Yes, that was a massive consideration - I don’t think anyone felt right making promises we couldn’t keep to authors in pitch meetings. You can’t always guarantee coverage or success, but you can promise time, energy and a team who really care. Delighted that’s coming across - it means everything!

Canongate has no plans to grow further, we actively cut our list size some years ago and last year became a BCorp. Does that inoculate us against poor ethical choices or this kind of rhetoric? Absolutely not - but I hope it’s a sign of the way we choose to do business, and what we are prioritising.

Oh sure - and the conversation about the ethics of who you choose to publish is a whole other factor. But I guess I just wonder how that transition happens, and whether it’s inevitable. I’d love to think not - so maybe it’s just a question of a series of conscious choices made much earlier…

I do think ever-tightening margins are leading a lot of people down some pretty dark paths - less spread betting and more just straightforward churn - and it’s easy to forget the reason we do what we do. And absolutely sheer corporate greed plays a factor in many places too. But still…

I hear you, but Newton isn’t a corporate CEO who moved over to lead Bloomsbury; publishing has been his life. I’d love to understand how you reach this position from that starting point. And corporate publishing remains packed w/ people who love books, even alongside those with a “units” viewpoint…

And obviously that's without even scratching the surface of his comments on the role of AI. Which also raises MANY questions for me, none of them good.

Beyond that, surely anyone who works in publishing would acknowledge that high sales are not always an indicator of good writing, nor low sales a sign of poor quality. There are a wealth of factors that go into a book's success incl - as ever - the industry's heavy inbuilt biases and, frankly, luck.

I'm just fascinated by his logic: if a 'big name' is already a big name (ie, a celeb), there's no guarantee they're a good writer. If they're a big name because they've made it as a writer, someone once took a chance on them. So how do you build more of those without investing in unknown names?

Personally, I’d ask why a “big name” is considered an indicator of quality, in publishing of all places - when the rise of celeb-authored books at the expense of new talent has long been an issue. But then I’ve quite a few questions about that interview, and that one is relatively low down the list.

For those who missed it: www.theguardian.com/business/202...

“We are programmed deep in our DNA to be comforted by the authority and the reliability of big brand names, & that applies more than ever to the names of big writers.”

Visiting so many bookshops around the country over the last few weeks simply confirmed what I already knew: booksellers are the kindest, best folk, the hardest workers - and the best chat. It always feels like such a privilege to get to drop into the many and varied communities they have created.

EXCITING.