canongate books
the independent alliance publishers are: atlantic books, canongate books, constable & robinson, faber and faber, granta books, icon books, portobello books, profile books, serpent’s tail, short books and david fickling books .
atlantic books atlantic monthly press black cat cannongate canongate books grove press grove / atlantic inc. open city books
edinburgh, scotland: mojo books, an imprint of canongate books ltd. ,
, new york, ny / edinburgh, scotland: canongate us / canongate books ltd. ,
. historic scotland and canongate books, 1999. chadwick, h. m .
new york, ny: omnibus press / great britain: canongate books ltd. ,
edinburgh, scotland: canongate books ltd. , (u. k. edition )
edinburgh, scotland / new york, ny / melbourne, australia: canongate books ltd. ,
bbc believes you only read 6 of these books... 300 books everyone should read at least once amazon' s 100 books to read in a lifetime 50 books to read before you die books you' ll never brag about having read the rory gilmore reading challenge npr' s top 100 science fiction & fantasy books 99 classic books challenge 101 best selling books of all time books to read to be considered well read 200 books everyone should read bbc' s the big read - best loved novels of all time bbc' s top 100 books you need to read before you die
a critic would counter that the books that helped to make canongate’s name, and which seem so characteristic of canongate, like jim dodge’s stone junction, could only have been published by canongate. some of the books put out now, anyone could have published them .
the founding publishers of the independent alliance were faber and faber, atlantic books, portobello books, canongate, icon books, profile books and short books, who came to partnership in 2005. granta books and serpent’s tail – part of profile books – in january 2007, and constable & robinson and david ficking books in 2013. faber and faber provides the sales force and administrative team for independent alliance publishers and, in march 2008, the book service ltd (tbs) became sole distributor .
edinburgh’s canongate books had gone bust twice when in 1994 jamie byng, then 26, took the company over. through a
edinburgh, scotland / london, u. k. / new york, ny / melbourne, australia: canongate books ltd. ,
books everyone should read in a lifetime ridicu - list: all the books christine can remember reading bookbub' s 100 books to read before you die bbc' s top 100 books you need to read before you die book series everyone has read bbc believes you only read 6 of these books... books to read before 40 sarah' s ultimate to read list booker prize winners 1989 - 2017 99 classic books challenge here we are again with another list best books made into movies when will there be time to read them all ?
canongate books ltd, 1994. paperback. condition: used; good. fast dispatch. expedited uk delivery available. excellent customer service .
the books by urban and tokarczuk aren' t available in english either or on the canongate list. not published. should be removed .
you’ve done very well with religious books. is faith something you dwell on ?
canongate books ltd, 1994. pap. condition: new. new book. shipped from us within 10 to 14 business days. established seller since 2000 .
canongate has confirmed it is the publisher for a series of children' s books by controversial comedian russell brand, revealed by the comic in a ...
canongate (u. k .) random house (u. s. )
canongate’s most iconic books are jimmy boyle’s sense of freedom (1977), alasdair gray’s lanark (1981), and yann martel’s the life of pi (2002) .
for byng, the value of publishing fewer books goes beyond the economics of individual publishers .
canongate books. paperback. condition: new. 0862414393 brand new direct from the publisher! not overstocks or marked up remainders! ships in a sturdy cardboard container with tracking! .
‘lazy publishing, ’ says canongate’s jamie byng, ‘is just a disservice to what books can be. ’ the veteran independent publisher talks about man booker, reading, and ‘letters live’
answered prayers... jamie byng, managing director of canongate. photograph: murdo macleod
jamie byng helped save publishers canongate from bankruptcy in 1994, when he bought the business .
unfortunately for the person controlling canongate’s social media accounts, information to the contrary later emerged .
the canons are books without boundaries. some are classics already, the rest will be soon .
18 books · 45 voters · list created august 28th, 2010 by candiss (votes) .
annabel wrote :
the books by urban and tokarczuk aren' t available in english either or on the canongate list. not published. should be removed .
both have been removed .
by stephanie wolfe murray in 1973. the first books published were both by americans: robert shure’s novel
the first thing you notice are the books. hundreds and hundreds of them covering every available surface .
it is quite chaotic ,
admits byng .
but that’s the nature of canongate .
following a buyout in 1994, canongate broadened its focus beyond scotland and scottish literature. the pocket canons, which published individual books of the bible with introductions from public figures including bono and the dalai lama, announced a completely new kind of publishing for canongate: diverse, youthful, radical and global .
