Summary
The view from the top of business. Presented by Evan Davis, The Bottom Line cuts through confusion, statistics and spin to present a clearer view of the business world, through discussion with people running leading and emerging companies.
Like the music industry before it, the print book industry has been turned upside down up by the digital revolution. As sales of ebooks continue to grow, bookshop sales are down from a peak in 2007. So what does the future for hold for the bricks and mortar bookstore? Will physical books become a thing of the past? And what role will traditional players like publishers, agents and retailers play in this brave new world? Evan Davis and guests examine what the landscape might look like once the dust settles.
Joining Evan in the studio are Jonny Geller, literary agent and joint CEO Curtis Brown; Victoria Barnsley, CEO of publisher HarperCollins UK & International; Michael Tamblyn, Chief Content Officer at Toronto-based ebook retailer Kobo.
Producer: Ben Crighton Editor: Innes Bowen.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Thank you for downloading this programme. In this edition of the bottom line, Evan Davis and guests try to make sense of the brave new world of publishing. |
| 0:08.5 | Hello and welcome to the programme. We're going to talk about the future of the book today. |
| 0:13.5 | Publishing was perhaps once seen as a gentle industry, a comfortable business for literary people who might be unemployable elsewhere. |
| 0:20.4 | I don't think anyone would say that |
| 0:21.9 | now. It's gone from cozy to cutthroat in record-breaking time, jolted by technological and |
| 0:28.6 | cultural change. My three guests are all working in the book business, all trying to make sense of |
| 0:33.3 | the turmoil within it as rapid change engulfs them. Am I exaggerating? Well, I don't think so. |
| 0:40.2 | So let's meet them. And you each represent a different piece of the book world. So I'll get you |
| 0:45.3 | each to tell me what you do. First up is literary agent Johnny Geller, joint CEO of the |
| 0:51.0 | talent agency Curtis Brown. Johnny, who are your clients? Well, I represent a whole host of |
| 0:57.6 | wonderful writers, but they include John LaCarray, William Boyd, Tracy Chevalier, Howard Jacobson. |
| 1:02.7 | What's your relationship with them? How often would you see them? Well, it depends. I mean, |
| 1:06.8 | some authors I see or speak to every day. Others, you only speak to. Oh, yes. There's, |
| 1:12.0 | it's quite an intense relationship because you're part business consultant, part doctor, part |
| 1:17.3 | consuliary, and you can be involved in every aspect of their professional life. And if I came |
| 1:22.5 | to Curtis Brown as an author, do you pick me or do I pick you? It's a very good question that. I think when you |
| 1:30.5 | start off, it's about us discovering you. You either submit material to us or we find you because |
| 1:36.6 | we're reading you in other places. But once we have that mutual understanding and we like each |
| 1:42.0 | other's work, then it's about a relationship, whether we can build that. And you'll find that once an agent takes on an author, normally they accompany them through their whole career. And you're paid about, what, 15% of what the author gets, is that right? Yes, we're purely on commission. So the time we invest in new writing is based on our judgment of whether we will have a career. |
| 2:01.4 | Okay. |
| 2:06.8 | Well, also with us is Vicki Barnsley, Chief Executive of the publisher, Harper Collins, UK and International. |
| 2:07.8 | Actually, Vicki, you had quite an interesting career because you didn't start at Harper Collins. |
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