Hip to be square

I spent yesterday afternoon with students studying Creative Writing and New Media at de Monfort University. I was there to talk about a secret project we’re planning for next year (!) and we spent quite a bit of time talking about the role of fiction in the modern hyperlinked digital world. Penguin editor Jon and I were roundly accused of taking a far too ‘linear’ approach to fiction, meaning that we should be thinking about how we use the technology available to create new forms of literature. Lines of text printed in ink on paper (or even downloaded as an ebook) miss the opportunity to create new and immersive forms of narrative which might stimulate  readers trained in the non-linear  world of myspace, youtube and del.ico.us.

We explained that our role as publishers was to serve our authors and package, promote and distribute their work as well as we possibly can and that to date very few of our authors (meaning zero) have approached us with a desire to publish anything other than a pretty conventional linear work with a beginning, a middle and sometimes even an ending.

But on the train back Jon and I were wondering whether our approach is hopelessly, well, square. Is non-linear the way forward? Is the world ready for interactive, multi-dimensional fiction? Are 21st century readers crying out for ‘notbooks’ that dispense with traditional narrative form and structure? Should we give up publishing books and start publishing and distributing computer games instead? Is this the future of creative writing?

So, readers of this blog, what do you think? Your thoughts and comments greatly appreciated.

Jeremy Ettinghausen, Digital Publisher

Ban this book?

Back in the UK… but a little wistful that I’m not still in the US to witness the fireworks sparked off by the non-publishing of OJ Simpson ‘hypothetical’ account of how he might have murdered his ex-wife. . Such furore throws up all sorts of interesting questions for us publishers – where does one draw that un-crossable line? And is it redrawn each time the industry is thrown a curveball such as the OJ book, or every time the government wrestles with legislation concerning free speech, or when the home office questions the right of convicted criminals to profit from writing their memoirs? While the vast majority of people in the industry wish to stamp as high as possible a level of quality (editorial, design, production etc) on our books, the reality is always going to be that the bottom line of pounds and dollars matters just as much –  no sales means no books. And there is no doubt that the OJ book would have sold – and sold rather well.

And so creaks the rollercoaster debate about the balancing act between public appetite and censorship… Penguin has had a long history of courting with such controversy – from the days of Lady Chatterley’s Lover (link), to Rushdie’s Satanic Verses, and more recently Roy Keane’s fiery autobiography. So how do we make those judgement calls? Surprise surprise – there really is no magic formula – not that I’ve seen, anyway. Lots of debate, a few responsible people sat round the table, and a bloody good legal team help – but still no quadratic equations to make those decisions for us.

But, I guess as a fiction editor I’m lucky – mostly I’m immersed in a wonderful world of action thriller and historical mysteries, and such issues aren’t waiting round the next corner to jump up and bite my arse…. mostly… I have a wee sideline in bloke-ish humour books – and am very excited to be publishing a wonderful book this month by Icelandic cartoonist Hugleikur Dagsson. www.shouldyoubelaughingatthis.co.uk. He’s captured many hearts here at Penguin with his very kooky and cute, but ever so slightly controversial cartoons. But (there’s always a but) – it seems not everyone is so enchanted…

Download irish_sun.pdf

Alex Clarke, Commissioning Editor – Michael Joseph

YourSpace

According to consumer research conducted on what factors matter to people when they decide whether or not to pick up a book in a bookshop, the cover design comes out as most important.  So this might be the stupidest thing we’ve ever done.

However … Just over two months ago I was standing in the corridor talking with my boss about books, and suddenly we had a new idea: why not publish our favourite books without front covers?! And that’s what we’re doing. It’s been a secret project with about seven people involved, and from the idea two months ago we now have six books that are ready to go into the shops and onto http://www.penguin.co.uk at the end of November.

