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It is well understood how we have shaped these wolves: our ancestors would have favoured those that were friendly and useful to humans, so eventually creating the domestic dog of today. But less well studied is how this relationship changed us. Shipman argues that those humans who showed the right skills and sensitivity to manage wolves outlived and out-bred those who tried to go it alone; the result is a world of dog-lovers. Domestication runs two ways.

She claims that three giant leaps in human development were all about this animal connection: our mastery of stone tools (to kill or cut up these animals); our development of language and eventually writing (to communicate information about animal habits and habitats); and our domestication of other species. Together these laid the foundation for modern societies.

This is a bold hypothesis, and among the evidence she presents is also a great deal of speculation. But there are at least some cases where the results of these connections are clear – such as our alliance with the cow. DNA profiles suggest that 10,000 years ago, the vast majority of humans were lactose intolerant – genetically incapable of digesting milk beyond infancy. Yet in Europe and those areas colonised by Europeans, 95 per cent of the population now can (and do) happily consume dairy products into their dotage. So in these cow-rearing lands, humans with the ability to digest milk spread at the expense of their fussier cousins. In effect, just as we have bred cows for high milk yield, so they have “bred” us to digest this milk (and therefore to have a reason to care for them). And if we have evolved lactose tolerance through our interaction with the bovine, it is not crazy to think we might also have evolved a fondness for dogs, or a predilection for observing the behaviour of predators.

September 19, 2011 at 03:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

FT: Book - Line in the Sand

August 26, 2011 9:57 pm

A Line in the Sand

Review by Patrick Seale

How Britain and France redrew the map of the Middle East to satisfy their own interests

The story of how Britain and France carved up the Arab world between them after the first world war has often been told but James Barr’s new book, A Line in the Sand, adds some spice to the usual accounts of this decisive moment in the history of the Middle East. It was a cynical act of imperial greed. When they spoke of “independence” for the Arabs – which under the postwar Mandate system they had pledged to help the Arabs achieve – what the British and the French really meant was “liberation” from Turkish rule – but certainly not freedom to run their own affairs. They paid lip service to President Woodrow Wilson’s principles of national self-determination but their real intention was to redraw the map of the Ottoman empire’s Arab provinces to suit themselves. Weakened by the war and confronted by the rising power of the US, Britain and France were concerned above all to protect their own vital interests.

The French had over the centuries established a protectorate over Christian communities in the Ottoman empire. In addition, their commercial interests included large investments in Ottoman roads, railways, ports and shipping companies, as well as utilities and banks. On the eve of the war, some 90,000 Ottoman children from elite families were learning French and absorbing French ideas at French school. In Lebanon the Maronite patriarch was a central figure in France’s client network. For many influential Frenchmen, Syria and Lebanon constituted a Levantine extension of France itself. Bringing these territories under French rule seemed a legitimate spoil of war, whether the natives agreed or not.

On this story

British interests were essentially threefold: first, to control the output and disposal of Iranian and Mesopotamian oil (as First Lord of the Admiralty in 1912 Winston Churchill had taken the decision to switch the fleet from coal to oil); second, to control Palestine as a buffer for the defence of the Suez Canal and Egypt, and also because in 1917 Arthur Balfour, then foreign secretary, had pledged British support for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”; and third, to control the land and sea routes to India, through the Suez Canal to the Red Sea or down the Persian Gulf to the Indian Ocean.

Barr’s account of how the territorial carve-up was first agreed by Sir Mark Sykes and François Georges-Picot – and how the “line in the sand” was finally drawn to satisfy rival French and British interests – is lively and entertaining. He has scoured the diplomatic archives of the two powers as well as the private papers of most of the leading officials of the time in search of the telling phrase, and has come up with a rich haul that brings his narrative to life.

He has thrown some light on hitherto unexplored corners. Sykes’s father, Sir Tatton, was obsessive about milk pudding and maintaining his body at a constant temperature. In the heat of Baghdad, as they were creating the new state of Iraq, Gertrude Bell quarrelled with her boss Arnold Wilson (“There are days when I would knife him if I could.”). David Lloyd George, the prime minister, had a perfect understanding of the ambitious young Churchill (“He would make a drum out of the skin of his own mother in order to sound his own praises.”).

