastic, ignore me, I will go away in a minute.

If, on the other hand, you recognise the issues above and they are important to you then you really can make a difference. Where you shop, what you buy and when you buy it has enormous impact. The mere fact that you choose to read books at all puts you in a valuable minority and your voice matters. Use it wisely, and well.

Archive: The Bookseller, August 2008

Here is a column I wrote a couple of years ago. When I started buying for Waterstone's we would just place one order for each title in the 3 for 2. Once it was gone, it was gone. A different offer with different books would follow a month later. It worked extremely well and led to big opening weekends and a genuine interest from customers as to what would turn up in the next promotion. We had to stop this after less than a year though as stores were unable to cope with stock selling out and at what point to take a book out of the offer and revert to full price. That's why you will see some books in the 3 for 2 or BOGOF or whatever all year round. Anyway, one side effect is that you don't see queues of people outside bookshops very often.

I couldn’t believe my eyes. I was standing outside a bookshop on a summer Saturday and it was heaving. I am not talking about a bit of a queue. The place was rammed with people jostling for position and buying piles of books.

This doesn’t happen in bookshops. They are normally such civilised, reserved and, dare I say it, quiet places outside of Harry Potter season. So, why all the fuss?

Sadly it was because of a closing down sale. British Bookshops shut their Windsor branch last weekend and were flogging off everything at half price. The young and old of the royal town were steaming in there to pick up a bargain.

I have seen similar crushes in the Next Sale or the HMV Christmas Clearout, but rarely in a bookshop. Why doesn’t the first day of a new 3 for 2 have people queuing outside or pushing each other out of the way to get their mitts on a bargain?

Well probably because a) half the books in the new offer will have been in the previous one, and b) they’ll be around for weeks and months to come. There is no sense of urgency from the customer because they know that all the bestselling books are going to be in a promotion for as long as they remain bestsellers.

You can’t blame retailers for that. If the books in a multibuy were only in the offer for a week or two then they might well fly out the door, but what happens once they have gone?  Readers do not, and will not, gravitate to full price books in sufficient numbers. The pull of the multibuy is too strong.

Having said that, the most successful bookshop offers are usually the ones that don’t last very long. Just think back to the glory days of the Waterstone’s Christmas offer of the week, or the WH Smith ‘this weekend only’ chart deals. They sold lots of books in a very short space of time.  These sorts of offers excite people. They also pull in punters who are not frequent book buyers, and when competition is so intense across the whole high street that is no minor detail.

I am not suggesting that retailers should change their entire strategy because a bunch of middle-class shoppers got all hyperactive over one closing down sale, but it would be nice to think that there is something round the corner that will energise and excite both the consumer and the industry as the credit crunch gets ever more crunchier.

It will be interesting to see what the autumn and Christmas promotions have in store.

Conspiracy Theory

You may be interested in this article I have written for The View From Here website.

It is about the alleged Booker conspiracy against Howard Jacobson, why I have never finished any of his books and includes a short rant about brilliant books that hardly anyone else has read.

Future Savagery

Here's a piece I wrote last night for the FutureBook website.

It is all about our exciting plans for publishing In Praise of Savagery by Warwick Cairns as an ebook a full six months before the print edition.

Are we mad?

Only time will tell.

Archive: Slightly Foxed Book Hound, Spring 2005

The literary quarterly Slightly Foxed used to have a regular column called The Book Hound. It ran in the early days of the magazine and would pick out some hidden gems from the current crop of new books that had just been published. What isn't widely known is that I was the person behind these columns. Here is one from Spring 2005. Actually, I think this is an unedited version as the final one that went to print only featured four titles.

Our publishing insider selects the pick of the books that will be appearing in bookshops as we go to press but may well get lost behind piles of bestsellers…

Richard Mabey - Nature Cure

There is nothing more likely to make me depressed than reading a book about surviving depression, but Nature Cure is a remarkable exception. Richard Mabey is the award-winning natural history writer responsible for the ground-breaking Flora Britannica. When he slipped into a severe depression in 1999 he was left emotionally and physically crippled, unable to do anything besides lie in bed staring at the wall. He found himself isolated, penniless and, worst of all perhaps, numb to the joys of nature that had been his inspiration for so many years. This warm and embracing memoir tells of his slow recovery, sparked by a move from the leafy Chilterns to the fens of East Anglia. As Mabey begins to explore this new landscape he makes far more personal and intimate discoveries that bring him truly back to life.

