The Role of Publisher: Audio Interview with Kathryn Court, President, Penguin Books by Nigel Beale.
Kathryn Court joined Penguin Books in 1977 and became Editorial Director two years later. In l984 she was named Editor in Chief of Viking Penguin and in 1992 Senior Vice-President, Publisher, and Editor in Chief of Penguin Books. She was named President of Penguin Books in August 2000. Authors she has worked with include: Reinaldo Arenas, Andrea Camilleri, J.M. Coetzee, Slavenka Drakulic, Mary Relinda Ellis, Robert Fagles, Josephine Humphreys, Garrison Keillor, Nora Okja Keller, Donna Leon, Mary McGarry Morris, John Mortimer, Richard Rodriguez, C.J. Samsom, Jim Trelease, and William Trevor.
We met last summer at BookExpo in New York, and talk here about: the role of publisher, artist Chris Ware’s funky Candide cover, new ways of selling things you already own, showing the young that reading can be fun, finding new authors and having faith in them, Andrea Camilleri and the benefit of buying series, hard cover versus soft cover sales, 4000 title backlists that finance front lists, J.M. Coetzee’s greatness, sales and distain for interviewers, the need for confidence in young editors in order to convince others that their picks are as good as they say they are, advertising in book review sections and how it doesn’t work, how emotional novels and those with voices women can identify with sell best, the three million copy selling The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, the sales power of word of mouth, and the joyful intensity of working as part of an editorial team…as a happy few against the world.
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February 7th, 2008 at 2:31 PM
[...] Update: John Sutherland states that reports have been misleading and that the book club was only used as an example of what sources students could use to get ideas about what books to select for the modules in which they’re given that choice. I’m only slightly appeased — I still protest against making any post-1990 category compulsory. It looks fairly stupid to me when educators, who presumably don’t believe that classics are “dull or boring”, constantly link anything exciting, thrilling and revelatory to the new and recent. I don’t know what to think when an evil Penguin USA executive is wholly taken with ways to repackage and reintroduce older works to newer generations while Oxford and Cambridge examiners are more concerned about getting in on the fabulously new. And this move is aimed at 6th form students (working at taking the Oxbridge A-levels for they are different versions) who, again I must stress, are typically the sort of students who are perfectly satisfied, even, my word, excited about Conrad and Eliot. What’s going on in the UK? What am I missing here? [...]
February 8th, 2008 at 11:59 AM
[...] Favourites so far are the ones he conducted with Kathyrn Court, President of Penguin Paperbacks and Plume for the Penguin USA division, and Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott. She talked about getting Chris Ware for Candide:Or, Optimism, a selection from the Penguin Classic Deluxe editions (of which I have several including the Voltaire, plus a few from the Great Ideas Series). Walcott? It won’t matter for he will win you with his potent affability and warm sense of humour. His interview was like the audio version of a hot chocolate with a touch or two of Jamaican rum. Real good stuff. [...]