, establishing canongate as an international publishing house in scotland, rather than a publisher of purely scottish literature .
canongate authors kate grenville and m. j. hyland were both shortlisted for the booker prize in 2006 .
finances play a part in his thinking. “if you look at the books that lose you money each year, ” byng says, “often they’re the books that you haven’t published with complete conviction, or which just aren’t as good as some of the other books you did, so the word of mouth on them never took off. ”
a gamble taken on two obscure books by the man who is now us president but was then a junior illinois senator has helped scottish independent publisher canongate see off competition from the conglomerates to be named publisher of the year .
those books are two of the best acquisitions we' ve ever made, but it' s about more than that ,
he nods, hair flopping back into his eyes .
i think these are not only great books but they are extremely important books, and i believe there' s a long, long life ahead of them .
canongate publishes around 40 books per year. they have twice been awarded publisher of the year (in 2003 and 2009), independent publisher of the year in 2014, and awarded bia marketing strategy of the year for letters live 2015
detailed below is an extensive list of books, many of which are out of print, that also may be of interest. it is suggested that those interested approach their local library or a dealer specialising in second - hand military books .
godless morality was, i imagine, another part of building the canongate legend, in that it was somewhat controversial .
canongate books ltd, edinburgh, 1994. paperback. condition: very good. minor signs of ownership, slight shelf wear only ow clean and tight. no dust jacket. ; 8vo 8
- 9
tall; 256 pages .
eddale court which for more than 40 years has been pioneering in its publication of some of the world’s most interesting books .
new york, ny: times books / random house, inc. , (u. s. edition) { a }
the highland lady in ireland: journals 1840 - 50 and over 2 million other books are available for amazon kindle. learn more
then, in 2002, everything changed when canongate published life of pi. yann martel’s novel become the biggest - selling booker winner ever, while canongate won publisher of the year – something unheard of for a tiny independent publisher. a new era had begun .
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passion for books .
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are registered trademarks with the registered us patent & trademark office .
canongate books ltd, united kingdom, 2001. paperback. condition: new. new edition. language: english. brand new book. this is an account of life in a fishing community on the east coast of scotland seen through the eyes of a young boy .
. he has also written books for children and has won the blue peter book award, the smarties book prize and been shortlisted three times for the carnegie medal. he has sold more than a million books in the uk and his work has been translated into over forty languages .
thinking of the philip pullman book, the good man jesus and the scoundrel christ, that you published, canongate seems to be involved in two or three controversies a year. it certainly gives the books a push. what’s your attitude to controversy? is it a marketing tool ?
canongate’s involvement in letters live has catalyzed connections that have proved beneficial all ’round, byng says: sunnymarch has just optioned matt haig’s novel how to stop time, published by canongate, with cumberbatch now down to play the leading role, and an award - winning screenwriter also in the frame .
not that you would know it. tucked away in a close off the high street, the warren of offices could belong to any struggling small company. but with a million - seller on the shelves and turnover this year heading for 7 million, canongate books is one of edinburgh’s best business success stories .
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amie byng, 46, son of the 8th earl of strafford, grew up in hampshire and studied at the university of edinburgh. after graduating he joined canongate books as an intern and bought out the struggling edinburgh publishing house two years later, aged just 25. his successes include the uk publication of yann martel’s
canongate spent its first two decades publishing many wonderful scottish writers. today the company works with authors from all over the world, but that national tradition – and every book in our backlist – remains alive and vibrant. in 2008, a short - run reprint of nan shepherd’s the living mountain led to it becoming one of canongate’s bestselling backlist books and made shepherd a posthumous superstar. she’s now the first woman ever to appear on a main issue scottish bank note .
while last year' s canongate turnover was a very respectable 8m, next year' s looks set to escalate even further, to an astonishing 13m .
in 2007, canongate published the memoirs of a little - known us politician. barack obama’s memoirs would become a bestseller before his race to the white house had even begun. but dreams from my father has gone on to sell over two million copies, canongate’s biggest - selling book since life of pi .
while the move prompted joy from the left and outrage from some on the right, none encapsulated the episode quite like edinburgh - based publisher, canongate .
