The Biblio File Hosted by Nigel Beale

Michael Erdman is Head of Middle East and Central Asian Collections at The British Library with overall responsibility for all manuscript holdings in Arabic, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Chagatai, Coptic, Hebrew, Kurdish, Ottoman Turkish, Persian, and Syriac.

I talked with him about my recent magazine hunting exploits in Istanbul, and how what we found fits into the overall history of magazine publishing in Turkey. Esoteric, I know, but hey, this is where passion takes you.

Michael Erdman is Head of Middle East and Central Asian Collections at The British Library with overall responsibility for all manuscript holdings in Arabic, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Chagatai, Coptic, Hebrew, Kurdish, Ottoman Turkish, Persian, and Syriac.

I talked with him about my recent magazine hunting exploits in Istanbul, and how what we found fits into the overall history of magazine publishing in Turkey. Esoteric, I know, but hey, this is where passion takes you.

I first came across Andrés Mario Zervigón’s (Cuban) name while researching a magazine that filled me with awe the first time I saw it.

AIZ, the Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung (Workers Illustrated Magazine) is an illustrated, mass circulation German periodical that was published in Berlin during the 1920s and 1930s (in Prague after 1933). It contains some of the most emotionally charged imagery I’ve ever seen. The best work was by John Heartfield.

Zervigón is professor of the history of photography at Rutgers University in New Jersey. He obtained his PhD from Harvard University in 2000 and concentrates his scholarship “on the interaction between photographs, film, and fine art." His first book, John Heartfield and the Agitated Image: Photography, Persuasion, and the Rise of Avant-Garde Photomontage (University of Chicago Press, 2012), proposes that “photography’s sudden ubiquity in illustrated magazines, postcards, and posters produced an unsettling transformation of visual culture that artists felt compelled to address.”

Zervigón’s work, says the Rutger’s website, “generally focuses upon moments in history when these media [film, photography, fine art] prove inadequate to their presumed task of representing the visual.”

We start our conversation by unpacking this passage, and then move on to a short history of illustrated, mass circulation magazines, (including VU magazine), then to the life of John Heartfield, and finally to AIZ.

Background here

Tony Fekete is a​ book collector who for years specialized in collecting erotica. ​ H​e's best known for the catalogue he produced for a Christie’s auction that took place in 2014 that featured highlights from his collection. ​ M​ore than 200 books, manuscripts, lithographs and erotic photographs ​ w​ent up for sale ​ ,​ including a first edition of My Secret Life (1888), an eleven-volume memoir​ that describes ​ in detail the sex life​ of an anonymous Victorian "Gentleman," of which only twenty-five copies were printed.​ The auction netted Fekete more than a million pounds.

​ T​ony is a​ mobile bibliophile who travels frequently, primarily by train, in pursuit of books. Born in London in 1954​ of Hungarian​ descent, ​he worked for​ Citibank in Eastern Europe ​ d​uring the mid-1980s​ ​ whe​ r​e he cultivated both his love of books and an appreciation for the region. Today ​ h​e shares these passions on Instagram and Facebook​, posting photographs of his journeys​throughout Eastern Europe​ , that feature old bars and restaurants​ that he favours and, of course, highlights from his still significant (and stimulating) erotica collection. I spoke with him via Zoom.

Siegfried Lokatis is a retired professor of book history, and former head of the University of Leipzig's​ Institute for Communication and Media Studies. He is the author of Book ​Covers of the GDR and is currently working on a history of the S. Fischer publishing house, due out in 2026.

We met in Leipzig recently where Siegfried treated me to a tour of ​t​he Bibliotop's splendid Insel Bucherei book collection.

Founded in 1912, the series now ​contains some 2,000 titles (and still counting according to Jonathan Landgrebe, head of Suhrkamp Verlag, the company that today produces the books). The series is iconic in Germany and in many ways its publishing history reflects the history of the country. The books are known for their beauty and the care with which they're produced. Qualities include: individual typographical design, exquisite illustration (notably from the thirties - stay tuned) and photography, and printing on wood-free, age-resistant paper, plus they're thread-stitched and bound in decorative cover paper.​ They served as the model for Allen Lane's King Penguin series.

The Insel Bucherie series includes both well-known and little known texts from world literature as well as art history, non-fiction, poetry, and fairy tales, plus gift anthologies from Germany and around the ​globe.

Subjects covered in my conversation with Siegfried include Rilke and copyright, ​the decision to publish​ established, versus contemporary works; Stephan Zweig and the Nazis, poisonous mushrooms, the rarest volume, the Allied bombing of Leipzig, censorship, the separation of East and West Germany, wartime profits, collecting, pornography and more.

Richard Charkin has held senior posts at many major, and some minor, publishing houses in the U.K. over the past 50 years, including: Harrap, OUP, Pergamon Press, Reed Elsevier, Macmillan, Bloomsbury, and Mensch Publishing . He is former President of The Book Society, the International Publishers Association and the UK Publishers Association.

His book My Back Pages , An Undeniably Personal History of Publishing 1972-2022 came out in 2023. The book has sold more than 3,000 copies, and is being translated into four languages. It took me a year to figure out what questions to ask him.

Just so you know, Richard has been very good to The Biblio File podcast over the years. Thanks to him I've landed all sorts of great publishing guests. And John Banville! I’m grateful to him for this, and for his being so generous with his time and knowledge, sharing them as he has with me on multiple occasions during episodes that have dealt with, among other things, great publishers , the challenges facing the book business , and how to set up a small publishing house.

I wrote this about him a while back:

Richard does what all great publishers do. He pays attention to what's going on both in the world, and in the world of books. He pays attention to what people are doing and reaches out to them to learn more. He takes an interest. It’s pretty simple. And pretty important. He also lets people know what he's up to. I got to know him through his blog. It gave me a wonderful glimpse into the daily life of a high-powered publisher - the workings of business, but also the workings of his mind, and occasionally his emotions…

His writing invited and welcomed a human response.

I'm happy to have been able to re-connect with Richard again recently, this time via Zoom, to talk about the changes he’s seen, and lessons he's learned, over more than 50 years in the book publishing business, something, more than incidentally, that he's been rewarded for recently in the form of an OBE .

It’s good to see that his exemplary work in, and on behalf of, the publishing business - his “service to literature,” has been recognized.

The last time I ran into renowned book scholar Jonathan Rose (at a SHARP conference ) he mentioned that he was doing some work on Playboy magazine. ‘Way more women readers than you’d expect!’ he told me.

Rose is an accomplished author. His groundbreaking and award-winning book, The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes , first published in 2001, is selling in its third edition and has been translated into multiple languages.

I emailed him recently. He directed me to a paper he’d delivered entitled Readers, Magazines, Playboy, Market Research: The Daniel Starch Reports as Tools for Reading Research , I read it and teed up this conversation on Zoom. Subjects covered include Daniel Starch and his Starch Reports, Soviet readership reports, Stephen Hawking, Woody Allen, free speech, Skyhorse Publishing, gay rights, Hugh Hefner, art director Art Paul, missionaries, free enterprise, Cosmopolitan Magazine, airbrushing, pornography, conventional wisdom, myths, George Orwell and populism

Enjoy!

Michael Lista is an investigative journalist, essayist and poet who lives in Toronto. I’ve followed his career now for some fifteen years. He’s written true crime for the better part of a decade. His story “The Sting” is being adapted by Adam Perlman, Robert Downey Jr., and Team Downey, into a television series for Apple TV+.

We talk here about Michael’s recent book of true crime stories, The Human Scale; about Truman Capote and the non-fiction novel; about listening and details; being honest when talking with people who’ve experienced crises, and how tawdry it is to ask for exclusivity; about examining systems, and how tardy the delivery of justice can sometimes be; about how the story resides in the telling, and how Shakespeare stuck his landings; about in extremis and understanding who we really are; fact-checked fairy tales; competing against YouTube and Netflix; and much more.

Ian Birch is "former editorial director of Hearst UK and Emap. He began his magazine career in the late 1970s as a reporter for Melody Maker before moving to Smash Hits where he was assistant editor for three years. His first launch and editorship came in the late 1980s with Sky Magazine. At Hearst UK he was publisher of Company, Esquire and Harper's Bazaar. Prior to working at Hearst, Birch was chief content officer at TV Guide in New York for four years; and before this he was editorial director at Emap for more than 10 years, where he helped to launch Red, Closer, [and] Grazia."

His book Uncovered: Revolutionary Magazine Covers: The inside stories told by the people who made them kicks off with covers from the late 1950s, about as far back as you can go [ if you want to interview the people who both created the covers and are still alive to talk about it], and brings us up to 2017; you know, when big-run print magazines died.

Paul Wells is a leading Canadian political journalist and author. We met at his offices in Ottawa to talk about his impressive career, and his craft writing about politics for newspapers, magazines, books, and now Substack . Topics covered include: observing and interviewing politicians; reading and remembering history; putting events into context; pre-revolutionary Paris; pedagogical magazine writing; helping people; recited formulas, thrown slogans, and knowing you’re being lied to; the difficulty politicians experience making a difference; discussing issues in their full complexities; “the wall of words,” “the significant trifle,” including yourself and analysis in your narratives; paying for Substack subscriptions because you want to comment; filling the ‘weekend supplement’ niche; understanding each other as neighbours; and the secret to a successful marriage.

“Lucian Bernhard (1883-1972) was one of the great founders of modern graphic design. In a career spanning nearly five decades in Berlin and New York, Bernhard laid the foundation for a new language of form and communication. His brilliant posters, advertisements, book designs and typefaces created the very look of the twentieth century and beyond. In this lavishly illustrated book, noted design historian Christopher Long traces Bernhard's life and career, uncovering new truths and demolishing old myths.”

Long studied at the universities of Graz, Munich and Vienna, and received his doctoral degree at the University of Texas at Austin in 1993. Trained as a cultural historian, his dissertation was a study of the Viennese architect and designer Joseph Frank. He has since written extensively on various aspects of Central European Modernism and has published monographs on a number of notable central European emigre architects and designers in the United States.

We talk about his latest, Lucian Bernhard . I learned about it from Steven Heller’s essential Daily Heller, and was thrilled to see that it was published by Kant Books , based in Prague. All I had to do was to walk about ten minutes from my apartment doorstep to my favourite bookstore, Kavka Books, to pick up a copy.

I interviewed Nick Anthony a year or so ago about his experience writing a first novel and getting parts of it work-shopped. Today I catch up with him to find out what he’s been doing and where he’s at now on the road to getting his first book published.

We talk about, among other things, how AI has helped him in the writing process; subjective and objective readers; the difference between screen writing and novel writing; Noam Chomsky on plagiarism ; Elon Musk on Harry Potter; chess; photography; Joyce’s Ulysses ; Marcel Proust writing about me going to the corner store to buy a bag of milk; and more.

The “Josh” I reference towards the end of the conversation is Josh Dolezal, who was a recent guest on The Biblio File podcast . He talked about, among other things, the experience of trying to find a literary agent.

John Sargent was too young to fight in WW ll but he spent years battling Amazon and Google in the trenches on behalf of publishers and authors, protecting copyright and defending book prices.

John grew up on a cattle ranch in Wyoming. Over forty years he worked at six publishing companies, including Simon & Schuster where he was the publisher of the Children’s Division, and Dorling Kindersley where he was CEO. For the last half of his career he was the CEO of Macmillan. He’s the author of three children’s books and is currently chairman of The Ocean Conservancy.

We met via Zoom to talk about some of the fights he’s had over the years and other stories presented in his new memoir entitled Turning Pages, The Adventures and Misadventures of a Publisher. We also talk about crying and bravery, McDonald’s, Monika Lewinsky, George Bush Sr., suicide, Donald Trump, fucking sea urchins, and more.

Joshua Doležal is a writer and award-winning teacher with 20 years of experience in publishing and editing. His mentor was Ted Kooser, former Poet Laureate of the United States and Pulitzer Prize winner.

Josh's work has appeared in more than 30 magazines including The Kenyon Review and The Chronicle of Higher Education. His memoir Down from the Mountain Top: From Belief to Belonging was short-listed for the 2016 William Saroyan International Prize. He writes at The Recovering Academic on Substack , AND...he's a “book coach ”.

What’s a book coach? We met via Zoom to answer this question. Topics discussed include: the roles of a book coach and the qualifications you need to be one; writing tools that Josh recommends his clients use; the concept of defamiliarization ; horror films and the element of surprise; three-step strategies for drafting manuscripts; Lisa Cron; James Paterson; turning points, resolutions and reckonings; tent poles and cairns; the importance of discovering things while you write; literary agents; advice for me on my podcast catalogue “book” project; Sting's backlist; pertinent questions to ask yourself if you want to write a book, such as: ‘why are you writing this book?’ and ‘why should readers care?’; plus, much more.

Andrew Nash is Reader in Book History at the Institute of English Studies, University of London (a leading book history scholar in other words) and Director of the London Rare Books School.

We sat down in the stacks at the Mark Longman "Books about Books" Library at the University of Reading (well, actually the Museum of English Rural Life in Reading which is somehow connected to the University and its publishers' archives collections) to talk about a course Andrew teaches ​at the London Rare Book School on how to use/work with publishers' archives .

Th​ough this topic may sound a ​tad niche, even for this podcast, it's not. Andrew makes the convincing ​c​ase that publishers' archives are in fact ​of interest to many scholars, and have valu​e precisely because they can be studied from many​ different economic, social, ​and cultural​ perspectives. Publishers' archives​ yield, among other things, fascinating, detailed information about how knowledge and "culture" is “made public” in society. They’re not just about author-publisher correspondence​s, though these in themselves are justly recognized and valued as essential documents of cultural heritage, no, they’re about providing scholars, and the world at large, with rich source documentation, from which all of us can better understand...yes, everything!