In 1921 Churchill, then colonial secretary, summoned British Middle East experts to a conference in Cairo to decide to put the Emir Faysal, whom the French had thrown out of Syria, on the throne of Iraq. But Churchill himself seems to have spent less time at the conference than at the pyramids with his painting kit. The British agent in Somaliland, Sir Geoffrey Archer, stole the show when he arrived with two young lions bound for London Zoo. At a party at the British residency the lions broke loose and nearly caught the pet Marabou stork of the high commissioner, General Edmund Allenby.

The French prime minister Georges Clemenceau, with whom Lloyd George had to bargain over who would get what of the Ottoman provinces, was “a stout, bald man whose snowy white moustache gave him a close resemblance to a walrus”.

Barr’s argument is that Britain and France, victors in the first world war, became rivals – even enemies at times – as they continued to squabble over spheres of influence after the second world war. Where, in my view, he somewhat overshoots the mark is to suggest that the Balfour Declaration itself was only issued “to ward off the inevitable French pressure for an international administration once Palestine had been conquered” from the Turks. There were many other compelling reasons for Balfour’s letter to Lord Rothschild, notably the British hope that American Jews would influence the US in favour of the Allied war effort. Barr even argues, not very convincingly, that the reason Zionist terrorists such as the Stern Gang and the Irgun were able to get some weapons and financing from France, to enable them to carry out the devastating attacks which eventually forced Britain out of Palestine, was because the French wanted to get even for the way Britain had helped Syria and Lebanon secure their independence. This might be stretching the story of Anglo-French rivalry in the Levant a shade too far. But it makes for enjoyable reading.

Patrick Seale is author of ‘The Struggle for Arab Independence: Riad el-Solh and the Makers of the Modern Middle East’ (Cambridge University Press)

A Line in the Sand: Britain, France and the Struggle that Shaped the Middle East, by James Barr, Simon & Schuster, RRP£25, 464 pages

September 19, 2011 at 03:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

September 06, 2011

ST: Malcolm Gladwell

Malcolm Gladwell, books, Singapore

Download ST - Success not fully within one's control 110830 (M. Gladwell)

September 06, 2011 at 06:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

August 31, 2011

ST: Photo project a big draw

FEATURE

Photo project a big draw

20 years on, photos of 14 great Chinese ink painters still attract crowds at exhibitions

Published on Aug 21, 2011

Chua Soo Bin decided to photograph 14 great Chinese ink painters who were regarded as the best of their generation. They include (above) Shanghai artist Liu Haisu, seen painting a nude with his student Liu Kang from Singapore. -- PHOTOS: CHUA SOO BIN. LU YI FEI

1 of 2

By Teo Han Wue

Had Chua Soo Bin been concerned about the lack of market for his art 26 years ago, he could not have created a long-lasting legend much celebrated at home and abroad since it was first presented in Singapore in 1989.

His exhibition and book, Legends: Soo Bin's Portraits Of Chinese Ink Masters, would not have seen the light of day, let alone gone strong after all these years. Yet another China tour kicked off at the Zhejiang Art Museum in Hangzhou early this month.

As the editor of his book, I was at the opening in Hangzhou on Aug 4, together with some close friends of his who had flown there to support him.

Background story

Unique images
These portraits are so enduring that they remain to this day the only definitive images of a generation of artists in their twilight years. They are also endearing because they portray the subjects as warm and sometimes quirky human beings complete with their idiosyncracies.

He is the only photographer the museum has exhibited apart from American Ansel Adams whose works were shown there last year.

Back in 1985, Soo Bin gave up his glamorous career of taking pictures for big-time advertising campaigns like those of Singapore Airlines because he found them too transient. Despite the many accolades he had won as a travel photo-grapher, he decided to embark on a different yet much more uncertain and risky journey.

He took on a project to photograph 14 great Chinese ink painters who were regarded as the best of their generation, convinced that he would be producing works of more lasting artistic value. The prospect of not making ends meet on such a project was the last thing on his mind.

The featured artists - Zhu Qizhan, Liu Haisu, Huang Chun-pi, Chao Shao'an, Chen Wen Hsi, C.C. Wang, Li Keran, Ye Qianyu, Wu Zuoren, Lu Yanshao, Xie Zhiliu, Li Xiongcai, Tang Yun and Guan Shanyue - who were 80 and older then have since died.

To photograph his subjects he had to travel frequently to various places in China, Taipei, Hong Kong and New York.

Without any funding other than his own savings or hope for a profitable outcome, he plunged headlong into a massive five-year venture many would consider foolhardy even today. He was acting with the resolve and courage of the proverbial adventurer insisting on going into the mountain knowing full well he will encounter tigers.