icon books is an independent publisher of thought - provoking non - fiction. we publish science, history, politics, philosophy, psychology, humour and much else besides
going back to what we were saying about gil scott - heron and alasdair gray seeming like what we would call canongate - type authors… julian assange seems like a canongate author. it was such an obvious match – in retrospect, do you think that blinded you to his character ﬂaws and the risks associated with those ?
what this means, essentially, is that our cultural agendas shrink simply because we are all reading the same books as everyone else. and while this undoubtedly benefits worthy recipients such as emma donoghue' s room and david nicholls' s one day, bickmore argues that there are a great many books out there deserving of just as many readers .
as far as i' m concerned, the more prizes the better. we all need people to select books for us ,
he says .
canongate books ltd 19 / 05 / 1994, 1994. condition: very good. this book is in very good condition and will be shipped within 24 hours of ordering. the cover may have some limited signs of wear but the pages are clean, intact and the spine remains undamaged. this book has clearly been well maintained and looked after thus far. money back guarantee if you are not satisfied. see all our books here, order more than 1 book and get discounted shipping. .
our passion for the books we publish often spills beyond their pages. in 2011, canongate ceo jamie byng founded world book night to encourage reading. and letters live, inspired by shaun usher’s letters of note and simon garfield’s to the letter, has become an on - going celebration of the art of letter - writing through performance .
jamie byng bursts into the reception area of his canongate publishing company, mobile phone clenched to his ear, all wild hair, skinny tight jeans and mild panic .
“that, to me, is so against the model of what we’re doing at canongate. that’s not to say it’s not a viable mode—it’s just not for us .
for the purpose of adding information to this web site. none of the books in my collection will be sold while i am alive. if you have a copy of any of the following four books you would like to sell for $ 15. 00 [ u. s. ] or less, including shipping to ripon, wisconsin, please
neil forsyth – books / tv creator of the hugely successful bob servant character, neil forsyth first brought to life the bard of broughty ferry as a way to entertain himself and play havoc with email scammers. three books, a radio show, and now a tv adaptation later the public has proven hungry for the strange, parochial outlook of bob .
julian barnes - the sense of an ending (jonathan cape - random house) carol birch - jamrach' s menagerie (canongate books) patrick dewitt - the sisters brothers (granta) esi edugyan - half blood blues (serpent' s tail) stephen kelman - pigeon english (bloomsbury) a. d. miller - snowdrops (atlantic )
alasdair gray’s seminal book was an early milestone for canongate, a novel that changed the literary landscape in scotland and typifies the kind of fiction that canongate loves and continues to look for. time has done nothing to lessen the power, imaginative brilliance and beauty of this landmark publication by the man described by ali smith as a “necessary genius” .
barack obama' s two books, dreams from my father and the audacity of hope, were acquired by canongate just after their author announced his candidacy for the us presidency, and have now – coupled with a rapidly rushed out book outlining his vision for america, change we can believe in – sold more than 1m copies for the small publisher .
… and then in 2010 karl pilkington became a number one bestseller with an idiot abroad. more travels and plenty of moaning later, and karl’s sold more than a million books .
sense of freedom broke the mould in that it was the biography of a notorious glasgow gangster, jimmy boyle, written and published whilst boyle was serving a life sentence for murder in barlinnie prison. five years later canongate published alasdair gray’s lanark, an illustrated dystopian novel which became the first book to win the saltire society’s book of the year award. yann martel’s the life of pi was the first canongate book to win the man booker prize, propelling canongate into the big league when it sold over 10 million copies worldwide .
of fcp .
our plans for this community and the adjoining development opportunity will benefit from the expertise of our partners, kane realty, randolph development and canongate capital .
do you ever write letters? i do all the time but it’s mainly to accompany books i’m sending out. otherwise the writing i do tends to be done by email or text .
it’s been a good few weeks for canongate, the edinburgh press that jamie byng bought out of receivership in 1994 and has built into one of the uk’s most successful independent publishers .
canongate books ltd 19 / 05 / 1994, 1994. paperback. condition: very good. shipped within 24 hours from our uk warehouse. clean, undamaged book with no damage to pages and minimal wear to the cover. spine still tight, in very good condition. remember if you are not happy, you are covered by our 100% money back guarantee .
canongate books ltd, edinburgh, 1994. paperback. condition: good. dust jacket condition: good. first edition. author signed gift dedication to title page. no other markings. general cover creases, despite being a paperback, there is a dust jacket which also has creases and a small corner chafe at spine top. size: 8vo. signed by author .