Archives referenced during our conversation include those of Allen & Unwin, Chatto and Windus, Longmans, John Murray, George Routledge, and The Hogarth Press.

Marta Sylvestrova is a curator and art critic, and has headed the graphic design department at the Moravian Gallery in Brno, Czech Republic, since 1986. She is a graduate of Masaryk University where she studied art history, and has, over the years, been involved in the organizing of many Brno Biennieles. They feature and evaluate graphic designs from around the world every two years, alternating for many years, between celebration of book jacket design and poster design. It closed, somewhat controversially, in 2018,

I went to Brno to talk to Marta about this controversy, but also, primarily, to talk about a big, beautiful four kilogram exhibition catalogue she edited 20 years ago entitled Czech Film Posters of the 20th Century , published in 2004 by the Moravian Gallery.

Nic Bottomley is a bookseller, and co-owner with his wife Juliette of Mr B's Emporium of Reading Delights, an independent bookshop based in Bath that has twice been named UK Independent Bookshop of the Year. Prior to setting up shop Nic was a capital markets lawyer. He currently serves as Executive Chair of the Booksellers Association of UK and Ireland . We spoke via Zoom about his innovative "Reading Spas," about approaching customers, and reading related to passions and careers; other topics discussed include: themed displays, arrogant book selection, whether or not the bookselling model is broken, the Elliott Bay Bookstore in Seattle, honeymoons, butchery novels, work-related reading lists, paying attention to detail, biblio-therapy, work ethics, a bookshop's personality, “the browse,” and way more.

The Umberto and Elisabetta Mauri Booksellers School was founded in 1983 by Luciano Mauri in memory of his father and his daughter, who died prematurely.

"In the course of almost thirty years of teaching activity it has trained new generations of booksellers and has become a laboratory for experimentation and discussion on the possibilities of the book. The first example in Italy, second in Europe, after Frankfurt, the School promotes a discussion that does not remain limited to the organization and management of the point of sale, but which extends to all aspects involving the activity of the bookshop: distribution, marketing and promotion."

I met with the head of the School, Nana Lohrengel, at her offices in Milan. We talk, among other things, about what's taught at the school, about Germany's bookseller apprentice program, and about the importance of curiosity in bookselling and keeping current; also, about exchanging knowledge with fellow booksellers, "handselling" books via Instagram and Facebook, about Libraccio's bookstores in Milan, and about bookstores and democracy.

Ricky Cavallero was CEO of the Spanish-language publisher Random House Mondadori for eight years. In 1995 he joined Mondadori as Director of Marketing Books; two years later he was appointed General Manager of the Spanish subsidiary and launched the Alexandros trilogy by Valerio Massimo Manfredi which became a huge best-seller.

In 1999 he inaugurated the Grijalbo Mondadori bookshop in Havana​. ​ In 2000 he returned to Italy as director of Books Edizioni Mondadori. The following year, the Random House Mondadori joint venture was established ​ and Cavallero assumed the position of Chief Executive Officer​ initially ​ based in New York and then, from 2004, in Barcelona.​ ​

​In 2010 ​he was appointed ​ General Manage​​ r​ of​ Libri Trade Mondadori and Chief Executive Officer of Einaudi​, under which the ​ Piemme, Sperling & Kupfer and Frassinelli houses​ operated .​ ​ ​I n 2016​ he launched a new venture, founding his own house,​ called SEM Società Editrice Milanese.​ He sold it in the Spring of 2023.

We met in Milan to talk about his take on book publishing. Topics covered include Libya, the Hoepli bookstore in Milan, Hemingway, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, nipples, different ways of looking at Latin America, atlases, nationalism, the fun of hitting the big one, Sonny Mehta, buying Fifty Shades of Grey, the impact of Covid, travel and understanding the world, meeting people, diversity, Africa, new writers, exiles and revolutions, bars, interesting people, getting 'out there;' listening, and asking questions, participating in life, partying, SEM, weekly dinners being a better investment than advertising, jazz music, Verso Bar and Bookshop in Milan, jamming with Ken Follett, offering stages for new voices, and giving birth.

Matteo Columbo is Margaret Atwood's publicist and personal magician at the Ponte alle Grazie publishing house in Italy. We met in Milan to discuss, among other things, the relationship between magic and publicity, the things that Margaret's handlers insist must be present in her hotel rooms; banana tricks, surprises, examples of how to gain the attention of journalists, Ponte alle Grazie's eclectic backlist, Luigi Spagnol, books as unique entities, the impact of Margaret's in-person Italian appearances, comparisons between publicity and photography; trustworthiness, syntax, and more.

I saw Dan Fridd in action promoting Edelweiss "the book industry's platform to market, sell, discover, and order new titles" at the RISE Bookselling Conference in Prague a few weeks ago and knew I had to have him on the show.

Dan is Client "Success" Manager for Edelweiss. We talk about the company, his career in bookselling IT, and how "Above the Treeline" provides booksellers with the big picture; about book sales, inventory management, pie charts, Barbara Kingsolver's The Lacuna , the John Sandoe Bookshop in London, Ann Arbor, Michigan, book conversations opening up your world, marina management software, yachts, coding, data splicing, browsing publisher sales catalogues, analytics, creating your own catalogues, the Book Bugs and Dragon Tales bookshop, Norwich, Mitch Kaplan, and gigs in the Cayman Islands.

Sure this may all sound a bit stodgy to non-booksellers, but I'm telling you, Dan gives dynamite interview.

Maria Hamrefors was appointed chairwoman of the Swedish Booksellers Association in 2019 after a long career in the book industry. Previous positions include CEO of Akademibokhandeln, CEO of Bokus, CEO of Norstedts Publishing Group, CEO of Thomson Corp in Sweden and director of Sweet & Maxwell Group in the UK. She is the treasurer of the European and International Booksellers Federation (EIBF) and a member of the EIBF executive committee.​

We met at the RISE Bookselling Conference in Prague last month to talk about, among other things, how to turn around a chain bookstore, difficult cost cutting decisions, showing books face out, active curation, customer clubs, loyalty, fourth generation family businesses, ​discovering "best" information, trust, conspiracy theories, critical thinking, shared love of books, and the best life advice ever.

Putin is murdering Ukrainians. Xi is likely perpetrating a genocide on the Uyghurs. He's also threatening to murder Taiwanese, and he's crushing democracy in Hong Kong. Trump is ignoring the rule of law. Florida is censoring books.

Why am I doing what I'm doing? Why have I interviewed more than 600 people about the book? Well, precisely to help contribute to a better understanding of how best to stop these types of things from happening; how best to come up with and fashion good, big complex, ideas and make them public, get them discussed, motivate people to act on them, get governments to make the world a better, safer place.

These are dangerous times. Books and bookstores are more important than ever.

Despite the country's relatively low literacy rate, relative to other countries in the EU that is, Italians do understand this, and their government has done something about it.

I met Barbara Hoepli in Prague last month at the RISE Bookselling Conference. She'd just delivered a talk on the Italian bookselling business which referenced Italy's Levi (Fixed Price) Law. It limits the size of discounts that can be "levied" on books sold in the country. It's designed to help grow and support the book sector, and literacy, and culture - tangible proof, it is, of the importance Italians assign to books and bookstores in their society.

I figured it was worth talking with Barbara, not only because she has a beautiful voice and accent, but, primarily, because she's been in the book business all of her life directing both a major educational publishing house and a sizeable bookstore in Milan . We talk here about, among other things, market regulation, books being the cornerstone of our society, learning from the past, the name "Barbara," her family's 150 year history with books, and how books help us to grow and create.

And yes, I left in the sound of her phone ringing (apologies, it's loud and startling). I figured it provides an extra peel of information - one that helps the listener better understand who she, Barbara, is as a person. Maybe not. You tell me.

Jeff Deutsch is a devoted reader, browser and lifelong bookseller. He's the director of Chicago's iconic Seminary Co-op Bookstores, and has written a book entitled In Praise of Good Bookstores (Princeton, 2022) in which he calls for a re-imagining of the current bookselling model, one that incorporates more than just retail, that adequately values the important work done by booksellers for their communities and democracy, and that appreciates the incomparable experiences that bookstores offer their patrons.

We get into what "good" means, how a new model of bookselling might be funded; establishing new institutions and supporting the cause; about the ephemeral and the eternal, stars and blossoming fruit trees, William Blake, Robert Musil, mammon, Socrates learning to play the flute, the gift of finding something, or one, to love and knowing that this too shall pass; about the joys of "the browse," and thrift stores; capitalism, socialism, what people value, and civic-mindedness; Amazon, and underpaid work; James Daunt; Blundstones; old cowboy shirts, "slow time," Stendhal; bottling enthusiasm, Leon Forrest's Divine Days , Jaipur, and so much more.

Photo Credit: Sally Blood

I've long been interested in rhetoric, the techniques of persuasive argument, propaganda; the use of passionate language. It's why I collect publishers' sales and bookseller catalogues, I'm sure!

Ever since first laying hands on the bookseller catalogues that Jerry Kelly has, over the years, designed for the likes of Jonathan A. Hill and Glenn Horowitz, I've held the conviction that he is one of America's truly great book designers. It's hard to describe this conviction. His work just looks and feels right to me. "Read me." it says. "I'm worth looking at." It's worth looking at of course because it's a product of years of dedicated study, and passionate practice. These kind of deeply precious objects don't just appear out of nowhere.

Take the type for example. Its selection, how it augments the arguments and value propositions put forward in these catalogues; how it adds to their credibility, their conviction, makes the words seem more important. Or the aptness of the paper choices, their relevant colours, the statements made by their weights and textures. The way the choice of ink pigments clarify and emphasize. It all burnishes the larger persuasive effect.

But enough waxing. I recently decided that when I finally do come up with a manuscript, I want Jerry to turn it into a book.

That "when" in fact, is now, while I'm here in Prague. I plan to write eight or nine profiles of a select set of people I've interviewed over the years. With this in mind I recently Zoomed Jerry, prior of course to having written a word.

Our conversation focuses solely on how beautiful the end product might look if Jerry deigns to design it. We start with what he needs in order to get going: words and pictures, and specs. Then we look at the three publishing options that exist.

About a month ago I watched a documentary entitled Capital in the 21st Century . It was pretty riveting, describing much of what, and how, I've been thinking over the past few years about the American take-over of Canada, and the belief that the country "developed" largely because the very rich were too lazy, risk-averse and unpatriotic to invest in their own country, preferring instead to let the more adventurous Americans do the heavy lifting in exchange for a commission - collected by bankers, accountants and lawyers - which was then sent offshore, where returns were better, and taxes lower or non-existent.

The documentary, based on French economist Thomas Piketty's best-selling book of the same name (Harvard University Press, 2014) - a copy of which I've just bought for the second time - tells the story of how fights over capital resulted in two world wars, followed by a mid-century golden period during which the wild beast was tamed and the promise of a merit-based economic system, among other things, was briefly realized, until the animal was unleashed again thanks to Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. Today inequality is at the same frightful extremes experienced prior to the world wars. Will we repeat the same devastating mistakes, knowing what we now know?

The film is a warning; and director Justin Pemberton delivers it with all the power of his medium. I talk with the New Zealander (!) about how he went about converting Piketty's startling 800-page narrative of capitalism's past, present and future, into a fast-paced, thrilling, persuasive, on-screen polemic.

Scott R Ferris , is a researcher, writer and specialist in the art of Rockwell Kent (1882-1971). He has conducted many lectures on Kent and has served as curator for a lot of Kent exhibitions.

Here's a thumbnail of Kent culled from what Zoë Samels has written on the U.S. National Gallery website:

He attended the Horace Mann School in New York City where he excelled at mechanical drawing. After graduating he decided to study architecture at Columbia University. In 1905 he moved from New York to Monhegan Island in Maine home to a summer art colony where he found inspiration in the natural world.

He found success exhibiting and selling his paintings in New York and in 1907 was given his first solo show at Claussen Galleries. The following year he married his first wife, Kathleen Whiting, with whom he had five children.

For the next several decades he lived a peripatetic life, chilling in Connecticut, Maine, and New York. During this time he took extended voyages to remote, often ice-filled, corners of the globe: Newfoundland, Alaska, Tierra del Fuego, and Greenland, to which he made three separate trips. For Kent, exploration and artistic production were twinned endeavors. His travels to these rugged, rural locales provided inspiration for both his visual art and his writings. He developed a stark, realist landscape style that expressed both nature’s harshness and its sublimity. Kent’s human figures, which appear sparingly, often signify mythic themes, such as heroism, loneliness, and individualism. Important exhibitions of works from these travels include the Knoedler Gallery’s shows in 1919 and 1920. Kent wrote a number of illustrated memoirs about his adventures abroad, including Wilderness: A Journal of Quiet Adventure in Alaska (1920)

By 1920 he had taken up wood engraving and quickly established himself as one of the preeminent graphic artists of his time. His striking illustrations for two editions of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick — precise and abstract images that drew on his architect’s eye for spatial relations and his years of maritime adventures—proved extremely popular and remain some of his best-known work. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s his print output included advertisements, bookplates, and Christmas cards. His satirical drawings, created under the pseudonym “Hogarth Jr.,” were published in magazines such as Vanity Fair, Harper’s Weekly, and Life.

