The End of the beginning

Sometimes, it has to be said, this whole publishing lark can get on top a bit. Books not appearing on websites when they should, deliveries from printers going AWOL, sales worse than hoped, sales better than you planned for, all of these things can make it frustrating and annoying and generally force you to ask why you bothered in the first place.

And at times like these, its really easy to get down on the idea and I have to admit, I am more than capable of whinging like a bluenose about the whole deal. (And if you have ever heard the whole of St. Andrews, heads-in-hands moan 'Noooorrrr' in unison when yet another goal goes against them, you'll know what I mean).

And for the last few months, this has been the situation I find myself in - whinging and whining and moaning and generally acting like a prima-prat, and to be perfectly frank, I've had enough of listening to myself, and so instead of curdling milk and annoying friends and 'colleagues' alike with complaints about 'how hard it all is', we're going to do something about it.

Now, don't get me wrong, I don't think it will be easy to change, a lot of it is probably genetic on my part anyway and in some ways therapeutic, but there are elements of bluechrome that need altering, other parts that need chopping off and burying deep in the wilderness and yet more areas that should be rolled up in newspaper and stuck in the loft for the Antiques Roadshow to discover long after we've gone.

I know I'm not being overly clear here.

So from this point forward things will change, you will begin to notice the emergence of a new and streamlined organisation, an ultra-professional publisher with little room for the concerns of authors or submissions or time to talk or moments to breath.

You will see amazing productivity, and greater commerciality, less risks taken, blander more saleable books, and we will probably join organisations so that we can win awards, and generally schmooze the right people at the right times.

We will change the name too, and get a drop-box address in Kensington.

We will take venture capitalists to the Groucho and introduce them to authors they will never read or have ever heard of.

We will become that shoulderpaddednamedroppingpappushingcelebrityinfestedknighthoodcravingrolexjanglingprofit
orientedchanceavoidingexpensesclaimingestablishmentlackeyingsafeandsoftboringashellishotpublisher the world seems to want.

And god it will be easy to follow the herd, and man it will be simple to just push out the same things as everybody else and write the booksellers a cheque to make sure that the books are piled high and flogged on the cheap, and talk about branding authors and fast moving consumer good strategies and trends and returns and forget the fact that we wanted to do things our own way, and that we wanted to put books out there that were interesting and beautiful and brilliant and outrageous and brave and even more brilliant and stunning and crazy and screwed-up and uncommercial and bizarre and generally unique in some way and disregard the fact that even though they might not sell by the million, that some of our books just wouldn't have been published without us and yet deserved to be read and despite the fact that we knew that a lot of them would lose money we still went with them, living in hope if not expectation.

Obviously, we can forget that cool feeling you get when you see a book of poetry, or a novella or a short story collection that you know is just amazing or incisive or whatever, sitting on a bookshelf, that you know you've done something special to even get it that far, to present it as well as you possibly can and make it available to people who like something that doesn't come in a bun with fries.

In fact, we can forget it all, and be a Profit-Oriented-Business.
Be commercial.
Be everything we didn't want it to be about in the first place.
Stop taking chances and play the percentages.
Be just like all the others on a slow steady decline into the world of
McPublishers serving-up
McBooks to
McDonuts.

Vive l'evolution