. with expertise in start - up, owner - operated businesses and with over 25 years of combined experience in the real estate investment, development and management business, canongate provides its individual and institutional partners and investors hands - on management of each of its projects. canongate is invested in multifamily, retail and office assets as well as a portfolio of small businesses in
canongate’s own jamie byng interview’s gil scott - heron in 2010. this year would have marked gil’s 68th birthday. his posthumously published, indelible memoir the last holiday is now a canon .
by ali smith, which appears to have scarpered of its own accord, as books sometimes do). you will notice immediately that these books are all written by different people, most if not all of whom you have probably heard of before. and that’s what i love about this series: it’s a master stroke in perspectives, and i’m all about trying to find new perspectives .
byng read dreams from my father and his political biography the audacity of hope, thought both were
remarkable books by a remarkable person
and swooped to secure the uk and commonwealth publishing rights .
byng insists the company’s transformation is a team effort. but watching the guinness flow and byng work the crowd at the bar, there’s no doubt his style and personality have driven canongate’s success .
the idea seems driven more by byng’s concept of the value publishers should add. “it’s just a personal view on the sort of publishing we want to do at canongate, ” he says .
canongate was founded in 1973, and was taken over by current ceo jamie byng in 1994 following a management buyout. it has since emerged as one of the most dynamic publishing houses in britain. with a distinctly international outlook, canongate books continues to nurture and publish new talent from around the world, whilst retaining the essence of the scottish canon. the company is one of the founding members of the independent alliance, a global alliance of eleven uk publishers and their international partners who share a common vision of editorial excellence, original, diverse publishing, innovation in marketing and commercial success .
there is another persistent rumour that canongate is known to some authors as cheapskate books because it offers minimal advances and refuses to pay towards the promotion of many of its titles. byng doesn' t even bristle .
they can go and publish somewhere else. we' re a small fucking independent publishers, and there are a lot of writers we publish who have made a lot of money .
poster with winning book jacket 2011 poster with all shortlisted book jackets 2011 julian barnes - the sense of an ending (jonathan cape - random house) carol birch - jamrach' s menagerie (canongate books) patrick dewitt - the sisters brothers (granta) esi edugyan - half blood blues (serpent' s tail) stephen kelman - pigeon english (bloomsbury) a. d. miller - snowdrops (atlantic )
“you only need look at the impact of what philip pullman or jo rowling have done for the children’s market, because of the quality of the books that they’ve published, the lifetime of reading that they’ve inspired .
each book is a novella – a short read in a smallish package. the books measure, on average, 5×8 inches and are in the range of 200 pages long. they were first published as hardbacks .
this summer the book sold its millionth copy, canongate’s annual turnover is up 40 per cent as a result and in february the company scooped the prestigious publisher of the year title at the british book awards .
canongate plans to publish the 100th title in the series in 2038. let' s hope that they and the universe survive that long. meanwhile, after dreaming up the project (and leaping out from behind a gorse bush in scotland to persuade atwood to take part), canongate' s jamie byng is entitled to his own mythomania: justifiably, he calls the task he has set himself' herculean' .
canongate books ltd, uk, 1994. paperback. condition: very good. dust jacket condition: very good. book description campbell mackay is teaching his last class, on milton' s
lycidas
, before an early retirement forced by his revulsion for modern teaching methods. as mackay addresses the class he tells the story of his own life as a willing slave to literature, and disgresses into his early experiences .
i called a friend and told her i really wasn’t enjoying my post - graduate degree and she said why don’t you try publishing. as soon as i walked into canongate, it felt like home .
through a joint venture with kane realty corporation, randolph development and canongate capital. east central lofts is comprised of 72 studio, one and two - bedroom loft apartments featuring floor to ceiling windows and dramatic views of
i remember someone calling canongate anarchic. it’s a label the man in charge is happy to have .
one of our authors said anarchy is not being out of control. it’s being out of their control. anarchy can be quite a creative thing .
as if proof was needed of such a philosophy, on byng’s cluttered desk is a copy of yann martel’s life of pi. when canongate secured the uk rights to the book two years ago, byng vowed :
we’re going to make this win the booker prize .
