SYP Conference: freedom, responsibility and the bottom line

Posted on November 23, 2009 in Uncategorized

The recent SYP Annual Conference tackled some major questions as it examined "the impact of publishing on society". Jon Slack and Alan Crompton report on the weekend’s highlights

This report first appeared in BookBrunch, one of the leading UK publishing trade journals. SYP members are entitled to a 15% discount when they subscribe to BookBrunch – click here for more details on our Offers page.

The answer to the future of bookselling lies in the film industry, while the efforts of corporate publishers to consider society needs can be at odds with shareholders’ demands. That was the verdict at the opening panel discussion of the Society of Young Publishers’ Annual Conference, held last weekend at Oxford Brookes University under the banner "Making an Impression: The Impact of Publishing on Society”.

Speaking before an audience 200-strong, Helen Fraser, outgoing Managing Director of Penguin, said that social responsibility remained “incredibly important” to the company but acknowledged that long-term decisions on brand were often competing with bottom-line targets.

Will Atkinson, Sales and Marketing Director of Faber, stated that independents had an advantage of developing “more authors over a longer period of time”. Referring to Faber’s flagship poetry list, he described the Faber’s policy to keep books in print as “extremely out of fashion” and “unacceptable practice for a conglomerate”. He named Ezra Pound as one author who could take five years to recoup on the balance sheet. However, Fraser defended Penguin’s record of nurturing new talent, citing recent Man Booker winner Hilary Mantel as an example of long-term faith from the publisher. Later on, Atkinson, pointing to examples of creative industries using multiple platforms to reach the consumer, claimed innovative ideas from the film industry “are closer to how we can promote and sell books than we realise”.

Michael Jones, Category Manager at Borders UK, argued that retailers and publishers working together – as with Richard & Judy and World Book Day – can have a significant impact on reading habits, but added, “rarely does a book become a cultural phenomenon in itself, [maybe] once a decade”. She pointed to Harry Potter and Lady Chatterley’s Lover as examples.

Discussing the value of publishing to society, Atkinson proclaimed the English language as “our North Sea oil” for the next 100 years, while Fraser reflected on the challenge of publishing authors in apparent conflict with the publishers’ ethical standards, such as Jeremy Clarkson, whose well-known stance on climate change is in stark counterpoint to Penguin’s green agenda. Fraser and Atkinson both agreed that Penguin and Faber have had to overcome strong elements of “scholarly branding” in recent decades, with their respective publishers both investing significant energy in dusting off their “textbook image” with a more cutting edge, modern approach.

Speaking about the environment, Atkinson conceded that bigger companies are “generally better at planting more trees”, but that impending legislation will oblige independents to be more in line with government targets. On Google, he said that the internet giant now understood the importance of copyright, “but it has taken three to four years to get to this understanding”. The US company “could be, eventually, [a] good partner”.

In the afternoon, delegates joined several practical workshops taking place around the Oxford Brookes campus, among them “Digital Developments”, “The Economics of Publishing” – a pragmatic session on the importance of contracts and managing risk, and “Entrepreneurial Publishing”, which raised questions among the audience of how open the industry is to new start-ups. Twitter traffic was heavy by the time delegates reconvened for the Conference’s closing talk, where speakers discussed the “Responsibility to Publish”.

Chris Brazier, Co-Editor at the New Internationalist, said that a steady rise in subscription numbers over the past 30 years had begun to drop off since 2000: “traditional marketing techniques to recruit new subscribers are falling by the wayside” he said, adding that the magazine had turned to on-street charity recruiters, with mixed results, to bring in new readers. It wasn’t all bad news: Brazier said strict ethical guidelines – which in the past had prevented the majority of corporations from advertising with the magazine – had in fact cushioned them against potential fallout from the economic downturn.

Sarah Totterdell, Head of Oxfam’s publications department, highlighted how essential publishing was for the charity, declaring “the ultimate aim is social change” through fundraising, raising awareness, and in developing training programs. But she acknowledged that measuring the impact of the publications “can be a challenge”.

Alan Samson, Publisher at Weidenfeld & Nicholson, suggested that in the aftermath of the credit crunch there is “a new seriousness”, and “a retreat to Fifites values” appearing on the book shelves. Defending the decision by publishers to print books by any “celebrity” if a market is deemed to exist for them, Samson nevertheless called for “a new word to separate the likes of Mandela and Obama from the rest of the celeb slush pile”.

Robert Sharp, Campaigns Manager at English PEN, made the case that books fuel political and social thinking, and thus a key role existed for publishers in shaping the world’s future. Noting that 12 of the top 20 grossing films of all time are adaptations from books, Sharp declared “publishers have more responsibility than any other arts sector to society.” He also advocated increased efforts to publish literature from other countries, declaring “we can’t have good literature without freedom of expression, and wider access to information”.

Jon Slack is past Chair of the SYP and currently working on special projects; Alan Crompton is SYP Oxford Chair