We're Nearly Famous Now!
Victoria is a funny old locale for bookselling [and I pause here to allow those of you who live 'off' to raise a brow to our St James's Park address, but it’s really the same place]. At first it seems a bit barren; but on close inspection, and with a bit of judicious gerrymandering, it's actually quite productive. Literally speaking.
Iain Dale started Politico's just round the corner, and last time I lifted the lid it looked like he was creating a Tory TV channel and becoming a web based media baron.
Random House aren't so far away that you couldn't go round there and make inappropriate comments at them during your lunch hour.
And just across Victoria Street from Mishmash Bookshop is the delightful Friday Project [whom I here pause to emphasise are nothing at all to do with the execrable after-hours bilge that is TV’s Friday Night Project].
The Friday Project is a small, funky, blogfan type publisher that looks to utilise the best emerging technologies like the internet, podcasts, e-books, that sort of thing, to run alongside print media. Most famous for employing Scott Pack, the erstwhile “most powerful man in British bookselling” [sorry Scott but it could be worse; “real name Katie Price” for instance] TFP was actually up and running for a while before he joined them a couple of months ago, bringing them more into the reading public’s gaze.
They have got a very good website too, with three very informative and entertaining blogs; Scott P's very own Me and My Big Mouth, The Friday Thing and London by London. Of course everyone in bookselling reads MMBM every day, despite Scott’s recent protestations. TFT is just coruscatingly rude about pretty much everyone, and LBL is a fantastic hotch-potch of opinions and ideas from just about everyone left standing in London.
Last week they picked Mishmash Bookshop for their Intermezzo Londoner interview bit – boy was I surprised. In amongst the entry level celebrity glitterati, you can understand our flattered glee. You can have a read of LBL's latest issue here. Then take a look at the other Friday Project stuff. And next time you are in Victoria [or at least the St James’s Park end] pop into Mishmash Bookshop and buy a book or two.
6 comments:
Can I have an autograph! (And you're overdue for a post...)
Congratulations on the interview.
Cheers!
Yes but...
I wouldn't repeat the Friday Project's puff quite so readily, personally.
Most bloggers I know would rather go with a major publisher who might not know what blogs are but might be prepared to offer them an old-fashioned, traditional, good deal.
David,
I'd like to know
1. where the 'puff' was repeated from and
2. where you gain the assumption that our deals are non-traditional?
In your own time. Thanks.
Aw come on guys…
In the past I’ve chatted to a couple of TFP folks who have dropped into Mishmash on their way to the office. We are listed together by London Bloggers because [kind of weirdly] it’s organised geographically. They asked me to do a wee interview piece for their LBL blog. And I thanked them in a post that hopefully informed the reader about their aims. Blogging seems to be built on these symbioses isn’t it?
But I don’t think I was ‘repeating their puff’
Publishing claims to thrive on the new, the innovative, the cutting edge, setting the agenda. But in fact it’s about the same thing that it always has been – buying rights and selling copies. Technological advances, from movable type, photogravure, litho's, digital setting, to the internet, haven’t really changed that. We are still devouring novels, biographies, manuals, and colouring books. And although TFP trumpet their contemporary skills and attitudes very effectively, I’m sure they know it. They do after all have a top selling blog-based book in the shops right now. Bums on seats, Dear, as they say in the theatre.
Are bloggers different from any other authors? Are authors any different from other artists? Is it a calling, a job, or a burden? I suppose it’s the answer to those kinds of questions that would make me decide between publishers. If I were a poet I would want to court Bloodaxe, Carcanet, and Faber. If I were an art historian I would love to write for T&H or Phaidon. The majors would always have more money; but with the smaller niche presses you know you would get a more sympathetic hearing if times got tough.
Clare I’m sure doesn’t need me to fight her battles; but I admire anyone who starts a small publisher in these days, and then makes it pay, and then makes it a success.
But thanks for checking in…
Andrew
Thanks Andrew...
The comments are fun though, right?! I will make sure I drop in to see you soon.
I must admit to being very impressed with TFP, if for no other reason than they published Tom Reynold's Blood, Sweat & Tea. His blog is one of the first I encountered and it's still one of my first reads when he posts a new piece.
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