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Joanna Trollope has left her publisher of many years, Bloomsbury. It's reported that Trollope felt that the firm has become so preoccupied with its great money-maker, JK Rowling, that it has neglected its bread and butter authors and lost its way.
Sitting on a wizard pile of Harry cash, Bloomsbury hasn't yet found a way to spend it that will guarantee a profitable future. Some hopeless books, such as the memoirs of David Blunkett and Gary Barlow, were given ridiculously large advances. More sensibly, it is now spending money on specialist reference and education publishing and the creation of a business information database with the Qatar Financial Centre Authority.
To his credit, the firm's head, Nigel Newton, knows it would be "futile to look for another Harry. It was one of a kind. Everyone is looking for a new Harry and it isn't there". He's come close here to saying the unsayable, the hidden truth about publishing. Which is that when it comes to finding the big names who now dominate the business, publishers just don't know what they're doing, never have.
What they could meaningfully do is support and nurture their established mid-list writers over the long term - but that's precisely the kind of steady work that's been sidelinedas a result of the impact made on entire companies by huge sellers like JK Rowling and Dan Brown.
When it comes to finding the next big thing, they just haven't got a clue (which is one reason they then act like a pack of lemmings when somebody else does land a surprise success). To coincide with the London Book Fair earlier this month, the trade magazine The Bookseller ran an informative article looking back at what had happened to the big advance bookfair deals of the past. Most had turned out to be pitiful flops.
The phenomenon even has a name now - the "Londonstani effect". At the Frankfurt book fair three years ago, Gautam Malkani's debut novel, Londonstani, set in Hounslow, caused huge excitement among the publishers and was eventually bought for £380,000. It got dismal reviews and, despite frantic pushing, has sold under 15,000 copies.
The editor who splashed out on it, Nicholas Pearson, now admits that publishing is "not a science". No, indeed not. Nor much of a profession either these days. It's more like playing blind man's buff. Or not even so skilful as that perhaps - more like buying a lottery ticket and hoping for the best. No wonder few authors feel much loyalty. those who continue to walk on a moving stairway and those who, finding themselves carried along, are content to stop and wait. And that simple division reflects their overall ambition in life and, therefore, pay grade, with almost weird precision. This expressive little bit of physical theatre is acted out all over London every minute of the day.
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Re: 'No wonder few authors feel much loyalty. those who continue to walk on a moving stairway and those who, finding themselves carried along, are content to stop and wait. And that simple division reflects their overall ambition in life and, therefore, pay grade, with almost weird precision. This expressive little bit of physical theatre is acted out all over London every minute of the day.' This doesn't make sense; it has obviously been cut down from a longer text.
- Christopher Squire, Twickenham, UK, 25/04/2008 17:18
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