The Peripatetic Publisher

IMPRINTS: Skyhorse Takes Arcade for $548,000

2010-07-28T11:36:00.000-04:00

This, I hope is excellent news. Arcade was one of the great literary lists of the 20th century. Was fortunate enough to meet Richard Seaver at a couple of Frankfurts (though never quite managed to disengage any of his backlist for Northwestern...), Not everyone may know that he, along with the wonderful Austryn Wainhouse, was the translator of the works of the Marquis de Sade. Let's hope that Tony Lyons, an excellent publisher himself. Here is link to the Skyhorse press release.

Skyhorse Takes Arcade for $548,000

TECH TRENDS:How Publishers Can Use Foursquare

2010-07-08T11:32:00.000-04:00

I have been wondering about Foursquare and what possibilities lurk within it for publishers. MediaBistro have some suggestions which might be interesting, though it sounds like a lot of work for a publisher (except perhaps a travel publisher..) though good fun for the user. Especially perhaps for more unusual guides, like one of my favorite ones on the Beats in New York.

Interested to know if any publishers are actively using Foursquare?

How Publishers Can Use Foursquare

Books They Don't Want You To Read - Famous Brit Authors

2010-07-06T13:34:00.000-04:00

from the MobyLives blog, a nice story about when co-operation doesn't mean authorised and why Martin Amis doesn't want you to read about his life...and sad that when the big authors and their agents go into bat, not much a small publisher can do to stem the tide, libel laws being what they are in the UK.

Amis sics the Jackal on small UK publisher to kill biography

TECH TRENDS: WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND

2010-06-29T12:04:00.000-04:00

New Indie Bookselling Model: Publish Own Handselling Favorites

Many centuries ago, publishing was essentially the province of booksellers... now, the advent of POD machines and the lack of attention of many publishers seems to be reopening that particular door once more. This is an interesting model, one I think could be added to by an Espresso Book Machine, allowing customers to purchase any public domain (or any other book available through the service). It reinvigorates the indie bookstore, cuts out the expensive supply chain that has so decimated the profitability of the print book, but still supplies real books to actual people in a way that I still firmly believe is a model a vast number of readers appreciate.

Nick W-W

Penguin pulps Lolita after axing fictional foreword | theBookseller.com

2010-06-18T10:17:00.000-04:00

BOOKS - WELL FOREWORDS - THEY DON'T WANT YOU TO READ!

This does rather suggest that a whole bunch of people at Penguin didn't actually know much about the classic they were reprinting..it's just not enough (note well Google) to scan pages and dump them out there. Penguin Classics too of all imprints...

Penguin pulps Lolita after axing fictional foreword | theBookseller.com

Books They Don't Want You To Read - Anti-Putin book seized

2010-06-17T10:23:00.000-04:00

Russian police seized 100,000 copies of a book critical of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin that activists planned to hand out at the Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum.

A book written by two opposition politicians contains something interesting, clearly...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/7833181/Police-seize-100000-anti-Vladimir-Putin-books.html

Books They Don't Want You To Read: Egyptian Publisher Detained

2010-04-07T14:25:00.000-04:00

It seems unwise to publish books supporting the opposition in Egypt as there seems to be mounting fear of opposition gathering around Nobel Peace prize winner ElBareidi. Publishers aren't usually the ones arrested though, so this is particularly troubling for all opponents of censorship. It seems he has subsequently been released, so one assume this is meant as intimidation. This from The Guardian

Egyptian security forces arrest publisher

Jack Shenker in Cairo
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 4 April 2010 20.54 BST
Article history

Mohamed ElBaradei, the former head of the United Nations nuclear agency. Photograph: Asmaa Waguih/Reuters Photograph: Asmaa Waguih/Reuters/Reuters

The whereabouts of an Egyptian publisher who recently released a book lauding former UN nuclear watchdog Mohamed ElBaradei remained unknown last night, after his kidnap by security officials on Saturday morning.
The arrest and disappearance of Ahmed Mahanna has fuelled fears among opposition activists that the government is stepping up its crackdown on dissenters as ElBaradei's campaign for political reform gathers momentum.
"We're fearful for the safety of all the young supporters who are campaigning for genuine democracy," said Alaa al-Aswany, the bestselling author of The Yacoubian Building who has backed ElBaradei's call for change. "Those that are famous are in a position to defend themselves against the regime, but ordinary people are open to being victimised by the government."
ElBaradei, a Nobel Peace prize winner who has emerged as an unlikely challenger to the 28-year rule of President Hosni Mubarak, has spent the last few days ramping up his public appearances after an interview with the Guardian last week in which he called on the west to end its support for Egypt's "sham" democracy and other oppressive Arab regimes.
The 67-year-old used his online Twitter feed to condemn Mahanna's incarceration, claiming "the detention of a publisher of a book about me and my ideas of reform shows a repressive regime afraid of its own shadow." Mahanna, who runs the Dawan publishing house and also works as a blogger, published a book last month by Egyptian journalist Kamal Gebrayal entitled ElBaradei and the Dream of the Green Revolution.
According to the Arabic Network of Human Rights Information (ANHRI), Mahanna's house was raided by security forces at dawn on Saturday. The publisher has not been traced, but an Egyptian official confirmed to local media that he had been placed under arrest and that copies of the book were being confiscated. "The housebreaking and arrest of a publisher for a book about ElBaradei ... clearly shows the intention of the government to gag all dissenting voices," said ANHRI in a statement on Saturday.
ElBaradei has whipped up a media storm since his return to Cairo in February thanks to his highly public criticisms of the ruling NDP party and repeated demands for a "constitutional revolution" in one of the region's most stagnant political landscapes.
On Friday hundreds of supporters flocked onto the streets in the Nile Delta town of Mansoura, where ElBaradei launched the first stage of a national tour designed to spread his message of change.
"What I saw today doesn't need words and it reveals an overwhelming and burning desire for change among the Egyptian people," he announced to cheering crowds. "We are all partners in change, which won't take place until each one of you feels that he is responsible for change."
Meanwhile, it has come to light that Mahanna may have been released. The disclosure came from a police source speaking to the Associated Press news agency on condition of anonymity.