By the onset of World War II, Kent was focusing energy on progressive political causes, including labor rights and preventing the spread of fascism in Europe. Though he never joined the communist party his support of leftist causes made him a target of the State Department which revoked his passport after his first visit to Moscow in 1950 (though Kent successfully sued to have it reinstated). As his reputation declined at home and his work fell out of favor, Kent found new popularity in the Soviet Union, where his works were exhibited frequently in the 1950s.

I visited Scott at his book-filled home in Boonville, in upstate New York, to trace the arc of Kent's life through the lens of various items in Scott's extensive collection of Kentiana

Sasha Tochilovsky is a graphic designer, typographer, curator, teacher and head of the Herb Lubalin Study Center of Design and Typography at the Cooper Union in New York City. We talk here about one of the greatest creative teams in magazine history: author, editor, publisher and photo-journalist Ralph Ginzburg and graphic designer and typographer Herb Lubalin. We rustle around in the work these two produced together in Eros, Fact and Avant Garde magazines during the 1960s, discussing magazine design, sex, risk, censorship, advertising, typography and the shape of language, U&lc (Upper & Lower Case) Magazine, lettering, aesthetics, humour, Marilyn Monroe, Bert Stern, JFK, Grace Kelly, and the vindictiveness of Robert Kennedy.

​I booked a room at the Intercontinental Hotel in Montreal through Hotwire a couple of days ago. When I arrived at the hotel the receptionist asked me for a $250 deposit for incidentals. Next morning, without my permission (sure, okay, it's likely buried in the small print) they charged my card an additional $200. I subsequently learned that this was because I'd booked a couple of massages at their spa. When I checked out they charged me for the massages and told me that I should see the $450 back on my card in 2-3 business days.

Of course, this scam earns the hotel money at my expense. A tiny expense, but, when combined with all of the other visitors' tiny expenses, not tiny. This scam is similar to the one operated by the oil companies when they insist that you punch in the amount you think you'll need to spend filling your tank at their pumps. It's your money and time they're stealing. Peanuts per person, big coconuts together.

Where's the government on this? The same place government is on poor banking services, the highest mobile phone rates in the world, and sky-high dairy prices. Nowhere. Canadian governments have abandoned Canadian consumers. Valets to the rich and big business they are; to an alarming degree.

Which brings us to copyright legislation.

Cravenly hidden in an omnibus Budget Bill (a tactic Trudeau swore he'd never use), Bill C-32 received royal assent on December 31, 2022. It extends copyright protection in Canada for writers and other creators from fifty to seventy years after they die. How does this benefit the public? It doesn't. Not at all. Does it provide added incentive for these authors to create and innovate? None. Does it help readers and researchers and teachers? No, it does the opposite.

Lobbyists convinced the Trudeau government to extend copyright with one pathetic argument: that it brings Canada into compliance with other jurisdictions. Greed won out in other words. Now, no new works will come into the public domain in Canada for another twenty years. How does this affect books and readers, writers and publishers? I ask Michael Geist. He's a law professor at the University of Ottawa where he holds the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law and is a member of the Centre for Law, Technology and Society. He has obtained a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.) degree from Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto, Master of Laws (LL.M.) degrees from Cambridge University in the UK and Columbia Law School in New York, and a Doctorate in Law (J.S.D.) from Columbia Law School - so he should know.

A perceptive devotee of the podcast told me last week that he thought I was an ignoramus.

'You don't think it takes talent to be a photographer (referring to something said during this conversation with Michael Torosian, maker of fine press photography books, here )?'

'I do think it takes talent,' I responded. 'I just don't know how much. The case hasn't been made very well I don't think for photographers. Besides, true artistic genius is rare, regardless of what field you're talking about.'

'Why are you singling out photography then?'

'Well,' I averred, 'as Alexey Brodovitch, Conde Nast's great art director once put it: 'To learn yourself is more difficult than to listen to a teacher...Please take everything I say with a grain of salt. My way of guiding people is by irritation. I will try to irritate you, to explore you... the more disagreement the more we learn .'

The idea is that when you intentionally irritate someone they often respond with their best work. I like to try this on every now and again during an interview.'

In fact, I tried it on last week, albeit unintentionally, during a conversation with Richard Charkin when I suggested that the relative success of his new publishing experiment might be attributable, in part at least, to the fact that he, and most of his clients, have money.

Richard has achieved much over the years during a creditable, significant career . He got to the very top of the publishing world. Nothing more satisfying to him though, I'm guessing, than having launched and operated Mensch , his thriving little 'micro' publishing house.

I wanted to know how he was getting on after four years at the helm, what he'd learned, and, as it turns out, whether or not others could duplicate what he's done without the benefit of his special place both in the publishing constellation and in the world at large.

The conversation commences with a mission statement; then some meaningless platitudes about books, communicating and making the world a better place; then we talk about how much Richard invested up front in Mensch; about the criteria he uses for choosing which books to publish; about personality and commissioning books; about emails and what they mean; rejecting submissions; working with journalists, celebrities and non-celebrities; saving author proofs; growing backlists; hiring publicists; using print-on-demand; achieving diversity in the publishing industry; Rovers, Minis, and yes, fairness, plus much, much more.

I was left with the impression that money has far less to do with creating a thriving publishing enterprise than does prudence, personality and good, new technology. Yes, it helps to be wonderfully communicative and outgoing, like Richard is, and observant. But what's inspiring here I think, the lesson if you will, is that if you follow Richard's lead, pay attention to what's going on around you, let others know what you're up to, keep tabs on technology, the chances are pretty good you'll be able to do some decent damage, and do it without having to spend a whole lot of money

You may not get rich, but you can change the world, hopefully for the better, just as Richard's doing.

Here is Part ll of my conversation with Michael Torosian featuring his soon to be released memoir/bibliography Lumiere Press: Printer Savant and Other Stories (listen to Part l here ).

This episode gets to the essence of Michael's book writing/publishing practice: the interview. We discuss a list of guidelines Michael has developed based on his experience interviewing some of greatest photographers of the 20th century. It can be found in Savant in a chapter entitled 'Residual Landscapes, The Photographs of Edward Burtynsky.' Here's a summary:

1. I educate myself to the fullest extent about the artist's life and work.

2. I make up a question list of at least two or three pages...The I throw the list away.

3. I begin the interview with something plucked from the uniqueness of the day, the inception of our new experience.

4. I listen. It's imperative to maintain situational awareness and stay in the moment.

5. I avoid leading questions

6. I probe for greater detail.

7. I re-ask questions

8. In the editing process I splice answers together from various "takes." There is no improvisation or invention

9. I strive to be self-effacing.

Michael Torosian has spent his life taking photographs, interviewing great photographers, and making fine press photography books. He's in the process of making another entitled Lumiere Press, Printer Savant and Other Stories to commemorate the establishment of the Lumiere Press Archive at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library in Toronto. It's full of life lessons and back-stories illuminating each of the twenty-two books he's published over the past four decades.

We sat down in his workshop, behind his house in Toronto, to talk about the book. Topics covered in this first installment of a two part conversation include: photography, bookmaking, relentless exploration, 'general aesthetics,' cultivating aptitudes, the blossoming of the photography market, Edward Weston, Aaron Siskind, decoding visual language, composition, respect, paying homage, the Ninth Street Show, Gordon Parks, learning as the key to existence, making every word count, the Paris Review's Writers at Work series, capturing the voice of the artist, the book as the medium of photography, and more.

John Metcalf is angry that after working in Canada as a "storyteller, editor, novelist, essayist, and critic" for more than fifty years his books still only sell about 500 copies each. Regardless of this, he's made a significant contribution to Canadian literature through his editing, teaching, critiquing, compiling of anthologies, publishing, and promotion generally of Canadian writers and the short story form. His work is known for its satire, intense emotion and imagery. In fact, his whole career can be said - John says it himself in Temerity and Gall , the book we discuss here today - to have been an extended conversation with Ezra Pound's Imagism.

In our chronological conversation we examine John's life (he was born in 1938) starting with England and his relationship with his father, clergyman Thomas Metcalf; we talk about John's work with Oberon Press, ECW, Porqupine's Quill, and Biblioasis; about him teaching in the Montreal school system and almost dying of boredom, about publishing textbooks, and drinking with Mordecai Richler; about Michael Macklem (some people think he was a dick); about early catastrophes with Jack David and Robert Lecker, a lack of communication with Tim Inkster, and a love of Dan Wells's ambition. It's not all just juicy Canadian publishing gossip however, we also discuss James Joyce and the advent of film and modernism, Hemingway's first short story and the misspelling of his name, the serious ideas that underpin John's writing and editorial practice, and the success he's enjoyed, over many decades, of getting important books published. And finally, in the end, there's his patient, respectful wife Myrna working in the other room.

In an email I received several months ago, the owners of the iconic Washington, D.C. based independent bookstore Politics & Prose wrote that Mark LaFramboise, their chief book buyer, had died. “Mark was the best book buyer any independent bookstore could hope for,” Brad Graham and Lissa Muscatine said in their note. "Not only did he know books; he knew P&P’s customers, who gravitated to him because his passion for literature was infectious. Mark also was greatly appreciated by local authors, whose careers he championed and whose works he celebrated. And he was widely respected throughout the publishing industry, having built relationships over many years with booksellers and buyers at other stores, regional reps, editors, and top brass at the major publishing houses.”

Mark served as president of the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association (NAIBA) from 2014 to 2016, and as a judge for the 2019 National Book Awards. He was 60 years old.

I wanted to learn more about him. Brad suggested I interview Anton Bogomazov. He's responsible for buying books for P&P's two branch stores and knew Mark well. He too has an interesting resume, having lived in New York, Toronto, a tiny town in rural Japan and a suburb of Moscow. Anton, predictably, is a big reader, favouring many genres, including fiction of all kinds, queer lit/nonfiction, graphic novels and comics, essays, history, science, poetry and mythology (the original fiction). He tends to read four of five books at a time, and tries to be a good bookseller by having at least one not-yet-published book on his nightstand at all times.

We talk about the role of book buyer; his experience, and how Mark approached the position.

Tom Devlin is a key figure in the world of graphic novels. His career mimics the evolution of the genre. As founder of Highwater Books, a publishing house he set up in the early 2000s, he treated alternative comics audiences in North America to their first book-length exposure to future star cartoonist/authors John Porcellino, Marc Bell, Ron Rege Jr., Brian Ralph and others - many of whom subsequently joined him at Drawn and Quarterly, the Montreal-based publishing house founded by Chris Oliveros. Tom now works at D&Q as executive editor (and co-owner) alongside his wife, publisher Peggy Burns. His early work - its high production values, thoughtful design and 'bookshelf-ready' formats, plus experience earned as a comics retailer and distributor - presaged, one could say, an explosion in the popularity of graphic novels, one that was amply fueled by the impressive stuff he put out with various artists over the years at D&Q.

I talk with Tom about his early love of comics, his work in comic book stores and his experiences publishing graphic novels; about his life with cartoonists and his work helping to build D&Q, plus the struggle experienced by the medium itself to be taken seriously. Drawn and Quarterly: Twenty Five Years of Contemporary Cartooning, Comics, and Graphic Novels serves as our guide.

We met underneath the well-walked wooden floors of La Petite Librairie D+Q, the company's children's retail bookstore outlet in the Mile End district of Montreal.

Shannon DeVito is Barnes and Noble 's 'Director of Books.' We met via Zoom to discuss the roles and duties associated with this intriguing-sounding position. I discovered that they include co-ordinating the relationship between national and local book-buying teams; 'assortment' work; creating initiatives - including prizes ( e.g. the Discover Prize; most recent winner: The Rabbit Hutch , a debut novel which I'll shortly be 'book-clubbing' [having bookclub-type discussion, so to say] with James Daunt), book clubs, monthly book picks, etc. - for the company's promotional book strategy; developing campaigns with the publishing industry for important releases; negotiating 'exclusive' opportunities. Creating buzz basically, plus adding value to the experience of visiting a physical bookstore while taking market share away from Amazon without caring what they're up to. We look at B&N's pro-active influencing of taste and the leveraging of its role as big-time book recommender; plus there's a tiny bit of politics - the ethics of selling and profiting off stuff that might adversely affect democracy (only a tiny bit) - AND we discuss the recent explosion of Manga.

As promised during our conversation, here are Shannon's top recommendations of the day:

FICTION
The Marriage Portrait

Lessons in Chemistry

The Rabbit Hutch

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow,

Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence

NONFICTION

Ice Cold

Turkey and the Wolf: Flavor Trippin' in New Orleans

Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us

Revolutionary: Samuel Adams

Prisoners of the Castle

Where does editing leave off and ghostwriting begin? How cool is it to pass yourself off as the writer if you haven't done any of the writing? How much recognition do "collaborators" deserve? Should ghostwriters be completely anonymous? When should they refuse assignments? How does one work with a person whose views are opposed to yours? Where does craft end and art take over? What explains a successful collaboration? Is this whole business ethical?

I ask these and other bumptious questions of seasoned, successful ghostwriter and novelist Dan Paiser , plus I pose a few from interested party David Mitchell whose first novel, Ghostwritten , embroils us in a cacophony of narrative voices.

Dan also delivers some excellent stories about Ivanka and The Donald, and Whoopi, and others, and we spend a bit of time talking about creativity, and Dan's latest novel, Balloon Dog .

Earlier this year a tiny Quebec-based children's publishing house, Monsieur Ed , won the prize for Best Children’s Publishers of the Year in North America at the Bologna Book Fair. It won, judges said, for being at the forefront of innovation in the creative nature of its editorial choices during the past year.

