Could this device really spell the end of books?

Shouts the Metro in one of many obits in today's press for the printed form. As with virtually every newspaper article that starts with a question, the answer, of course, is no.

Hard Times

The announcement by Picador that from next year they’ll publish new novels as hardbacks and paperbacks simultaneously has led to the predictable pieces about The End Of The Hardback. I’m not sure that’s true, and even it is was, it’d be a shame. The older I get, the fonder I become of hardback editions – there’s something satisfyingly comforting and weighty about them. A bit like vinyl records (which I also love) as opposed to CDs, or those old British passports rather than their modern day flexible replacements. The funny thing is that the newspapers heralding the death of the hardback are the same ones who won’t review anything unless they are out in hardback in the first place. Maybe I’m not the only one who is old fashioned after all.

The Other Side of the Wall

Older readers may remember an advert for Nat West back in the 1980s, where a spotty youth talks the viewer through his job (the cash machine is ‘a bit like a photocopier, except the paper is more expensive’) – and come Friday night, he’s on the other side of the wall, it not being all work, work, work you know. Writing and getting a book published, I guess, is the publisher’s equivalent of being on the other side of the wall. The book I've co-written is Shopping While Drunk, and is now available from all (well, some) bookshops. It’s interesting to see the process from the author’s angle, and so far, it’s a salutary reminder to me why being published by a big house is not always the panacea of publishing: corrections to manuscript? Not taken in. Contact from either editor or publicist on publication? None. Publicity and marketing generated by publisher to support the book? None. Sales last week? 28.

Paris and be Damned

To Paris, to take a selection head-office buyers to meet an author. It’s one of those days where you can’t quite believe everything is going to happen: we’re coming in from London, the restaurant is on the other side of Paris from the station, the author is coming in from Germany and doesn’t have a mobile phone. But somehow it works. It’s almost a hark back to an earlier age: these days, not only are the chains wary of letting people go on such trips, but even when they are allowed to go, prising people from their desks can prove tricky. But when it does come off, as on this trip, it’s very much worth it. As much as you can talk up a book yourself, it’s never the same as letting authors – and their enthusiasm – speak for themselves.

If It's Half Term It Must Be Christmas

To Waterstone’s Piccadilly, for a recce of what books are looking good for this Christmas, and what might ideas might be ripe for next. No, I’m not feeling particularly festive either, but the décor is up and the big guns are out: Gordon Ramsey is in the foyer, signing copies and saying ‘fuck’ a lot. Meanwhile, as a publisher, one cannot both be amazed and slightly deflated at the sheer volume of titles fighting for attention. Take the humour selection. There are two huge tables full to bursting, with further books stacked on the floor by the side, three display units of more titles and a further acre of shelves, with even more offerings.

It’s a bewildering choice: how does a punter make a decision about what to buy? How does any book break out of such saturation? What’s more, one can’t but help notice how few new ideas there are on display. The bestsellers of previous years are voluminous in being parodied to death – I count three spoof Miscellanies, four Timewaster Letters take-offs, even a couple of cod Is It Just Me or Is Everything Shits – mockingly suggesting everything is, in fact, great. The few books that are based on original ideas – including our own verily brilliant The Internet Now In Handy Book Form! – stick out like sore thumbs. One can only hope they buck what is otherwise a somewhat depressing picture.

The Glamorous World of Publishing Part Two

Here's an example of just some of the glamorous publishing things I've actually been up to in the last few weeks: dealing with the fallout of storms off the coast of Scandinavia, causing books to be delivered late into the warehouse; coping with the beast of Bodmin (I think) causing another printers' binding machine to give up the ghost just as another book is due for publication; having teeth pulling contract negotiations with various agents over small print hypothetical never-actually-going-to-happen situations; placating authors who want to make changes to their books after they have already gone to print; attempting to get an internet bookseller to change the information displayed on their various pages; debating why calling someone a 'nightmare' is libellous, but 'high maintenance' is ok.
After all that I just haven't had the energy left for all the hating and knife sharpening and back stabbing and whatever else it is I'm apparently meant to be up to. Not to mention that my sparkly dress is at the dry cleaners ...

The Glamorous World of Publishing Part One

From The Times on Friday: 'the usually sedate, dignified, slow-moving world of books is in uproar, transfixed by one of the bitterest and most gripping feuds to have affected the literary world. Phones are ringing off the hook, rumours are flying about rampantly, long-held grievances are aired as knives are sunk deep, and usually anonymously, into the backs of old rivals. “On the surface we all get on brilliantly, but on a personal level we all f***ing loathe each other,” as the editorial director of one of the country’s largest publishing houses cheerfully confided yesterday. “I’ll tell you everything but it’s career death if I go on record.' Goodness, publishing sounds exciting. Or does this journalist want to be a fiction writer, perchance?