Design to get you hiding under the covers

My plan, over the course of my brief blogging career so far has been to win your trust with a series of embarrassing personal admissions, so when I talk about something cool that Penguin is doing, you will take me at my word.

Penguin is doing something cool.

Next week, on the 2nd, we are publishing a series of ten horror books by masters of the genre – including the likes of Edgar Allan Poe, H. P. Lovecraft and M. R. James – and the covers are, I think, really something special. I could talk about them, in the same way that I could talk about the credit crunch or the Large Hadron Collider, which is to say in a manner both uninformed and slightly hysterical. But I thought it would be better for all concerned if I spoke to Coralie Bickford-Smith, the designer of the books, and posted a video of her here, cutting out the (hysterical, uninformed) middle man. So here's Coralie: 

On Vimeo.

And here are the covers:

And here are the works in progress shown in the video:

Another thing that we talked about that didn't make the video was Coralie's initial inspiration for the covers – these two-tone crime covers Romek Marber produced for Penguin in the 60s.

All ten of the Gothic Reds are out on the 2 October 2008 and I would heartily recommend you purchase the whole set. I'm not close to having read them all, but the Poe and the M. R. James are particularly great – and The House on the Borderland is indeed crazy.

THE DUNWICH HORROR – H. P. Lovecraft  (9780141038766)
THE BEETLE – Richard Marsh  (9780141038797)
THE HAUNTED DOLLS’ HOUSE – M. R. James  (9780141038773)
THE SPOOK HOUSE – Ambrose Bierce  (9780141038810)
THE HOUSE ON THE BORDERLAND – William Hope Hodgson  (9780141038742)
THE LAIR OF THE WHITE WORM – Bram Stoker  (9780141038759)
LOIS THE WITCH – Elizabeth Gaskell  (9780141038803)
THE VIRGIN OF THE SEVEN DAGGERS – Vernon Lee  (9780141038780)
THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH – Edgar Allan Poe  (9780141038827)
THE HAUNTED HOTEL – Wilkie Collins  (9780141038736)

update: All ten titles are now available as a set with an exclusive poster. Enjoy!

Alan
Copywriter

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Little Dorrit deserves a smack

‘It’s not the job of fiction to present people with whom one might like to be friends.’ So says Zoe Heller in an interview this week to publicise her new novel THE BELIEVERS.

I’ve been struck by this over and over again in so many of the (mostly excellent) reviews for her book. For even in the great reviews, reviewers have commented on her main character, Audrey, and on some of the others who people the book, and said how dislikeable they are. And they mean this as a criticism.   

It’s not just the critics who take this line about fiction. As critic James Wood wrote (rather nastily) recently :
"A glance at the thousands of foolish "reader reviews" on Amazon, with their complaints about "dislikeable characters", confirms a contagion of moralising niceness. Again and again, in book clubs up and down the country, novels are denounced because some feeble reader "couldn’t find any characters to identify with", or "didn’t think that any of the characters ‘grow’".

I am bewildered: have the last six Philip Roth novels had likeable central characters? Or any of Michel Houellebecq’s? Or think of the classics: is Raskolnikov likeable? I know I’d rather spend time with Becky Sharp  than with that drip Amelia Sedley. For fictional characters to work on the page, for them to grip you with their antics, they’ve got to fascinate. That’s far more likely to happen with flawed or even dislikeable characters. I mean, don’t you love it when Uriah Heep walks on? Aren’t you fascinated when Rosamund Vincy behaves selfishly? 

How would those critics like it if things were reversed: the unremittingly good characters in fiction (Little Dorrit, Anne of Green Gables, King Arthur) can be pretty paralysing. After all, as EM Forster wrote, in fiction — sadly unlike in life — we expect chararacters to develop, and they have to make mistakes, bad judgments, the wrong moral choices to get to wherever it is their creators decide they are going to end up. Or, like Audrey in THE BELIEVERS, they can decide to ignore the choices before them.   

Too much goodness and sweetness of character is cloying. Bad behaviour rules on the page.

