Peter Cox writing in The Bookseller

Our cherished publishing industry—which to outsiders can appear more like a part-time hobby than a serious business—is a veritable cornucopia of contradictions.

A case in point. We have a boundless appetite for new ideas which we commoditise, package and sell. Yet we are notoriously slow to innovate ourselves. Although latecomers to the digital banquet, we have learnt next to nothing from the harrowing experiences of our cousins in the music and media industries. “Publishing is not like other businesses,” executives habitually tell me over lunch with a knowing wink, certain in their belief that we’ve been granted special dispensation from the laws of physics. It feels more like a terminal case of hubris to me but I usually say nothing because, after all, they’re paying.

Similarly, publishing exists in a heteromorphic continuum of risk. A successful publisher has the soul of a gambler: they win more often than not, and they see opportunity where others perceive only peril. Rock stars such as Anthony Cheetham and Jamie Byng have this instinct in spades. Corporate publishing, however, is massively risk-averse. “We’re looking for reasons not to publish books,” one chief executive proudly drawled to me recently. A line that probably goes down well with the bean counters at head office, but it’s anathema to real publishing.

To these corporate panjandrums, publishing is merely one component in a diverse portfolio of businesses. An industry in decline, in fact, to be milked where possible, starved of investment capital, and back-burnered before ultimate disposal. That, at least, is classic business school strategy to manage businesses in waning markets. Good for them, perhaps, but fatal for us.

So let me ask you this. As we enter the most challenging year in the history of our industry, whose side are you on? The risk-takers? Or the armadillos? Will you stick your neck out this year  or curl up into a tiny armour-plated ball of denial?

You have little choice. No industry can endure 5% year-on-year declines. Our survival depends on your ability to discern the opportunity contained within the risk. Safe publishing is no longer an option: shoot anyone on sight who says otherwise.
If your company’s culture discourages risk-taking, then quit. Their fate is sealed—don’t let them take you down with them. There has never been a better time to strike out on your own: the era of publishing dinosaurs is all but over and nimble mammals will inherit the earth.

Build secret alliances with other risk-takers. Conspire against your management. Twist their arms until they scream or, even better, until they give you your head. Great publishing is never conducted by committee—subvert, divide and conquer. Go crazy pants at every opportunity—you know you’re worth it.

I wish you a dangerously successful new year.

This column first appeared in The Bookseller on the 18th January 2011

Illustration by Suzanna

Peter Cox writing in The Bookseller

Being a publicist today is one of the toughest and least-appreciated positions in publishing.  I salute you, publicists – unsung heroes all.

However, it was not always thus.  “This is the easiest job in the world!” trilled my publicist when my first book was published, back in 1986.  “I just send out the press releases, then they interview you!” she bubbled.

And she was right.  In that era, the media had a thirst for knowledge and controversy that only books could quench.  An unknown author such as me could, if the book were big and noisy enough, grab the limelight, storm onto “Wogan” and his ten million viewers, and thence to the top of the paperback charts.  That, dear reader, is how I entered this business.

How things have changed. Today’s author counts herself lucky to grab 1,000 viewers on some obscure satellite channel at 3 o’clock in the morning.  The BBC’s commissioning editor for arts, Mark Bell, recently proclaimed in these pages that the BBC “is alive with books and new literature”.  Mr. Bell no doubt leads a life of guileless aestheticism, and I have no desire whatsoever to trample on another man’s fond dreams, but dare I whisper ever so sweetly that now would be a good time to arise from his Ephesian slumber?

Few would seriously dispute that the BBC has been systematically dumbed down in recent years.  Critics include the former controller of BBC2 Sir David Attenborough; John Tusa, onetime managing director of the BBC World Service; award-winning Panorama journalist John Ware… the list is depressingly long and luminous.  Even the president of the Royal Horticultural Society has slammed them for dumbing down its gardening programmes!  These people presumably know what they are talking about.

As the BBC has steadily atrophied into a thought-free zone, books – the messengers of ideas, controversy, passion and insight – are simply no longer relevant to its increasingly anodyne agenda.  Books are dirty, subversive, infectious things: weapons of mass awakening.  They are about as welcome in the BBC’s sterile ecosystem as MRSA is in a geriatric ward.