One of the 'tigers' or serious difficulties he ran into along the way was when he landed in hospital for a few weeks after suffering from a stroke due to stress. But he recovered quickly to complete his work.

Over the past two decades, this collection of 84 photographs of 14 Chinese artists has been shown in 18 museums in Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong and China. Invitations to exhibit in various other Chinese cities are still coming in as there are many in the vast country eager to see it.

During the week-long show in Hangzhou, more than 20 news-papers and television stations across China gave it extensive coverage, reaching millions of readers and viewers. The local Qianjiang Evening News, with a daily circulation of 1.4 million, reported it in a generous two-page spread - rare, said a museum official, for an arts event.

A Shanghai TV network has produced a long documentary on Soo Bin and his work, which will be broadcast in two parts later.

Visitors young and old flocked around him at the museum wanting to have his autograph and pictures taken with him. Hundreds of copies of the book that accompanies the exhibition were snapped up on the opening day.

The book, first published in Chinese in 1989, was republished in a set of Chinese and English editions by Sichuan Art Publishing and Foreign Languages Press in Beijing respectively in 2005, and is now into its second reprint.

These portraits are so enduring that they remain to this day the only definitive images of a generation of artists in their twilight years. They are also endearing because they portray the subjects as warm and sometimes quirky human beings complete with their idiosyncracies.

No other photographers had taken pictures of these artists in the way that Soo Bin had. To borrow the words of the French master Henri Cartier-Bresson, he 'put the camera between the skin of a person and his shirt'.

Singapore artist Chen Wen Hsi, for instance, loved durians and set high standards for his art by destroying his inferior works with fire. Liu Haisu caused a huge outrage in Shanghai in 1915 by introducing live nude models in the academy and kept in touch with his student Liu Kang from Singapore. Such close details about the artists abound throughout Soo Bin's works.

He took great pains to do research on each of the subjects, a task especially daunting for a complete outsider from Singapore like him.

'He is simply amazing. Although these artists had been so close to us for such a long time, we had never thought of photographing them in the way he did,' says Madam Mao Xiaofang, deputy secretary of the Zhejiang Photographers' Society. 'Mind you, five of the 14 artists were among us here in Hangzhou alone.'

Perhaps that is what sets Soo Bin apart from his photographer friends in China. Not only has he made portraits of many other luminaries in China such as artists Wu Guanzhong and Zhou Sicong, actor Ying Ruocheng and writer Bing Xin, he has also done no less for Singapore artists who are 'so close to us'.

He took portraits of 56 artists for the book Singapore Artists Speak published by artist Thomas Yeo in 1990. However, the book, which was the first of its kind here, focused more on the artists' works than their portraits.

Soo Bin flatly denies the frequent suggestion that he used his photography projects to promote the gallery business he started in 1990. 'I have never dealt in the works of those artists featured in Legends,' he declares.

More of his portraits of Singapore artists such as Liu Kang, Pan Shou, Wu Tsai Yen, Teo Eng Seng, Anthony Poon and Chng Seok Tin remain unpublished. It would be a great pity if he leaves them languishing in his enormous archives.

In Soo Bin's treasure chest of photographic images is certainly material for more legends from our Singapore arts scene.

Now at 79, he is still busy organising exhibitions at his gallery Soo-Bin Art International at Ubi.

Whenever I persuade him to publish his other photographs, he will say: 'Just give me more time!'

The writer is the executive director of Art Retreat incorporating Wu Guanzhong Gallery.

August 31, 2011 at 04:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

August 30, 2011

FT: Light reading

August 12, 2011 6:23 pm

Light reading

By Carl Wilkinson

This summer we’ve finally embraced the e-book – but what does this mean for writers and publishers?

In the departure lounge at Heathrow Airport people are reading. There’s nothing particularly unusual about the scene – we read all the time, on buses, trains and planes. What stands out here is that many of these readers are glued not to tatty paperbacks or glossy hardbacks or even those large format airport specials but e-books.

It’s all part of what is being dubbed the “Kindle Summer” – the first summer when e-books have sold strongly, marking a turning point for publishing. And if you’ve recently packed for a beach holiday, as I did last week, you’ll understand the benefits. Why take a stack of heavy hardbacks that eat into your precious luggage allowance when you can take an e-reader stocked with thousands of books? Gone is that mad rush at the airport bookshop as you try to find something you might want to read; and gone is the suitcase crammed with hardbacks packed “just in case”.