Taichi Yamada - Strangers

Hamada, newly divorced, runs into his parents in a Tokyo suburb and finds his life turned upside down. For Hamada was orphaned when he was 12 years old, and the couple he now begins to visit each weekend have not aged a day since the motorbike accident that killed them 30 years before. The more time he spends with his parents the more disenfranchised he becomes with the ‘real’ world, with the notable exception of his new girlfriend (who appears to be battling her own ghosts anyway). This is Yamada’s first novel to be translated into English and is an unusally literary ghost story which keeps you hooked right up to the truly thrilling ending.

John Griesemer - Signal and Noise

This is an epic beast of a novel which was published without any fanfare early last year and seems set to have an equally anonymous launch into paperback in 2005. I suspect the publisher does not know what to do with a Dickensian novel from an American actor who chooses as his subject matter the laying of the first transatlantic telegraph cable in the 1860s. Hardly the blurb for a bestseller! Nonetheless, Signal & Noise already has a cult following amongst its small readership and authors such as Richard Russo and George Saunders have been hailing it a masterpiece. A rich, vibrant tale of industry, invention, adultery and Victorian PR which manages to move from the ocean bed to the sewers of London with wit and style.

Nigel Hinton - Time Bomb

Four friends gather together on the last day of primary school; their final day as a gang before age, and religion, take them off to new schools and new friends. One of them, Eddie, manages to get into serious trouble with the head teacher on this of all days and the four are forced to unite one more time. And then they find the unexploded bomb. It is London, 1949, and their lives are never going to be the same again. Hinton has crafted a wonderful children’s novel which bears comparison with other WWII classsics such as The Silver Sword and The Machine Gunners. What he manages to do so well is create believeable adult characters who inhabit the children’s world, informing his novel with the suspicious innocence of his 10 year old boys without ever patronising the reader. Grown ups and kids will enjoy this book.

Etgar Keret - The Nimrod Flip Out

If your bookshelves, like mine, are somewhat lacking in the Contemporary Israeli Fiction department then look no further than this nutcase. Keret is clearly insane and has produced one of the most bizarre collections of stories in living memory. My favourites are the one about a young man whose new girlfriend turns into a fat, beer-swilling, hairy old bloke every night at midnight or the bemused narrator who has life-altering conversations with a pessimistic fish. Short story collections have rarely been successful in this country, this being one cultural area where the Americans actually beat us hands down in terms of appreciation, so this book doesn’t stand a hope in hell but it deserves an audience.

Archive: The Worst Of The Booker

With the winner of the Man Booker Prize announced last night I thought it might be fun to give this piece I wrote for The Times back in 2008 an airing. Apologies to Jonathan Cape who were nice enough to invite me to their Booker party last night.

Midnight’s Children. Midnight’s bloody Children. I can safely say that it is the most over-rated book it has ever been my misfortune to read. I still have nightmares about it, most them involving chutney, and now it has gone and won the Best of the Booker Prize.

In its 40 year history the Booker has recognised some of the finest novels ever written. I just don’t think Midnight’s Children is one of them. And I am not alone. I appreciate that many readers consider it a work of genius, I just feel duty bound to point out that a greater number of us simply don’t get it.

But Midnight’s Children isn’t the worst book to win the prize, far from it. The judges have selected some real clunkers in the past, many of which could stake a claim to be the Worst of the Booker. Boyd Tonkin famously let rip when John Banville pipped Kazuo Ishiguro to the 2005 prize. He called it ‘possibly the worst… and perhaps the most indefensible choice’ since the award began.

Thousands of readers have been baffled by Kerri Hulme’s The Bone People since it won over 20 years ago. Few people today would seriously suggest Hotel du Lac as a better book than Empire of the Sun, which it beat to the top spot in 1984.