Great Book Lovers of Our Time

2010-04-07T08:28:00.000-04:00

Don't click until you can guess it...which great rock legend is considering library training to deal with the thousands of books in his country home (UK of course..)

It’s only books ’n’ shelves but I like it - Times Online

PUBLISHERS PAST: PHARMA PRODUCT PLACEMENT SHOCK!

2010-03-25T16:26:00.000-04:00

One of this blog's areas of interest is in publishers past. I'm working on a book proposal PUBLISH AND BE DAMNED which will look at the actual publishers of controversial and dangerous books...and occasionally this blog will feature publishers from the past. As a trained historian, one of my interests is how nothing is that new in the world..and that is certainly true in an industry that has been around a good eight hundred years.

So today we feature John Newbery. Sure, that name is familiar - it's this John Newbery

The Newbery Medal has been presented since 1922 by the ALA to "the most distinguished American children's book published the previous year". And why? because John Newbery is credited with being the first ever publisher of illustrated books for children. Newbery started his publishing operation in Reading, Berkshire around 1740 and soon moved to premises in St.Paul's Churchyard, which had always been a center for bookselling and publishing. He published - and perhaps wrote the first Mother Goose, the History of Goody Two Shoes and other books intended not just to instruct but to entertain children.

But like so many publishers over the ages, it wasn't so easy to make a living from that alone. He had a side business as a wholesale and retail druggist, and it was in this capacity that he met Robert James. James was a physician and inventor, author of A Medicinal Dictionary, with a History of Drugs, which featured contributions from Dr Johnson, no less, and in 1746 he hired Newbery as sales agent for his new invention that made his fortune, James' fever powder which was of course supposed to cure almost everything...The powder was infamous enough to be throughly investigated by the Royal Society in 1791.
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Horace Walpole and others extolled its virtues. But Newbery had the foresight to take his advertising for the new product a stage further, what we would deem as Product Placement (or, forgive the pun, a Powder Puff). And for all we moan about product placement in kids movies and TV shows as a modern phenomenon, we're not even close to the sheer gall of John Newbery..

One of his most successful childrens books was The History of Little Goody Two Shoes., the inspiring story of an orphan girl who only has one shoe until she meets the man of her dreams who gives her a pair...Project Gutenberg has a facsimile of Newbery's third edition of the book - there were to be many more.

Chapter One of course sees the poor girl orphaned, with the woodcut above...and the very first sentence reads:

Care and Discontent shortened the Days of Little Margery's Father.--He was forced from his Family, and seized with a violent Fever in a Place where Dr. James's Powder was not to be had, and where he died miserably.

I defy my readers to come up with a more blatant pharma product placement than that - and indeed not only James, but Newbery himself, made his fortune from the powder, not the book. Nothing is new...

Nick W-W

TECH TRENDS - NOTES ON E-BOOKS 2

2010-03-23T10:50:00.000-04:00

Another good post on e-books yesterday from Richard Curtis's Publishing in the 21st Century blog.

There is an assumption, which in my experience of helping publishers take their content online through the Publishing Technology online platforms pub2web and IngentaConnect, is entirely unjustified, is that it is a really simple business getting content online. And that ipso facto, authors - and e-retailers - should get much more of the cake than they were for. Things may change, but as this post nicely demonstrates, there is an enormous amount for publishers to deal with, even if they have had the foresight to StartwithXML. There are multiple different formats, a huge range of TLA's to come to terms with (try this one), and an enormous amount to be done to extract the metadata that is so critical to success online.