On this story

In April, the Association of American Publishers announced that for the first time e-books had outsold all other traditional formats; and since the beginning of April, Amazon.co.uk customers have been purchasing Kindle books over hardcover books at a rate of more than two to one. “E-book sales are rising, and rising faster than previously predicted, led in the most part by the Kindle,” says Philip Jones, deputy editor of the Bookseller. “Penguin reported in July that its global e-book sales in the first half were up at 14 per cent, while in the UK it agreed with the general consensus that e-books now make up about 6 per cent of their trade/consumer business. We expect e-books to be at about 10 per cent by the end of the year.”

So what does this all mean? Are we reading more? Are e-books taking over from physical books? Are hardbacks about to go the way of vinyl? And where does it leave readers, writers and publishers?

There are now several major platforms for e-books. Amazon’s Kindle is the market leader, but Apple’s iBooks, Barnes and Noble’s Nook, Waterstones and retailers such as Kobo have all expanded the horizons of e-books in the past couple of years. Although each platform has its own unique feel, what are selling particularly well across all devices are thrillers, misery memoirs and blockbusting popular fiction.

Yet, while readers are embracing the digital book more than ever, this shift hasn’t been easy for publishers. The music industry struggled through the impact of Napster and the rise of the MP3 player, but publishing – one of the most traditional of all the creative industries – has until now remained relatively resistant to change.

“Culturally there was resistance pretty much at every publishing house,” says Michael Bhaskar, digital publishing director at Profile Books. “People thought that e-books and digital publishing were out there to kill books and the book industry.” That attitude has slowly been replaced with one of acceptance that digital is here to stay and that publishers (and writers) must adapt to survive. “Digital isn’t a way of killing print books, but supporting them. It’s the content that matters most.”

Making the transition from an entirely print world to a print and digital one is far from easy. It’s not simply a case of digital books bringing in extra sales. As Jones points out, the overall fiction market is down 13 per cent year-on-year and “sales of hardback novels through BookScan’s Top 5,000 bestseller list were down 5 per cent year-on-year, with paperback novels down 17 per cent.” Many readers who would once have paid full price for a physical book have migrated to e-books.

From the readers’ point of view, it’s not hard to see why. Joe Dunthorne, author of Submarine, says: “When reading all 1,200 pages of Infinite Jest last year, I cut my copy into three chunks (re-binding each bit with masking tape) to make it easier to carry. But then, each night, I had to come home and catch up on the footnotes. Needless to say, it was annoying. Now my girlfriend’s reading it on Kindle, and it’s ideal. David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest seems like a good enough reason, on its own, to buy an e-reader.”

Earlier this year, e-books had a prominent breakthrough when the judges of the 2011 Man Booker Prize were given a choice of how to read the 138 contenders. “We could choose to use Kindles or not – as I recall two did and three didn’t,” says the novelist Susan Hill, a judge on this year’s panel. Hill’s book Howards End is on the Landing (2009) explored her experience of rediscovering old books during a year of reading – something that couldn’t happen in a purely digital world. Did she embrace the Kindle for her Booker reading? “I didn’t read on a Kindle and have never even seen one,” she says. “I am a real book person – and always will be. I am a great laptop person and an internet/Twitter/Facebook one too so I am no Luddite; but the real printed book is a joy – it ain’t broke so ... ”

However, many book-lovers are embracing the e-book. The thriller writer and former literary agent Emlyn Rees is now an e-book fan: “I got a Kindle for Christmas and now read more books on it than not. It’s particularly great for holidays, in that you can load it up with beach reading, without having to pay airlines for the privilege of carrying all that extra weight.”

This summer, Rees’ publisher Constable and Robinson has been using e-books to grow word-of-mouth interest in titles that it will then publish in the autumn as physical books. Rees’ Hunted has been selling for just £1 as an e-book throughout July and August, garnering praise from Jeffrey Deaver and Sam Bourne. It will be published as a £12.99 hardback in September.

“All writers have to embrace e-books,” says Rees. “Any writer with a mainstream publisher is going to have to get used to promoting their e-books online as the market is growing so quickly it can’t be ignored. The main arguments concerning the pros and cons of e-books come down to royalties and piracy. What slice will the writer get of the electronic pie and how can they protect themselves from having their work distributed for free?”