This is not the only example of a superior work losing out to a novel that readers have subsequently failed to take to their hearts. Atonement missed out to the comma-less True History of the Kelly Gang. Cloud Atlas, A Month in the Country and Waterland were all beaten by books that have arguably proved less enduring. And then we have the curious blip that was DBC Pierre’s Vernon God Little, considered in 2003 to be a finer work than Brick Lane or Notes on a Scandal. I am not sure many people share that view in 2008.

But the worst Booker Prize winner ever? Step forward Ian McEwan and his 1998 novel Amsterdam. Even the author’s biggest fans consider it to be his weakest book and yet it beat The Restraint of Beasts and Master Georgie. Someone must have slipped something into the judge’s tea. Nigella Lawson was one of their number that year. I am saying nothing more.

All of which may lead you to believe that I dislike the Booker Prize. Nothing could be further from the truth. I love the damned thing. I probably enjoy it more when a bad book wins than when they give it to one I adore. Getting annoyed about it is all part of the fun. And boy, am I annoyed about Midnight’s Children.

Archive: Five Myths About Bookselling

Here is an article I wrote for The Author magazine back in 2005 when I was still Buying Manager at Waterstone's. It is interesting to note how much has, and has not, changed in that time.

Five Myths About Bookselling

I feel somewhat conspicuous as a retailer within the pages of The Author, but I am here on a mission. I have been tasked with debunking some of the myths that surround bookselling in this country. These are too numerous to tackle them all here but I will attempt to shed some light on the more common questions and misconceptions, in no particular order.

A good review will help to sell my book

In a recent Bookseller column I claimed that newspaper reviews don’t sell books. It caused a bit of a stir. I was being slightly mischievous with my comments but they were based on fact.

Around two years ago we introduced New & Recently Reviewed displays across the chain. A table at the front of each of our stores was given over to books that featured in press reviews, most notably the broadsheets. After six months we scrapped the whole thing. The books just didn’t sell. It remains the least successful activity we have ever run.

But why should this be? We have all been prompted to buy a book after reading a good review. Surely a promotion as described above would be a sure fire winner? That’s what I thought, but how wrong I was. One of the reasons for the apparent lack of interest, in my opinion, is the nature of the titles that the broadsheets review.

A full page review of a book on the history of wolves in America doesn’t appear to whip the reading public into a frenzy. What a surprise. Too many column inches are given over to books that very few people want to read.

I was criticised following the article for daring to suggest that literary editors should review books solely so that I can sell more copies. That wasn’t what I was saying. My point was that if a newspaper reviews a book which then doesn’t sell they have clearly reviewed a book that was of little interest to their readers. Judging by my email inbox immediately afterwards quite a few people agree, and two-thirds of the people mailing support were authors.

Since that article (and completely unprompted by it I hasten to add) Erica Wagner has revamped the The Times Books section and come up with a lively and inspiring supplement which I am sure will prompt many people to check out a range of new books, whether that be through bookshops, the internet, or libraries. It is a pleasure to read and I can already see its influence on what we are selling.

Bookshops are only interested in bestsellers

I have a confession to make. I love bestsellers. The clue is in the name really. They are the bestselling books in the country and without them most bookshops, from the smallest independent to the largest chain, would be very quiet places indeed (if they managed to stay in business that is).

We all need bestsellers. The fact that my company sells tens of thousands of The Da Vinci Code every month means that we can afford to stock a great book of poetry that only sells one copy in the same period of time. It is all a question of balance. It may look like all we sell are the stacks of paperbacks from the front of the shops but in reality these are only a small part of our business.

If you add together all the 3 for 2s, all the piles FOS and all the books we discount they represent less than a quarter of our total sales. The vast majority of the books we sell are backlist from the A-Zs, and we like it that way. The offers and promotions can lure customers in, but once they are browsing they seem more than happy to explore even the farthest corners of our displays.

