Publishing
The scourge of the sensitivity reader
A comparatively new figure with no accredited expertise now dictates to literary agents, senior editors and award-winning authors
The short history of short histories
My friend Ruby recently started a TikTok channel called ‘Too Long Didn’t Read’. With boundless enthusiasm and a colourful wardrobe,…
Why are publishers such bad judges when it comes to their own memoirs?
Anthony Cheetham has been responsible for many bestsellers, but this guarded account of his career in the book trade won’t be one of them
Academic publishing is lazy and unethical
Last week witnessed the first tremors of what could be a welcome revolution: the resignation en masse of the 40-strong editorial board of NeuroImage magazine – regarded…
A mini art form
It sounds disingenuous, not to say dis-respectful, but as a writer of 40 books, give or take, I never read…
A great talent-spotter
There’s no excuse for dullness, especially when writing about a life as eventful as Joseph Johnson’s, the publisher and bookseller…
Wrong time and place
Dan Rhodes’s career might be regarded as an object lesson in How Not to Get Ahead in Publishing. Our man…
Kate Clanchy and the new censorship in publishing
‘There’s more than one way to burn a book’, wrote Ray Bradbury, in a coda to the 1979 edition of…
Can’t stand free speech? You’re fired!
Since the whole world is in crisis, a crisis in the world of publishing might seem like a niche issue.…
Taking French leave
With more than a dozen acclaimed novels to her name, not to mention short stories, poetry, a memoir and a…
When did publishers become so spineless?
Even amid plague, economic apocalypse, and the cancellation of 2020, dumb stuff keeps happening. Besides, loads of us will now…
Apple of discord
Forty-seven years ago, Virago paperbacks, with their stylish green spines and hint-of-the-transgressive colophons of a red apple with a bite…
Kingsley Amis on Lolita: It’s not pornographic enough
From ‘She was a child and I was a child’ by Kingsley Amis, 6 November 1959: The only success of…
Would any publisher dare to print Lolita now?
The other day Will Self unburdened himself on the state of fiction with crushing hauteur. ‘What’s now regarded as serious…
Should we all write ‘feminist’ stocking fillers?
I arrived at Waterloo, half an hour before my train departed. Needing to buy a birthday card, I popped into…
Stuck for something to read? Pick up a Penguin Classic
In 1956, after Penguin Classics had published 60 titles, the editor-in-chief of Penguin Books, William Emrys Williams, wondered: ‘How many…
What Mills & Boon can teach us in the age of #MeToo
In celebration of its 110th birthday, I downloaded a Mills & Boon — The Greek Tycoon’s Blackmailed Mistress — and…
The day I signed a book ‘Adolf Roberts’
I’m giving 93 speeches over the next four months to promote my new book, Churchill: Walking with Destiny, but I…
When diversity means uniformity
I’d been suffering under the misguided illusion that the purpose of mainstream publishers like Penguin Random House was to sell…
How can we know what dead people want?
In 1999, Patrick Hemingway published True at First Light, a new novel by his father Ernest. In his role as…
Edward Garnett and his diligent blue pencil
Edward Garnett, radical, pacifist, freethinker, Russophile man of letters, was from the 1890s onwards for many years the pre-eminent fixer…
An innocent abroad
For those who read the weekly music press during the 1980s, David Quantick’s was a name you could rely on.…
Idolising Ida
Jonathan Galassi is an American publisher, poet and translator. In his debut novel Muse, his passion for the ‘good old…
Diary
The week starts well. My debut novel, The Miniaturist, is a year old. On the anniversary of its publication, my…
Despair springs eternal
The left is always eager to be told that capitalism’s final crisis is upon us – and it is always disappointed