One of Constable and Robinson’s literary bestsellers is Jennifer Egan’s Pulitzer Prize-winning A Visit from the Goon Squad. The novel, also available as an e-book (£5.99), has become an iPhone and iPad app. For just £2.99, readers get not only the full text of the book but the audiobook, video and illustrations. It’s hard to see how the £7.99 paperback can compete.

Meanwhile, Scottish crime writer Ian Rankin’s Edinburgh iPhone app has been downloaded more than 30,000 times and has just been launched on Android phones. The free app isn’t a book, but a guided tour of the city that has inspired Rankin’s writing and demonstrates that authors are no longer simply confined to producing traditional works. “Novels, films and games will start overlapping more and more,” says Rees. “You’re seeing this already in the gaming world, where titles such as LA Noire and Alan Wake are hybrids of crime fiction novels and games, only where players get to help shape the narrative. The novel as we know it might not hold any appeal for future generations.”

But publishers have to be cautious about how they embrace the digital possibilities. The question hanging over these complex and often expensive apps is: are they commercially viable? They require investment and can ultimately compete with other products such as the hardback or paperback, cutting publishers’ margins. Henry Volans, Head of Faber Digital is more positive. “If publishers don’t stretch what you can do then start-ups will. I think there’s an imperative to innovate.”

Faber, in partnership with Touch Press, is behind two of the most successful iPad book apps produced so far. TS Eliot’s The Waste Land, originally published in 1922, features a performance of the poem by Fiona Shaw and readings by TS Eliot, Ted Hughes and Alec Guinness, plus copies of the original manuscript. The Solar System by Marcus Chown is an interactive guide commissioned specially as an app with a hardback version due for publication in November. Both apps sell for £9.99 each and, Volans tells me, earned back their production costs in six weeks and are now in profit. “At one point,” he says, “The Waste Land was the third highest grossing iPad app in the UK. It’s quite thrilling to see a difficult literary poem among all those other things.”

Yet, digital books are not simply running amok. Physical books, far from obsolete, are competing with their digital counterparts. Hodder’s new Flipback books, for example, printed on wafer-thin paper and bound along the long edge are tiny, light and easy to read – like an e-reader. For mainstream hardback books we could also see a push to greater quality and exclusivity. “As digital culture becomes more prevalent the value of speciality culture becomes greater,” says Bhaskar. “I’m convinced that we’ll start to see more limited, boxed and numbered editions produced on incredible paper with extra design features. We’ll see the resurgence of the book as a sort of collector’s item.” Paperbacks and more disposable types of books, however, may not fare so well.

We can also expect new financing models for authors. In the US, Amazon has “dropped a brick in the publishing pond” with its digital self-publishing element (in June, John Locke became the first self-published author to sell a million e-books through Amazon). In the UK, the Unbound project is publishing books by pitching ideas direct to readers who then stump up the funding for the ones they want to read. When an idea has received 100 per cent of the financing needed, the writer starts work and “investors” receive a copy of the finished product. Terry Jones has started on Evil Machines, due in October, and Tibor Fischer has 76 per cent of the funding needed to start Crushed Mexican Spiders.

Literary agents, too, are getting in on the act. Last year, Andrew Wylie launched Odyssey Editions to publish modern classics by the likes of Saul Bellow and William Burroughs as e-books through Amazon. Part of the move was to cut publishers out of the loop. Next month, the agent Ed Victor will follow Wylie, setting up his own e-books imprint Bedford Square Books.

“I started Bedford Square Books for three reasons,” Victor explains. “One was to please my authors, to have books that they thought were dormant living and breathing again. The second reason was to have fun. I was a publisher, but the last book I actually published was in 1972. I’m learning about how you publish and market books in the 21st century and it’s fascinating. And the third thing is not to lose money.”

Bedford Square Books will begin by publishing six titles by Victor’s authors that are no longer in print. “I’m not doing this to compete with publishers, I’m publishing books that they didn’t want to publish,” he says. “I am now able to say to a publisher: ‘Would you like to reissue this wonderful book or shall I?’ It gets their attention.”

But while digital publishing has opened up the means of publishing to anyone with a computer, pity the poor reader. Sitting on a beach with my Kindle, I didn’t start trawling through all the books by authors I’d never heard of. Instead, I downloaded Julian Barnes’ The Sense of an Ending , which was published while I was abroad, but could be downloaded. When faced with vast choice, we gravitate to what we know. The brand (be it author or publisher) is all important. One of the biggest – JK Rowling – will begin selling Harry Potter e-books exclusively through her Pottermore website in the autumn. It is a canny move for the author, allowing her to maintain complete control (and reap the benefits).