The buyers in the big chains know a great deal about retail but not so much about books

If we were really only experts in one and not the other then we wouldn’t last very long. The truth is that we have to be good at both. All of the people I have worked with in my buying team are passionate about books and feel privileged to be able to work with them. We understand the influence we can have on the book buying public and try to use that wisely. That’s not to say we don’t occasionally sneak in one of our favourites though, something I am sure the authors of those books don’t mind at all.

Publishers can bribe their way front of store

Perhaps ‘bribe’ is too strong a word. ‘Buy their way front of store’ may sum up the perception more accurately. Most retailers ask for a marketing contribution when they put a book into a campaign or promotion. This money is used to help promote the campaign, and the book itself, through point-of-sale material, window displays and/or press advertising. Publishers have specific budgets for this activity. The important point to note is that this money is spent on books that have already been selected for promotion. The money itself doesn’t buy you space, the books have to make it into the offer on their own merit first. It is vital that the decision making process is always focussed on the book itself.

Believe it or not we read a decent chunk of most of books that come our way. It can be a real task, and doesn’t always prove popular with our loved ones when we keep the bedside lamp burning into the wee small hours, but it does ensure that we get behind the books we truly believe are the best in their field. These are the books that get front of store and no amount of money will make us put a book into a promotion if we do not think our customers will like it.

The 3 for 2 has become too powerful

Getting your book in to our 3 for 2 campaign can boost sales by as much as 5000%. It is a staggering statistic and one that highlights the strength of such an offer. Great news if your book is selected. Not so great if you are left out. Does that make it too powerful? I guess it depends on who you ask.

One major benefit to the 3 for 2s which often gets ignored is the ‘third choice factor’. Many readers use the third choice, which they consider their freebie, to take a bit of a risk. They buy books they have never heard of before just because they like the cover. They finally invest in a title they have been meaning to read for years. Some delve into backlist. Others try a genre that they have previously avoided. It is an invitation to experiment and, as with all experiments, some will fail but many go on to spark wonderful discoveries and this is why I think the considerable power of the 3 for 2s can be a good thing for us all.

I hope this short piece has managed to touch on a few of the issues that are important to authors and answered some questions and queries. In truth, the agenda of author and bookseller are not that different, we both want to get the widest readership possible for the books we are involved in and long may that continue.

Repeat: Anyone For e-Proofs?

This was a Bookseller column I wrote back in 2006. I still think it is a pretty neat idea. Needless to say, fuck-all progress has been achieved in this area.

Here’s an idea. Now, I cannot pretend it is fully thought through and I am sure it needs a great deal of refining for it to work. So consider it a nugget, thrown out there to see what happens.

It attempts to address a long-standing source of frustration and expense within our industry while, at the same time, embracing the new technologies that we all seem so tentative about.

First, the frustrating issue. Proofs are a subject of frequent debate: they cost publishers a fortune to produce; retailers get inundated with them and end up piling most up unwanted; authors and agents get miffed when they end up on eBay. The whole proof system is unsatisfactory, inefficient and hugely wasteful.

As for the technology. E-books and e-readers have been buzzing around the book world for some time and have been more or less swatted away till now. But there is a growing opinion that they are starting to make a bigger dent in what we read and how we read it. If only the major figures in the industry understood them, or better still, actually used them, who knows where it may lead.

So what’s the big idea?

The Publishers’ Association (or some other interested group) stumps up for a skipload of e-readers (I am sure they could get a good deal). These are then distributed, free of charge, to the key buyers and tastemakers. By this I mean the important head office and store buyers, literary editors, influential bloggers, reviewers and the like.

In return for the free hardware the recipients agree to make themselves available to receive sample chapters and proofs by email or online which they can then download onto their lovely shiny e-reader. Essentially they no longer receive printed proofs, they get e-proofs instead.

My fag packet scenario has the individuals being sent just the first few chapters of books, unsolicited. They can choose whether to read them or not but, if they do and want to read more, they simply request the full text from the publisher.

By targeting the bigger industry figures in this way the publishers will have sorted those responsible for the bulk of sales and media coverage for their books and removed the need to produce proofs in such vast quantities, or perhaps at all in some cases.

Of course, it is still important to get advance copies of books into the hands of booksellers around the country and, as such, I believe there will always be a need for some printed proofs. Just not so many and not in such volume.

