The Penguin Blog

That was the year that was Pt 2

To round off the year we took the liberty of asking some Penguins for their bookish highlights of the year and their publishing resolutions for 2008 - second set of answers below. Of course if you have any highlights from the year just gone, or predictions for the year to come, let us know in the comments below.

What was your publication of the year?

Looming Tower - Lawrence Wright. Sometimes it's the story of struggling to do justice to a book that keeps it in mind. Larry Wright narrates the plot behind 9/11 with such pace and personality that he conveys an important truth: it is people--and the mistakes they make--who make history. The story of the CIA chief who raised the alarm on Al Qaeda in the 1990s and lost his job for his troubles and who ending up dying in the World Trade Center is just one thread in a masterfully woven tale which reads like a thriller. But we struggled to create the right jacket as 9/11 is a very difficult event to portray visually. Personally, I don't think there's any reason to show that terrible moment of impact ever again. It took time and we were up against a deadline, but I'm so proud of the final visual our brilliant art department created. It looks like a paperback you want to pick up and read, conveying drama, importance and readability. Available at all good bookshops because of it. (Fiona Buckland, Sales Manager, Penguin)

Penguin's Poems for Life - a book I commissioned and which has been something of a sleeper hit (in its small way!) this Christmas. Wonderful anthology, gorgeously produced. (Adam Freudenheim, Publishing Director, Penguin Classics)

Slam by Nick Hornby - we tried exciting new things in marketing terms to reach that hard to reach teenage audience (Joanna Prior, Communications Director, Penguin UK)

My favourite publication was The Islamist by Ed Husain, because we have seen Ed's life change dramatically following the book's publication, and because of the letters we receive from readers around the country, who see in Ed's writing what I saw when I first acquired it, and because everything, in publishing terms, went right. (Helen Conford, Publisher, Penguin Press)

Roger Deakin's WILDWOOD: a wonderful memorial to an amazing writer and man. (Tom Weldon, Managing Director, Penguin General)

Amillionpenguins.com - not exactly a publication, but one of the most exciting projects I have ever been involved with. Someone had to do it, and I'm glad it was us. (Jeremy Ettinghausen, Digital Publisher)

What was your favourite book of 2007?

I had a bit of a Penelope Lively moment earlier in the year.  I liked her new book Consequences but even more I enjoyed her early, Booker Prize winning Moon Tiger. (JP)

My favourite book published in 2007 (in paperback!) was The Road by Cormac McCarthy - I've loved him since Blood Meridian.  My favourite book full stop was Dispatches by Michael Herr, partly no doubt because I read it while sitting on a deserted beach in Papua New Guinea. (HC)

Alistair Campbell's Diaries, an hilarious reminder that however far you advance in your career, you still fuck up constantly (TW)

Don Winslow's The Winter of Frankie Machine - a great american crime writer in top form. (JE)

What is your publishing resolution for 2008?

Publish every book with passion, enthusiasm and care. (AF)

Keep our retailers and their customers excited about Penguin books. And to sell even more (of course!) (FB)

To be brave, and to follow my gut instinct (HC)

Stay optimistic (TW)

To try and stay one step ahead of the game (je)

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That was the year that was Pt 1

To round off the year we took the liberty of asking some Penguins for their bookish highlights of the year and their publishing resolutions for 2008 - answers below and more coming tomorrow. Of course if you have any highlights from the year just gone, or predictions for the year to come, let us know in the comments below.

What was your publication of the year?

Don't really understand the question. I finally gave up the Indy for The Times if that's what you're asking!  (Tony Lacey, Editorial Director Viking)

Hurricane Gold by Charlie Higson (Robert Williams, Creative Director)

Neris & India's Idiot Proof Diet -- after all, I'll never publish another book that will make me lose 3 stone, nor another book that will have such an  incredible effect on so many women's lives.  Come to that this is the only diet book I'll ever publish… (Juliet Annan, Publishing Director Fig Tree)

My favourite publication of 2007 was Alan Greenspan's The Age of Turbulence.  While I was reading I felt as if I could certainly run a middle-sized country's economy, and with a bit of help and a second reading could probably cope with a global economy.  Of course the feeling wore off after a bit - but it is a wonderfully entertaining and invigorating book. (Helen Fraser, Managing Director Penguin UK)

Roger Deakin's WILDWOOD: following his tragically early death it was wonderful to hear his voice on every page of this book. (Simon Prosser, Publishing Director Hamish Hamilton)

What was your favourite book of 2007?