Below the horizon, there is also mushrooming creativity from new start-ups keen to break the mould. This summer, 24symbols.com, a “Spotify for books”, has launched. Readers can download e-books either ad-supported without charge or for €9.99 per month ad-free. Meanwhile, small digital non-fiction publishers such as atavist.net and byliner.com are finding niches for new forms of writing. Byliner made a splash in April publishing Three Cups of Deceit by award-winning author Jon Krakauer, about allegations that Nobel Peace Prize nominee Greg Mortenson fabricated parts of his bestselling books. Known as “Singles”, these e-books are intended to be read in a single two-hour sitting.

Fiction writers, too, could benefit. “There are so many possibilities for interactive fiction, which is where I see the e-readers really coming in to their own,” says Dunthorne, who has just published his second novel Wild Abandon. “I’ve been writing literary Choose Your Own Adventure stories, and these seem perfect for digital.”

“Writing always changes and evolves,” agrees Bhaskar. “Tweeting, blogging, the way people interact on social media – all of those things are new forms of writing and what we will see is new great writers master these forms. It’s a new commercial and creative challenge for writers. Publishers have to be there to help make it a success.”

There are, of course, hurdles to this brave new digital world. Sitting on the plane, waiting to fly home, I heard a voice: “I’m sorry sir, could you turn that off for take-off?” I’ve never been asked to switch off a book before.

August 30, 2011 at 09:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

July 30, 2011

FT: An aristocrat of a bold type

July 12, 2011 9:38 pm

An aristocrat of a bold type

By Emma Jacobs

Controversy sells: Jamie Byng has built Canongate’s reputation through cutting-edge projects, such as publishing the Bible in instalments with introductions <br/>by well-known authors such as Will Self and Doris Lessing

Big. That is Jamie Byng’s reputation. In the gossipy, cliquey, insular world of books, the managing director of Canongate, the Edinburgh-based publishing company he rescued from bankruptcy in 1994, is known as a big-head with a big mouth. Uniformly described by interviewers as “leonine” due to his mane of curly hair, much is also made of the big tufts of chest hair that are said to sprout from shirts open to his bellybutton. “Lord Byng of hype” is a common epithet, a reference to his self-promotion and aristocratic lineage – his father is the eighth Earl of Stafford; his stepfather, Sir Christopher Bland, former chairman of the BBC and BT, the telecommunications group.

Yet, on a sunny morning at his bright, airy London offices in a pretty residential street in affluent Notting Hill, home to American bankers and trustafarians, his locks are tamed and the chest hair is largely tucked away under a faded grey polo shirt. Rather than a turbocharged braggart, he appears effusive, confident and open.

On this story

Apologising for the messy desk – in fact, the piles of invitations, letters and hardbacks seem to have some logical order – the bespectacled Mr Byng launches into his favourite subject: books. “[A book] allows [the reader] to enter the mind of someone else in the most intimate of ways. Books. . . allow you to articulate that which you couldn’t otherwise understand.” There is no interrupting him. “They allow you to make sense of the nonsense.” A pause for breath. “Ultimately, the only way you could possibly survive is by creating a narrative to put some structure into what is otherwise just a maelstrom of different feelings, impulses, emotions.”

In 1992, the Edinburgh University English literature graduate “fell in love with publishing” when he worked as an unpaid intern at Canongate. Two years later, as the company teetered on the edge of going into administration, he bought it – a feat the 25-year-old would have found impossible without financial backing from his stepfather and his then father-in-law, banker Charles McVeigh. The total cost was £95,000.

“Aged 25, you’re naive and optimistic ... I still am in lots of respects.” The 41-year-old denies charges that Sir Christopher (now the chairman and substantial shareholder at the company) threw money at his stepson’s plaything. “[He] was incredibly rigorous.” Nor, he insists, has divorce created problems with Mr McVeigh. “I’m still very close to Charlie [and] my ex-wife. She’s the mother of my eldest two children.” (He has since remarried and had another child.) “I still love her in lots of respects.”

After the acquisition, Mr Byng set about transforming the publisher, forging a cutting-edge identity by creating controversial projects. Perhaps the biggest was the Bible, which he published in instalments with introductions from authors including Will Self and Doris Lessing. “When you’ve got no money, you have to be very resourceful ... I wouldn’t say I was fearless but certainly willing to take risks.”