Another benefit of the idea is that it enables smaller, independent publishers to get on the proof merry-go-round; most cannot afford to print proofs at the moment. The e-proof proposal is marvellously egalitarian and open to publishers of all sizes. It should be of particular benefit for non-fiction titles as these are currently not proofed as often as novels. You can also e-proof works in progress as a taster of things to come.

So there you go. It needs some work but it might be worth considering. Away you go.

A Difference Of Opinion

Luke Johnson, the man behind Borders before they went bust, said in a recent article that 'the high street book store is doomed'.

In my latest column for The Bookseller, I beg to differ.

Let Them Eat Cake

My latest column for The Bookseller is up on their website now. It is all about the Firestation Book Swap so do please pop on over and leave a comment if you have the time and/or inclination.

A vs. B

Quite a few people have picked up on Giles Coren's rant about sub-editors.  I first saw it on Max Dunbar's blog and I notice that Snowbooks and Mark Thwaite have mentioned it as well.

I do not know a great deal about Coren's work.  I was once a guest on Radio Five Live immediately after him and I have seen him in an advert for peas.  I greatly enjoyed his Supersizers series but that is the extent of my knowledge.

I certainly haven't read the column that he is moaning about but the gist of his complaint was that they changed the line:

I can't think of a nicer place to sit this spring over a glass of rosé and watch the boys and girls in the street outside smiling gaily to each other, and wondering where to go for a nosh.

to

I can't think of a nicer place to sit this spring over a glass of rosé and watch the boys and girls in the street outside smiling gaily to each other, and wondering where to go for nosh.

I had to read the thing a few times to work out what the difference was.  Some of you may do too.  Apparently he was annoyed about the removal of the word 'a' before 'nosh'.

The online debate seems to sway between 'is he a twat for f-ing and blinding about one petty word?' to 'at last those bastard sub-editors get it in the neck'.

It is certainly a lot of brouhaha over an A.

But what if it had been a B?

Commenting on Max's blog post brought back memories of my own sub-editing nightmare.

A few years back I interviewed Haruki Murakami for Waterstone's Books Quarterly.  It was around the time that Kafka on the Shore was coming out and much of the Q&A centred around that.  But towards the end I asked him what music he was listening to at the moment.  His reply was that the latest CDs by REM, Radiohead and Ryan Adams were pretty much always in his car.

Can you see where the B comes in yet?

I filed my copy and a few days later I had an email from someone at the magazine asking if I had got one of the names wrong.  Surely I meant Bryan Adams not Ryan Adams  While I am sure that Murakami has nothing against the Canadian rocker and his first real six string there is a fundamental and very crucial difference between the two and I made that perfectly clear.

Unfortunately, and despite my crystal clear clarification, someone in the sub-editing process decided that I must be wrong as they had never heard of Ryan Adams so added a fucking B to the finished article.

So while I do think that Giles Coren has perhaps been a little over the top in his rhetoric, I do have a great deal of sympathy for him.  But I would suggest that turning one of the world's greatest living writers into a Bryan Adams fan is a more serious offence than a bit of noshing.

You can read my interview with Murakami (minus the B) here where I recount the story again for the hard of hearing.

Ishiguro And Me In The Same Weekend

I enjoyed a brief superstar moment last week when I was interviewed for Japanese travel magazine Coyote.  My friend Motoyuki Shibata was in the UK on a fleeting visit with his wife as well as the editor and photographer for Coyote.  The main purpose for their visit was to attend the Kazuo Ishiguro conference in Liverpool but they were stopping off in London before their return and wanted to interview me.

So there I was in the National Portrait Gallery restaurant, chatting away animatedly while a photographer took shots from all sorts of angles drawing the attention of our fellow diners who were no doubt disappointed when they realised I was nobody famous.

