With the expansion of book publishing scale, today, more and more publishing houses appear in the reader's field of vision, however, most people can talk about the first time to say, often some classic publishing house brands. For publishing houses, there is only one way to impress a wide audience – that is, to publish well-known writers. This is why awards such as the Nobel Prize in Literature, the Booker Prize, and the Goncourt Prize in Literature, although the results may not be fair, must have attracted much attention. If a publishing house can unearth one or two writers in the history of literature who have such a place, then its reputation will remain in the history of books. In Britain, there is such a publishing house that has recruited 13 Nobel laureates in a century of history.
Günter Glass, William Golding, T.S. Elliot, Philip Larkin, Ezra Pound, Harold Pinter, Shemeth Heaney... In addition to the Nobel Laureates, a large number of classic writers in literary history have been contracted by a publishing house called "Faber-Faber". This publishing house has become a classic brand of literary publishing, but you may not think that the history of such a classic brand actually began with the founder drawing a big pie for others.
Faber Publishing House publishes partial book covers.
Start from scratch by drawing a flatbread
In 1923, at the age of 34, Jeffrey Faber was still a muddled, accomplished man. He had published two books of poetry and won the Oxford All Souls Scholar Award, but Jeffrey seemed to prefer to be a beer tycoon than a poet laureate, and with this dream in mind, Jeffrey Faber did not continue the literary path but entered the brewery as a supervisor. It sounds very unreliable to let a man who writes poetry into business — not surprisingly, two years later, a dismal brewery swept Faber out of the house.
Jeffrey Faber
Faber's life was a little embarrassing, and finally, an old friend at the Academy of All Souls helped him find out a way out—he heard that a scientific publishing house was recruiting a president of the press, the owner of this publishing house was Mr. and Mrs. Gwail, the husband Maurice Gerwell was a scholar of all souls, and the previous president who left office was also a scholar of all souls, so the requirement of the new successor was that the new successor also needed to be a scholar of all souls. Moreover, they didn't want to just make a magazine like the Nursing Handbook for nurses, but they wanted to broaden the publication of the book so that Faber was the perfect fit for their needs.
But Faber also has embarrassments. First, he didn't have any money on hand, and it was very difficult to get a stake in a publishing house; second, he didn't have any connections—he didn't have any connections in the circle of literary publishing, which was almost impossible to make any blockbuster books. So Faber came up with a solution, and he began to draw flatbies for different people separately.
The first object of Faber's painting of the pie was, of course, the Gewyles. In his letters, he spoke emphatically about his ambitions, including how to make science publishing houses bigger, first publishing a series of popular books on the law, relying on the huge sales of these books to earn a large amount of money, and then using these funds to find literary masters and publish their works.
The Gewyles were particularly satisfied with what they heard, and felt that Faber, the young man, was very planned.
But in fact, after joining the company, Faber did not do a single copy of the so-called best-selling law crash books, leaving the Gewyles and their eyes dry.
The second object of the painting of the pie is Faber's own mother. He wrote to his mother, wanting her to use the real estate trust left by his father to make money, thereby transferring the publisher's shares to the trust so that he could own more than half of the publishing house. Faber, who did not have a harmonious relationship between mother and son, was directly rejected by her mother, who believed that what her son said was not reliable at all. In the end, it was Faber who successfully impressed his sister with the generous trust interest, and under the joint persuasion of the brothers and sisters, his mother's attitude took a one hundred and eighty degree turn and agreed to Faber buying the shares of the publishing house.
The last object of the pie painting is the British writer T.S. Elliot. In his letter to Eliot, Faber wrote directly:
"I don't want to paint you a pie with empty mouth. But I firmly believe that as long as the road is right, we can see the dawn. ”
His relationship with Eliot was relatively close before, but in book publishing, his competitor was Virginia Woolf. Eliot's previous collections of poems had been published in Woolf, and in order to show his sincerity, Faber promised to pay Elliot higher, thus digging up Elliot from Woolf. But before that, he talked with Eliot about the grand development direction of the publishing house, "My current idea is that I can ask you to be the director of our publishing house." Then we will build an organic link between newspapers and books and wait and see how they grow."
T.S. Elliott
After successfully completing these three aspects, Faber began to realize his publishing ideals. As luck would have it, T.S. Elliot soon gave him a work of his own, the title of which was Called Wasteland.