a year later he delivered on his promise - making canongate the first scottish publisher to capture the prestigious award .
i recommend a lot of books on this blog, but i don’t recommend a lot of series. this is because i don’t typically read books that come in series. as a bit of slow reader, a whole series has to be really good before i will commit myself to the time necessary for me to get through it, and those just don’t come along that often (with many notable exceptions, of course). for this series, however, i will happily deviate from previous pattern, because it is a series i can get behind. you see, the canongate myths aren’t really a series so much as…hmm…an incredibly pretentious and scattered anthology? look :
“the booker prize can literally be life - changing, ” canongate’s managing director tells publishing perspectives. “ life of pi has been published in 45 countries around the world and we’ve sold more than 4 million copies. ”
we don’t court controversy. it just so happens that many of the books we publish tackle controversial subjects. when philip pullman told me he wanted to retell the story of jesus in our myths series and that he wanted to call it the good man jesus and the scoundrel christ, i knew the title alone would anger and upset certain people, but that’s no reason not to publish a book. books are meant to challenge you. they’re meant to disrupt your sense of comfort, your sense of certainty. books are meant to cause controversy even if it’s only an internal mental controversy about who you are and what you think is important and how you make sense of the world .
“myths are universal and timeless stories that reflect and shape our lives — they explore our desires, our fears, our longings, and provide narratives that remind us what it means to be human. ” - canongate myths website
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stevenson, buchan and conan doyle sell steadily but in relatively small quantities. it’s strange how writers fall in and out of fashion, but i am certain that ‘classics’ will always form a key part of the canongate list even if the sales are modest. i think it is part of your duty as a publisher to keep great books in print and our reprint programme has seen writers as diverse as rebecca west, charles mingus, chester himes, nelson algren, knut hamsun, nan shepherd, charles bukowski, jack london, will muir, john fante richard brautigan and iceberg slim ‘join’ canongate. they have enriched the list and have provided what i regard as a crucial element – context .
with the bestselling humour book of last year, the mighty boosh, and a spin - off from the wire which has sold over 200, 000 copies, also on its books, canongate last night took the top prize at the british book industry awards in cambridge, praised by judges for its
great professionalism, attention to detail and sheer exuberance of its publishing programme
, which they said led to
an impressive
doubling in turnover during the year .
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mcllvanney prize formerly the scottish crime book of the year, the prize was renamed in 2016 to honour the late author william mcilvanney. eligible books are by writers born in scotland, by writers living in scotland, or books set in scotland. last year denise mina became the first female winner for the long drop (random house). panel: prize: £1, 000 and a nationwide promotion in waterstones. longlist: jun finalists: aug winner: sep at bloody scotland
and, he continues, any opportunity for a little hype goes a long way in an industry that is currently far from healthy .
more books are getting published than ever before, but fewer than ever are getting the limelight .
reminds me of the classic spinal tap line: ‘there’s a thin line between clever and stupid. ’ i suppose at the end of it all, with the unauthorized autobiography, you ended up with a classic canongate publication and marketing campaign .
in 1994, while running a funk, reggae and rare - groove night called chocolate city at the venue in edinburgh, the 25 - year - old graduate badgered stephanie wolfe murray, doyenne of scottish publishing, for an unpaid day job at her offices. canongate' s fortunes were foundering when byng - with no knowledge of the publishing world but some obscenely useful family connections - helped to engineer an audacious buyout. his stepfather, bt chairman sir christopher bland, his then girlfriend whitney mcveigh, and her father, who is co - chairman of the multinational investment bank salomon smith barney, as well as scottish publisher hugh andrew and his father, stumped up the cash. and byng became the new director of canongate books .
canongate’s london office, which it aims to open by january, won’t involve a single transfer within the company’s 17 - strong workforce, and in fact the office is not even expected to have full - time staff. instead he says, it’s an
efficiency measure
as both he and canongate managing director, david graham, already spend much of their time in london and need a base from which to liaise with the rest of the staff when meeting authors and industry contacts there .
well, if we have, perhaps that’s no bad thing although i think there remains an anarchic spirit to canongate that pervades all our publishing. and you should always want to surprise people. the company’s also grown up as well as grown .
even if the majority of the heads of department around director jonathan glazer were london - based, the film’s benefit to scotland is plain to see: it was based on a michel faber novel published in 2000 by edinburgh - based canongate books, co - produced by gillian berrie from glasgow - based sigma films, and showcased local talent like paul branigan alongside lead star scarlett johannson. more than half the crew were based in scotland, not to mention the vital opportunities it provided for local trainees .