We spoke about my time at Waterstone's, The Friday Project and their unique approach to publishing as well as what's hot and what's not in UK publishing.  Shibata is a vocal fan of Paul Auster (he has translated all of his novels into Japanese), Kelly Link, Nick Laird and Paul LaFarge and he had great fun when we decamped to the nearest bookshop where he picked up nearly everything I recommended.  So he left with Ray Robinson's Electricity, some Jasper Fforde, Tim Lott's latest (not that I'm a fan but I think Moto will like it), The Raw Shark Texts and some others that slip my mind for the moment.

I can't wait to see how the article turns out even though I won't be able to understand a word.

Bookseller Column: A Foot In The Door

I know some of you will have already seen this this in The Bookseller but for those who do not subscribe and are remotely interested in reading it (a minority, I grant you) here is my column from April.

A Foot In The Door

Some ex-colleagues have jokingly suggested that I got out of book retail just in time, and certainly the high street chains have not been having a their best spell of late, but as a publisher I can take no pleasure in that.  We need a healthy bricks and mortar book business in order to present our titles to readers.  The internet and supermarkets are great and sell lots of books, but people don’t browse when shopping with them – they do in Waterstone’s, Borders and the rest.  Most publishers, big and small alike, make books that sell more if we can convince people to pick them up and read a few pages, something that traditional bookshops are all about.

The challenge for small publishers, of course, is getting your work in the bookshops in the first place.  We are lucky at The Friday Project as our sales and distribution are handled by Macmillan.  This at least gets us through the door, but fellow independents can struggle to get their books seen at all.  One such publisher, who shall remain nameless, has only been in operation for a short while but has received a great deal of positive coverage in the press and online, especially among the literary blogs.  They have built a buzz, albeit a small one, and they seem on course to enjoy some real success in the months to come.  However, their books were not even considered by one major retailer as the buyer ‘had never heard of them’.  Surely buying decisions are made on the quality of the book, not on the notoriety of the publisher?  After all, most readers asked to name a list of publishers would draw a blank after Penguin.

Of course, one big handicap for the independent publishing sector is the past history of independent publishing itself.  So much of it has been, to be frank, pretty shit and retailers still have to wade through piles of uncommercial tomes to get to the ones that they can genuinely sell, and sell in quantity at that.  Perhaps they can be forgiven for not bothering.  However, in the current retail climate, with lots of negative figures flying around, it has to be beneficial for retailers to tap into the rich vein of independent publishing.

To make sure that happens, small publishers are going to have to become better at selling and promoting their wares.  Canongate and Profile slug it out with the majors nowadays, but they started small and have only grown because of the passion of the individuals running them and the creativity of the teams they employ.  They made retailers pay attention, and had good books to back them up. 

Waterstone’s enjoyed success with books that no one else supported when Peter Saxton took on the Independent Publisher Coordinator role which Caroline Mileham created.  It is great to see that work carrying on at Brentford and with the promise of more support for indies to come.  It is, as I said, a foot in the door.  But it is really up to publishers themselves to make the most of that opportunity.

Poets As Novelists

Those of you with long memories will recall that I was writing a magazine article on the above fascinating subject some time ago.  Lots of you offered suggestions of poets to investigate or include and I was grateful then and remain grateful now.  This is just a short post to let you know that the piece has finally been printed and, if you are interested, you can read it in the print version of THE Book Magazine.

The mag is produced by book wholesaler THE and on sale in independent bookshops up and down the country.  It has some interesting pieces this quarter including features on friend of Big Mouth Imran Ahmad, American author Dawn Powell and a really good selection of kids pages.

Bookseller Column: Pigeonhole At Your Peril

Here is an old column from January of this year, quite relevant in light of the Key To Chintak debate which has been raging further down the page.

Back in the old days, when I was a retailer, we went through a spell of trying to sell a wider range of titles.  We wanted to challenge the notion that certain genres were ‘not for us’.  Like many initiatives, it fizzled out after a while but did leave one rather interesting story in its wake.

We asked Random House if they would set up a meeting with one of their saga authors.  We wanted to chat about the genre and understand what made it tick.  And they came up trumps.

Jess Foley was one of the best writers in the genre with six-figure sales. By setting up this meeting, Random House were giving us access to the ideal person.  There was just one thing we needed to know.  Jess was actually a bloke.  A bloke called Bernard.  How could we resist?