The BBC is run by highly intelligent people who produce deeply stupid programmes for “the rest of us”.  Their cynically patronising attitude towards the audience is only exceeded by their craven attitude towards authority.  I could cite Hutton; I could mention Mark Thompson’s self-flagellatory admission of a “massive bias to the left”.  Thompson, of course, confuses bias with the courage to ask hard questions: boat-rocking questions that powerful people often find inconvenient

And that’s the problem.  Books rock boats – and indeed, lives.

The BBC no longer does.

This column first appeared in The Bookseller on the 5th November 2010

Illustration by rubyblossom

Until now, most fan sites on the net have been in just one language: English.

If non English readers of internationally best-selling series such as Michelle Paver’s CHRONICLES OF ANCIENT DARKNESS wanted to access the official site they had to learn English first – or set up their own site in their native language. However, today, all that has changed.

Michelle Paver’s fan site – THE CLAN – has become the world’s first trans-lingual community.  Utilising state-of-the-art background translation, THE CLAN is now simultaneously available in over 50 languages in real time.

www.torak.info

Michelle Paver’s agent, Redhammer’s Peter Cox says of this exciting development for THE CLAN:

“If you’re in Beijing the entire fan site appears in Mandarin.  If you’re a fan in Helsinki, it’s 100% Finnish.  Both the Chinese fan and the Finnish fan can communicate with each other in real time!  We are bringing readers together for the first time who previously couldn’t communicate with each other.  Now, they can!”

By clever design and programming, all 50 languages can speak to each other simultaneously and seamlessly.  Multi-lingual means one language (usually English) to many.  THE CLAN is many-to-many.  And with nearly a million posts from fans all around the world, THE CLAN is one of the biggest reader fan sites on the net.

“This is the future of author fan sites”, says Peter Cox. “It’s also the future of the net itself.  I believe most sites will soon be offering what we’re doing.  The net is by definition international and inclusive.”

Michelle Pavers books have sold over four million copies in 48 languages worldwide.

Her new novel, DARK MATTER, for adult readers will be published on 21 October 2010.

Peter Cox writing in The Bookseller

Hello – my name is Peter, and I’m a book thief.

There, I’ve said it.  It’s a weight off my mind, I can tell you.  I’ll come quietly – you don’t need to use the cuffs.  Well… just this once, then.  Make sure they’re nicely lubricated.

Last year, I stole oodles of books.  JK Rowling, Dan Brown, Stephenie Meyer, Lemony Snicket, Michael Crichton… all these authors and more were my victims.  I stole blatantly in public, even on Sky Television – so there’s no doubt about my guilt.  My thievery was even splashed over the front page on The Times.  Please… won’t someone stop me before I do it again?

Well, I have done it again.  Go to my agency’s home page and you can watch a video of me stealing another book, just a few days ago.  And you know something?  Both I and countless thousands like me can be certain of one thing – our crimes will not be punished.

Shoplifters are not tolerated on the High Street.  We employ CCTV, security guards, undercover detectives, RFID tags and a host of other measures to deter “five-finger discounters”.  When we catch them, it’s blues-and-twos or Black Morias and a summary hearing at the Magistrates Court.  But online – well, that’s different.  Because the truth is, no-one appears to give a damn.

After last year’s publicity, I had hoped that the industry would have responded robustly and quickly.  Instead, there was much hand-wringing and pious talk about the need for “public education”.  But nothing substantial has changed.

My favourite website to steal books is Scribd.com.  After last year’s exposure, they claimed to have tightened up on piracy.  But as you’ll see from my most recent video, Scribd is now smugly charging users to download a pirated e-book!  This is surely intolerable.

For years, it has been obvious that the West-coast venture capital elite have no respect for our profession.  They can have an entire business financed, launched, pumped and then dumped in the 18-month timeframe it takes us to get one book out.  And they will cold-bloodedly eviscerate any existing industry to build their own website traffic (look at newspapers, look at music).  Play by these guys’ rules, and we will get burnt.

We must do three things.

First, we must print a clear warning in every book that scanning it and posting online is stealing vital income from much-loved authors.  Next, we can eliminate piracy-hosting sites by attacking their source of funding.  And third, we can and must lobby to remove any vestige of legal protection from these sites.  Lobbying works for other industries – why not us?   The alternative is, to be blunt, economic annihilation.

And frankly – if we lack the willpower to protect our own goods, maybe that’s what we deserve.

This column first appeared in The Bookseller on the 10th September 2010