“we have seen spikes in sales before as a result of activity on twitter but nothing as significant as the uplift we have seen on the back of stephen fry’s recommendation ,
said amy worth, head of books buying at amazon. co. uk .
mix of adventurous publishing, shrewd revival of underground classics and a solid scottish base, canongate was turned around. in february 2000 david graham was appointed managing director. his background had always been in publishing and he had even worked for the company back in 1987. canongate really hit the big time last october when yann martel’s life of pi took the booker prize, a success that was compounded in february when the company won publisher of the year at the british book awards. 0905 302 0111
transcript from a phone conversation from julian assange to jamie byng of canongate on 16th june 2011. in the call they discuss the return of the advance and the revised book deal on a different book. jamie states he would not publish julian’s unauthorised manuscript
moving onto the myths series which canongate embarked on last year, this is a particularly ambitious project involving a wide range of authors and publishers in different countries. i have read that the series will not be complete until 2038, is this correct ?
canongate was founded in edinburgh in 1973 by stephanie wolfe murray and her husband angus wolfe murray. it rapidly established itself as one of the most interesting houses in scotland, publishing a combination of literary fiction, travel, biography, poetry, classics and history. its eclectic list is what came to define it and whilst there was a distinctly scottish hue to much of the publishing at canongate, stephanie (who rapidly became the primary driving force behind the company) embraced writing and ideas from all over the world .
jen wallace, sales assistant at canongate books (www. canongate. tv), talks about her career path and what her current role involves. cccf, creative & cultural careers festival (www. cccf. ed. ac. uk), is a weeklong festival of events organised by the university of edinburgh careers service urltoken camera and editing by: martin vesselinov urltoken university of edinburgh, nor any affiliated bodies, claim any rights to the copyrighted musical content used in this video whatsoever. its usage is solely intended for the purpose of educating and promoting under the' fair dealing' provision of the united kingdom' s' copyright, designs and patents act 1988'. any usage of copyrighted material is also intended to help promote the work / music of the original artist .
bhp comics is an independent publisher based in scotland, producing a variety of comics, graphic novels and art books that cover a wide range of topics and themes. we aim to engage, provoke, inspire and inform with the works we publish. we also produce …
he steered the business into a new direction, remaining true to its scottish roots but broadening its contemporary appeal. one of his defining moments was snaring the likes of bono and nick cave to provide their take on books of the bible, guaranteeing news headlines in the process .
jamie: with my canongate hat on i thought we were going to cancel the deal, get the money and work out a new contract. but it looks like we’re not going to get a penny back in the short term, which i can just about handle .
canongate has a number of classic authors on its list, including famous historical novelists such as robert louis stevenson, arthur conan doyle, john buchan and naomi mitchison, and less well - known ones like harry hopkins. is the demand for these historical novels still strong ?
“think of florence, paris, london, new york. nobody visiting them for the first time is a stranger because he’s already visited them in paintings, novels, history books and films. but if a city hasn’t been used by an artist not even the inhabitants live there imaginatively”
are there disadvantages to having a friendship with writers you publish? do you sometimes back off from asking them to put into their books difﬁcult material other publishers would insist on? for example, the last holiday doesn’t entirely deal with scott - heron’s drug problems or spell in prison .
byng, 38, fell for the books before obama' s presidential prospects became clear. he wooed the politician via a succession of complimentary e - mails – and insists he would have battled to bring them to the uk market regardless of the historic events over the past six months .
he knows his business inside out, yet becoming a publisher was never on his radar when he first walked in back in 1994. his eyes were opened :
i loved books but i didn' t know what a beautiful creative process there was in publishing ,
he explains .
transcript from a phone call between julian assange and jamie byng of canongate on 8th june 2011. in it they discuss julian’s time difficulties and decide on a new kind of book that they will publish instead of the one originally envisaged. jamie is very happy about this new book
canongate press, edinburgh and london, 1994. soft cover. condition: as new. dust jacket condition: as new. first edition. as new, unread 1st edition. the dustwrapper is as new, unclipped and has been in a protective cover for some time .
he came to edinburgh university to study english, but byng escaped the world of new town student dinner parties by starting a nightclub called chocolate city .
on a good night we’d get a grand cash in hand. i liked that ,
he laughs. then came canongate .
that, it seems, is the jamie byng factor. certainly his striking presence has led to a stunning turnaround for a canongate. it twice faced financial collapse before he sauntered in for a spell of work experience in an industry he knew little about, and instantly became hooked .
