North Meadow Media
The North Meadow Interview

Books with Attitude

Scott Pack, Publisher at The Friday Project, is best known as the former Waterstone’s Head Buyer who was dubbed the “most powerful person in book publishing”. It’s a label that saw him demonised for not promoting the same books favoured by certain newspaper columnists, but there’s no denying that he was good at finding out what people wanted to read and selling to them at attractive prices.

These days, Scott writes an increasingly popular blog called Me and my Big Mouth, which is chock full of book recommendations, games of fantasy tennis, songs he’s fond of and tales of the mad bin woman.

I dropped Scott a line to ask him about the future of e-books, his media reputation, and his ideas for a fantasy book prize. This is what he had to say…

In December you pointed out that the Waterstone’s e-book Bestseller charts had changed — in a couple of months — from a list that was headed by a French-language edition of Dickens, to a place that is “abuzz with major league crime”. Are we really getting more switched on to e-books, or is it just a fad made possible by Sony’s Reader and other hardware?

With the revelation that Waterstone’s have sold 30,000 Sony Readers since the launch late last year then it does look like we are getting more switched on to eBooks and it is more than just a fad. I have had my own Reader for some months now. It was a freebie so my attitude to it is almost certainly different than if I had bought it. I have read lots of submissions and manuscripts on it as well as reviewed some new books from other publishers but, and this is crucial, I haven’t purchased a single eBook. I know I am not alone in this. I think people like the technology but find eBooks to be overpriced. I suspect they will come down in price quite a bit in the year ahead.

Whilst researching your career from the web, I was amused to note the praise you have received from bloggers, little-known writers and small publishers, in complete contrast with the vitriol that’s been poured on you by ‘big names’ who thought you were strangling the book trade as Buying Manager for Waterstone’s. How did you manage to pull that off?

Most of the time, not all of the time but most of it, the people having a pop had never met me or had any dealings with me at all. The exception is Tim Adams who lied his arse off during the interview and then wasn’t very nice about me when it appeared in print. I think he is a wanker but at least the physical description he gave of me was based on an actual meeting. Nick Cohen was quite unpleasant about me in the New Statesman, calling me bull-necked — the tosser, despite not knowing me from Adam.

I tend to speak my mind and am very direct. That rubs people up the wrong way sometimes. During my time at Waterstone’s I made some observations, often about how old fashioned and clunky the industry was, and there were people who objected to that. That is absolutely fine and both views are valid. There was a perception, false though it was, that I wielded a lot of power and if you think someone can make or break a book and you don’t like the cut of his jib then you are unlikely to be singing his praises across your bangers and mash at The Ivy, in publishing meetings or in print. Fair enough really.

In general though, people who have dealt with me directly are pleasantly surprised that I am not the complete cunt I am sometimes made out to be. I am a bit of an arse but not quite as bad as my press would suggest.

I personally find the independent publishing sector to be a vibrant and exciting source of wonderful books so I was happy to go out of my way to support it when I bought books for a living and am still keen to do so now I have a blog that a few people read. That approach has won me a number of friends and I see that as a wonderful by-product of what I do.

So, after that rant what I really mean is that the people who slagged me off usually didn’t know me and the people that did know me tended to be a bit nicer.

How did your critics in the publishing and media world react when you left to become Commercial Director at web-to-print publisher, The Friday Project?

Initially it garnered a bit of attention but I quickly fell off the radar into obscurity.

You’ve been blogging at Me And My Big Mouth for over two years now. What’s the most unexpected thing that’s happened as a result?

Being sent a free Sony Reader. Receiving a parcel of CDs from John Connolly.

What do you most appreciate in book and cover design?
As a reader I like something tactile and gorgeous. I love the untrimmed pages you often get with American hardbacks.

If you had a few thousand quid spare to set up your own book prize, what would you call it and how would it differ?

I have often been tempted to start my own book prize — only in my head, mind you. I love the idea of creating a huge prize fund and then the shortlisted authors would be invited round my house for tea and cake. All of this televised on BBC4. We would chat about the books on the sofas in my living room and then I would announce the winner. The runners up would receive a freshly baked cake from the Pack kitchens.

Posted by: Ben Locker
Published: 22nd January, 2009 at 10:38 am in Blog, The North Meadow Interview.
Tags: books, e-books, publishing, scott pack, the friday project, waterstone's
Comments: 2 Comments »

Polyphonic Can-Can

Katy Evans-Bush has that remarkable quality of making me want to read poetry for fun. So much so that I’ve refused a review copy of her book Me and the Dead, offered for kicking off this Cyclone virtual book tour, and I’m going to go and spend real money on it instead. It will be the second poetry book I’ve bought since I got a volume of Robert Crawford’s stuff for a friend back in 2003.