Some of this may become easier in time, but with formats and identifiers inevitably lagging behind technology (the industry still cannot work out whether we should use a unique ISBN for each format(, I cannot see this changing anytime soon. As many commentators have noted, most e-books right now are not very attractive renditions of print books being read on not especially attractive readers of one sort or another. There will be much more to come on this issue but I leave for now with a great cartoon from the excellent Bookslut blog from yesterday

reBlog from Joseph Esposito under: The Scholarly Kitchen

2010-03-23T10:33:00.001-04:00

TECH TRENDS: NOTES ON E-BOOKS 1

I found this fascinating quote today:

While we continue to debate “p” vs. “e,” we should note a bigger shift in the publishing landscape: from indirect or “channel” marketing to direct sales (from the publisher directly to the consumer). Historically, “p” has been connected to indirect channel sales, but it’s increasingly clear that “e” is likely to be direct-marketed.Joseph Esposito under, The Scholarly Kitchen, Mar 2010

Well worth reading - short and to the point. The issue is not really about p v e, since both formats will continue in most cases and find their markets, but about fundamental changes in publishers business models that inevitably follow from these changes

Imprimatur Re(du)x: Coronet

2010-03-18T17:19:00.000-04:00

Nice to welcome back an old imprint name from many years ago. The Bookseller reports that Coronet is being resurrected, having been closed in 2004. Looks to have a good new future, and has a new logo that won't come as a big surprise (see above, pictured with the new editor, Mark Booth). It's still under the aegis of Hodder, but of course the Hodder of today, a division of Hodder Headline which is a division of Hachette Livre, is a very different creature from the strongly religious Hodder and Stoughton founded in 1868. Coronet was - as many British publishers had in the post-war period - a nice way of publishing mass market paperbacks without besmirching the fine imprint of the main publisher. It did publish some good books - Ian Fleming reprints, Fay Weldon and I found some of these covers you might enjoy from the 70's.

I expect we will see something a little better for Stephen Gately

Nick W-W

(Imprimatur Rex will be a regular feature of the blog, in the belief that imprints have a life above and beyond the owners at any given time... Re(du)x is a poor attempt at a Latin pun.)

Books They Don't Want You To Read: The Texas School Board

2010-03-16T15:51:00.001-04:00

Back in the 80's, I was publisher of Methuen Australia which as part of its list had a nice line in grade school educational books, reading especially. One new series featured very friendly looking witches on the cover. We were quickly warned by our reps on the ground that this series would not be considered by the State of Queensland because of the witches - Queensland then was called the Deep North and was in many ways analogous to a Southern state - or even under the bizarre premiership of Joh Bjelke-Petersen closer to apartheid era South Africa. Queensland refused to allow its clocks to go forward at the same time as the rest of Australia, and infamously an airline pilot was allegedly fired for announcing

We are now landing in Brisbane. Please turn your watches back one century

We had a quandary though - with only five states who could possibly endorse and purchase a school book and a very competitive environment, it was almost impossible to turn your back on 20% of the market before you even went to press. Which brings us to Texas. A lot more states here in the US of course, but only a couple of them have major state textbook purchasing programs and probably none of them have the influence and power of Texas. There is a whole sub-industry, as one of my predecessors in another position discovered to our cost, of brokers who will encourage you to produce books specifically for Texas state adoption that then remain unsold in the Texas School Book Depository (well not this one..) and which if I recall correctly we were actually charged property taxes on since our unsold books were taking up state land.

We have here something very close to what we claim to despise in others, notably the controversy over textbooks in Japan that many claim deliberately distort elements of Japanese 20th century history. In Japan elected officials from the Ministry of Education appear to work very closely with private publishers to ensure a 'more appropriate' gloss on certain events. And in Texas we see a mandate that 'capitalism' be replaced throughout by 'free-enterprise system' and 'balance' put into discussions on civil rights, and Thomas Jefferson removed from lists of writers who inspired revolution. As with so much of what used to be called the 'Culture Wars' much of this leaves the average reader unaware of specific Conservative red-button issues and key words somewhat at a loss...but it is glosses and emphasis that really shape our view of History, not just the repetition of facts. There are certain points of view and people that this group just don't want the children of Texas to be exposed to, and that is a very dangerous thing.

So where will publishers stand on this? Interestingly, modern technology may make this less of an issue than it would have ten years ago. The ability to customize textbooks even down to classroom level may mean that American schoolchildren outside of Texas may still learn about Jefferson while back in the 80s the children of Sydney and Melbourne never did see our witch book. I will keep an eye on any statements by the major publishers on this issue and share them. I wonder though if Google will take a stand similar to that on China
Censorship is censorship...!!

Nick W-W

By way of introduction

2010-03-15T16:07:00.008-04:00

A warm welcome to my new publishing blog, The Peripatetic Publisher. I have been planning this for a while but never quite managed to shake the idea that it is a self-indulgent exercise of interest only to me. We shall see.

You will find posts here in a number of categories that fascinate, bemuse or infuriate me, on issues in publishing past present and future. There is a category on imprints, which remain the most enduring way in which publishers announce and promote their products - and which survive all of the corporate shenanigans that make parent companies come and go - you will find these posts under the heading Imprimatur Rex: a category on Books They Don't Want You to Read - partly highlighting banned books but also looking at publishers' role as gatekeepers and occasionally as censors: a category on current issues and future trends, informed particularly by my experience of the last five years as Senior Business Consultant to Publishing Technology, the largest supplier of technology and related services for the publishing industry -you'll see these under Tech Trends. And some more personal posts from my checkered publishing past as and when they fit in - The Ones That Got Away (and some that didn't...).

Nick W-W