“take yuval noah harari’s sapiens —the brilliance of that book, fantastically published by vintage and random house. that will be getting people who’ve read that to read more books. if instead they had read a boring book on that subject, they’d have thought, ‘i’ll just watch another box set. ’
but people felt they knew who you were. you were edgy, off - beat, different, with striking marketing campaigns and cover design. it felt less like a publisher than a record company like factory or creation. you’ve disturbed that image by putting out books like the only fools and horses title .
no one is ambivalent about jamie byng; they either love him or loathe him. not that he gives a damn - since scooping the booker prize last week, he' s been hailed as the most dynamic figure in british publishing. he talks to libby brookes about his kids, cocaine and canongate
passion was what he offered, from across his 15 - strong team at canongate .
all i know is that enthusiasm and energy are crucial. what makes one novel stand out from another? novels are so subjective, so passion is vital. that' s the single most important thing .
“haig is adamant that ‘one of the uses of the arts is to keep us sane’, and that ‘reading is a route out of yourself’. he is almost evangelical about the power of reading to do good. ‘i think books can save us and i think they sort of saved me, ’ he says. ”
for j. j. abrams’ first ever literary project – the typically high - concept s. , which took the form of an old library book, brimming with ephemera, and was written in collaboration with doug dorst – canongate created a pirate radio station playing 20 hours of music inspired by the story .
from rebecca solnit to gil scott - heron, and philip pullman to margaret atwood, the only thing that links the books on our canons list is that once you’ve read them, they’re impossible to forget. they come from unexpected perspectives, or carrying incredible stories: some are classics already, the rest will be soon .
but then he says :
there are frustrations. you make mistakes. you don' t always publish books as well as you could. there are writers i look back on and think we just shouldn' t have published the book. and it will be in those instances that the writers feel a grievance .
on canongate' s office wall is a mocked - up picture of a smiling obama, sporting a santa hat, pointing towards a line of numbers – the movable arm is currently set at around 900, 000 – with the words
obamometer, one million. sell it – yes we can !
.
he hopes that other people in publishing respect what he is trying to do at canongate. he thinks he is reasonably good at dealing with criticism .
i' ve got a fairly clear idea of what i think is the way we should be doing things, but i' m not a control freak .
it brought different pressures and expectations but in the main it was amazing for canongate. it allowed us to grow in new ways, hiring great staff and investing in superb books and authors without life of pi, god knows where we’d be today. we certainly would not have bought a majority stake in a great australian publishing house, text, in 2004. and that in turn led to other important events like publishing kate grenville and barack obama. everything’s connected. life of pi was also a game - changer in that it showed to the outside world – and to ourselves – that we could publish a best - selling book. in its ﬁrst year in paperback, life of pi sold 900, 000 copies. that was almost more books than we’d sold in total during the ﬁve years previous to life of pi’s publication. it was an extreme experience that gave us the luxury of money, which is something that’s great to have when you’re a small, creative publishing house .
it was such an amazing night. there are a lot of great people working at canongate, and i think for everyone it felt like a vindication. it' s just another fucking prize but it just happens to be the biggest prize and the one that has a greater impact on sales than anything else .
in the “big ideas” session of the bookseller’s 2013 futurebook conference, byng proposed that publishers should produce fewer books, so they could devote more care and attention to them. in fact, he made a sort of pledge that he’d work for a 1: 1 ratio—a title each year for each staffer in his company, and no more .
all these ideas that take advantage of digital, the ﬁlms, the audio books – they’re canongate’s ideas? the writers aren’t yet approaching you saying they want to try something to coincide with a book’s release and they need x, y and z from you to do it, right? sometimes they do come to us with ideas. when david byrne approached us with how music works, an overview of music, he was adamant that as part of the publication of the physical book there needed to be some sort of advanced e - book or app before he signed any contract. we were thrilled that he was thinking this way and insisting that we did too .