Four of us were sent copies of Jess/Bernard’s most recent saga Wait For The Dawn.  We started it with some trepidation.  What if it was really crap?  What if we hated it?  Would we even be able to finish it?

We needn’t have worried.  Within a day we were hooked, coming in to the office each morning ready to bend each other’s ears about the latest plot twist.  Sure, it wasn’t Booker Prize material and it stuck to the rules of the genre but it was a bloody good story and expertly told.  We were looking forward to meeting the author.

And what a delight he was.  He seemed genuinely surprised that we had read the book and even more so that we had enjoyed it so much.  Bernard Taylor had started writing sagas after a career in crime fiction and non-fiction, winning a CWA Gold Dagger in the process.  He had a pedigree that shone through in his latest incarnation as Jess Foley.  But we couldn’t really sell many of his books, could we?

Previous Jess Foley novels had sold a few dozen copies throughout the whole chain and we’d struggle to change that.  Little A-format books with a girl in a bonnet on the cover were destined for supermarkets and Smiths, they weren’t for us.  But hang on, we had all enjoyed Wait For The Dawn, why wouldn’t our customers?

We had a brainwave.  For Bernard’s next book, why not give Waterstone’s a different jacket?  Something a bit Sarah Waters-esque perhaps?  It was a gamble but worth a try.  Full marks to Random House who supported the idea with a great cover when No Wings To Fly was published.  And what happened I hear you ask?  Sales of the new book were well into four figures.  Result.

If publishers and retailers are prepared to experiment a little and adapt for different markets then there is every chance that readers will follow.  As a postscript I hear that Taylor and Random House have parted company but am delighted to report that he is writing a new novel.  I, for one, am most intrigued to see who publishes it and how it will look.

It's Official. Nick Cohen Is A Bit Shit.

I notice on the Bookseller To The Stars blog (which I am proud to say I bookmark) that Fourth Estate have had to issue an erratum for insertion into Nick Cohen's current bestseller What's Left?: How Liberals Lost Their Way.  It reads:

"On page 358 it is said that Azar Nafisi dedicated her book, Reading Lolita in Tehran, to Paul Wolfowitz, which is not the case. The book is dedicated to her family."

Now I know that researching a non-fiction work can be a hard slog and we should forgive any writer the odd mistake, but not opening a book which you can find in any bookshop to check the bloody dedication is simply poor journalism.  Could it be that Nick Cohen is a bit shit?

Nick Cohen?  Nick Cohen?  Why does that name ring a bell?  Could he be the same Nick Cohen who wrote this article about me?  I guess if he is lazy and unprofessional enough to write a cheap and inaccurate attack on someone he has never met then it shouldn't surprise us that he doesn't get off his arse to check his facts when writing a whole book.

Now, rather than Fourth Estate inserting an erratum into Nick Cohen's book perhaps I could suggest something Nick Cohen could insert himself?  I would be happy to lend a hand.  Mind you, by the look on his face, perhaps someone beat me to it.

Bookseller Column: Anyone For e-Proofs?

Here is another of my old Bookseller columns, this one from December 2006.

Here’s an idea. Now, I cannot pretend it is fully thought through and I am sure it needs a great deal of refining for it to work. So consider it a nugget, thrown out there to see what happens.

It attempts to address a long-standing source of frustration and expense within our industry while, at the same time, embracing the new technologies that we all seem so tentative about.

First, the frustrating issue. Proofs are a subject of frequent debate: they cost publishers a fortune to produce; retailers get inundated with them and end up piling most up unwanted; authors and agents get miffed when they end up on eBay. The whole proof system is unsatisfactory, inefficient and hugely wasteful.

As for the technology. E-books and e-readers have been buzzing around the book world for some time and have been more or less swatted away till now. But there is a growing opinion that they are starting to make a bigger dent in what we read and how we read it. If only the major figures in the industry understood them, or better still, actually used them, who knows where it may lead.

So what’s the big idea?

The Publishers’ Association (or some other interested group) stumps up for a skipload of e-readers (I am sure they could get a good deal). These are then distributed, free of charge, to the key buyers and tastemakers. By this I mean the important head office and store buyers, literary editors, influential bloggers, reviewers and the like.