I have, though, read Katy’s free sampler on her publisher’s website. It’s cracking. And it has a damned fine photo on the front.

Oddly, what I like so much about Katy’s poems is the fact that they reveal a fine prose writer. Take this, the first stanza of her poem ‘The Bog of Despair’:

We’d lunched on Greek salad and coffee
in a place with white walls and a skylight,
and when the guy in the corner’s phone
went off in a polyphonic can-can
we laughed without even trying to hide it.

Run the lines together, tidy up the punctuation and – bingo – you’ve got a slice of musical prose. Delicious.

Anyway, I caught up with Katy by email and asked her about her dreams, and what she thinks about some of mine.

When did you start writing poetry, and why?
My relationship with poetry started as soon as I could read… no, in fact everyone’s relationship with it starts even earlier, with the beginnings of speech – with nursery rhymes and songs. My grandfather used to sing me the old vaudeville song, “K-K-K-Katie, beautiful Katie, you’re the only g-g-g-girl that I adore…” and it’s still imprinted in my head. And I still think “Row, row, Row Your Boat” is amazingly mysterious: that creepy use of the word “merrily,” and “gently” down the stream – the stream of life, which is “but a dream.”

Children love play with words and sounds, and meaning is fluid to them. They love different ways of understanding things – it’s how they learn. They don’t have an innate sense of poetry being dull or boring – they get taught that.

I never really differentiated poetry from other forms of books, stories, songs, etc. I was lucky; my parents and even their friends gave me poetry books, along with fairy tales, which I’m also steeped in. I still have my Selected Poems for Young People by Edna St Vincent Millay – a selection, not specially written for children. I can remember reading it at about 7 or 8. And I was unafraid of the Oxford Book of English Verse; I’d just dip in and read whatever took my fancy.

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Posted by: Ben Locker
Published: 8th December, 2008 at 12:01 am in Blog, The North Meadow Interview.
Tags: katy evans-bush, me and the dead, poetry, salt publishing
Comments: 7 Comments »

Shedding Convention

Journalist Alex Johnson has a thing about sheds. So much so that, on any given day, you’re likely to find him sitting in his shed, writing about sheds for the benefit of people who, er, work in sheds. It’s an obsession, but the thing is – even if you think you’re indifferent to the small buildings in your back garden – you’re almost certain to find Alex’s blog Shedworking a lively and compelling read. And even if you don’t, he’s staked out a bit of the web that’s devoted to bookshelves, so there’s no excuse not to take a look at his stuff.

North Meadow Media’s Ben Locker asks Alex whether a life spent in sheds has the foundations for a successful career.

Why a shed? Why not a tree house, an Anderson shelter, a loft conversion or another space in or near your home?
To be a shedworker you have to have a garden office, and in that respect I’d argue that a tree house and Anderson shelter are ’sheds’ – I regard ’shed’ as a flexible concept rather than a concrete architecturality (i.e. if you think it’s a shed, then it’s a shed). While shedworking bears strong comparison to loftroomworking, spareroomworking and kitchentableworking, there are some key advantages:

• physically, it’s easier to prevent – or at least restrict – your children, spouses and pets invading your work space if you’re based in a garden office (although admittedly I get more bees in here than I did when I worked in the dining room).
• there’s no need to double up on spaces. With a shed, your third bedroom remains modem free and your dining room table is not deluged by paper.
• a shed keeps you away from the fridge so the temptation to nibble and grow obese is more remote
• financially, it adds value to your property: up to 5% according to some reports,
• it’s also a great place to meet clients. I’ve had several meetings in my garden office and every single visitor has been at the very least intrigued by the arrangements and most are positively impressed.
• psychologically, shedworking marks a clear difference between where you live and where you work – there’s no taint of work attached to any part of your home. Instead all the taint is in the shed.

I’d add that shedworking is as much a statement of intent as it is a piece of architecture: John Ruskin argued that our buildings must mean something to their inhabitants, that their spiritual concerns are as important as the material ones. Shedworking is just plain more fun, adding a certain pizzazz to your working life.

Do you miss working in the same room as your colleagues?
No, although I do miss the option of nipping out for a swift half sometimes. I spend time with people I actually like now rather than those whose paths accidentally intersect with mine

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Posted by: Ben Locker
Published: 18th November, 2008 at 3:32 pm in Blog, The North Meadow Interview.
Tags: age concern, alex johnson, designer breakfasts, interviews, journalism, national association for colitis and crohn's, sheds, shedworking, the bookshelf blog
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