Enthusiasm, he believes, is the reason for his reputation as a publicity-peddler. “If you’re passionate about something you are hyping it as opposed to just loving what you do ... there’s a great cynicism in this country”.

He is being disingenuous. He acknowledges his reputation as a former wild boy helped draw attention to his publishing house. He once told a newspaper: “[Cocaine is] the drug I like most at the moment. Alcohol, nicotine, coke.” Today, he reflects on past indiscretions. “Your profile as a publisher can raise the profile of the publishing house and the authors ... Sometimes I’ll be too honest ... I’m not naive. It’s part of what makes Canongate what it is ... we have [an] irreverent attitude.” He has the public schoolboy habit of dropping expletives into conversation to display his anti-establishment devil-may-care attitude.

Nonetheless, the publisher’s profile has helped attract writers such as Philip Pullman, whose book, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, recast the story of Jesus.

Canongate’s iconoclastic reputation also helped to secure cyberwarrior Julian Assange’s much anticipated memoir, which is being written by novelist and journalist Andrew O’Hagan. Last week, reports circulated that the deal was off over fears that the US government could use the details against Mr Assange, who is appealing against the decision to extradite him to Sweden to face rape allegations. After such garrulousness, Mr Byng is frustratingly tight-lipped and will not add anything to a statement released by the publisher, which said the “contract ... is still very much alive, with over 35 publishers around the world committed to publishing this book”. Everything is under wraps, he insists. “It’s the book that most people would like to see leaked, so there are security considerations.” How much money did he pay the pair? “I never ever say what I paid for a book unless it’s so tiny it’s laughable.”

That brings to mind the publishing house’s nickname “cheapskate Canongate”. Is the description accurate? “It might be a reputation [but] it’s not exactly fair,” he retaliates. “We [don’t] overpay for books . . . we don’t need to because money is not the only thing you’re offering to an author ... You’ve got to publish the book really well and there are examples where agents and authors have decided to accept an offer from us even though it’s lower than another publisher’s.”

Standing out is what publishers have to do, he asserts, as bookshops close, replaced by online retailers, particularly Amazon, e-books challenge print, and agents and authors become publishers. “It’s never been easier to self-publish and get your book up there on Amazon. The price of entry to market has never been lower but getting your book to stand out is harder than ever. There’s every chance your book will remain obscure and no one will ever read it.” This is where, he insists, a creative and flexible publisher, such as his, can make its mark. He cites musician Nick Cave’s novel The Death of Bunny Munro as a template for innovation.

The case of Nick Cave

Best known for fronting the band The Bad Seeds, Nick Cave’s talents were put to use by Canongate’s publishing campaign for his novel The Death of Bunny Munro – a tale about a sex-crazed salesman on a road trip with his son. Alongside the hardback, Canongate released an audio version with Cave reading the entire unabridged version with help from Bad Seeds collaborator Warren Ellis.

It also sold 500 limited editions on a microsite that hosts videos of Cave reading extracts. “The books we do commit to we think about very carefully,” Mr Byng explains. “It’s not like a conveyor belt where you just throw it out there.”

The greatest money-spinners have been down to Mr Byng’s literary hunches. In 2006, he read a series of memoirs by a little-known US politician called Barack Obama, and swiftly secured the UK and Commonwealth rights. One presidential election later, Dreams of My Father and Audacity of Hope have ratcheted up sales of 1.2m and 700,000 respectively. Yann Martel’s Life of Pi (which won the Man Booker prize in 2001) has been Canongate’s best-seller by volume – more than 2m copies.

Despite the precariousness of publishing, he remains adamant that Canongate will continue to be independent. Ten years ago, discussions over a merger with US publisher Grove Atlantic collapsed. “I don’t want to go into the details ... It was to do with [valuing] the businesses.” He has no need, he says, to look for another partner. “[Ten years ago] was before we published Life of Pi ... we were in a much more vulnerable position ... Our balance sheet is very different [now].” Nonetheless, business is modest. Revenues for 2009, the last reported financial year, were £13.89m, down from £14.7m in 2008, and pre-tax profits fell from £2.62m to £1.85m.

He doesn’t want to be swallowed by a big company. “It would be very hard to think why.” Money? “Yes, but how much money do you want or need in life? ... I never got into publishing to make a quick buck; it was about creating a great publishing house.”

July 30, 2011 at 09:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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The case of Nick Cave