Over February and March, I took a survey as part of my dissertation on branding. I asked 111 people a heap of questions about what factors influence them to buy a book, what jackets they recognised, and what logos they recognised. Then, I asked them what impressions came to mind when they thought of four named publishers, one of whom was Canongate. 93 out of 111 had never heard of them of had no impression. Of the rest, there were a few guesses; a few mentions of independence, Scotland and Obama and one very clever “A good defence system!”
Now, most of my respondents were in the UK and Ireland with a small handful from elsewhere (in retrospect I should have clarified a location to see where the unusual responses came from – the unlikely fans of Mills and Boon were few, but where are they?). And, in my opinion, Canongate are doing it all right at the moment, but it doesn’t seem to have any effect on increasing visibility amongst the general reading public, even with a list that includes Booker winners, Richard and Judy reads (a declining force by all accounts) and a President with what you might call the best branding campaign they’ll ever have. And they’ve got Boosh. AND The Wire. And Nick Cave in their back pocket, complete with seven and a half hours of audio for his new novel, and a soundtrack by his Bad Seeds. If that doesn’t get your name out there, I’m not sure what will. And despite the general obliviousness of the reading public to imprints and publishers, the more I write about it, the more I think it can be undone, and that recognition is not only possible but will probably be very necessary in future with the way the retail landscape is looking.
It’d be interesting to see whether Canongate’s club night, Irregular, gets them a new audience, or brings them closer to a segment of the market that’s well-suited to what they publish. They’re clever you see; they think about what we’re all up to when we’re not reading, and they get in there, as it should be when you know your market well. But Irregular actually puts them in a place most publishers don’t go: outside the office, in the world, with the readers, doing something different. The night is modestly priced at a fiver (or 3 pounds if you get yourself on the Facebook list), which included a free copy of Dreams From My Father and a shot of tequila, as well as a cracking evening of live music, readings and dancing. It wasn’t out of anyone’s reach either; no hierarchy existed wherein publishers and authors disappeared ‘backstage’ between performances. We sat on the floor and laughed at the funny bits, and Jamie Byng and the band and the poets and novelists wandered around with their pints and chatted to whoever happened to be looking their way at the time.
How did people find out about it? I don’t really know. The evening was in conjunction with Limbo, a weekly club night in Edinburgh, and it got some national press, but I suspect there were a lot of industry people there too, for the inaugural evening. Did the Limbo folk pick up on the Canongate presence? They couldn’t have missed it, although commendably, we were never bombarded with logos, shameless plugs or even the restriction of including authors only from the Canongate list (Joe Dunthorne read from Submarine, published in February by Penguin). It was about doing something special in the community and being involved as well as giving something out to reward the people that showed interest.
There seems to be a recurring theme in all the ruckus about ebook pricing (see here plus comments for one good set of coherent arguments) that the value system of publishers clearly differs from that of readers, that cost-driven pricing won’t work because the ebook market won’t tolerate upwards of a certain price point ($9.99, it would seem), and I think this is a good example of publishers taking the good stuff they’ve got, and giving it out at a price that, to me, seemed like fantastic value. Mightn’t have cost them anything to screen five minutes of Nick Cave reading from his new novel, but for people who admire him, or even have an interest, we were getting a sneak preview, six months ahead of the release, read by the author himself and set to a specially written soundtrack. And a free book. And a drink.
Anyway, end of ode to Canongate, but I’ll be watching them closely to see where the savvy kids in publishing are going.