From our own stable I very much enjoyed The Lodger though I skipped over the chapters on hair pieces; and I continue to browse Pardon My French - it's endlessly fascinating, just wish it was a bit longer. From outside, Sophie Hannah's terrific new book of poems; and James Lawton's ghosted "autobiography" of Bobby Charlton which makes you sigh for those pre-John Terry and Ashley Cole days. (TL)

Rupert Thomson's Death of a Murderer (RW)

Cormac Macathy's THE ROAD: an astonishing feat of stripped down prose and compressed emotion. (SP)

I can't limit it to one : EVERYMAN by Philip Roth; THE GOOD LIFE by Jay McInerney (recommended to me by one US and one UK Penguin) and Kate Atkinson's CASE HISTORIES: all books about death.  Oh dear. (JA)

My favourite book of 2007 was Zoe Heller's The Believers which I read in proof and thought was an incredible portrait of a massively dysfunctional family and a completely monstrous mother. (HF)

What is your publishing resolution for 2008?

Turn Ed Smith into a bestseller! (TL)

To give audiobooks a chance! (RW)

Try and find some books for the autumn ! (JA)

Do everything we can to help the independent bookshops. (SP)

My publishing resolution for 2008 is the same as it has been for many years: 'fewer better books'. (HF)

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Zoom. There it goes.

Suddenly, another year has gone by. A final Harry Potter, the promise of more Bond, and a growing addiction to stollen - that's been my 2007 in a nutshell. The future, however, looks both golden and delicious: Bond is actually published, the shops stop selling stollen (for a while), and we give you a new Marian Keyes, the plague, a bit of musical poetry, some fairly monstrous and some very funny parenting, a gangland statistician, some number-crunching Lewis Caroll stuff, and a guide for nice guys. What more could you ask from 2008?

Wishing you all a very happy Christmas and a lovely New Year - I'm off to dance on the photocopier at the annual Penguin Towers bash.

Sam the Copywriter

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The future of books - bleak or bright

Towards the end of every year I tour the office, brazenly declaring that the next year will undoubtedly be the year of the ebook, so why should 2007 be any different? But this year, there is more and more evidence that the tipping point for digital reading, if not here already, is just around the corner. With this in mind Penguin, like many other big publishers, is getting its As, Bs and Cs converted into ones and zeros and preparing our catalogue for a time when words will be blithely transmitted across the ether to a variety of devices via a variety of services. Our high level digital director this week spent an hour talking to 200 Penguins from around the company explaining where we were going and giving people an idea of the amount of work that lies ahead. To bookend her talk she prepared the two videos below that give very different ideas of what the future of books and reading might look like. I know which view I favour. What about you?

A World without Books

or

The Future's So Bright...

Jeremy Ettinghausen
Digital Publisher

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I'm Gonna Live Forever, I'm Gonna Learn How to Fly!

Kids dancing outside classrooms. Uberstylish girls singing with perfect pitch on the stairs. A young couple rowing at the tops of their voices before stopping  to ask ‘shall we take that from the top?’. And an almost unbearable urge on my part to pull on the leggings and leg warmers and start limbering up.

It can only mean one thing. Puffin entered the world of Fame at the Brit School, an institution who’s distinguished alumni include Leona Lewis, the Kooks, and a certain Ms. Winehouse (heard of her lately, anyone?). We travelled to Croydon, the UK’s latest hotbed of performing talent to cast the part of Sara in our version of Kate Modern – regularly updated dramatic 'vlogs' - based on Melvin Burgess’ latest novel Sara’s Face.

Melvin is rightly known as the Godfather of Teen Fiction, and he first soared to fame himself in 1997 on publication of the hugely controversial Junk.  Since then, his books have never shied away from combining difficult issues with fantastic storytelling.

Sara’s Face (out in Penguin paperback at the end of Jan) focuses on celebrity, image, and cosmetic surgery. Lead character Sara is 17, gorgeous and desperate for fame. The story is told partly through transcripts of her vidlogs, and it’s these, along with some new and exclusive material from Melvin, that we’re going to be shooting and releasing as ‘webisodes’ on Penguin’s teen site Spinebreakers.co.uk early next year.