I thought this was a big deal so I contacted publisher and creative director Valérie Picard. She told me (well, actually, it's written on the website), that Monsieur Ed "favors stories set in peculiar worlds where reality and fantasy coincide. He feeds on compelling tales with the power to transcend the ordinary, arouse laughter or bring tears. Universal stories that can inspire introspection and contemplation. Although fiction is at the heart of his publications, Monsieur Ed is also interested in documentaries, graphic novels, and even your favorite kind of tea."

Monsieur Ed lives in Montreal, Quebec, and so does Valerie, and, for the time being, so do I. So I went over to her place to interview her, and her little dog Benjamin, about the creative choices she's made over the past year, indeed the past five, and to get at the reasons she thinks explain why she won at Bologna.

Allan Fleming (1929 – 1977) was a Canadian graphic designer best known for having created the Canadian National Railway logo, for designing the 1967 book Canada: A Year of the Land and for "revolutionizing" the look of scholarly publishing in North America in the 1970s with his work at University of Toronto Press.

In 1953 Allan moved to England to work as a graphic designer, and to learn about the practice from eminent English designers and design historians such as Stanley Morison, Oliver Simon, Herbert Simon, and Beatrice Warde. In 1955 he returned to Toronto where he landed a job as director of creative services at the typographic firm Cooper and Beatty Ltd. In 1962 he was appointed art director at Maclean's magazine. From 1963 to 1968 he was director of creative services at MacLaren Advertising and from 1968 to1976 he was chief book designer at the University of Toronto Press.

Throughout his career, Allan designed or consulted on the creation of many iconic Canadian images for clients including Canada Post, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Liberal Party of Canada, the Hudson's Bay Company, Ontario Hydro, and the Canada Council.

His daughter Martha Fleming , a museum professional and academic, wrote and edited two issues of The Devil's Artisan in 2008 which were devoted to Allan's life and work. We met via Zoom to discuss them and the many achievements of this extraordinary Canadian.

I first became aware of the graphic edition of Timothy Snyder's book On Tyranny during a visit to the National Socialist Documentation Centre museum in Munich about a year ago (revel in the backstory here ). I bought and read a copy of the original edition shortly thereafter. It's a powerful book, full of important, actionable lessons. This past Summer I picked up a copy of Nora Krug 's illustrated version of the book. Reading it was revelatory. I simply had to interview her.

So I contacted the person who knows every graphic designer in the world, Steven Heller. He'd just, of course, participated in a presentation with Nora. And yes, was happy to put us in touch.

Listen here as Nora and I go about reviewing the serious thought she put into illustrating On Tyranny , starting with the cover. Topics touched on include: the importance of small talk; the influence of illustrators; shedding light on the human character; origami; painting with blood (okay, paint that looks like blood); little feet; fire and smoke and war; moral questions, smudges, and the traces of history; big dumb hands; depicting fear; snooping around flea markets; salvaging found objects, photo albums and scrapbooks; how illustrations bring books into different realms, adding new emphases and layers of meaning, contradictory and otherwise; empathy and history; the importance of personal narratives; emotional entry points into war; dissecting history; vigilance, and the responsibility that each of us has to fight against the rise of tyranny.

Photo Credit: Nina Subin

Libri Prohibiti is a nonprofit, independent, archival research library located in Prague, Czech Republic that collects samizdat and exile literature. Founded by Jiri Gruntorad after the fall of the communist regime its holdings include some 40,000 monographs, periodicals, reference resources, and audiovisual materials. In addition to dissident articles, many popular books were banned, and subsequently distributed as samizdats including George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, both of which are held in the library.

In 2013, the Libri Prohibiti Collection of Czech and Slovak Samizdat periodicals from the years 1948–1989 was listed by UNESCO in its Memory of the World (MOW) Register. It is the largest collection of its kind in the world. According to the MOW Registry, "the completeness and uniqueness of this large number of documents attest to the fight against the communist totalitarian regime and its importance for the study of the history of the twentieth century."

I met with Jiri Nenicka , a librarian at Libri Prohibiti, in Prague to talk about the collection.

The novel/diary we refer to about 2/3 of the way in which beautifully describes the samizdat publishing experience is A Czech Dreambook by Ludvik Vaculik translated by Gerald Turner (Karolinum Press, Charles University, 2018)

Naomi Bacon is a seasoned book marketer, and founder of The Tandem Collective. She has worked with JK Rowling’s agency, The Blair Partnership, as well as Pottermore, Pan Macmillan, Penguin and Hachette. Her ambition has always been "to be at the forefront of digital innovation, creating meaningful connections between publishing partners, content creators and brands to generate word of mouth around new book, film, theatre and TV releases."

We talk about how she came up with her "Readalong" service, as well as word of mouth being gold-dust, measuring the impact of social media marketing on the bottom line, micro-influencers, Instagram story posts, book recommendations, optimum follower numbers, marketers as booksellers, top ten bestseller lists, shoe-string campaigns, Tik-Tok's backlist power, conveying enthusiasm, curating social media, scathing reviews, structuring public book conversations, engagement, non-fiction titles, proof of product and bespoke marketing packages for small presses.

Naomi mentioned that Tandem offers a free video interview service for small presses who want to pitch their catalogues on Instagram and Youtube. For details, email her at naomi@thetandemcollective.com

Michael Žantovský is a Czech diplomat, author and translator. He is a former Czech Ambassador to the United Kingdom, as well as to Israel and the United States. He has translated more than fifty works of fiction, drama and poetry, mostly by contemporary American and British writers including James Baldwin, Norman Mailer, Joseph Heller, E.L. Doctorow, and Tom Stoppard. Non-fiction translations include works by Henry Kissinger and Madeleine Albright. He is currently the Executive Director of the Václav Havel Library.

We met in his office at the Library in Prague to talk about, among other things, his book Havel: A Life, published in 2014; about writing the biography of a close friend; about dealing with death, grief and indebtedness; about the clinical attitude; writing as a process of selection; hagiography; coming across honestly; guilt about wealth; responsibility and trust; Václav Havel's play sticking our noses into misery; hope and hopelessness; outsiders; Woody Allen; and the inner need to say something.

John Owen is a bookseller who runs the events program at the English Bookshop at Dussmann das KulturKaufhaus in Berlin. That English Bookshop? Probably the best I've ever been in, in my life.

We talk about, among other things: being blown away; bookshop lighting; window seating; how to display books; mixing things up and discovering new titles; bookshops as cultural institutions; Sally Rooney; sales of English language books in Germany; trying to reduce references to Margaret Atwood in this podcast; bookstores being like bakers; keeping your eyes open; aesthetic awareness; Rebecca Solnit's genre-bending books; Albanian political scientists; kooky, unusual best-sellers; elevator pitches; hating science fiction, and more.

Elisabeth Ruge is a German editor, publisher and literary agent. She currently heads the Elisabeth Ruge Agency which she founded in 2014. In 1994 she established the Berlin Verlag publishing house together with her then husband Arnulf Conradi and Veit Heinichen.

I met Elisabeth at her home on the outskirts of Berlin to discuss the roles she has played over her career, including the one she currently plays as Germany's leading literary agent. Among other things we talk about the importance of "attention" in the book editing and publishing processes: getting it, giving it, maintaining it; about letting go; about spin and elevator pitches; about James McBride's The Color of Water; about Jonathan Littell's The Kindly One ; about how essential in-house editors are to the success of publishing houses; about serious book conversation; about authors being paid honorariums in Germany; about the importance of an author's credibility; about critics; explanatory brochures; Gallimard covers; the agent-publisher relationship, the complexity of the publishing business...and about Denmark.

Jonathan Landgrebe is the publisher of Suhrkamp Verlag. We met at his offices in Berlin to talk about his role as head of one of Germany's most revered publishing houses, and to riff off Siegfried Unseld's book The Author and His Publisher.

Topics covered in our conversation include: important books that just don't sell; the publisher-author relationship; books that change both readers and the world; explaining and transferring feelings and enthusiasms to others; forcing values on the public; the war and recognizing Ukrainian literature; how to gain attention; authors towering above us; making Rachel Cusk known in Germany; Lutz Seiler's writing on the GDR; the growth in sales of English language books in Germany; publishing Hesse, Brecht and new voices; illness; the frozen sea within; the single reader counting most; enriching life; German publishers' sense of duty to society; Returning to Reims by Didier Eribon, and Sasha Marianna Salzmann's Beside Myself.

Pamela Paul was books editor at the New York Times from 2013 to March 2022 when she became an opinion columnist for the newspaper.

We talk mostly about the role that books editors play in the lifecycle of 'the book.' I also whine a fair amount about how I don't like the fact that she left her position plus we diverge into discussion about Pamela 's recent opinion piece 'There's More Than One Way to Ban a Book.'

Topics tackled also include self-censorship in the publishing business (being a terribly perceptive observer of the book world I boldly assert that there must also be self-censorship going on at The Times itself); the importance of enabling all voices to be heard in the grand public debate; identity; Pamela 's confident, informed, smart, pleasant presence on The Review podcast each week; her early ambitions for the books section; how the job changed her; how books are chosen for review; the role of preview editors and publicists; Pamela 's guilt and sense of responsibility; and my love of her voice.

Why listen to James Marsh ? Because he knows about love and encyclopedias.

He grew up in The Junction district of Toronto surviving a difficult childhood, and began his career in publishing at Holt Rinehart and Winston where he was editor of a Centennial history of Canada entitled Unity and Diversity. He later became executive editor of McClelland and Stewart's Carleton Library Series , after which he was hired by Mel Hurtig as editor-in-chief of The Canadian Encyclopedia - the biggest printing/publishing endeavour in Canadian history.

We talk about his memoir Know it All: Finding the Impossible Country and about what he found; about encyclopedias striving for ideals; about historian Ramsey Cook and limited identities; selection by community; post-Centennial enthusiasm for Canada; economic nationalism; selling 250,000 sets of The Canadian Encyclopedia and then putting it on-line and making it "engaging;" the importance of conversation to democracy; Alberta premier Peter Lougheed; the woman with the two colour eyes; and the gift of friendship.

Nick Anthony is a writer, stand-up comic, and screen-writer. He's participating in this year's Prague Summer Program for Writers and his novel, tentatively entitled Two Hits of Acid in Cambodia , was just workshopped this past week.

We talk about the experience, but not before discussing magic, stand-up comedy writing; new material that kills; God complexes; screen-writing; Tarantino's Django Unchained ; suspense and humour; intelligence and humour; doubt; and Dave Chappelle. We then talk about workshops as focus groups, plus the importance of hearing the perspectives of better writers.

In addition we also look at Nick's novel itself, and how it references diversity in publishing from the perspective of a young white male writer; losing your best friend "to" life; what men look like post #metoo; and the skewering of what our culture thinks of sex. Is it a play for Jordan Peterson's huge audience? Could well be. You be the judge.

Why listen to Alexandra Pringle ? Because Richard Charkin told me that she's the best editor in the English speaking world, that's why.

Alexandra was editor-in-chief at Bloomsbury Publishing for more than two decades. She was recently appointed Executive Publisher.

She began her publishing career at the British magazine Art Monthly before joining the women's publisher Virago in 1978. She became Editorial Director in 1984, and moved to Hamish Hamilton in 1991 to undertake the same role. Through much of the 1990s she was a literary agent for, among others, Amanda Foreman, Geoff Dyer, Maggie O'Farrell and Ali Smith. She joined Bloomsbury in 1999 as head of the adult publishing division where her authors included Margaret Atwood, Elizabeth Gilbert, Sheila Hancock, Anne Michaels, Ann Patchett, George Saunders and Richard Ford. Among other things we talk about editing's "what if" conversations, about houseboats, socialism, building confidence, Harry Potter, tempering criticism, teasing, instinct, luck, and yes, arm-hair.

Note to Listener: My apologies. The Zoom connection was poor on this one. But what Alexandra has to say is delightful and informative, so I hope you'll agree with me that it's worth putting up with. I plan to interview her again. In person. With a good microphone. On her houseboat.

What's not to like here? Marius Kociejowski is charming, erudite and funny. Why should you listen to him? He's just written a memoir about the soul of the book trade. What happens in bookstores doesn't happen elsewhere​ he says. The multifariousness of human nature is more on show​ here​ ​ t​ han anywhere else, he says, and ​"​ I think it’s because of books, what they are, what they release in ourselves, and what they become when we make them magnets to our desires.”​

The ​memoir is called A Factotum in the Book Trade . We talk about it and the lives of the booksellers​, collectors and characters ​Marius has​ ​ lived ​with for close to five decades​. He reveals secrets and describes feuds. He gives us a wonderful feel for the workings of the London Antiquarian book trade over the past fifty years. Bertram and Anthony Rota, Bernard and Martin Stone, Bill Hoffer, Peter Ellis, Raymond Danowski. They're all here. Have a listen.

(speaking of which, listening that is, thank you so much to all of you who have so loyally listened to my podcast over the years. Your attention, feedback, and friendship, has meant a great deal to me. No, I'm not quitting. Just want to express my gratitude).

I'm in Prague for the Summer. Going to be participating in one of the world's leading creative writing programs. I interviewed its founder Richard Katrovas.

Why listen to Richard? Having run the Prague Summer Program for Writers for more than two decades, he knows a lot about the process of teaching creative writing; plus he knows karate.

