WHEN BOOKS ARE BIG BUSINESS
authors to take a closer interest in book finance
THE battle between Rupert Murdoch and Ian Chapman, Chairman of Collins, for control of the publishing firm is an instruc- tive case, not without overtones of amuse- ment. Murdoch is a bogy-name for many people, not least writers, and Mr Chapman has been busy organising the firm's authors to voice howls of outrage against the prospect of being taken over by the Dirty Digger. The Bookseller reported on 9 December that the existing regime had already received 160 letters of support from its authors, 'including many interna- tional big sellers', some saying 'count me among the walkers' if Murdoch won. Three days earlier, the Times had carried a rather touching letter from eight people describ- ing themselves as 'authors of English- language teaching books for Collins', claiming that 'anyone with interests in English as a foreign language teaching' (whatever that may mean) should support Mr Chapman.
Mr Chapman even wrote me a letter, beginning, 'Dear Author' and enclosing the bid document and his defence. I had forgotten I was a Collins author, but it is quite true that in 1973 George Gale and I wrote and illustrated a book, published by Collins, tracing the steps of Boswell and Johnson in their tour of the Highlands. I did not think much of the way the book was produced — it included one of the worst maps I have ever seen. However, a lot has changed at the firm since then, and the case for the existing management deployed by Chapman seems impressive (it made a handsome profit of over £24 million in 1987). But I had to laugh at the underlying assumption of the struggle, that a takeover of Simon-pure Collins by the ogre News International could be a blow against civilisation as we know it.
For one thing, NI has held 41.7 per cent of the voting shares of Collins for some years now, and the heavens have not fallen in. For another, Murdoch himself and his colleague Sir Edward Pickering are actual- ly directors of Collins and do not seem to have starved any authors to death. In 1987, NI sold Collins a 50 per cent stake in Harper & Row, the famous New York publishing firm, which NI owns. As it happens, Harper & Row is my principal American publisher and I have found it absolutely first-class, both before Murdoch took over and since. The former vice- chairman of Collins, George Craig, was brought over to New York to become chief executive of Harper, where he has flourished, and another senior Collins manager, Eddie Bell, is also a vice- president in New York. In short, there has long been a good deal of interaction between NI interests and Collins, which has proved satisfactory in many ways. It is essentially about personalities, not princi- ples, and of course about the amount of money Murdoch offered in his bid.
However, the Collins bid set me thinking about how writers should view the corpo- rate structure of the firm which publishes their books. It is a complex matter. Many writers are fragile, vulnerable people, bad- ly in need of advice about all commercial matters, and even more of sympathetic help in building up their self-confidence. They need an editor who is genuinely involved in their work and who will always bear in mind their interests as well as the firm's. Perhaps for a majority of authors, the relationship they establish with their individual editor is more important than the nature and size of the publisher which employs him or her. The common assump- tion is that the really devoted editor is more likely to be found in small, indepen- dent firms. It is true that a small firm, which publishes only a handful of books each year, can give greater individual attention to its few, highly select, authors. The late Martin Secker, for instance, prob- ably the greatest small-scale publisher of the century, knew well every one of his authors (who ranged from D. H. Lawrence to Norman Douglas) and some of them were intimate friends — he enjoyed having 'It's about the moral high ground.' them down to this house to finish their books. But in my experience, good editors, who care deeply about the authors whose works they handle, are to be found in every kind of firm.
A small firm has the advantage, particu- larly for a new, unusual and highly original author, that it can drop everything and concentrate all its time, energies and re- sources on promoting a particular book. But then its resources, even when concen- trated, may be limited. And small firms are often struggling to survive: keeping their independence may mean, for instance, paying below-par salaries to staff, in an industry where salaries are anyway notor- iously low. When people are underpaid, they rarely give good service for long. The late C. P. Snow, a fund of practical wisdom about publishing, as of much else, once told me that a sensible writer should start out with a small firm and then, at a certain critical point in his career and reputation, move to a big, established one.
That may have been good advice for the 1960s, but Snow was still thinking in terms of a national market. Nowadays pub- lishing, like most other things, has become internationalised. Small publishers find it hard to think globally. The importance of an international, operation was brought home to me a couple of years ago when I produced a little anthology for Oxford University Press and was amazed by the large number of copies sold. The success had little to do with me: it was due partly to a superb jacket by Susan Scott but still more, I think, to the sheer spread of OUP's worldwide network. One reason Murdoch feels he needs control of Collins, itself a large firm, is that he hopes to link it fully with Harper & Row as the basis of a global publishing operation. That makes sense to me. I now always write with an international audience in mind. The home market is simply not big enough: the British, alas, are not keen on buying books, especially serious ones, and there are not very many of us anyway. Writing for a world market means that an author has to think very carefully about what he is doing and why. But he also, increasingly, needs a publisher who has the commercial skills and backing to work on a global scale. Up-to-date financial expertise is now an essential element in the book trade. During this decade I have watched admir- ingly the skill with which Nicholas Berry, with his City background, rescued a dis- tinguished but moribund publisher, Har- rap, and turned it into a highly successful business. No author of sense should adopt a snooty attitude to the vigour and daring which has turned News International into one of the most successful publishing empires the world has ever seen. In fact these days authors should take a close, informed interest in the financial aspects of publishing — that is, if they want to make a living in what is probably the world's poorest-paid profession, writing books.
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