Book editor takes on publishers

Press, 24 April 1987, Page 17

Book editor takes on publishers

From

ROBIN CHARTERIS

in London

Challenge is nothing new to Liz Calder. Didn’t she traipse two children around North and South America for six years, then bring them up largely on her own in London while holding down a busy publicity job with a book publishing house? And later move home and children to Manchester and keep her job in London, commuting 600 km back and forth every week-end? Then, just a few months ago, with her children embarked on careers of their own and now rated as “the most brilliant book publisher in London,” she took the risky step of leaving her long-established employer and going it alone. The New Zealand-educated Liz Calder, aged 49, became one of four co-founders of Britain’s newest publishing company, Bloomsbury, a fledgling set to take on the veterans in a business renowned for its propensity for more flops than fliers. But she had more than her own much-lauded abilities on her side. Her co-founders were among the best in the business, they had secured $5.6 million backing from the City, and it was odds-on that her own reputation would take with it many of the best-selling authors she had already nurtured. So it is that Bloomsbury Publishing, Ltd, has burst on to the book scene in Britain and the world. Conceived only 18 months ago and established for less than

six, its first two publications were delivered on April 2, on time to the day. In its first week, “Trust,” by Mary Flanagan, raced to number five on the “Sunday Times” best-seller list. Within a matter of weeks, Bloomsbury will have 25 books in the shops. “Not bad, we feel, within six months of starting up,” says the gentle-spoken genie of British book editors. “And there’s many more to come, 150 titles a year.” Bloomsbury has attracted massive media attention and the enthusiastic support of Britain’s authors. Its policy of putting writers first and involving them in all stages of book production — even setting aside a percentage of share capital for them based on the success of their works - has been welcomed as a breakthrough in author-publisher relations.

The “Guardian” newspaper describes the unique share equity scheme as having “thrown the publishing world into a flap.” But, it says, the most intriguing aspect of Bloomsbury is the choice of Liz Calder as editorial director.

“She has been poached from Jonathan Cape where, over the last eight years, she has established a reputation for nurturing such prize-winning authors as Salman Rushdie, Anita Brookner, and Julian Barnes. “She’s the only person in British publishing who’s like a

Manhattan editor,’ says an insider. ’She’s adored by her authors and is likely to be followed to a degree that could be quite painful to Cape. She is very glamorous yet very straightforward’,” reported the "Guardian.” “The Times” has described her as “probably the most respected fiction editor in the business,” and the London “Standard” as “the most brilliant book publisher in London.” They are appellations she describes as “nice but nonsense.”

"I just like to put authors and readers first. And I really love my work,” she said in an interview in her cramped office in London’s literary district of Bloomsbury (where else?) which overflowed with magazines, manuscripts, folders, files, and busy people. Bom in England just before the war, she went to New Zealand at the age of 10 with her parents who settled on a farm at Sanson, near Palmerston North. “After the privations of post-war Britain, it was wonderful to be on a New Zealand farm,” she recalls.

Liz had a “delightful” 10 years there, first as a student at 'Palmerston North Girls’ High, then at the University of Canter-

bury where she took an English degree. She married a young aeronautical engineer, Roger Calder, soon after and accompanied him to Derby, in England, where he undertook a graduate apprenticeship with Rolls Royce in the early 19605. “Swinging-sixties Britain it might have been, but certainly was not for us at the time,” she says. “After two years Roger was sent to North and South America and we spent six years travelling around the two continents. It was difficult to make roots and lasting friendships, and by then we had two small children with us.” She found the travelling enjoyable but the life unsettling and frustrating. When they returned to Britain, she and her husband separated and she took on the “hairy task”' of establishing a career for herself.

Eventually, she found a job in the story department of MGM Films as a reader and later, through contacts, joined the publicity department of the book publishers Victor Gollancz. It was difficult working full-time and bringing up her children virtually on her own. She had the usual anxiety and guilt feelings, which heightened when she moved to Manchester and com-

muted during the week to London.

That did not last long. She came back to London and after four years moved to editing within Gollancz, the step which led her to find her forte.

“It was quite a leap because it demanded a different set of strengths,” she says. “You take on the responsibility of making a success of a book, and starting your own authors’ list from scratch.”

She did her job well. Soon, she had Rushdie, Brookner, Lisa St Aubin de Teran, and Barnes in her stable, and her reputation grew. Most of her writers followed her when she moved to Cape in 1979 and they seem like sticking with her again now she is at Bloomsbury, to the chagrin of her previous employers. “It isn’t a case of taking the ’authors with me. They will decide when they have a book ready,” she says. “Some think my relationship with them is important and others don’t; it’s impossible to predict.” Her success is perhaps due, she says, to having come from nowhere. Tm not part of the establishment. This has given me the opportunity to be untroubled or inhibited by established procedures. I can take a few risks and follow my instincts, which you have, to do to be a successful publisher. “You make many errors, of course, in failing to recognise

value and in backing some things that don’t make IL but If you don’t stick your neck out you can’t take advantage of success." She has not written a book herself. “I’ve not even thought of it. I don’t feel that burning desire to write that authors must have to be successful."

What makes a good book? “I’ve no answer to that I used to think that was a disadvantage I had but I now. feel it helps to have an open mind. A really successful book is one that the author has to write. It comes out of the passion and obsession of the writer.”

Liz Calder, steel-grey haired and with the tired eyes of a workaholic, plays down her own part in the instant success of Bloomsbury, which already has a long list of overseas agents, including Roulston Green Publishing Associates in New Zealand. She is “just one” of the four founders and the last to join. The company was the idea of dynamic young American, Nigel Newton, former deputy managing director of Sidgwick and Jackson, and David Reynolds, cofounder of the publishers Shuckburgh Reynolds. The fourth partner is Alan Wherry, former sales director of Penguin Books. “Challenging and rewarding” is how Liz Calder describes both her work and the company’s. “I like a challenge, and getting Bloomsbury off the ground has certainly been that.”