We talk about listening and critiquing artfully, not fucking with style, the formalization of a sense of literary community; counter-culture, the literary conversation, literary communities in different epochs, communal writing, work-shopping, the genius of the English language incorporating other languages, publishing first books, validation, the importance of self-esteem and personal prestige, the desire for social relevance, Ernest Becker; 'who touches a book touches a man,' book fetishes, the weirdness of poetry and Prague, ripping off books, living in the Projects, and much more.

This is part one of the conversation. I'll conduct part two once I've gone through the wringer.

Why did I interview Mark Andrews? Because he's a fellow Canadian, he's an exceptional book collector who brings an engineer's mind to the task, and he's just published a beautiful book featuring selections from his book collection, entitled The Science and Engineering of Water; An illustrated catalogue of books and manuscripts on Italian hydraulics, 1500 - 1800 ; it's exemplary. Exactly the kind of thing every book collector should think about doing - in some iteration - with his/her/their own collection.

​Mark's catalogue ​explores the development of science and engineering through the early modern period​ by presenting 367 printed books, manuscripts and maps​ in chronological order​. They highlight the relationship between the evolution of ideas and the authors who documented th​e​ se ideas. Drawing from Mark​'s larger collection of civil engineering​ titles, ​ ​ it's filled with​ illustrations and diagrams​ (nearly 1000), ​from books that were used as ​ working ​tools by Italian scientists, engineers, and builders​ from the early 1500s to the ​end of the 1700s.

​Trust me. While books on Italian hydraulics may not sound exactly riveting, they are. At least, they are when Mark talks about them.

Why am I interviewing Mark Samuels Lasner for a third time? Because he's a recognized and respected book collector who knows how to speak intelligently and amusingly about books. And though we've already talked about his impressive collections that cover late 19th century British literary culture, and The Bodley Head, I wanted to learn about what happens "after the dopamine" hits. What he's done with his collections - the cataloguing, the scholarship, the exhibitions, the research, the talks - how has he worked with his books to help share their collective lessons, to better understand the worlds and relationships they document? And how can you do the same with your collection?

That's why I interviewed him a third time.

I came across Kat McKenna 's name in an article written by Alison Flood in The Guardian last year . I'd googled Tik Tok's "Book-Tok" because I'd heard it was moving a lot of YA books and wanted to learn more. Kat was quoted in Alison's piece. It was clear she knew what made BookTok tick. I contacted her and now she's on the show.

Kat has worked in UK publishing for almost 15 years specialising in children's and teen/YA marketing and brand strategy, and "delivers exciting and audience driven marketing campaigns to most of the major publishers as a freelancer, working on brands including World Book Day, Jacqueline Wilson, Supertato and more." She bills herself as an early innovator of digital and social media in publishing, and today she's still very much on top of what's going on.

She sent me a list of links to various examples of how young people are using Book Tok these days, here:

Books that made me cry: (@justmemyselfandi) Here

They Both Die At the End moodboard (@emmyslibrary): here

Convincing you to read We Were Liars (@alifeofliterature): here

If you like this Harry Styles song, read this book (@sophiebooks): here

Want to work in books? (@hotkeybooks - publisher account!) here

Why do books smell like they do (@hotkeybooks) here

Translations of my book by country (@Caseymcquiston - author) here

Aesthetic of The Inheritance Games (@.bookobsessed) here

A book Tiktok made me read that was not good (@emdobereading - based on a sound trend - we can talk more about those tomorrow!) here

Convincing you to read books based on their first line (@jennajustreads) here

Heartstopper - page to screen love (@rafept) here

So, lots to talk about.

Re: my question about who owns Tik Tok: results are pretty murky. Yes, the Chinese government has a stake in it. How much control it has over operations is open to question. Lots, is what its American competitors would like people to believe. Relatively little it seems if you're a Tik Tok spokesperson. The Guardian again, here .

Stephen Enniss is director of the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas in Austin. Previous posts include Head Librarian at the Folger Shakespeare Library and Director of Emory University's Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library where he made a series of impressive acquisitions including the archives of Seamus Heaney, Salman Rushdie and Ted Hughes. Since taking over at the Ransom Center in 2013, Stephen has overseen the acquisition of the archives of Ian McEwan, J.M. Coetzee, Kazuo Ishiguro, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Michael Ondaatje, among others.

We met via Zoom to discuss his role as director of a special collections library; where Martin Amis is, and Christopher Hitchens, Clive James and other members of their group. About fighting oblivion; about the value and challenges of email archives and negotiating or not negotiating with Andrew Wylie; about Texan "nationalism," and the goals of attracting books and people, and developing a "civilization;" about diversity, and hiring practices and collection development policies; about cataloguing, bureaucracies, acquisitions, books bridging political divides, the Gotham Book Mart, sweet little exhibition catalogues, and much more.

Sarah Miniaci is a freelance book publicist with fifteen years of experience in the New York and Toronto markets. Ken Whyte's Sutherland House is one of her clients. Ken interviewed Sarah for a recent issue of Shush , his excellent Substack newsletter on the publishing business. Together they surveyed today's new publishing landscape. With the help of Michael Legat's An Author's Guide to Publishing, Sarah and I do the same here, only with our voices, tracing the evolution of book publicity from Legat's pre-2000 traditional publishing world, up to the present.

We talk about the advent of the Internet and blogs, about gatekeepers and democratization, about how easy and boring life used to be for a publicist, about the shift to Social, about the importance of Goodreads , about producing trailers and Q & As for Youtube, about compiling lists, rocket science, passionate bloggers, influencers, the literary conversation, the continued relevance of the publishers' sales catalogue, ​geese, swans, "golden children," quality, and the imperative to make money, the Last Bookstore in L.A., and Toyota Corollas.

Author/historian Stuart Kells has been chasing rare books and other bookish treasures since childhood. In the 1980s he went for classic sci-fi paperbacks from Ace and Dell, and authors such as Philip K. Dick and Robert Heinlein.

When he moved to Melbourne in the summer of 1989 he was amazed by the city’s bookshops, especially secondhand shops - notably Alice’s and Sainsbury’s in Carlton. When ​he wasn’t looking for books​ here he was fossicking in the Co-op bookshop at Melbourne University, or hunting for ​them at markets and fetes. For the past 26 years​ he's been a regular at Camberwell Market where great books can be found, along with almost everything else. Vividly remembered finds include Iain Banks and Vikram Seth firsts; classic Australian crime pulps; rare maps; and advertising and ephemera of every kind.

I connected with Stuart recently via Zoom to talk about Penguin and the Lane Brothers , ​his revealing, myth-busting book about the intimate partnership of Allen, Richard and John Lane – and how it explains the success of Penguin Books, the twentieth century’s "greatest publishing house." We talk about the spirit of daring and creative opposition that drove the brothers to publish so many quality books on such a massive scale at such affordable prices – and how together they achieved a revolution in modern book publishing.

Over the past half-century, bookselling, like many retail sectors, has evolved from an business dominated by independent bookstores to one in which chain stores have significant market share. This transformation has often been a less-than-smooth process, especially so in bookselling, argues Laura J. Miller, because more than most other consumer goods, books are the focus of passionate debate.

What drives this debate? And why do so many people believe that bookselling should be immune to questions of profit? Laura and I discuss some of the answers to these questions which were first raised back in 2006 when her book Reluctant Capitalists Bookselling and the Culture of Consumption was published.

Laura is Professor and Chair of Sociology at Brandeis University where she arrived in 2002, having previously taught at the University of Western Ontario and Vassar College. She teaches courses in the sociology of culture, the mass media, food studies, and urban sociology. Her research is centered on understanding the interaction between cultural and economic processes.

Jonathan Kay is a Canadian journalist. He was editor-in-chief of The Walrus magazine, and is a senior editor of Quillette. He was previously comment pages editor, columnist, and blogger for the Toronto-based Canadian daily newspaper National Post, and continues to contribute to the newspaper on a freelance basis.

He's also a ghostwriter, best known in this capacity as the author of Justin Trudeau's memoir Common Ground. During our conversation we talk about Jon's ghostwriting practice - riffing off an article he wrote on the topic for Quillette entitled 'My Life as a Ghostwriter' ( https://quillette.com/2021/09/26/my-life-as-a-ghostwriter/ ) - about gaming influencing ghostwriting; storytelling, people hovering in the background, literary prostitution, humour checks, anonymity, Mitt Romney, eliciting details, the political messaging in Justin Trudeau's memoir, the best part about being a ghostwriter, lawyers wanting to know everything, well-rounded depictions, the truth, self-publishing; luck, alchemy and 50 Shades of Grey , The Making of the Bible by Konrad Schmid and Jens Schröter, blurred stages and immersion, Tarantino, and kitchen design, among other things.

Kathryn Schulz joined The New Yorker as a staff writer in 2015. In 2016, she won the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing and a National Magazine Award for “The Really Big One,” her story on seismic risk in the Pacific Northwest. Previously, she was the book critic for New York , the editor of the environmental magazine Grist , and a reporter and editor at the Santiago Times . She is the author of Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error.

We talk about Lost and Found , her just published memoir, about making the planet less lonely, dark places, a sense of the beautiful, math formulas, love, death, loss, discovery, commonplace experiences, the history of words, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Frost, being proud of others, privacy, foggy grief, technicolour worlds, noticing details, surprises, essays and memoirs, bearing witness, and and.

Larry Grobel is a journalist, author and teacher. He has written more than 25 books including Conversations with Capote ( which received a PEN Special Achievement award) and The Art of the Interview ( which has been used as a text in many journalism schools), most of his books however are short story collections. His latest is called The Narcissist . Over the years he's written for dozens of publications including the New York Times, Rolling Stone, and Entertainment Weekly, but he's best known for his Playboy magazine interviews. Larry created the M.F.A. in Professional Writing for Antioch University and taught in the English Department at UCLA for ten years.

We met via Zoom to talk about how he conceives of, and writes, his short stories.

James Wood is a literary critic, essayist and novelist.

He was The Guardian' s chief literary critic between 1992 and 1995, and a senior editor at The New Republic between 1995 and 2007. Since roughly that time he's taught the Practice of Literary Criticism at Harvard University and has been a staff writer and book critic at The New Yorker magazine. In 2009, he won the National Magazine Award for reviews and criticism. Books include How Fiction Works , the novel Upstate , and essay collections The Irresponsible Self, The Broken Estat e and most recently Serious Noticing.

We talk about James's role as a book critic - how and why he does it - about realism, the canon, 'lifeness', sameness, his intro to Serious Noticing, our shared love of the Russians, looking for great writing everywhere, Virginia Woolf, Joyce, Zadie Smith; Vasily Grossman's Stalingrad , what writers do when they walk into a room...plus, I quote Clifton Fadiman and Henry James at far too great a length.

William Taylor Jr. is a cataloger with PBA Galleries, a San Francisco-based auction house for rare books and ephemera; he specializes in fine literature, counterculture and poetry. He's an avid reader, and a prolific writer. His first book of fiction is included in the curriculum at select universities across the United States. In 2013 he was the recipient of an Acker Award, a tribute named after groundbreaking writer Kathy Acker given to members of the avant-garde arts communities in both New York and San Francisco who have made outstanding contributions to their discipline.

We talk here about PBA Galleries, about Bill's role as a cataloguer and auctioneer, about how to sell your rare books using PBA's services; about what those services are; about commissions, first editions of Huxley's Brave New World in very good plus dust jackets (actually the item in question was in NF/NF condition), printed catalogues, Bukowski, the Beats, reasons to sell via an auction house versus eBay, and much more

Damon Galgut is a South African novelist and playwright. He was awarded the 2021 Booker Prize for his novel The Promise and shortlisted for the prize in 2003 and 2010 right about the time I first interviewed him at his apartment in Cape Town (listen here ). Damon was head boy at Pretoria Boys High School, matriculating in 1981, and then studied drama at the University of Cape Town. He wrote his first novel, A Sinless Season (1982), when he was 17.

We met via Zoom to talk about his life as a writer and how he writes novels. Among other things we discuss his Parker fountain pen, Chekhov's brilliant short story 'The Kiss' (hat tip to James Wood). We also riff together off John Gardner's classic On Becoming a Novelist. Good idea to read both if you want to get the most out of our conversation.

Biblio.com started as a price comparison engine for new and used books in 2000. Later, this price comparison engine became SearchBiblio.com famous for several years as the Internet's fastest "metasearch" site for books. In the summer of 2003 Biblio.com launched as a used books marketplace, working off a 'triple bottom line' using these goals: achieving profit, serving people, and preserving the environment.

Biblio's founder, Brendan Sherar has a life-long passion and appreciation for books. A former bookstore owner, he has been involved in the transformation of the book industry from the earliest days of the Internet. He has a B.A. in economics from University of North Carolina at Asheville and is a graduate student at Georgia Institute of Technology. In his spare time, he enjoys running, soccer, hiking, playing piano, gardening, and traveling extensively.

I met with Brendan via Zoom to talk about the differences between Biblio and its larger competitors, about Biblio's first ever live virtual Antiquarian Book Fair scheduled for March 24-26 , 2022 , about how booksellers can best increase their online sales, tips for book buyers wanting to shop online, advice on book collecting, how Biblio is working to match collectors with buyers and sellers, and much more.

Glenn Horowitz is an agent in the sale and placement of culturally significant archives to research institutions throughout the United States. Authors, artists, musicians, designers, and photographers represented include Bob Dylan, Norman Mailer, James Salter, Eve Babitz, Deborah Eisenberg, David Foster Wallace, Vladimir Nabokov, and many more.

