Bookbuyer's
Bookend
As predicted in Bookend last March, the house of Barrie and Jenkins has finally fallen into the hands of Communica-Europa, the Swiss-based company headed by old Etonian Christopher Shaw. Barrie, until recently controlled by the Hon. Tony Samuel, are a general publishing firm with some saleable fiction (novelists include P. G. Wodehouse, George Macdonald Fraser, Alan White, and now Peter Blatty) and a broadly based list of travel, history, music, art and antiques books.
Communica-Europa was described by Shaw last year as being -a newly formed group operating in the EEC in the areas of special interest magazines; reference, language and educational publishing; educational materials, TV programming; business services." It is not easy to see where Barrie and Jenkins fit into all this unless Communica-Europa have their eye on the famous Nagel travel guides although Barrie are only distributors for these and in any case the Nagel operation was very much the baby of sales director Ernest Godfrey who left the company this spring. (He was not the only one.) Anyway Mr Shaw, aided by Rupert Murdoch and the sewing machine money of Forbes Singer, is now back to give Britain another demonstration of his publishing expertise. Bookbuyer hopes he has better luck with Barrie and Jenkins than he appears to have had in his publishing career so far. Mr Shaw's name first began to appear in trade circles during the early 'shales when he was original managing director of the magazine Topic which had a short life.
Thence he moved to New English Library, first as sales manager and later as managing director, at a time when the company was undergoing mixed financial fortunes. (Losses in 1967 amounted to £307,000 and in 1968 they were £335,000 although it is important to add that more recently the company has undergone a dramatic revival andlast year made a pre-tax profit of £355,000.) In 1968 NEL announced the formation of a new hardback imprint to be launched in association with Bernard Geis, the American bestseller manufacturer specialising in soft-core sex books; Bernard Geis Associates were unfortunate in having to file proceedings under the US Federal Bankruptcy Act nearly three years later.
In 1969 Mr Shaw's hardworking endeavours to put the NEL ship in order were rewarded when he was promoted to the prestigious presidency of World Publishing, the US hardback subsidiary of the Los Angeles Times-Mirror, who also own NEL. Despite his efforts he was unable to halt World's substantial losses and shortly after he left in 1973 the president of the Times-Mirror's book publishing group announced that World were cutting back on general publishing and concentrating on Bible and reference book publishing. Earlier this year, Times-Mirror sold the Bible and reference book publishing list to Collins.
The past few years must have been frustrating ones for the bright Mr Shaw who clearly deserves to fare better with Barrie and Jenkins, a company with roots back into the early part of this century and a fine set of literary traditions.
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