In essence, we’ve started a new series because if the first six work we’ll publish more.  The series was named My Penguin by our rather marvellous Creative Director, who came up with the name after about two minutes.  The tag line is ‘Books by the Greats, Covers by You’, and throughout the rush to design the (back) covers, get the right paper, and tell people about them, we’ve had a really great time.  The covers are art-quality paper, and from internal Penguin efforts we know that they hold ink, paint, pencil and glue (see the first efforts here).  Each one comes shrink-wrapped so the paper doesn’t get dirty, and I hope people might give them as gifts.  They’re went round Penguin earlier in the week and we’ve starting an online gallery that will launch with staff efforts at the end of November (no doubt we’ll talk about this here).  All of the books talk about the gallery on the back cover, because we want anyone and everyone to send in pictures of their own covers so we can put them up too.

I love this project, because there are no rules, and what we want is for it to be fun.

Helen Conford, Senior Commissioning Editor at The Penguin Press

Power to the people

A great visit and talk yesterday from Lauren Cerand, the renowned PR queen. Much made of the joys of digital marketing and PR – why pay tonnes to a newspaper for a tiny ad for your event, when putting out a viral email virtually (forgive the pun) guarantees a crowd of self-selecting devotees?

More important though, is the power of bloggers. Lauren recounted how a secret url passed to one blogger resulted in thousands of hits to the site as the link spread through the community like wildfire. My, how we long for that…

So how to convince all you Dear Readers that my fellow bloggers and I aren’t shilling for the corporate buck? Well, we can’t even begin to lust after the credibility that the dedication of Miss Snark and Grumpy Old Bookman gives: all we can do is offer a glimpse into the world of Penguin books that some people may not yet have. For instance, I learnt only last week that most publishing houses don’t even have a copywriting team. The editors write their own copy! Ha! How charming to know we are slightly unique in the industry. Ooops, are my orange-and-black colours showing again?

Sam the junior copywriter

People read blogs, makes sense

Part of working for an icon of publishing means that we have access to cross industry talent. There are frequent, informal presentations put on by the marketing and publicity team leaders of the various imprints, where such talent is invited to impart new techniques or foresight onto our teams. The latest was a visit from Lauren Cerand who is an independent public relations representative and consultant based in New York and her talent —generating initial buzz and building sustained attention for projects and individuals online has placed her clients in major print and broadcast outlets including National Public Radio, The New York Times and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

Lauren was perfect. She introduced herself and her background (a child of publicity for labour legislation in the US who traded politics for culture) and then gave three very good examples of how she creates relationships with bloggers to generate awareness of the books and authors she represents. While Lauren covered a plethora of common challenges and benefits to using blogs, I appreciated that she contextualised the defense of blog marketing and PR in the context of change patterns in cultural consumption. That the way readers interact with media is changing, and the value which was once placed in broadsheet book reviews is now being exchanged for the more inter-personal dialogue that stems from online communites, whether networked or disparate. I like to view this as the emergence of a certain salience in consumption. But it is also my view that this can only happen online, made possible by the interactivity of the medium; the act of reading and consuming, and marketing while consuming. Lauren also touched on this.

Something that struck me as the 40 or so women and 3 men (have you forgotten PR) exited the 7th floor meeting room was the event itself. One of the reasons Lauren was invited to speak to us was the fact that this is brand new territory for publishers. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I understand no other publisher is truly out there interacting with bloggers in a real way (US and UK). I say ‘real’ to express the extent to which publishers doggedly hound after other media (print and broadcast). Looking back on my experience, magazines across Canada having been doing this for years. In fact several base their mere existence on the awareness they can only generate through the affordable online community of bloggers. What have publishers been doing for the past 3 years? I recommend all publishers get out there and read The Long Tail by Chris Anderson now and feel ashamed for not thinking of it first!