From "Gwiyer-Faber" to "Faber-Faber"
The publication of "Wasteland" can naturally help Faber Publishing House to lay the aesthetic taste of literary publishing in one fell swoop, but it is still a bit too whimsical to make money by publishing "Wasteland". This obscure collection of poems has so far been read by very few people. But fortunately, through the publication of other books such as "The Wasteland", Faber Publishing House has successfully put T.S. Elliotera into its own camp, and has since had a literary consultant with great aesthetic judgment.
Board of Directors of Faber Press, 1944, Geoffrey Faber in the center and T.S. Eliot on the left.
For publishing houses, only aesthetic nature cannot survive. Although Jeffrey Faber promised the publisher that he would make some legal tools to make money first, he didn't actually do any of them, but he still had to find a way to make a living in the business of the publisher. Jeffrey Faber decided to expand the nursing handbook into a magazine called Nursing World, which was sold exclusively to nurses and housewives. Thanks to the magazine's best-selling, the publisher also has a stable source of income. But the magazine was also the beginning of the intensification of the feber and Gwyre's differences.
In December 1925, Care World was launched, and the first issue sold 32,000 copies. Faber believes that the magazine will have a huge public demand market, and hopes that the Gewyles will make more efforts in marketing and publicity to increase the printing volume and inventory of Care World. Faber's idea was obvious—the better the magazine sold, the more money he spent on literary publishing. Unfortunately, the conservative Gwyers did not take Faber's advice, Gerweir thought that the magazine could maintain its current sales is very good, will not open up any new audience, on the contrary, they also looked down on Faber's magazine planning ideas, they think that "Care World" should provide more useful dry goods, such as a doctor who declared not to mix milk and water for babies to drink, etc., and Faber retorted, he thought that those doctors were complete nonsense, not confirmed by any modern science.
The leak coincided with the overnight rain, and at the same time as the febers and Gerwihr quarreled, the British printing house also went on strike, and a large number of books and magazines could not be printed. Because workers demanded higher salaries and printing costs increased, World of Care's earnings were much worse than before. The failure of best-selling projects has affected the investment in literary publishing. In the end, Faber had to admit that the money invested in "Care World" was indeed adrift. The publisher's financial situation is in a very bad situation.
The conservative Gwyrees wanted to quit Faber, the best-selling magazines that made money stalled, and literary publishing projects that could not be launched as they pleased. Faber's literary publishing career seems to have reached a dead end, and he repeatedly wrote to the Gewyles in the hope of a solution to the problem, but the two sides have been unable to reach a settlement.
However, the escalation of contradictions between the two sides cannot be blamed on the Gewyles for being too conservative. Originally they and Faber were getting by in face, but when Faber was most embarrassed, he wrote a letter to the Gewyles. The idea of the letter is very strange, the meaning is probably - now the publishing house's book business needs to be re-planned, but the strategy of the two of us is not the same, it seems, someone has to make a little sacrifice to do it, I thought about it, there is a way, otherwise let me buy all your shares and be my boss, say, how much money are you willing to sell at the minimum?
If you want to ask a major shareholder to hear such a statement, you will not think that the other party is crazy.
Since then, the Gewyles have lost their last bit of faith in Faber, and they are also trying to mobilize the council to kick Faber out by voting and re-elect a satisfactory publisher president. Fortunately, the twist of fate came in 1929, when both Faber and Gerwihr thought that the publisher's book business was already a mess, and someone approached the publisher and expressed his willingness to buy Care World at a high price. Faber managed to get the money into his own pocket, and he used the twenty thousand pounds from the sale of Care World to buy the publishing house's book business (which cost exactly twenty thousand pounds), thus obtaining the vast majority of the publishing company's shares in one fell swoop and becoming the absolute helmsman.
The first thing he did after taking control of the publishing house was to immediately change the company name from "Gwier-Faber Press" to "Faber Faber Press". The name is still in use today. And Faber, on the other hand, can finally free his hands and feet to publish his literary books.
Talent is better than taste
To date, Faber has thirteen Nobel Prize-winning writers, from the early Beckett, Saint-Joan Pace and William Golding, to today's Orhan Pamuk and Kazuo Ishiguro, some recommended by writers and governors, some of which were self-discovered. Among them, William Golding was a writer that Faber Publishing narrowly missed.
In 1953, Charles Montith, who had been newly appointed to the committee, received a manuscript of the novel, which had been sent by a writer named William Golding. At Faber, not all writers' manuscripts are read directly by committee members, and Goldin sent the novel, called Strangers From Within, which had been read by Faber's reviewers before, and commented:
"Countdown to the future. Fantasies about an atomic bomb exploding in a colony. Ridiculous and boring. A group of children land in a jungle country near Guinea. Garbage and boring. Meaningless. Rejection. ”
Montis read the first chapter patiently, feeling that the reviewers were right and planning to reject the novel.