myth, concerned with the fertile source of life, is a matriarchal affair. canongate launches its series with small, beautiful books by three wise women. karen armstrong' s a short history of myth provides a critical rationale for the project; she is a renegade nun who spent seven years in a catholic order, so she expertly demythologises sacred lore. christ, she says, was a political agitator who owes his mythic status to st paul. a rumour of his resurrection, which we might call an urban myth, became the miraculous basis of a religious faith and, because easter coincides with spring, nature was enlisted to prove the truth of the fiction .
to say the learning curve was steep is an understatement. but twelve years on we are still here so we must have got some things right. and there were some excellent people at canongate at that time who helped guide the company, not least stephanie who remains a dear friend and was my first real mentor in publishing .
canongate press, edinburgh and london, 1994. soft cover. condition: as new. dust jacket condition: as new. first edition. as new, unread copy of the first edition by one of scotland' s most eloquent voices. dustwrapper is as new, unclipped and has had protective since puchase soon after publication .
i started collecting books in the early 2000s when i came across a second printing of the juniper tree (vol. s 1 & 2), illustrated by maurice sendak. i had no clue if the set was valuable, i just knew that it resonated with me. from there i began to look for other hard to find sendak books, not realizing i was hooked until it was too late. in 2009, after a number of collecting foibles, i started the one girl collecting blog as a way of sharing some of the lessons i' d learned. years later, i' m still learning. this is a labor of love and a one woman show .
as the business fell on hard times, byng and business partner hugh andrew – who later founded edinburgh - based birlinn publishing – pooled resources and contacts and bought out the company. byng' s connections – his step father is sir christopher bland, former chairman of the bbc governors and now canongate' s chairman – certainly helped .
while home is in london with his second wife, elizabeth sheinkman – he moved to be near his first wife whitney and theirchildren, marley, 12 and leo, ten – edinburgh is where canongate will always remain, insists byng, and even though 2008 has been a remarkable year he says there' s no room for complacency .
i wanted to ask about the future of canongate in our brave new digital world. you’ve recently been talking about your web site, which has been re - titled canongate tv. you’ve said, ‘we should be thinking of ourselves as broadcasters rather than simply book publishers. ’ what does that actually mean? the opportunities for publishers have never been greater, so while i’m certain we’ll always publish books in traditional ways, my point about being broadcasters is that we have access to and are collaborating with people who don’t simply think in terms of the written word. it’s more possible now to open up different stories in different ways in different mediums than ever before and audiences increasingly expect and want this. as a publishing house there are many things that you can do from that position. you can choose to publish books as you always have done or you can think, hold on, we’re quite good at bringing people together, why don’t we examine this at a more serious level than we have before. digital is the most liberating medium in that sense. it’s fairly simple these days, as you can see on canongate. tv, to have a multi - channel web site where you can allow people to listen, read, and watch great content. if we want to engage the writers and creative people we are working with, we need to be much more imaginative in the way we think about opening up subjects and stories, whilst creating entertainments that remain in line with the things we care about. we’ve been working on these ideas with some of the people i’ve already talked about. there’s multi - media footage of the likes of gil and nick cave and richard holloway appearing on canongate tv as well as with people like noel fielding, tilda swinton, miranda july and david byrne, who are equally happy working in different mediums and cannot be pigeonholed creatively. our position now is as much as a curator and catalyst in supporting this work. and digital is an important way in which we see ourselves growing – and learning .
imagine a future in which scottish producers were able to place more bets across a genuine portfolio of projects, having accumulated experience more rapidly than a film every two or three years allows. this would give them more creative nous, financial muscle and credibility; strengthening their hands when it comes to optioning scripts and books, hiring writers and attracting directors.
canongate books ( often simply canongate ) is a scottish independent publishing firm based in edinburgh ; it is named for the canongate , an area of the city . it is most recognised for publishing the booker prizewinner life of pi . canongate was named publisher of the year in 2003 and 2009 . 
canongate books (often simply canongate) is a scottish independent publishing firm based in edinburgh; it is named for the canongate, an area of the city. it is most recognised for publishing the booker prizewinner life of pi. canongate was named publisher of the year in 2003 and 2009.
canongate books (often simply canongate) is a scottish independent publishing firm based in edinburgh; it is named for the canongate, an area of the city. it is most recognised for publishing the booker prizewinner life of pi. canongate was named publisher of the year in 2003 and 2009.