HarperCollins Australia: A rare behind-the-scenes look at the publishing industry
Thanks to Hollywood, many think a vivid, magical gloss and high-octane scandals fuel the publishing industry. But it couldn’t be further from the reality.
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There’s a vivid, magical gloss around some industries.
An indefinable sheen of glamour and style.
Hollywood and streaming services love these hotbeds of high stakes and scandals — and so do we as readers and viewers — so there are any number of books, movies and TV shows set in the world of book publishing, magazines or newspapers.
And the stars of these shows all seem to share the same quality.
Whether it’s a hotshot young journalist, high-powered publisher or a Miranda Priestly-type magazine editrix, they all display a steely single-mindedness, a laser-like focus when it comes to that breaking that story, writing THE piece that incites real change, or, in the case of publishing, getting that book to the top of the bestseller charts.
In these delicious, fictional portrayals, it seems to be that these kinds of achievements — wooing a high profile author, launching a novel (in the case of Bridget Jones, in the company of Salman Rushdie and Jeffery Archer and scintillating discussions of Chechnya), or putting together an issue in a race against time — are all pulled off by a tiny handful of individuals (usually in tight skirts, red-soled Louboutins and impeccable hair) and they’re somehow able to achieve these massive feats and get to that chic Manhattan bar for some backslapping in time for happy hour, where their usual tipple will be prepared on arrival because they’re a regular (of course).
The reality is very different.
Take the world of book publishing, for example. The fact is if it takes a village to raise a child (and what I’d give to have a village at my disposal …), it takes a small and resourceful nation to get a book from the manuscript stage to your local bookseller’s labyrinthine shelves.
There are publishers, editors, proofreaders, warehouse staff, typesetters, cover designers, digital gurus, finance teams, publicity and sales managers, people who can decipher elaborate systems that laugh in the face of user-friendly interfaces, all of whom are tasked, usually over a period of time of nine months, to get a book from manuscript to bookshop by the publication date.
This just can’t be managed by one person, even someone like the uber-chic powerhouse Sandra Bullock in The Proposal or someone with the pep of Hilary Duff in Younger.
Getting a book published involves swathes of people; all of whom carry a passion for pages like the young and thoughtful protagonist in Matilda and many of whom give up their weekends and nights to create books — and that’s not even including the all-important author!
An author puts more than their heart on a page when they write a book.
There’s so many large and small sacrifices involved to get those 90,000 words down in the right order. It can mean that children’s award ceremonies are missed, that birthday drinks remain uncorked, and regular 5am alarms are endured in order to get words, plots and twists down before heading off to their day jobs. Everyone who works in publishing knows this — it’s a big responsibility we take on.
And yet, sometimes, despite all the efforts of all these people, just one small, tiny thing — I’m obviously not referring to our current pandemic here — has the potential to completely upset the library cart.
Take, for example, what happened to, PR maven and all-round powerhouse, Roxy Jacenko, who had to pulp the first print run of her most recent book after a quote on the cover mistakenly said she “never fails to disappoint”.
The less-than-flattering endorsement quote — an honest mistake, meant to say “she never fails to deliver” — made it past all those publishers, editors and proof-readers – and was spotted only when advance copies of Roxy’s Little Black Book of Tips and Tricks had been sent out. Wince.
Thank goodness this kind of blip is relatively rare.
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You’d think the work and relentless drive would exhaust you and would have those involved fleeing for jobs where you can clock in at 9am, log off at 5pm and blissfully not give a thought about work until you do it all again at 9am tomorrow.
But people tend to stay in publishing — once you’re called to it, you rarely leave it.
A lot of our sales team at HarperCollins Australia, who spend more time in bookshops than their loungerooms, have been doing it for 30-plus years. The wonderful man that keeps our mailroom humming at HarperCollins is close to the fifty-year mark.
It might not be the three-martini long lunches of The Group or have the ruthless romanticism of The Nest, but if I’m honest, there is a little bit of magic involved — it just involves a lot more elbow grease and a lot less designer fashion. The galloons of coffee consumption is spot on, though.
Kimberely Allsopp is a well-adjusted book industry veteran at HarperCollins Australia. For more behind-the-scenes insights on publishing and being an author join Kimberley and top writer Meg Mason at Books, Actually — a new Facebook Live series about the world of words, every Tuesday at 12.30pm on the HarperCollins Australia Facebook page.
While you’re on Facebook, drop it at the Sunday Book Club Facebook group, where we’ll give you a heads-up on our forthcoming next Book of The Month: The Goodbye Man by Jeffrey Deaver, yours for 30 per cent off at Booktopia with the code GOODBYE