Fortunately, Montis was in the car, the carriage was boring, he had nothing else to do, he had such a manuscript in his hand, so he continued to read it with a hard scalp. Then he realized that there was so much interesting in the novel.
At the end of the year, Montith began to discuss the revision of the novel with William Golding. Golding changed the title to Weeping Child, and Montith felt that the title was still relatively ordinary.
Finally, a director of Faber Publishing Proposed an idea and suggested that the name of the novel be changed to "Lord of the Flies" (NF)
Yes, it is this classic novel that was almost thrown away as waste paper.
Of course, Faber Publishing also had mistakes that could not be recovered in time. For example, publisher robert McClum, after reading Milan Kundera's Laughing and Forgetting, decided not to quote Milan Kundera for the time being, arguing that his book was not worth spending any money on copyright. It was only after reading the English translation that Faber Publishing House deeply regretted it, and finally contacted Milan Kundera a few years later to make up for this regret.
There is also friction between them and the writer. At the suggestion of T.S. Eliot, James Joyce had submitted his work to Faber Press, not including Ulysses, because the novel was banned in England at the time, and Faber Press did not dare to risk censorship. Joyce admired the taste of Faber Publishing House and specially wrote a small poem, hoping to serve as an advertising slogan for Faber Publishing House:
Buy a small book from Faber Press,
Brown cover of the kind,
Travel with Anna Riavi Jr.
Watch her tumble and jump,
The words on the ring,
Poetry in prose,
All flowing in the notes of the river of years.
Unfortunately, the staff of the sales office of the publishing house did not read it, and the poem was not adopted, which made Joyce very unhappy.
But these are all mistakes that any literary publisher cannot avoid. Almost immediately, Faber Publishing discovered writers such as Shemeth Heaney, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Vargas Llosa. The reason why so many excellent writers can sign up the copyright is that the traditional culture of Faber Publishing House is to attach great importance to the suggestions of the directors.
Toby Faber
From the time of Jeffrey Faber, he set a rule that if a book was strongly recommended by a director, then the book must have publishing value. Once, T.S. Eliot and another trustee, Frank Maureen, had recommended a novel called Nightwood to him, and Jeffrey Faber read it twice, but still didn't know what was so good about it. Despite his disdain for the novel, Jeffrey Faber allowed it to be published, and in his reply he wrote that "in the case of Juna Barnes, it is entirely possible to follow our existing rules—as long as any one of the trustees recommends a book or an author, we have to follow, whether the author is male or female." If there were two directors who jointly highly recommended it, it would not be even more so... I can only convince myself that you are right and wrong with me— a state of affairs that makes me very unhappy for at least a well-educated publisher. Of course, there may be some benefits. ”
The affirmation of the reading talent of the board members is the core of the continued vitality of The Faber Publishing House in literary publishing, and the books recommended by the directors will certainly be highly valued by the publishing house. It is with this professionalism that Faber Publishing House has continued its excellent reputation in literary career, and the launch of paperbacks has allowed them to have more readers and become a classic brand known to almost everyone.
Between Genius and Genius, by Toby Faber, translated by Di Jing, Edition: CITIC Publishing Group, January 2022
However, in recent years, Faber has also tried to transform against the backdrop of setbacks in global print publishing – something that was seen a century ago, when Faber's main poetry business had declined somewhat, and readers were no longer satisfied with reading poetry collections, but set off a wave of cultural activities. For the sake of book sales, Faber contacted the poets, hoping that they would attend a poetry reading for the new book, but they contacted a very unsuitable person, Philip Larkin. Larkin was puzzled and did not understand the poet's appearance to recite the recitation, and eventually refused.
Fortunately, the publisher did not have a rift with Larkin because for the writers of The Faber Press, although there may be many things that have to be cooperated in the business, the members of the Faber Press Committee can always use their talents to discover the value of their works. Today, the new crisis they face is that due to the corporate culture formed in the past century, modern business management technology is difficult to apply and popularize in Faber Press, and the members of the board of directors generally have no sense of profit, they do not care too much about the market sales of a book, or publish books according to their own aesthetic judgments. These were crucial to maintaining the character of Faber, but they also led to another financial crisis that Faber had to face at the end of the twentieth century. Their stumbling path seems to be a microcosm of the dilemma facing modern print publishing.
The author | Miyako
Editor| Shang Zhongming
Proofreading | Fu Chunyi