In a period that one agent recently described to me as "total carnage" in publishing, it was heartening to see Canongate win the coveted publisher of the year award at the British Book Industry awards this week.
We all have publishers with whom we feel an affinity, or whom we know have a standard of quality, and for many people of my generation – let's say 20 to 40-something, indie-minded people – Canongate has been that outlet. I know because time and time again during conversation Canongate is cited as the publisher that got many disparate people that I know into both reading and writing. I've even made new friends because of Canongate. Part of this is down to the short-lived but nevertheless excellent imprints that it ran in the late 1990s. These included specialist sub-divisions like Kevin Williamson's Rebel Inc – which effectively re-introduced the works of John Fante, Richard Brautigan and Knut Hamsun to a new generation of readers – and Payback Press, which saved works by Chester Himes and Iceberg Slim from obscurity.
But Canongate also wins a lot of respect for its risk-taking. Life of Pi may have been a worldwide success for Canongate, but that was back in 2001. Rumour has it that the company was really struggling when it signed up a clutch of new books in 2007, including two memoirs by a well-liked but relatively unknown senator and former Harvard Law Review president, Barack Obama. Obama's books have literary value, but would have been very modest sellers had the author not swiftly risen to become possibly the most important man this century may see. It was clearly a publishing gamble worth taking.
It was the success of President Obama's books – and high-selling publications such as The Mighty Book Of Boosh (whom company owner Jamie Byng signed via a combination of personal flair and the bribe of an antique chair) – that helped Canongate double their sales during the recession-hit 2008. It's also precisely this type of foresight that nudges Canongate ahead of its larger and less tenacious contemporaries – something the judges acknowledged when they praised it for the "great professionalism, attention to detail and sheer exuberance of its publishing programme."
Such factors cannot be faked. Readers respect passion and risk-taking as it comes across in the choice of books and the way they are marketed. Publishers may currently be exploring new ways to inspire brand loyalty or to sell their wares but no amount of new media trickery can compete with a solid company that knows who its readers are, yet is still prepared to surprise them. Publishers currently face more criticism and stiffer competition than ever – and many of them deserve it for being so painfully straight, starched and conformist. I don't know Jamie Byng but I do know that he has kept Alasdair Gray in print for years and regularly DJs with his funk and reggae rarities, so, superficially at least, to this reader he is already ahead of the publishing pack. For once it's nice to be able to sit back and raise a glass to a company that seems to be doing the right thing – and for the right reasons. Money, yes. But also a love of books.