We spoke recently via Zoom about his practice: what he does and how he does it. Topics covered include polyps; making bookseller websites accessible to the disabled; looking for and selling value; Sting and estates; the disappearance of printed bookseller catalogues; the human touch; Hemingway; unique copies; avoiding book fairs and bookseller associations; nostalgia; unorthodox archives; the Kitchen Sisters; unused video games; the fact that every bookseller is now an archives dealer; Against The Tide Commentaries On A Collection Of African Americana 1711-1987 ; Johnny Cochran; and much more.

John Sargent is an American book publisher; until recently he was the CEO of Macmillan Publishers USA, and Executive Vice President of the Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group where he oversaw global trade operations; he was also responsible for Macmillan Learning, the company’s US-based higher education business.

We talk via Zoom about his career in publishing, not about libraries; about being sales reps, and doing cold calls; Columbia Business School, complex balance sheets and P & Ls; his grandfather Effendi (F.N. Doubleday); publishing great saleable books; supporting Joseph Conrad and Somerset Maugham; agents; movies selling books; advances; intuition and good taste; managing and motivating people and having fun; honesty; embracing and appreciating authors; sharing your enthusiasm for what you do; getting out of your silo; the unreplicable experience of reading, and producing movies in your own head; Frederick Forsyth; autobiography; self-publishing and gate keepers; hyperbole and blurbs, noise and signals; Bill O'Reilly, and more.

Jerry Kelly is a​ ​ book designer, calligrapher​ ​ and type designer. Before starting his own design business in 1998 ​he was Vice President of The Stinehour Press​. Prior to this he worked as a designer at A. Colish. ​Jerry's work has been honored ​frequently ; for example, h is book designs have been selected more than thirty times for the AIGA “Fifty Books of the Year”​ Award.​ In 2015 he was presented with the 28th Goudy Award from RIT.

​He has served as Chairman of the American Printing History Association​ and President of The Typophiles, and​ has worked ​ o​n ​numerous committees at The Grolier Club. He has written​ several books on calligraphy and typography, including The Noblest Roman: The Centaur Types (co-authored with Misha Beletsky; winner of the 2016 Bibliographical Society of America Prize) and​ Type Revivals .​ His best known book is probably A Century for the Century , a catalogue of the 100 most beautiful, finely printed books produced during the twentieth century, which we refer to in our conversation, along with referencing some of the most beautiful catalogue work Jerry ​has done for clients including booksellers Jonathan A. Hill and Glenn Horowitz, and The Grolier Club.

Andrew Wylie is an American literary agent. He grew up in Sudbury, Massachusetts and attended St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire. He has a degree from Harvard University where he studied Romance Languages & Literatures.

Wylie founded his eponymous literary agency in New York in 1980 and opened a second office in London in 1996. The firm now represents more than 1400 authors and literary estates.

We met via Zoom to discuss what he does and how he does it. We talk about, among other things, his early experience building the business, authors getting ripped off, calculating and elucidating the true value of great literary works, bound daytime television, Danielle Steel, traveling the world, late mornings and the great British publishing tradition, Roger Straus and Fuck you very much, channeling Susan Sontag, the Zen of Andy Warhol, spider plants, hollow men, advances as guarantees of good service, discovering new literature, doing what you love until you die, and much more. Andrew also sings.

Richard Charkin is a British publishing executive. He founded Mensch Publishing in 2018. Prior to this he was Executive Director of Bloomsbury (2007 to 2018). Over the years he has held executive positions at Pergamon Press, Oxford University Press, and Reed International/Reed Elsevier. He is the former Chief Executive of Macmillan Publishers Limited and Executive Director of Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck.

We met via Zoom to talk about what he's learned over the past several years running Mensch, his tiny publishing firm; specifically we discuss Frankfurt, understanding assets, and measuring various publishing activities in order to save time and money.

* Apologies for the poor audio. Zoom connection was abnormally poor on this one.

Warren Kinsella is a Canadian lawyer, author, musician, political consultant, commentator and sometime painter. He has written for most of Canada's major newspapers and is currently a columnist for the Toronto Sun. He is the founder of the Daisy Consulting Group, a Toronto-based firm that engages in paid political campaign strategy work, lobbying and communications crisis management. Prior to this he played various roles in the Liberal government, including special assistant to Jean Chrétien, former Prime Minister of Canada. He has written ten books, including non-fiction on terrorism, racism, and punk rock, and a novel entitled Party Favours .

We met via Zoom to discuss the political book genre. Topics of conversation included Warren's father Douglas, the types of people who write political books, motivations for writing political books, Chretien's Straight from the Heart , books written pre and post power, books on Justin Trudeau, movies that make you feel shitty, the Canada Council, prime minister biographies and autobiographies, Dick Morris's The New Prince , Marions Antiques in Brighton, Ontario, The Kinsella Diaries , and much more

Steven Heller is an eminent American graphic designer, art director, art critic and scholar.​ He ​has authored or​ co-authored ​more than 200 ​books which variously trace​ the history of typography, illustration and other subjects related to graphic design.​ I talk with Steve here about Alvin Lustig an American American book designer, graphic designer and typeface designer. Some of Lustig's most innovative work was for New Directions, the independent publishing firm. For example, he designed more than seventy iconic dust jackets for the New Classics literature and other series from the mid-40s until his death in 1955. His non-literal designs exuded a modern art sensibility and incorporated a fresh approach to typeface design that defined the New Directions look.

Steve and I met via Zoom to discuss Born Modern: The Life and Design of Alvin Lustig a book he co-wrote with Elaine Lustig Cohen, Alvin's widow. Among other things we talk about magic shows and magicians, design as sleight of hand, illusions, tactility, Frank Lloyd Wright, hot metal, Constructivism, helicopters, furniture design, Ward Ritchie, New Directions, James Laughlin, expressionistic modernism, primitive art, catholic church propagandists, soldier's ribbon bars, being close to genius, Alvin's blindness, and Steve's forthcoming memoir Growing up Underground (Princeton Architectural Press, 2022).

Terry O'Reilly is a Canadian broadcast producer and personality best known for hosting the CBC radio/podcast programs O'Reilly on Advertising, The Age of Persuasion , and Under the Influence, which together have been downloaded more than 40 million times. His programs examine the cultural and sociological impact of advertising and marketing on modern life. His books include The Age of Persuasion, This I Know , and most recently, My Best Mistakes: Epic Fails and Silver Linings.

We met via Zoom to talk about how to market a book, about knowing the reader, ideas and passions, getting to audiences, finding your readers, all-terrain advertising, social media, podcasts and platforms, communities and fans, authors' marketing activities, trivia and tidbits, free first chapters, reaching out to interviewers, discoverability, bookmarks, visiting bookstores and signing books, speeches, word-of-mouth, interacting on social media, relationships and tone, kindness, dust jacket ideas, book spines, design as narrative, elevator pitches and much more.

Margaret Atwood is a Canadian novelist, essayist, poet, teacher, environmental activist, and inventor. She has written plenty of books, many of them prize-winners. For example, she's won "two Booker Prizes (latest in 2019, co-winner, for The Testaments ), the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the Governor General's Award, the Franz Kafka Prize, Princess of Asturias Awards, and the National Book Critics and PEN Center USA Lifetime Achievement Awards." Several of her works, including The Handmaid's Tale , have been adapted for the screen, big and small.

I think of her as a bird. In fact that's how I introduce her - as a cross between an osprey and a magpie. She's partial to phoenixes. We talk about her book Negotiating with the Dead (recently reissued as On Writers and Writing ), and about the many reasons why writers write; about writer grants and Shakespeare; appealing to audiences; and geese, totalitarianism and not telling writers what to do; about Dante and bringing stories back from the past; about illuminating the darkness; spiders and witches, compromise, and interviewers hounding authors for interviews. Plus a fair amount more.

Hermione Lee was President of Wolfson College from 2008 to 2017 and is Emeritus Professor of English Literature in the English Faculty at Oxford University. She is a biographer and critic whose work includes biographies of Virginia Woolf (1996), Edith Wharton (2006) and Penelope Fitzgerald (2013, winner of the 2014 James Tait Black Prize for Biography and one of the New York Times best 10 books of 2014). She has also written books on Elizabeth Bowen, Philip Roth and Willa Cather, and a collection of essays on life-writing, Body Parts . In 2003 she was made a CBE and in 2013 she was made a Dame for services to literary scholarship.

We met via Zoom to talk about the what, how and why of biography, and the role of the biographer. During our conversation I reference a book that Hermione wrote in 2009 called Biography: A Very Short Introduction . Topics covered include the practice of autopsy and portraiture; truth and fiction; empathy; conversation; selection and shaping; gossip, privacy and intrusion; the multiplicity of selves and identities; 'definitive' lives; vivid details; anecdotes; obsessional commitment, and detachment; Freud and psychoanalysis; unknowns and gaps; objectivity; Richard Holmes's memoir Footsteps; and Virginia Woolf.

"After working in computer systems analysis for a decade, John Burnside became a full-time writer in 1994. John has published 14 books of poetry, and has won the Geoffrey Faber Prize, the Whitbread Poetry Prize, the Petrarca Preis and, most recently, the Forward and T.S. Eliot Prizes for his poetry. He has also published eight novels and a memoir. He is Professor of English at the University of St Andrews."

We met to talk about the what, how and why of poetry as described in his book of criticism The Music of Time . Topics discussed include poetry making nothing happen, poetry making lots happen, paying attention, listening, lightening rods, the sound of the earth, everyday life, elitism, the questions that dog humans, the human name not meaning shit to a tree, connections, LSD and the continuum, dams, killing lawyers, understanding systems and not understanding them, Facebook, the "n" word, compost heaps, Leopardi, Montale, and more...

Jaleen Grove is a Canadian artist and art historian whose area of focus is the history of illustration in the US and Canada. She teaches at the Rhode Island School of Design, has written monographs on illustrators Oscar Cahén and Walter Haskell Hinton and has served as associate editor for the Journal of Illustration .

She is associate editor of the 592-page History of Illustration (Bloomsbury, 2018), and author of a chapter in it entitled 'Avant Garde Illustration 1900-1950' which is the topic of our conversation here, one that incorporates modernism, livres d'artiste, Cubism, Bauhaus; the importance of collecting, preserving and studying ephemera, and more.

Steven Heller is an eminent American graphic designer, art director, art critic and scholar.​ He ​has authored or​ co-authored ​more than 200 ​ books which variously trace​ the history of typography, illustration and other subjects related to graphic design.​ I talk with Steve about Paul Rand an American art director and graphic designer best known for his corporat​e designs which include logos for IBM, UPS, Westinghouse, ​and ​ ABC​. ​

Rand was a professor​ of graphic design at Yale University​ ​ from 1956​ to 1985​. He once said that of all of his work, he was proudest of his magazine and book covers. Book covers!

Daniel Mendelsohn "is an internationally bestselling author, critic, essayist, and translator. Born in New York City in 1960, he received degrees in Classics from the University of Virginia and Princeton. After completing his Ph.D. he moved to New York City, where he began freelance writing full time; since 1991 he has been a prolific contributor of essays, reviews, and articles to many publications, most frequently The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books ."

We met via Zoom to discuss the role of the literary critic and how Daniel performs it. We talk about who he is {okay, just part of who he is), what he does, how he does it, and why it's important; about how the critic, by looking behind our reactions, helps us to better understand and appreciate the meaning and significance of a work of art; about critics expressing the intangible and ineffable; the distinction between criticism and opinion; criticism as a service industry; disagreeing with critics; criticism as metaphor; criticism as storytelling; communities of intelligent people; and how really mind-blowing it is that we're all kicking stones around here on a planet that's spinning at some incredible speed moving through a gigantic space that seems devoid of meaning, and we don't know why. Which is why, of course, narrative is so important. It stops us from being scared shitless all of the time. Criticism helps us to figure out how narrative does this. This, and much more.

Fifteen years ago I interviewed Michael Cader at Book Expo in Toronto. The advice he had for publishers at the time remains remarkably fresh and valuable. Michael is the founder of Publisher's Lunch, the largest book publishing industry publication in the world. Each day it's e-mailed out to more than 45,000 people.

We talk about process, and transparency, extras, the role of a creative person, finding audiences while you're alive, the satisfaction of engaging with an audience, bringing work to the public, enabling public discussion, and more.

William (Bill) Matthews has been dealing in old & rare books, manuscripts, maps and related material since 1976. He began working for a bookshop in Saskatoon, then opened his own in Vancouver in 1976, and subsequently moved to Toronto in 1980. He was in Ontario until 1996 when he moved to San Francisco / Berkeley and was part of Peter Howard's Serendipity Books for a few years. He's now the proud owner of The Haunted Bookshop, a bricks and mortar shop in Sydney, B.C. just north of Victoria.

We met in the shop to talk about Bill's career in the used book business, about young collectors; Odean Long, previous long-time owner of The Haunted Bookshop; pseudonymously and anonymously authored books; scouting trips, Acres of Books in Cincinnati, little book fairs, book scouts Martin Stone and David Sachs, Driff's Guide to All the Second-hand and Antiquarian Bookshops in Britain , fantasy fiction, booksellers Peter Howard and Bill Hoffer, the great Winnipeg book sale, Maurice Sendak, and much more.

After our conversation Bill and I chatted a bit about Saskatoon, where the two of us had grown up, discovering that we'd both gone to the same high school, at the same time - in the same grade. Bill later produced the yearbook to prove it.

Apologies in advance for the poor audio quality (something about soft-spoken booksellers and the acoustics of used bookstores).