Juliet Annan
Publishing Director, Fig Tree

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Books Vs Cigarettes

If you had told me a week ago that reading a book would cure me of my ten year smoking habit, I would have laughed in your face. Then I would have lit a cigarette. Just to console myself. But a week ago, I picked up Allen Carr’s Easy Way to Quit Smoking and four days ago, I smoked my last cigarette. Miraculously, I haven’t wanted to smoke since. I know what you’re thinking – that I probably was one of those smokers who could take it or leave it. Not true. I smoked about half a pack a day, which isn’t much to some, but I had been known to scale the school walls to get out of school property to get that nicotine hit. Though ultimately I did well on my exams because of the number of detentions I was given for getting caught smoking (in the end my head teacher gave up giving me detentions and begged me not to set fire to school property), I couldn’t shake off the guilt about doing something that was bad for me. I consoled myself that Gabriel Garcia Marquez smoked six packs a day while writing Love in the Time of Cholera. (He is still alive today at 81.)

As much as I loved smoking, the reason I couldn’t give up was because of my experiences of trauma in attempting to quit before: tears, tyranny, insomnia, weight gain, grey clouds, misery, misery, misery. Several people had mentioned that they had quit without experiencing any nasty withdrawal symptoms using the Allen Carr book.  I treated these comments with cynicism and caution, but I thought I would give it a try. It was cheaper than hypnotherapy.

It turned out to be a bit of a page turner – I had to know what the secret formula was and was desperate to know if it would work for me.

Since finishing the book, not only have I kicked the habit, I’ve also been unusually cheerful and hyperactive. What I didn’t expect was the boredom. Having recently moved house, I have not yet installed broadband, got a phone line or a TV and I found myself pacing my living room.

We in the publishing industry are always worried about our competitors – the internet, TV, video games which vie for our readers’ attention. But had we missed something? Perhaps cigarettes have been a silent competitor for years. George Orwell wrote in 1946 that contrary to belief, people in the forties didn’t choose not to read because they couldn’t afford it, they just preferred to spend money on other things (cigarettes included) instead. I get it. Cigarettes sedate us, we can happily sit without doing anything other than smoking for hours. It is a form of entertainment in and of itself.

But following my miraculous feat, I’ve been reflecting on the relationship between books and cigarettes. Maybe we give our competitors too much credit. It is easy to forget that throughout history it has been ideas and not technology that have moved the world forward. After all, if a book can change this
wall-scaling, self-deceiving, emotionally unstable addict into a happy, confident non-smoker then we in publishing should spend less time worrying and try to carry on buying, editing, marketing and selling great books. Maybe, as Allen Carr promised, this optimism and happiness is the real side effect of giving up smoking. In any case, I have renewed faith that publishers are definitely in it for the long haul.

Hannah Michell, Online Marketing Executive

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Credit Crunch Blues

My posh dress is hanging up behind my desk and I’m hoping rather forornly that the creases will fall out of it by the time I finish writing this post. Spring 09 Conference is over and tonight I’m off to the Bookseller Retail Awards to celebrate supply chain initiatives. I wonder how many times the credit crunch will be raised tonight? You couldn’t avoid it at conference. Everyone at Penguin is wondering just what effect it will have on us this Christmas, not just here in the UK trade, but also in our group and international territories.

Joe Stiglitz says those who claim they can see light at the end of the tunnel are only seeing the light from the freight train coming right at them. For, he claims, we are only just beginning to face into the storm.

Strong stuff.

And yet, there is a view (hopefully not a complacent one) which says that books are relatively recession proof. Is this true? I have heard three possible reasons for this view:

1. The lipstick effect: that in tough economic times, people may baulk at buying a new wide-screen tv, but a lipstick (or indeed a book) is a relatively low-cost, feel-good purchase, whether for yourself or as a gift.

2. For the same reason pubs are suffering, books may thrive as more people choose to save money by staying in, and what better way to relax as the nights draw in than reading a book?

3. This one from our MD in Singapore who cites the 20:80 rule: that a small fraction of people buy the majority of books and these people are themselves relatively recession-proof, their disposible income being such that they don’t deprive themselves of anything in order to buy books.

