Tag Archives: #publishing

My night with the Buzzcocks

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Manchester was a crucible for UK music in the wake of punk rock. Joy Division, Buzzcocks and The Fall were just a few of the key bands to emerge in 1976-77, inspired by the Sex Pistols’ legendary gigs at the city’s Lesser Free Trade Hall. These groups were supported by a cohort of entrepreneurial managers, promoters and producers. Added to this mix were local record labels like Factory, New Hormones and Rabid, and together they helped to define a “Manchester sound”, even though the bands themselves were musically diverse.

But by the very early 1980s, the city had gone off the boil again, with a number of those influential post-punk bands on hiatus. Major names such as The Smiths, James, Happy Mondays and the Stone Roses were not yet established, and “Madchester” was still several years away.

Around the same time, my family moved from the leafy suburbs of south east London to a semi-industrial town about 20km from Manchester. So the city became my second home during my time as a student at Leeds University.

In those far-off, pre-internet days, fanzines were an important source of information (alongside the weekly music papers, New Musical Express, Melody Maker and Sounds). City Fun was a key Manchester publication, and I found myself getting involved as their “Leeds correspondent”. This included writing a few articles, selling copies at gigs and trying to blag free concert tickets under the pretence of writing glowing reviews. (More on that another time….)

The editorial team on City Fun was led by Liz Naylor and Cath Carroll. In September 1982, I went with them to see Nico performing at Manchester’s Band on the Wall. After the gig, Liz, Cath, Richard Boon and myself travelled to the infamous Haçienda nightclub (which had opened just a few months earlier) in a white Ford Escort estate car driven by Howard Devoto.

The Haçienda that night felt like a hangout for off-duty musicians. Mick Hucknall, following the demise of his band the Frantic Elevators, and yet to achieve fame in Simply Red, was sulking on the balcony. Members of A Certain Ratio were propping up the bar. Vini Reilly from The Durutti Column was dancing to David Bowie’s “Fame”. I’d heard that  one of the reasons Howard Devoto was in town was to re-unite with his mate Pete Shelley. Both Buzzcocks, the band Devoto and Shelly formed in 1976, and Magazine, the band Devoto formed after he left Buzzcocks, were on hiatus at the time, so there was a strong suggestion that the pair were going to start recording again. (They did, but not for another 20 years.)

Seizing the moment, I walked up to the bar where my new best friend Howard and his old mate Pete were deep in conversation. In my slightly inebriated state, I tried to insert myself into the discussion, much to the bemusement of both Shelley – who looked at his companion as if to say, “Is he with you?” – and Devoto – who replied with a look of “Don’t blame me!”

Not the finest hour in my annals of rock star encounters.

As a footnote, I met Howard again a few years later, at a house party in London. We got talking, mostly about the pros and cons of being called for jury service. (Knowing his penchant for 19th and 20th century literature, I managed to avoid making any obvious references to Dostoevsky, Kafka or Camus…) If Howard had any memory of our previous encounter, he had to good grace not to bring it up!

Next week: Measuring musical success

 

Cooking the books?

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Over the many years I have been writing this blog, I have often commented on the publishing industry, from my personal experiences, to industry trends and future outlook. The recent collapse of Australia’s online bookseller, Booktopia, prompted me to revisit the topic.

First, a declaration – I am an unsecured retail creditor of Booktopia. Orders for books I  paid for in advance of their publication dates still have not been fulfilled. Obviously, I am not alone; there are about 170k retail creditors, owed a total of $15m. That is an average of about $90 per creditor, although some retail customers are owed more than $10k.

Second, Booktopia’s total debts of around $60m are nearly one third of annual turnover ($198m in FY2023). In FY2022, annual turnover was $240m. Clearly, this was a business in decline, and in financial trouble.

Third, I should have been alert to the problems when I enquired about my outstanding orders, shortly before the administrators were called in. I knew the books had already been published, so I wanted to know when to expect them. This was part of the reply I received, in mid-June:

“We have been experiencing difficulties procuring new stocks from our supplier lately, we are so sorry for the delay.”