In return for the free hardware the recipients agree to make themselves available to receive sample chapters and proofs by email or online which they can then download onto their lovely shiny e-reader. Essentially they no longer receive printed proofs, they get e-proofs instead.

My fag packet scenario has the individuals being sent just the first few chapters of books, unsolicited. They can choose whether to read them or not but, if they do and want to read more, they simply request the full text from the publisher.

By targeting the bigger industry figures in this way the publishers will have sorted those responsible for the bulk of sales and media coverage for their books and removed the need to produce proofs in such vast quantities, or perhaps at all in some cases.

Of course, it is still important to get advance copies of books into the hands of booksellers around the country and, as such, I believe there will always be a need for some printed proofs. Just not so many and not in such volume.

Another benefit of the idea is that it enables smaller, independent publishers to get on the proof merry-go-round; most cannot afford to print proofs at the moment. The e-proof proposal is marvellously egalitarian and open to publishers of all sizes. It should be of particular benefit for non-fiction titles as these are currently not proofed as often as novels. You can also e-proof works in progress as a taster of things to come.

So there you go. It needs some work but it might be worth considering. Away you go.

Bookseller Column: The Death Of The 3 for 2?

I write a monthly column for the trade magazine The Bookseller.  Taking a leaf out of journalist Danuta Kean's book I thought I'd post old columns up here every now and again in case they are of interest and to see if they can reignite any debate.  The piece below was first published during November 2006.

The Death Of The 3 for 2?

It used to be the all-powerful mechanic.  Publishers rejoiced when their books were selected and wrote off advances when they weren’t.  The 3 for 2 could take an unknown author and make them a bestseller, it could pluck an old bit of backlist and resurrect it from oblivion.  It sold books.  Lots of books.  Millions of books.

The problem is, the 3 for 2 isn’t working any more.

It is still a force to be reckoned with, and most publishers would rather be in it that out of it, but it is showing signs of its age.  It is slowing down and getting weary.  It isn’t exciting people like it used to.  The author Ben Sherwood once described the 3 for 2 as ‘the crack cocaine of the book world’, now it is more like a cup of tea and slice of cake: warm, reassuring, nice to have around, but by no means addictive.

This presents retailers, all sectors of the industry really, with a problem.  If the 3 for 2 isn’t working then what do we replace it with?  One possible solution would be to give it a rest, introduce a variety of mechanics and vary things up a bit.

In the early days of the Product Department at Waterstone’s we experimented with all manner of mechanics – 2 for £10, Buy 2 Get 1 Free (yes, I know it is the same as a 3 for 2), Buy One Get One Half Price, 3 for £15, as well as others – and they all worked.  None of them worked quite as well as the 3 for 2 but they were all successful.  They varied the tone and encouraged different types of customers to try different things. 

The problem was that stores didn’t like the chopping and changing.  Renewing the offer every couple of months with a different mechanic was great for sales but was hard work for booksellers.  You could argue that other retail sectors cope fine but the reality is that we didn’t.  That put paid to that.  The most popular offer, the 3 for 2, was reinstated on a permanent basis.

But people have grown used to it, it doesn’t really peak any more - it ticks over.  It has become that dreadful retail phrase, a ‘hygiene factor’.  It protects sales rather than driving them.  So perhaps now is the time to try some change again.  Is it any coincidence that the sectors growing sales, the supermarkets and internet, rely less on multibuys and hardly ever the 3 for 2 at all?

The 3 for 2 has been a great servant to the world of publishing and will continue to be so, but perhaps it needs a bit of a rest and a helping hand in the years to come.

Read All About It (Digitally)

For those of you who can't be bothered to buy a copy of The Times just to see a picture of me, or those of a foreign persuasion who can't be bothered to live in Britain, here is the online version of my debate with Fay Weldon.

To be honest, I don't think the two of us disagree all that strongly, and her original piece was intended for a very different audience, but the basic premise for discussion is a decent one.  I have had an enjoyable bit of email banter with her since.