I’m tempted to call Niall Ferguson to ask his opinion as I sat in a room with him at the beginning of the year discussing his new book The Ascent of Money, and he predicted everything we’re seeing. What did the book index look like in previous cycles? I find consolation in history, in knowing that this is part of a cycle, rather than a free-form meltdown with no precedent.

Sales, well, sales are always tough. We are looking down that long runway toward Christmas and it’s nerve-jangling waiting for the rush to hit. So we’ll raise our glasses of chardonnay to the company that wins the Award for Expanding the Retail Market, we’ll share the gossip, we’ll invoke the crunch again as the answer to our questions and the question we need to answer, and then tomorrow, we’ll have one more coffee and then pick up the phone and sell some more books.

And perhaps no-one will notice the creases after all.

Fiona Buckland
Sales Manager

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And Another Thing…

It’s been a busy fortnight here at Penguin Towers.

Two weeks ago we were contacted by the agent representing the estate of Douglas Adams who asked us if we might be interested in bidding for the right to publish a sixth installment of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, to be written by Eoin Colfer. Needless to say we were and a crack team threw themselves into creating one of the best pitches anyone has ever seen. This (and a large-ish cheque) happily won us the rights to publish And Another Thing… and late last night we broke the news to the legions of fans of the Hitchhiker’s series and the almost equally hardcore fans of Eoin’s Artemis Fowl books.

We knew that there would be intense interest in this news and we wanted the fans to be the first people to hear it, so at 6pm last night we alerted them to these audio recordings which they quickly spread around the internet.

‘Big media‘ grasped onto the story early this morning culminating in an appearance by Eoin Colfer on Radio4’s Today programme.

Now, in the very brief lull between announcing this news and planning
the delivery of the most exciting publishing event of 2009, we have a
few moments to sit back and watch these most passionate of fans debate
the merits of resurrecting the series.

Reactions have ranged from the ecstatic, to slightly concerned, to completely appalled via speculation that this might be part of an even deeper conspiracy. If you want to add to the noise, leave a comment below. We don’t speak Vogon, but we do look forward to hearing from you.

Jeremy Ettinghausen, Digital Publisher

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‘You can never expect these things at all. I was stoked to be on the longlist, so it’s 50% more thrilling to be on the shortlist’

 

As a relatively new starter here at Penguin, I can echo Steve Toltz’s words on making the Man Booker Prize shortlist on Tuesday. Coming from the staid and stoic world of academia, all this award business is massively exciting and new to me. And in the case of A Fraction of A Whole it is all the more rewarding because it is totally deserved.

Allow me to set the scene. Three months ago I arrived at 80 Strand with an old tin lunch box and brand new pencil case thirsty to get started. I was ready to get stuck into the literary world; my only involvement in it up until that point had been an English degree and time spent mooching around second hand bookshops. My first day, and week for that matter, was wall-to-wall meetings with publishers and editors, getting me acquainted with the people and the books that make this place so damn special. And out of the mountains of manuscripts, proofs and finished copies I’d greedily accumulated, A Fraction of the Whole made it to the top of the pile pretty quickly.

Working in publishing, I know everybody judges a book by its cover, and this one is a beauty and it immediately struck me as something I should read, well, immediately. From the brilliant opening it’s a truly ‘rollicking’ read, despite what Frank Cottrell Boyce thinks. As the father-son exploits of Martin and Jasper unravel over 700+ pages of dazzling ‘verbal dynamite’ (thank you, Wall Street Journal), you are pulled into a mesmeric and roll-around-on-the-floor-funny world of chaos, lunacy and intrigue. It’s the kind of book that makes you call up old friends and read them a couple of choice lines as it is so chocker with quotable wit it is almost impossible not to share.

Trying to fit in everything that goes on in this whopping novel would be impossible, so let me just say a big congratulation to Mr Toltz. And a big well done to everyone here involved in the success of this fantastic book. Fingers crossed for 14th October. 