Justin Renard, Puffin Marketing Officer

Life after an MA in Publishing

When I applied for my postgraduate degree in publishing, I had to choose between two schools—Simon Fraser University and the London College of Printing.  I was at the business and marketing helm of a sinking, indie/niche literary/arts magazine in Montreal and both appeared to offer equal helpings of industry expertise, industry connections and practical-hands-on experience. London  of course proved to be the winner, and while I landed a job at the top, heck before I even started writing my thesis, I always envied the Canadian alternative, specifically the community it has created for grads and those lingering on the periphery. And this is embodied in its online "hub", Thinkubator, the Young Publishers Network. A quick visit will show you a raw, yet well-designed site that rivals any high falutin Web 2.0 social networking application out there. And sadly it makes the SYP website look rather stale. Where is the voice, the edge, the innovation? I would go on to argue that the simplicity and accesibility of Thinkubator makes its UK quasi-equivalents look considerably behind the times. Sure they seem to do the same things technically, but as a "young publisher" myself, one speaks to me on a level and in a visual language that others simply haven’t caught up to. Or maybe that’s just the "marketer" in me.

The latest News post on Thinkubator looks at the recent trend of book trailers, or rather film-style trailers for books, released online as a way to tap into video and film consumption patterns of online communities—book lovers included. They reference a CBC article. In the article, the Canadian edition of Londonstani (Harper Collins) is referenced in its release of a film-like trailer for the book. A visit to YouTube shows that the book has had 2,837 (make that 2,838) views. You can read the piece yourself. Fact is, this is a venture I am pursuing for a number of our upcoming teen releases, Bloodsong, by Melvin Burgess and Being, by Kevin Brooks, to name a few. I raise this not to delve into the amazing (but not all that) new media marketing techniques Puffin is pursuing in order to reach its audience (we are) but instead make note that this just goes to show how tapped in this website of young Canadian publishers really is. And I also wonder why the UK programs with their long heritage and futuristic claims, have not done the same. If there is anything I’ve learnt so far about the publishing industry, it’s that publishing is all we like to talk about. And sure the SYP site boasts a "new forum" and makes available essential resources for publishing job seekers, but the style in which it is presented may very well be losing eyeballs.

Like all industries, Publishing has finally started to realise it can’t go the way of the old school boys club of years past, but must instead rethink how it does business, how it markets books, how it speaks to customers. This is mostly due to the changing consumption patterns and cultural context of markets. If anything, the young publishers of today (future publishers of tomorrow) surely live in those different markets and interact in those new ways. Shouldn’t then the content they consume reflect that?

Justin Renard

Puffin Marketing Officer

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Gareth the Woolly Mammoth

You might think that the people of Penguin Online lived in a virtual world of blogospheres, myspace’s, YouTube’s, Bebo’s and Second Life’s – and you’d be right. But I bet you wouldn’t believe it if I said that some of us could travel 10,000 years in time… Well, that’s exactly what happened yesterday (of a sort) when Penguin brought a life-size, woolly mammoth called Gareth to London and put him slap bang in the middle of Trafalgar Square. As you can see, Gareth proved to be very popular with tourists and office workers alike. Believe it or not, there was a time when woolly mammoths really did roam Britain, visit the Homo Britannicus website here.

Kate Harmer
Penguin Online

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Book Awards and funny fish

Hello.  It’s another morning-after-the-night-before for Penguin Production.  Last night I spent a good few hours in the company of the great and good from the UK’s book production and printing industries at the British Book Design and Production Awards 2006.  A fairly raucous affair – it was held at a swanky hotel in Grosvenor Square London,  in the ballroom darling.  Hmmm.  Again, not usually my ‘thing’ – but ‘my thing’ these days tends to be singing seventies Motown songs to my 4 month old daughter so it was nice to get out for a change. 

