The Rough Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Posted on October 6, 2009 in Uncategorized

I was really irritated last year when I saw that Penguin had chosen Eoin Colfer to write the next Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy book.  Irritated, because I’ve never really rated the writing of Eoin Colfer.  I guess some kids may find a dwarf that consumes and defecates rubble to be amusing, but I don’t.  Then again, I’m not a kid.  Having written that, I do think my current writing style has been greatly influenced by watching and reading Douglas Adams’ work in my youth.  Indeed, I’ve spent many an idle moment thinking of how I would write the sixth Hitchhikers book…  I’ve had visions of handing out copies of a book with “Don’t Panic” emblazoned in nice friendly letters on the cover to stressed city workers … Or depicting the final moments of Arthur Dent and Martin in a book called Paranoid Android…  If I’d been responsible for drawing up a list of names to write the sixth Hitchhikers, then Robert Rankin, Jasper Fforde, Steven Moffat, David Walliams, and Mark Gatiss would have been on the list.  Eoin Colfer wouldn’t have got anywhere near it.  And I’m not the only one who’s dubious about Colfer – Penguin even noted the amount of consternation their choice had arisen amongst Hitchhikers fans in a press release in December – which is hardly a great selling point.  And with a title like And Another Thing, I just get the impression that Colfer’s going to raid a very bare chest of jokes for this book.  It’s not as if Penguin had to employ an in-house author for this project, since they recently chose Sebastian Faulks to write as Ian Fleming.  In one of those idle moments, I’ve even been thinking of protesting outside the Penguin offices in my dressing gown, à la Arthur Dent. Seriously Penguin, don’t let Eoin Colfer write the next two books in this new trilogy!
  Of course, Eoin Colfer’s original big bucks contract ran into controversy when Penguin did a special deal with WH Smith for the first Artemis Fowl book, allowing Smith’s to sell it in trade paperback format at £6.99 while the rest of the book trade were having to shift £12.99 hardbacks.  A similar controversy occurred recently when Penguin did another ‘special’ deal that meant that WH Smith Travel would only sell their Rough Guide travel books.  Competitors Lonely Planet had good reason to complain about this.  Although I think they shot themselves in the foot by announcing almost immediately afterwards that they would be opening a Lonely Planet store at Sydney airport, which presumably won’t be selling any competitors’ brands such as Rough Guide.  Of course, BBC Worldwide’s recent report regarding the losses at Lonely Planet gives a good indication why Penguin did this deal with WH Smith, as, according to Neilsen Bookscan, the travel guide market in the UK, US, and Australia has gone down by over 18%.  You have to feel sorry for the authors, as demand for exotic travel plummets during such a bad recession.
  It’s also gutting to see 100 jobs go at Penguin.  As a member of the Society of Young Publishers, I know how tough it is already to get into publishing, and announcements of such large job cuts makes it seem even more impossible.  Yet, having worked in the industry for a while, I can see from even my junior position that there is room for even more cost cutting now that Print on Demand has matured as a technology.  We may even be witnessing the first signs of a decentralisation of the industry, as London overheads prove less tolerable.  Indeed, the Internet means that you can publish from even the most far-flung places nowadays…  
  Perhaps Penguin could have saved some of their staff by not splurging so much money on Hitchhikers, as I’ve no doubt that the novel would still have been a commercial success had they allowed an unknown (and cheaper) author to take the reins.  With Eoin Colfer at the helm, I very much doubt that it’ll be an artistic success.
  
Kevin Mahoney is the SYP Web Content Editor and the Publisher and Founder of Punked Books.  Please note that these are his views only, and do not reflect those of the Society of Young Publishers as a whole.