Matt Clacher
Literary Marketing Executive

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FINAL ACT OF THE IDIOT RESIGNING FROM THE BEST JOB IN THE WORLD

 INT.  80 STRAND.  JOANNA PRIOR’S OFFICE. 
DAY 1.  09.30
JOANNA SITS OPPOSITE ROB AT A HUGE BOARDROOM TABLE
                                    JOANNA
You can’t set this here.  I haven’t got an office any more.  We’re open plan.
          ROB NODS.  BOTH STAND TO LEAVE
 CUT TO:

INT.  80 STRAND.  SIXTH FLOOR BREAKOUT AREA. 
DAY 1.  09.30
ROB AND JOANNA SIT ON ‘BONKETTES’ OPPOSITE EACH OTHER
                                       ROB
            Actually, can we talk in private, please?
                  JOANNA ROLLS HER EYES
                                                                           CUT TO:

INT.  80 STRAND.  ‘DELHI’ MEETING ROOM. 
DAY 1.  09.35
JOANNA SITS NEXT TO ROB  AT A SMALL ROUND TABLE
                                    JOANNA
                    And you’re sure about this?
                                      ROB
               Erm …  I think so.  No.  Not really.
                                    JOANNA
You’re Penguin’s first Creative Director.  You’ve got The Best Job In The World.  And you’re really going to give that up to write for television?  I thought television was dead.
                                      ROB
Like the book, I know.  I wish they’d stop killing stuff I like …
ROB RUNS HIS HAND THROUGH LONG, GRAYING HAIR
It’s something I’ve always wanted to do.  Ever since Yosser Hughes.  And to be given an opportunity like this …
      LOOKS AT THE STRAY HAIR IN HIS HAND
And I’m not getting any younger, am I?  When I started in publishing there was no grey in my hair and Amazon was still primarily a jungle.
                         JOANNA (SQUINTING)
                             Yosser Hughes?
THE DOOR OPENS AND A MAN IN A SUIT PEERS IN AT ROB
                                      MAN
We booked this room several months ago for a meeting about matters that someone with hair like yours would be unlikely to understand.
                       ROB LOOKS AT JOANNA
                                  JOANNA
                       You’d better tell the teams …
                                                                             CUT TO:

INT.  80 STRAND.  ROOMS 6A-D.  DAY 3.  12.15
ROB SITS IN FRONT OF THE ASSEMBLED MARKETING TEAMS FROM PENGUIN GENERAL, PRESS AND PUFFIN.  NONE OF THEM WILL LOOK AT HIM.  SOME PICK AT THEIR NAILS, OTHERS PLAY WITH THEIR HAIR, MOST FOLD THEIR ARMS.  AFTER A MOMENT’S AWKWARD SILENCE, ELIZABETH SMITH GLARES AT ROB
                                 ELIZABETH
         You’ve got The Best Job In The World.
                                     ROB
And I’ve had more than five truly wonderful years here.  We’ve won awards, we’ve changed the way people think about marketing at Penguin and the way people outside of these walls think about Penguin.  We’ve pushed all sorts of boundaries and we’ve even sold the odd book.  But–
                             COLIN BRUSH
        Don’t give us the Yosser Hughes rubbish … 
                ROB LOOKS CRESTFALLEN
                             Joanna told us.
       ROB GLANCES ACROSS THE THREE TEAMS
                                     ROB
               I really am going to miss you lot …
FINALLY GAZES BEGIN RESTING ON ROB.  NOW HE AVOIDS THEIR EYES
… So much that I might only be able to articulate it in the third person, if at all.
                       TORA ORDE-POWLETT
                       Can I have your stapler?
C/U ON ROB, AGAIN WONDERING IF HE’S MADE THE BIGGEST MISTAKE IN THE WORLD
                                                                               CONT:
INT.  80 STRAND.  HR MEETING ROOM.  DAY 5.  10.30
C/U STILL ON ROB.  PULL BACK AS HE HANDS HIS IDENTITY CARD TO SHANA, ACTING HR MANAGER
                                   SHANA
That’s it.  Exit interview complete.  And this is your last day, isn’t it?  Sorry we didn’t get to work together a bit longer.  Every time I hear your name it seems to be followed by ‘Best Job In The World’.  That must get annoying!
                                     ROB
Yeah.  Except …  You know all those big companies who say they ‘care about ideas’ but you know that most of them don’t?  Some think they should and some even know they should but most don’t, not really.  Well, here they do.  Genuinely.  Passionately.  The people right at the top of this business, they really do.  It’s just an extraordinary place.  And it’s been a privilege to have been part of it. 
                                   SHANA
     It really is The Best Job In The World then?
                                     ROB
                                  It really is …
                                   SHANA
So how come I hear you’re going off to become a bricklayer in Liverpool?
CLOSE ON ROB, SIMULTANEOUSLY FROWNING AND SMILING

                                    ENDS

Note:  In contrast to a lot of fiction, here the people are real but I made the rest up.  Mostly.

