1 On the rise of the media conglomerates, see Ben H. Bagdikian, The New Media Monopoly (Boston: Beacon Press, 2004); Edward S. Herman and Robert W. McChesney, The Global Media: The New Missionaries of Corporate Capitalism (London: Cassell, 1997); Robert W. McChesney, Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times (New York: New Press, 1999); Anthony Smith, The Age of Behemoths: The Globalization of Mass Media Firms (New York: Priority Press, 1991).
2 Bennett Cerf, At Random (New York: Random House, 1977), p. 221.
3 See Tom Dardis, Firebrand: The Life of Horace Liveright (New York: Random House, 1995).
4 Eric de Bellaigue, British Book Publishing as a Business since the 1960s: Selected Essays (London: British Library, 2004), p. 3.
5 Cerf, At Random, p. 276.
6 Ibid., p. 278.
7 Ibid., p. 285.
8 Data provided by Open Book Publishing, 2008.
9 Subtext, vol. 14, no. 11 (1 Oct. 2009), p. 2.
10 In this section I’ve drawn heavily on Eric de Bellaigue’s excellent essays on the transformation of British trade publishing; see de Bellaigue, British Book Publishing. See also Christopher Gasson’s very helpful Who Owns Whom in British Book Publishing (Bookseller, 2002).
11 Jeremy Lewis, Penguin Special: The Life and Times of Allen Lane (London: Viking, 2005), p. 397.
12 de Bellaigue, British Book Publishing, p. 41.
13 Ibid., pp. 145–7.
14 Paul Hamlyn in Sunday Telegraph (Feb. 1984), quoted in ibid., p. 92.
15 de Bellaigue, British Book Publishing, p. 98.
16 Ibid., p. 110.
17 Ibid., p. 63.
18 The Bookseller (24 January 2008).
19 ‘Review of 2008’, The Bookseller, 23 Jan. 2009, pp. 26–9.
20 ‘Top line’ refers to the total revenue generated from the sale of goods and services, before all costs, expenses and other charges have been taken off to show the net income or profit, also known as the ‘bottom line’.
21 For a helpful breakdown of the typical elements of a P&L for a trade book, see Albert N. Greco, Clara E. Rodriguez and Robert M. Wharton, The Culture and Commerce of Publishing in the 21st Century (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2007), pp. 121–4. However, what one doesn’t get from a formal analysis of this kind is any sense of the role that the P&L actually plays in the day-to-day lives of editors and publishers.
22 In 1998 the London branch of HarperCollins sought to cancel Chris Patten’s book, which it had signed the previous year for £125,000. Patten’s editor at HarperCollins, Stuart Proffitt, stood by his author and was suspended from his job; he subsequently resigned and moved to Penguin. The book, East and West, was published later that year by Macmillan. HarperCollins is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, which has substantial financial and media interests in China, including Star TV, a major satellite television network based in Hong Kong that serves mainland China and other parts of Asia. It is widely believed that Murdoch objected to the publication of Patten’s book on the grounds that Patten’s forthright criticism of the Chinese government could harm his business interests in China, although Murdoch’s precise role in the affair remains a matter of debate.