Coming over all Simon Cowell wasn’t necessary, as the actresses who turned up to the auditions were seriously talented. Still, they had a difficult task. The clips need to feel entirely natural and Sara, who’s beautiful, manipulative and damaged runs the gamut of emotions from ecstasy to horror. The director reckoned these girls’ abilities easily surpassed those of the groups he gets sent when he’s casting with big TV stations. Each girl brought her own interpretation to the role and any one of three particularly talented auditionees could land the part. It’s time to roll back the tapes and watch them back to find out who’ll be lucky.

As well as the videos, spinebreakers will be hosting a vlogging competition. Entrants can upload their own  rants on the subject of beauty, and how far they’d go to get it onto the site from early next year to win state of the art video recording equipment.

The eight professionally shot and acted videos based on Sara’s Face will be broadcast on spinebreakers in January. Don’t forget to watch them. In fact, remember remember remember remember remember.

Jodie from Puffin

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No telly, thanks, I'm reading

What's a better part of Christmas than some hearty Christmas telly? Twinning your telly programmes up with their original literary forebears, of course. On the BBC, we've got quite a few on-screen/on-page twinnings, not least a Russell Brand bit of tomfoolery over in the States. Brand hitched over there a few months ago to retrace the steps of Kerouac himself in his On the Road journey, in an hour-long celebration of the book on its 50th anniversary. Expect lots of passage-reading and hopefully some humorous soul-searching as he scamps his way across the continent.

Elsewhere, you'll have the chance for a Dickens of a Christmas, with the BBC's glossy-yet-soot-smudged Oliver Twist, Blackadder's Christmas Carol, and not one but two versions of the actual Christmas Carol over on Channel 4 (the Reginald Owen one and the Patrick Stewart one - hurrah!) on Christmas Eve.

Lots of children's books making it to Christmas schedules, too - Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (please can someone explain Book 13 to me?),  The Cat in the Hat (no comment), and - my personal favourite - Ballet Shoes. Lovely.

Less lovely but slightly more likely to be watched by anyone who isn't a 12-year-old girl is The Great Escape. Although marvellously acted, directed, etc., I implore you not to watch this film. It will destroy you. Why everyone talks about Steve McQueen on the bike like it's a good thing, is, frankly, beyond me (spoiler). Although I have been told that the book is excellent, so maybe stick to that.

Some family viewing/reading for everyone to enjoy: a new Sense & Sensibility, some Pullman adventure for Belle de Jour in Shadow in the North, and an oldie(ish) but a goldie, The Count of Monte Cristo. Musically, GB Shaw will be showing us all a good time with BBC 2's My Fair Lady on Christmas Eve, and what better excuse is there to finally getting round to reading Peter Pan than avoiding Finding Neverland on New Year's Day? Just don't let the kids read it. They'll be scarred for life.

Sam the Copywriter

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Introducing Penguin's own Bond Girl

Today we unveiled the cover for the new James Bond novel, Devil May Care, which I hope you'll agree is rather striking.

We're publishing this new chapter in the life of Bond in May 2008 to celebrate the centenary of Ian Fleming's birth. Sebastian Faulks has written the new novel - and it's all set to be one of the most exciting moments in 'book world' next year… keep watching this space.

We knew that this book cover had to be stylish, sophisticated and iconic - all the things one associates with Fleming's world-famous spy. So our Art Directors decided to take a slightly different approach to this artwork and we took on award-winning design agency - The Partners - who have worked with leading British brands such as Jaguar, the BBC and the National Gallery. We wanted someone who would have a slightly different take on designing a book cover, one which would go beyond usual publishing preconceptions about what such things should look like.

The Partners presented us initial designs based around the concept a blood-red flower with the silhouette of a naked woman as its stem set against a jet black background. Everyone - the Estate of Ian Fleming, Sebastian Faulks and all those involved in-house - reacted really positively to the concept artwork… so the next stage was to find our Bond cover girl. Tough job.

We knew the moment we saw Tuuli that she was the one - she exuded the grace, style and beauty one associates with all the Bond girls. Most of all Tuuli was fantastically enthusiastic and engaged with the project - her vivacity really came through in the shoot. Then the Partners applied their skills in finessing and styling - and the end result was a fantastically iconic image.

Without a shadow of a doubt I think this has been one of the most rewarding covers we've produced - the moment you mention the name James Bond people's eyes light up. Everyone involved in designing the cover has leapt to the challenge with that glint in their eyes - and the artwork really reflects that enthusiasm and passion.

You can't judge a book by it's cover - but you sure as hell can make people want to pick that book up and read it…

Alex Clarke, Editor, Penguin 007

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