Rob Williams
Penguin Creative Director, 2003–2008

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Five in Mind part fourteen

I have recently become very old. I have been idling on the planet for a quarter of a century now, and given that a lot of this idling has been book-in-hand, I thought that I should try and chart this life of mine in books. Happily, five goes into 25 quite well (age having some benefits) so here is my life in five compressed stages. Oh crikey, that might make this the list of books that made me, so tread softly, blog-critters:

Me at 0–5 years:
Burglar Bill by Janet and Allan Ahlberg

Ah, my favourite childhood criminal. Although that honour should perhaps be reserved for Robin Hood, given that my second year was spent insisting that Robin Hood was my name and answering to no other. The choice for this spot was between Burglar Bill or Each Peach Pear Plum, but the catchphrase ‘I’ll ’ave that’ became a family staple – possibly showing that we did not absorb the moral of the story.

… and at 5–10:
Quest for a Maid by Frances Mary Hendry

I moved to Edinburgh at the start of this period so these reading years are dominated by Scottish historical fiction. Beginning with the mysterious death of King Alexander III it moves between Scotland, Norway and London with witchcraft, whales and the most appealing description of marzipan known to man. I loved this book with a fierce passion – it’s so evocative I can still see how I imagined it all so many years ago.

… and at 10–15:
Microserfs by Douglas Coupland

For some reason this affected me much more than Coupland’s Generation X. The narrator feels incredibly real. I guess it’s appealing because it’s about looking for meaning and purpose in your life when you’re in a hamster wheel, be it school or jobs in your twenties …

… and at 15–20:
Sandman by Neil Gaiman

The gateway drug of choice for graphic novels. This epic is sublime. The characters, artwork (which changes over the years) and stories – both the arc and individual plots which crop up all over the place – are perfectly wrought. Be warned if you’re about to embark on this – it’s an expensive obsession. It’s a series of 10 trade paperbacks at about £12 each – Christmas and birthdays won’t come round fast enough. (I’ve done this to a friend; I buy him one on each birthday. This year will be the fourth and he has to sit on his hands when he visits so as not to break with tradition and steal mine).

… and finally at 20–25:
Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut

It was this or The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. But The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay doesn’t have Kilgore Trout, surely one of the best characters ever written, so it didn’t get placed. And I love Vonnegut’s style of writing. Having just finished his Timequake, I now can’t work out if that is even better, or if I was too suffused with relief that it wasn’t Coetzee, whose Disgrace I had winced myself through immediately prior. (Note to Coetzee lovers: I don’t dislike Disgrace, it just doesn’t have a place in a] this list or b] my soul).

So yes, those books form part of me. I have a huge affection for them all and would recommend them wholeheartedly. Even though only one of them’s a Penguin. Whoops.

Alice, Editorial.

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First Impressions

This summer, after nearly a decade writing about the world of publishing, I handed in my pen – just like a retiring NYPD cop surrenders his badge and gun – to join Penguin. But after just seven working days at the Strand, the blog-meisters have convinced me to pick that pen up again, and give you my first impressions of life inside this well-oiled, world-famous publishing supertanker.

How little I knew. I barely had an inkling of the complexity and scale involved in producing quality books, or of the way the diverse specialities and teams elegantly slot together. I certainly didn’t appreciate the level of strategising, energy and care that is needed to push writers’ work into the world. It’s fascinating to find how deeply it runs: that Penguin blend of creativity and determination also shines through the internal company stuff. And yes, everyone does talk about books a lot – with a refreshing absence of the world-weary cynicism which can be the norm in journalism.