Anyway it was a big turnout from Penguin and we spent the night pressing the flesh of many portly printing people,  asking bar-pianists if they had any RadioHead in their repertoire and – more importantly – awaiting our turn to go up to the stage and be photographed receiving an award.  We certainly had a fair number of books on the shortlists for the various categories and competition was fierce.    As we chomped on marinated salmon and wondered if it would make us ill later – we had our first success of the night:  Arabesque,  the superb Moroccan cookery book by Claudia Roden won the prestigious Trade Illustrated Book of the Year  It was published by our Michael Joseph imprint and the commissioning editor was Camilla Stoddart.  Helen Eka handled the book production and will be thrilled to learn that the judges were – and I quote – ‘extremely impressed by the care and attention that had gone in to the elegant typography and how it had been complimented by the sympathetic choice of colours and ornaments’.  A well deserved award me thinks – and a heavy one! Not since a visit to my Grandmother’s when I was knee-high to a grasshopper have I seen a cut glass bowl of such hugeness! It will be displayed in our reception area here at 80 Strand.

Our second award of the night was for the Dorling Kindersley title DIY: Know-How with Show-How which won the Best Jacket/Cover Design .  The designer,  Nicola Powling was there to collect her cut-glass prize and we all agreed that pure designing had won the day… No weird finishes – holographic foil or glittery bits were required… just a simple and concise concept that the judges agreed ‘worked superbly’.  We were delighted.

Puffin rounded off the awards-gathering picking up a ‘Highly Commended’ for the Jan Pienkowski title The Fairy Tales and Lyn Gifford was there to hear the judges applaud the ‘inspiring use of design and richness of colour in the production guaranteed to make it a great read for children.’

So there you have it – two fantastic awards,  a highly commended – not a bad evening’s work.  We are already planning for our awards assault next year! Arriving home at 2am I had a lovely hour-and-a-half sleep before Henty Junior started screaming – Good morning to you too…

Andrew Henty

Production Manager

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Heathcliff vs Count Fosco

I’m just back from a week in Barbados and the tan is fading rapidly. I didn’t do as much reading as I would have liked, but I did pile through Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White, which really is a riot. And my favourite literary devil has changed from Heathcliff to Count Fosco, who is the archetypal villain, stalking the pages with relish, gusto and not a little pantomime. And is it just me, or are the goodies just too annoying for words? They simper, they prance, they moralise, they are fey little ciphers in a novel that luxuriates in Machiavellian decadence. But maybe that says a little too much about my character…

My boyfriend was reading Freakonomics. And it drove me mad. Almost every ten minutes he’d lean across to me and quote some nugget and by the end I was saying ‘I KNOW! I read the book a year ago. Please summarise your points and we can discuss them over dinner.’ Talk about a book haunting you…

So here I am back in the fray and thinking about new books to do in the Classics. It’s Jean Genet’s centenary in a couple of years, so I’m thinking about re-translating his work and thinking about poetry in general, in the midst of the success of our Claire Tomalin-chosen Poems of Thomas Hardy, which we’ve published to coincide with her biography of the great man.

I’m also thinking about which book to read next. I finished Maggie O’Farrell’s absolutely miraculous Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox a few months ago, and I haven’t felt like picking up a contemporary novel, afraid that it would disappoint in comparison. I always remember Nabokov’s dictum that the best reader is a re-reader. In order to improve my readerliness, I think I’m going to opt for a re-read of Mary Webb’s Precious Bane – a book I dearly wish I could publish. I’ve just re-read Katherine Mansfield’s Collected Stories, which I was introduced to by a particularly brilliant teacher and which have haunted (in a good way) ever since. Ali Smith has just delivered the most sparkling, glorious, mesmerising introduction to a new edition of the Stories, and I was reminded of Mansfield’s brilliance by the brilliance of Ali. Writers talking to each other down the years…

Other than that I’m in cookery training for a curry-off we’re having next weekend. My closest friend bet my boyfriend that he could thrash him in a blind curry tasting. We’ve got ‘outside’ people coming to judge, and it could get nasty. I back my boyfriend, because firstly he’s Indian and secondly because his father makes a mean spice mix that is a family secret passed down through generations. Rather like the KFC recipe.

Marcella Edwards
Classics Series Editor

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Fatboy Classics

There are no prizes, but can you count and name the classics here?