Don Stewart is the proprietor of MacLeod’s Books at 455 West Pender Street in downtown Vancouver, a shop famed for its magnificent piles of books, wide selection and narrow aisles. Stewart bought MacLeod's Books in 1973 from Van Andruss who' d bought it from Don MacLeod a few years after it opened in 1964. He moved the business into larger premises in 1981 only to see the place burn down the next year - so he had to start again from scratch.

Ironically, for the past ten years he's had to contend with Vancouver Fire Department regulations in order just to keep his doors open. Instructed to reduce the number of books in his shop, ​his only options have been to stuff ​things in storage and sell​ as much as he can. Recent zealousness exhibited by the VFD may well be connected in part to the rapaciousness of area developers . Contrary to current rumours the shop will not be closing.

I met with Don in the stacks of his shop to talk about his career in bookselling, about homelessness, British Columbia as rich terrain for all manner of book culture, legendary West Coast booksellers Stephen McIntyre and Bill Hoffer, socialism, and anarchy, among other things.

Dr Falk Eisermann is head of the Incunabula Division at the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin and is considered a world expert in the field. He also heads the Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke (Union catalogue of incunabula), GW for short. Founded in 1904 it's objective is to list all 15th-century items printed from movable type. Today the job is reportedly about fifty percent complete. Lots of work remains.

I met with Falk in his green-carpeted office at the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin to talk about his role as a rare books librarian, about incunabula, and about his quest to find and catalogue it all.

Dan Morgan is the proprietor of an antiquarian bookstore in Prague 6 that replicates the feel and function of a living room. Back in the 1990s Dan was invited by his future wife to visit Prague. He never left. In 2008 he 'got into' books thanks to a woman who sold them in his neighbourhood and who introduced him to Czech modernism and Samizdat. Coming full circle, by good fortune he was able recently to buy the entire stock of her original bookstore.

I met with Dan at his shop. We talk about the cultural evenings he hosts, about the unheard stories that people tell of Prague's past; the important role Cubism played in moving Czech book design from Art Nouveau to Modernism; book designers Josef Casek, Ladislav Sutnar and Jaroslav Svab; the huge influence of renaissance man Karel Teige ('Captain of the Avant-Garde') and his ABC book; Jindřich Toman's amazing monographs on Czech modernist book design, notably the one on photo montage ; Toyen; visually striking books; a collector's intuition; and the quality, but inexpensive, books produced by state-run publishing house Dru stevní Práce.

Library exhibition catalogues, just like Bookseller catalogues, constitute a damned fine collecting area if you ask me. Beautiful, informative, and cheap - especially when you consider how much money and time, care and attention goes into producing them - they're well worth acquiring, despite not being particularly rare. What better service can I provide the collector to get a grip on this under-appreciated field than to talk to someone who evaluates them if not exactly for a full-time living, then certainly for a good time?

Emma Sarconi is a librarian and book historian who seeks "to facilitate conversations around the impact of special collections in our lives by providing quality reference services, instruction design, project management and event planning." She currently works as the Reference Professional for Special Collections in Firestone Library at Princeton University, and chairs the RBMS Leab Exhibition Awards Committee.

The Leab Awards are given annually in recognition of excellence in the publication of catalogues and brochures that accompany exhibitions of library and archival materials. They are administered by the Exhibition Awards Committee of the ALA/ACRL Rare Books and Manuscripts Section (RBMS), whose operating expenses are covered by a generous endowment from Katharine Kyes Leab and Daniel J. Leab, editors of American Book Prices Current.

I spoke with Emma via Zoom about the criteria used by the committee to judge the catalogues.

Jordi Nadal was born in Barcelona in 1962 and holds a degree in Germanic Studies from the University of Barcelona. In 1998 he took the Stanford Professional Publishing Course and then began his career at Vicens Vives, later moving to Herder (Germany). He has been director of EDHASA, editorial and publications director of Círculo de Lectores, consultant at Random House in New York, general director of corporate development for Spain and America at Grupo Plaza & Janés and assistant director at Ediciones Paidós, as well as Deputy General Manager at Planeta Agostini Profesional and Formación. In 2007 he founded Plataforma Editorial. He is the co-author of Meditating Management… and Life (Plataforma Editorial, 2012) and author of, among other books, Libroterapia (Plataforma Editorial, 2017, 2020) and The Invention of the Bicycle (Plataforma Editorial, 2020).

We met via Zoom to discuss his book Book Therapy: Reading Is Life (Mensch Publishing, 2021) . Our conversation covers, among other things: how actions and inactions characterize reading; whether or not reading 'betters' a person; Camus and being kind to others in an unhappy world; why we're motivated to share treasures and enthusiasms with friends, and how reading and writing is so very human.

It's a lively, colourful encounter with a passionate reader, writer, publisher and white-shirt enthusiast.

For years Paul Delaney was professor of English at the University of Moncton; prior to this he taught at various institutions in London, England. During his lifetime he has had an ongoing interest in Acadian genealogy, a topic upon which he continues to publish and conduct research.

His biography of Charles de Sousy Ricketts (1866-1931), published in 1990, was the first major study of a man whose "spirited career encompassed many aspects of late Victorian and Edwardian culture," including fine press book design and production, stage design, typography, painting, sculpture, art criticism, and art collecting. Friends included W.B. Yeats, Thomas Moore, ​A. E. ​ Housman, ​Oscar Wilde and many other luminaries of the period .

Drawing upon a wide range of material​, much of it unpublished​ and/​ or newly discovered​ at the time​ , ​​ Delaney ​"​ reveals a man of strong opinions and artistic convictions"​ ​who despite a ​ fierce opposition to Post Impressionism and ​​ Modernism​, was noted for his love and deep ​knowledge of art, as well as his ​ wit, ​conviviality , generosity and ​artistic ​ versatility.​​ ​ ​ ​Delaney's biography illuminates cultural and artistic​ life in England​ during the 1890s and early decades of the​ 20th​ century​, and provides a detailed portrait of one of the period's great personalities.

​Ricketts, during his lifetime, established a reputation as a​ great​ ​ ​ art connoisseur​. I n 1915 ​he ​ turned down ​an offer ​to become director​ of the National Gallery​, a decision he later regretted​. He did however ​ serve​ "disastrously" as adviser to the National Gallery of Canada from 1924 until his death in 1931. ​H e also wrote three books of art criticism, two volumes of short stories and a memoir of ​Oscar ​ Wilde. Selections from his letters and diaries were​ ​ published​ posthumously​ .

I met with Paul Delaney at his home in Moncton, New Brunswick, where we talked about, among other things, his nom de plume (J. G. P. Delaney), about Ricketts of course, and his adventurous mother; about Ricketts' long time companion artist Charles Shannon; about publisher and editor Rupert Hart Davis, and about Paul's experience writing the biography of artist Glyn Philpot.

Andrew Coyne needs little introduction to Canadian audiences. He writes a weekly column for the Toronto Globe and Mail newspaper and is a member of the At Issue panel on CBC TV's The National newscast. He has previously been national editor of Maclean's magazine and a columnist for the National Post newspaper.

James Elliott Coyne (1910-2012) was a scholar, lawyer, public servant, family man, and "practicing eccentric." A Rhodes scholar, and captain of the Oxford University hockey team, he practiced law with his father in Winnipeg during the 1930s before joining the Bank of Canada's research bureau in 1938. He became deputy governor in 1950, and governor in 1955, succeeding Graham Towers. During his tenure he was embroiled in a much publicized conflict with Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, known as the Coyne Affair, which led to his resignation and a clarification in the role required of the governor of the Bank of Canada.

I met with Andrew Coyne via Zoom to discuss his extraordinary father. Our conversation includes a response to my assertion that understanding James Coyne requires an appreciation of how deeply he felt about Canadian independence, and economic nationalism.

Canada has an impressive tradition of producing great printer- publishers. Three of our best are Stan Bevington, Tim Inkster, and Andrew Steeves . Ancient interviews with all three can be found here on The Biblio File website.

The one with Andrew took place a dozen years ago so I figured it was time to clock another. I drove down to Kentville, Nova Scotia last month, where Andrew lives and works, and sat down with him again right next to the place where the wall cordoning off his office used to sit (it came down about a decade ago), inches away from where our previous talk too place.

Andrew bills himself as a writer, editor, typographer, letterpress printer and literary publisher. Over the past two decades he's won more than 50 citations for excellence in book design from Canada's Alcuin Society. His essay collection Smoke Proofs: Essays on Literary Publishing, Printing and Typography appeared in 2014.

We talk here mostly about the specifics of book design and how Andrew makes books that very beautifully and aptly express their contents; we also discuss the challenge of selecting titles; the use pilcrows, the importance in life of paying attention, and much more.

Michele K. Troy is professor of English at Hillyer College at the University of Hartford. She studies Anglo-American literary modernism in continental Europe and is the author of Strange Bird: The Albatross Press and the Third Reich , the first book to be written about the Albatross Press, a Penguin precursor, that entered into an uneasy relationship with the Nazi regime to keep Anglo-American literature alive under fascism. The press was, from its beginnings in 1932, a “strange bird”: a cultural outsider to the Third Reich but an economic insider. It was funded by British-Jewish interests. Its director was rumored to work for British intelligence. It distributed fiction in English by both mainstream and edgier modernist authors such as D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and Ernest Hemingway to eager continental readers. Yet Albatross printed and sold its paperbacks from the heart of Hitler’s Reich.

Michele and I talk about how weird this is, among other things.

Since 1972, Dr. Steven Lomazow has been building a collection of important American periodicals; it's now considered to be the most extensive in private hands.

"The Steven Lomazow Collection of American Periodicals has been curated for the purpose of demonstrating the role of magazines as a reflection of all aspects American popular culture from pre-revolutionary times to the present day."

Highlights of the collection were featured in an exhibition at The Grolier Club in New York this Spring called Magazines and the American Experience. A celebration of this vitally important American medium, the exhibition illustrated, among other things, how magazines fostered the development of distinct communities of Americans by creating networks of communication. The accompanying catalogue expands upon the exhibition with a series of essays by leading media historians. It's enhanced by more than four hundred illustrations.

Steven has been a consultant to the Newseum in Washington, D.C and is presently a member of the American Antiquarian Society. He is a board-certified neurologist with a practice in Belleville, New Jersey.

We met via Zoom to discuss why collecting magazines is so pleasurable, American magazines in particular. The discussion references Vogue, Life, Look, Harper's, Leslie's, Hearst's and many more iconic publications.

On this episode of The Biblio File Book Club Heather O'Neill and I discuss one of her favourite novels, Agota Kristof's The Notebook .

This dark, fractured fairy tale of a story, told in simple, striking, visual language, describes the devastating impact of war on children and their families. Set in an unknown country during wartime it follows the lives of twin boys coping with life after they've been left by their mother to live with their dirty old grandmother. A dangerous weirdness ensues.

We met at Le Figaro, a popular restaurant located in the Plateau neighbourhood of Montreal to talk about this disturbing, memorable work.

Heather is a Canadian novelist, poet, short story writer, screenwriter and journalist, who published her debut novel, Lullabies for Little Criminals , in 2006. It won the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction and the 2007 Canada Reads Competition. Other novels include The Girl Who Was Saturday Night and The Lonely Hearts Hotel. Her latest, When We Lost Our Heads, will be available on Feb. 1, 2022.

Listen to the two of us as we compete for your attention with birds, trucks, screaming babies, and a tree full of cicadas.

Aimee Peake has been active in the antiquarian book business in Winnipeg for more than 20 years. She got her start as an apprentice to Michael Park, proprietor Greenfield Books. In 2000 she took over as manager of the newly-opened Bison Books, assuming sole proprietorship in 2010. In 2018 she purchased Greenfield and amalgamated it with Bison.

You'll usually find Aimee in her bookshop on weekdays attending to customer needs and working on acquisitions, collections development and appraisals. Over the years she has exhibited books at fairs throughout North America, and in 2018 she participated in the ILAB Congress in Pasadena.

Aimee is President of the Winnipeg Association of Secondhand Bookstores, and a board member of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of Canada.

In addition to her work with Bison Books she also manages Dominion Auctions, a long-established Winnipeg-based art and antique auction house

I visited her at her shop in downtown Winnipeg last month to find out what it was like to sell antiquarian books on the Prairies.

Jack David launched the publishing house ECW in 1974 as the journal Essays on Canadian Writing - from which came the E, the C, and the W. For the next ten years the company focused on scholarly projects and occasionally dabbled in more accessible trade books and biographies. The breakthrough came when it decided in the early 90s to publish books about non-literary folk, the key title being a biography of country singer k.d. lang. The book broke out in the American market and illustrated to ECW that it could be successful publishing trade titles with universal appeal. ECW has followe​d this literary/commercia​l path ever since.
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"I love to be surprised," says Jack, "and I love to find myself reading something that I would never pick up in a bookstore (if any remain). In fact, I enjoy reading unsolicited proposals; I live in hope. I sometimes find myself reading a line or a passage to anyone who happens to be within earshot. I do this spontaneously because I like to share what I’m enjoying; and then I observe myself and register the fact that I want others to take pleasure in what I’m reading. That’s the impetus for signing up a book."

Ken Whyte knows magazine and newspaper publishing. He was editor-in-chief of Saturday Night Magazine, founding editor-in-chief of the National Post newspaper, editor-in-chief and publisher at Maclean's Magazine, and President of Rogers Publishing Company.

He's an accomplished author having written The Uncrowned King: the Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst , a Washington Post, LA Times, and Globe & Mail book of the year; a groundbreaking biography of Herbert Hoover; and most recently, The Sack of Detroit: General Motors and the End of American Enterprise, a book which is currently creating quite a stir across North America.