Fourth, it transpires that publishers, wholesalers and distributors were experiencing payment delays from Booktopia. Suppliers were reducing or cutting off their credit lines, and declining to supply more stock unless the existing debts were cleared. The administrators are doing their best to realise any remaining value of the business, including a trade sale of Booktopia (as a whole, or as parts). The assets include warehouse stock (some of which may still be owned by the publishers/wholesalers), customer lists, technology, goodwill and other IP. But it was made pretty clear at the first creditors’ meeting that unsecured trade and retail creditors should not expect to get their money back any time soon, and certainly not in full. (A total of $15m in secured debt will get preference, including employees.) So even if the unfulfilled but paid-for stock can be located, there is no apparent obligation for outstanding orders to be completed. In fact, the administrators were suggesting that retail creditors should contact their banks or credit card providers, to see if they could recover their money via those channels. (Which is why insurance premiums, card fees and bank charges go up, of course.)

I don’t understand why Booktopia’s retail and trade debts were allowed to get to such a high percentage of their turn over. Book publishing and distribution shouldn’t be that hard – either the book is in stock at Booktopia, and can be sent immediately, or it is available to order from suppliers and can be fulfilled within a reasonable time. For books that have not yet been printed, surely the customer’s money should be held in some sort of escrow account, and the cash not accessible by the seller or recognised as revenue until the order has been completed?

Of course, books go out of print, and customers may have to wait for a re-print or a new edition. Or the industry needs to consider print-on-demand solutions. Funnily enough, that is one of the key recommendations of the Ad Rem report on the Australian publishing industry (“The Australian Book Industry: Challenges and Opportunities”) in 2001….

Next week: Notes from the UK

 

 

Literary triggers

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Reading for pleasure should be a joy in itself. But to read a book and then be drawn into somewhat tangential (and even trivial) thoughts triggered by personal recollections is an added bonus.

That was partly my reaction when reading Jonathan Coe’s marvelous novel “Mr Wilder and Me”. Ostensibly a fictional account about the making of one of Billy Wilder’s final films, set in Greece and France in the mid-1970s, it manages to incorporate many themes – Hollywood, the creative process, migration, family, the Holocaust, ageing, travel – without selling any of them short. Happily, it’s now being made into a film itself, which confirms the strong narrative at the core of the book. I look forward to seeing it when it is released.

For myself, the novel prompted three travel-related memories:

1. Just like a key time in the novel, my first visit to Greece was also a few years after the collapse of the military junta – currency restrictions, banks only open a couple of hours a day, rationing of hot water in the hostel where I was staying, and construction projects abandoned unfinished because of their association with the military regime

2. The narrator’s love of cheese, stemming from an impromptu visit to a Brie maker, brought back memories of many trips to Paris in the 80s and 90s, and visits to bars like La Tartine, and trying the different types of crottin

3. On my first trip to California, I was fortunate enough to have drinks at the Hotel del Coronado, the setting for Billy Wilder’s most famous film, “Some Like It Hot”, and an iconic resort facility in San Diego Bay.

Seemingly unconnected, yet all evoked by a single work of fiction.

Next week: Let There Be Light

Literary legacies

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As more classic works of literature come out of copyright protection, and enter the public domain, publishers and booksellers can look forward to sales of re-packaged titles, for which they won’t have to pay royalties. With the right combination of content and marketing, it’s as good as free money.

Under the Berne Convention, copyright in published works is the life of the author plus 50 years, although many territories have extend this to life plus 70 years (100 in Mexico!). These periods may be subject to extensions if the executors of literary estates are able to renew the existing copyright (under previous copyright regimes) or by issuing revised editions of existing works which are sufficiently different to the original so as to constitute an entirely separate publication – but these are exceptions.

By allowing copyright to lapse, this should mean key works will always be in print, and even more obscure titles can be revived with little to no production cost. For nearly 20 years, Google Books has been scanning works out of copyright and putting them online. But even this process can run into copyright limitations, and questions of provenance (as illustrated by the treatment of George Orwell’s “1984”). But this has also encouraged some enterprising individuals to sell “reprints” of facsimile copies of scanned titles, when the buyer thought they were purchasing an authentic copy, or a contemporary edition (i.e., newly typeset and printed).

Intellectual property law may be complex, and in need of reform to reflect modern technology and contemporary society. But as copyright works pass into the public domain, there remains the issue of moral rights. These give writers the right to be identified as the author of a work (“attribution”), and to protect their work against inappropriate use (“derogatory treatment”). Moral rights also protect writers against “false attribution” – i.e., a publisher can’t claim a work was written by an author who didn’t actually write it.

Moral rights vary from country to country (e.g., Germany, UK, USA, Australia), but generally do not survive when copyright expires. Which can mean that unscrupulous publishers may feel emboldened to “modify” original texts at will, given some recent examples of key 20th century novels. Surely not what authors and their legacies should be subject to?

Next week: Public Indifference?