There’s much for me to adjust to. First there’s timescale: instead of the instant-hit cycle of hackery, I’ll be juggling projects over months and years. Timeliness is important, but for Viking, quality is top priority. The same applies to decision-making. Proposals for books are carefully refined and tested rigorously from every angle – though ultimately there’s still the need for a leap of faith. Then it’s all about advocacy to get your writer’s efforts noticed. Nothing happens by chance. That’s not because of the industry cliché about sales and marketing “taking over”: it’s more that all the different parts of a publisher need to back a book to get the best possible results. There’s no point in fine writing (or editing) if no-one reads it.

I half-expected my inbox to be besieged by dross, but the bulk of the manuscripts I’ve read have been decent. Many of them will find a home. But I’m looking for that special extra something that will make them stand out, win over the trade, and ultimately persuade a reader to part with their hard-earned cash.
Another surprise is the democratic, transparent nature of Penguin. Big decisions are made in meetings (and there aren’t many doors to close, since the open-plan revolution). Everyone is given regular, sobering exposure to the financials. And there’s a genuine attempt to analyse what has worked, what hasn’t worked, and why.

The calm confidence exuded in this place is a contrast to journalism, where newsrooms are a perpetual state of crisis (The Bookseller excepted). That allows broader thinking to flourish: at Viking the editorial discussions have ranged from the Olympics and the US elections to the death of consumerism. And the digital revolution is being embraced, not feared.

I think I’ll like this publishing lark. My only regret is the time it will take before my books are out and I start to pay my way – though everyone seems remarkably relaxed about this. And thankfully my new colleagues are far too polite to mention any of the shocking ignorance and errors I must have displayed in my former incarnation. So far, so good.

Joel Rickett
Editorial Director, Viking

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Graphstravaganza, in which it becomes apparent that there is something wrong with me

Since my first post here at The Penguin Blog back in February, I have made two discrete references to Transformers, two to Army of Darkness and a single reference to Kung Fu Panda (this last also mentioned once by Jennifer).

Well, if that seems like glib, pop culture nonsense, NOW I AM PULLING OUT THE BIG GUNS.

As SOCRATES is reported by PLATO to have said at his trial: ‘The unexamined life is not worth living.’

Socrates. Plato. Impressive. Try to keep that sense of wonder and susceptibility in your mind for the time being.

In January, Sam wrote ‘the world will have to live without knowing the historical library of a Penguin copywriter’, which is no longer the case. Now that I am here, the world only has to ask and I can supply it with a list of every book that I have read since 2006. The world won’t ask – the world doesn’t care – but nevertheless, there it is.

This post isn’t about why I would be obsessive enough to keep that list (but, hey, it’s nice – like looking through a passport at stamps of places visited), it’s about the fact that I would be far more obsessive if only I could.

My memory isn’t great and, if it was only easier, I would be delighted to outsource to an external record all kinds of information about my life (just as I’m in the process of outsourcing my knowledge of all things not-me to Wikipedia and Google). Not just books read, but music listened to, meals eaten, alcohol consumed, trips taken, blurbs written, blurbs that should have been better, words misspelled, photographs taken (by location, competence and subject) …

And then I would have my experiences fed back to me as pie charts, spark lines, bar and radar graphs. So whenever I lose my nerve or my determination, whenever my bad habits beat out my better nature and I repeat old mistakes, my failure can stare me in the face as hard data, all my flaws plotted and handsomely laid out.

Because the unexamined life isn’t worth living.

Nicolas Felton, who designed the beautiful ‘Hard Times‘ for the We Tell Stories series, produces a personal annual report, documenting the minutiae of his life in this way.

And now he’s working on Daytum, a tool designed to make this kind of tracking and presentation of personal habits easy. I’m very excited. You can see how it works in this video.

Only Daytum’s in private beta. So if anyone happens to have an invitation, please let me know – I can offer only gratitude, but it will be grand and sincere.

There is also Mycrocosm, that is similar, but not as well-designed, and with an interface that is a bit too bare-bones. Still, how can you not love something that leads to users making graphs like this:

Now Scottobear will always know that he gets headpain twice as often as pain ‘in the butt’. Probably not quite what Socrates was thinking of in his ‘Apology‘, but noble all the same.

Alan
Copywriter

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