Additional interesting things about Ken: he's chairman of the board of the Donner Canada Foundation, one of Canada's leading philanthropic organizations. He sits on the board of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, the National NewsMedia Council, the Digital Policy Forum, and the Frontier Institute. He is a member of the advisory committee of the Cundill Prize, the world's richest prize for historical non-fiction, and a governor of the Aurea Foundation, which funds public policy research in Canada.

Several years ago he launched Sutherland House Books, a publishing house based in Toronto, Canada which has world dominating aspirations, plus he writes Shush, a weekly newsletter on the publishing business.

I invited these two gentlemen to join me for a Zoom conversation about Canadian book publishing and the lessons it might offer the world.

Dr. Stephen Enniss is Director of the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin . He has held previous appointments at the Folger Shakespeare Library and at Emory University’s Rare Book Library. His research interests are in 20th century poetry, and he has written on Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, and Seamus Heaney, among others. He is the author of After the Titanic: A Life of Derek Mahon (Gill and Macmillan, 2014).

The Harry Ransom Center is one of the great rare book libraries of the world. Not only does it possess many of the greatest books and manuscripts ever written, it also has an outstanding record of promoting and exhibiting them, and making them available to researchers and the public.

I invited Stephen to participate with me, and a group of Canadian book collectors I've recently helped assemble (working title for the club: Bibliophiles North ), in a discussion about how collectors can best go about establishing relationships with rare book libraries in hopes of selling or donating their collections

Meghan Constantinou has been Head Librarian at The Grolier Club since 2011 and a Club member since 2013. Her research interests include the history of private collecting, women’s book ownership, and provenance studies. The Club Library collects, preserves, and makes accessible materials dedicated to the history and art of the book. Strengths of its collection include bibliographies, histories of printing and graphic processes, type specimens, fine and historic examples of printing, bookbinding, illustration, and, in particular, the literature of antiquarian book collecting and the book trade.

I spoke with Meghan via Zoom about the Grolier's collection of private library catalogues, and asked her for advice, based on her lengthy study of the topic, on how collectors might best go about producing their own catalogues.

One of the best ways to become a successful, fulfilled antiquarian bookseller is to establish close, long-lasting relationships with enthusiastic, committed, ideally well-heeled, collectors. Justin Schiller is a pioneer in the field of rare, collectible children's books. During his career he has developed extraordinary bonds with many passionate book lovers. His efforts over the years with several of them have resulted in some of the world's best known children's book collections. We talk about how he and these treasured customers scaled mountains together.

Walter Lockhart Gordon (1906 – 1987) was a Canadian accountant, businessman, politician, and economic nationalist. Born in Toronto, he was educated at Upper Canada College and the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ontario. Upon graduation he joined the family accounting firm of Clarkson, Gordon and Company. During World War II he served in the Bank of Canada and the federal Ministry of Finance. In 1946, he chaired the Royal Commission on Administrative Classifications in the Public Service. From 1955 to 1957 he chaired the Royal Commission on Canada's Economic Prospects. The Commission's reports expressed concern about growing foreign ownership in the Canadian economy, particularly in the resource sector, and made recommendations to redress the problem. These were revisited by Gordon during his government career, notably in his poorly received budget of 1963. Gordon was Minister of Finance from 1963 to 1965 during Lester Pearson's first minority government. He quit in 1965, returned, and left for good in 1968. During his time in office he was responsible for the introduction of some of Canada's most important social programs. After leaving politics he returned to business but continued to argue, successfully, for economic nationalist causes. He published his political memoirs in 1977 and died in 1987.

Stephen Azzi is one of the original core faculty members of the Clayton H. Riddell Graduate Program in Political Management at Carleton University. Prior to academia he worked as aide to four different members of Parliament. From 2005 to 2011 he was associate professor at Laurentian University where he taught US history and foreign policy. At Carleton he has taught in the Political Management program, the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, the School of Canadian Studies, and the Departments of History, and Political Science. His research specialties are prime ministerial leadership in Canada, Canada–US relations, and Canadian economic and cultural nationalism.

We met via Zoom, to talk Gordon, and to riff off Steve's book Walter Gordon and the Rise of Canadian Nationalism (MQUP, 1999)

Don Lindgren established Rabelais Books in 2006. The bookshop now operates out of Biddeford, Maine and specializes in Artists’ Books, Cocktails, Cookbooks, Farm and Garden, Gastronomy, History of Food, Rare Periodicals, and Wine.

We met years ago when I sought him out in Portland to talk about collecting cookbooks (Listen here ). As we parted Don handed me a copy of his first Rabelais catalogue with the big salami on its cover. I've been intrigued with them (bookseller catalogues) ever since. Don has a sizeable collection, and whenever we get together we talk about them. Several months ago we decided to make it formal by devoting an episode of The Biblio File podcast to discussing the design and content of these great and various sales vehicles. I reached out to several booksellers, including Simon Beattie, Heather O'Donnell, Jonathan Hill, Glenn Horowitz, Mark Funke, Biblioctopus and Brian Cassidy, all of whom kindly send me examples of their outstanding work. Then Don and I got down to business.

According to his website, "In 1995, Bruce Batchelor rocked the publishing industry when he invented print-on-demand (POD) publishing and triggered a landslide of new books from every country in the world."

Did he invent it? You'll have to listen to the podcast to find out.

Since 1995, more than 1,000,000 writers, says Bruce, "have seized the opportunity to be published through services such as Agio (his small publishing consultancy firm), Author Services, Kindle Direct Publishing and many other publishing houses."

Bruce was CEO of Trafford Publishing for11 years, and is now owner/publisher at Agio Publishing House in Victoria, BC, Canada. He's a "bestselling" author and management consultant, and speaks at various writer and academic conferences.

We talk here about the explosion in self-publishing that occurred during the 1990s, and the role that he and Trafford Publishing played in it.

"Ursula Nordstrom (1910 - 1988) was publisher and editor-in-chief of juvenile books at Harper & Row from 1940 to 1973. She is credited with presiding over a transformation in children's literature in which morality tales written for adult approval gave way to works that instead appealed to children's imaginations and emotions." She authored the 1960 children's book The Secret Language , and a collection of her correspondence, edited by Leonard Marcus, entitled Dear Genius: the Letters of Ursula Nordstrom was published in 1998.

Harper's received three Newbery Medals and two Caldecott Medals during Nordstom's tenure. She edited some of the milestones of children's literature, including E. B. White's Stuart Little (1945) and Charlotte's Web (1952), Margaret Wise Brown's Goodnight Moon (1947), Crockett Johnson's Harold and the Purple Crayon (1955), and Syd Hoff's Danny and the Dinosaur (1958). Other authors she edited included Laura Ingalls Wilder, Ruth Krauss, and Charlotte Zolotow.

I talk to Leonard Marcus about everything Ursula.

Photo credit: Sonya Sones.

Marion Sinclair has been Chief Executive of Publishing Scotland since 2008, with responsibility for program management, funding bids, policy, the International Publishing Fellowship program, publishing practice issues and reporting to Creative Scotland. She has worked in the book publishing sector for more than 30 years, at Polygon from 1988-97 (awarded Sunday Times UK Small Publisher of the Year in 1993) then as a university lecturer in publishing, before joining PS in 2003. Marion is also a board member of the Gaelic Books Council (ex-officio), of the book distributor BookSource, and Literature Alliance Scotland , she's also a committee member of the Sabhal Mor Ostaig Library Advisory Group, and Saltire Society Publisher of the Year panel.

We met via Zoom to talk about what Publishing Scotland does to help Scottish publishers. Towards the end of our conversation I try to wheedle some advice out of Marion for Canada.

Conrad Black - in full, Conrad Moffat Black, Lord Black of Crossharbour - was born in 1944, in Montreal. He is an author, columnist, historian, and businessman who built the third largest newspaper group in the world during the 1980s and 1990s. At its height the organization controlled nearly 250 newspapers including the London Daily Telegraph, the Fairfax Group in Australia, The Jerusalem Post, Southam Press in Canada, and the Chicago Sun-Times.

Black studied history and political science at Carleton University in Ottawa, earned a law degree from Laval University in 1970, and a Masters degree in history from McGill University in 1973. For his thesis he wrote a biography of former Quebec premier Maurice Duplessis; published in 1977, it came to be considered a definitive work.

He entered the newspaper business in 1967 as part owner of two small Quebec weeklies, on the way to establishing his media empire. He currently lives in Toronto with his wife Barbara Amiel.

W​e met via Zoom to talk about his various book and model ship collections, Napoleon, Roosevelt, his collecting habits, and his long-term fulfilling relationship with books. First off however he vigorously defends himself against charges that were successfully levelled against him by U.S. federal prosecutors in the mid-2000s.

John Brookshire Thompson is a British sociologist, a professor at the University of Cambridge, and a fellow of Jesus College. His work over the past two decades has focused particularly on the publishing industry. Books in the Digital Age: The Transformation of Academic and Higher Education Publishing in Britain and the United States (Polity, 2005) presents an analysis of higher education publishing from 1980 to 2005. Much of the analysis is based on industry interviews made on condition of anonymity. His Merchants of Culture (Polity, 2009) covers in a similar way, the entire publishing and bookselling industry from the 1960s to 2008.

We talk here about his latest book Book Wars: The Digital Revolution in Publishing (Polity, 2021) which tells the story of book publishing's wild ride over the past decade - the surge of e-books, the self-publishing explosion and the growing popularity of audiobooks - plus successful and failed attempts to create new businesses in this space. It's a comprehensive, dense (in a good way) human read; and, if you love books as I do, an extremely entertaining way to spend 15 hours or so.

Ruth Panofsky is Professor of English at Ryerson University in Toronto. She is a leading scholar of the history of publishing and authorship in Canada and Canadian Jewish literature, an award-winning poet and a Fellow of the Royal Society.

We met via Zoom to discuss her most recent book Toronto Trailblazers: Women in Canadian Publishing (2019, U of T Press) which explores the influence of seven women who helped advance a modern literary culture in Canada.

"Publisher Irene Clarke, scholarly editors Eleanor Harman and Francess Halpenny, trade editors Sybil Hutchinson, Claire Pratt, and Anna Porter, and literary agent Bella Pomer made the most of their vocational prospects, first by securing their respective positions and then by refining their professional methods. Individually, each woman asserted her agency by adapting orthodox ways of working within Canadian publishing. Collectively, their overarching approach emerged as a feminist practice. Through their vision and method these trailblazing women disrupted the dominant masculine paradigm and helped transform publishing practice in Canada."

We talk about writing these women back into the history of Canadian publishing, and end off with a look at the challenges that face Canada's current book publishing industry.

Dwight Garner is an American journalist and a longtime writer and editor for the New York Times . In 2008, he was named a book critic for the newspaper. Garner's previous post at The New York Times was as senior editor of The New York Times Book Review , where he worked from 1999 to 2008. He was a founding editor of Salon.com where he worked from 1995 to 1998.

Garner now lives, or will shortly live, in New Orleans. He is married to Cree LeFavour, author of the memoir Lights On, Rats Out and several acclaimed cookbooks. His most recent book is called Garner's Quotations: A Modern Miscellany . We met via Zoom to talk about his book Read Me: A Century of Classic American Book Advertisements.

Mark Samuels Lasner is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Delaware Library, and one of the world's great book collectors.

The Mark Samuels Lasner Collection focuses on British literature and art from 1850 to 1900, with an emphasis on the Pre-Raphaelites and writers and illustrators of the 1890s. It comprises more than 9,500 books, letters, manuscripts, photographs, ephemera, and artworks, including many items signed by such figures as Oscar Wilde, George Eliot, Max Beerbohm, William Morris, Christina and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Aubrey Beardsley.

In 2016 Mark donated his collection, worth more than $10 million, to the University of Delaware. It's the largest and most valuable gift in the Library’s history.

We connected via Zoom to talk about Mark's childhood and his incipient interest in England and the late Victorian period, his early book collecting - the how and why of it - the extraordinarily talented and well dressed essayist, caricaturist, and critic Max Beerbohm; fun, friendships, favourite booksellers, fashion and much more.

David Frum is a Canadian-American political commentator and a senior editor at The Atlantic. He is the author of ten books, most recently TRUMPOCALYPSE: Restoring American Democracy (HarperCollins, 2020). His first book, Dead Right , won praise from William F. Buckley as “the most refreshing intellectual experience in a generation” and from Frank Rich in the New York Times as “the smartest book written from the inside about the American conservative movement.”

He is a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, and authored the first book about Bush's presidency written by a former member of the administration.

As a young man he was enamored with C.S. Forester's Hornblower stories. Together we examined two of them for The Biblio File Book Club . Listen as we talk about rice, morals, codes, lying, punishment, being true to yourself, normal lives, leadership, and the Mafia, among other things.

Odette Drapeau is a leader, educator and innovator in the practice of fine bookbinding. She founded her bookbinding workshop The Headband in Montreal in 1979.

For more than 50 years she has refined her work though the innovative use of materials including fish leathers, high-tech fibres and LED lights. Through her creative use of stunning textures and colours she has achieved a level of excellence that has been widely heralded, including, most recently by The Alcuin Society which bestowed its Robert R. Reid Award for lifetime achievement in the book arts in Canada upon her. Odette is a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Art, and was head of the Association of Quebec Bookbinders between 1988-91. She has exhibited at solo and group shows more than fifty times at venues in Europe, Canada and the United States.

We talk here about her long, accomplished career, her thoughts about "the book," and her work philosophy.