Bill Campbell, publisher, tells of his ideal 24 hours.
IF THERE is such a thing as a part-time media mogul that is what I
would like to become should we ever be blessed with an additional day in
the week. For long I have had this secret longing to be able to extend
into areas of the media other than books. But publishing is such a
time-consuming business there just can never be the time. For me books
will always be the most abiding and satisfying form of media.
I am also, to some extent, a child of the media revolution and I would
love to make a video or television documentary. In a way, this would be
an extension of publishing. I would like to do some radio programmes,
too. And I would love to edit a newspaper. Basically, to have a go at
all the different forms of communication that exist.
Publishing has become such an all-consuming passion and by its very
nature it almost defies your whole idea of free time. Free time for me
means reading a manuscript. Obviously one has to make time for one's
family, which, hopefully, I do. I have two girls, aged 11 and eight.
They are both avid readers and critics, which is nice.
Quite a lot of my available time just now is consumed with an interest
in watching their education. Apart from anything else, kids are now much
more literate in terms of media, video machines, television, remote
controls . . . all sorts of things. So I would like to learn a bit more
about things that kids take for granted.
Books, in comparison, to other aspects of the media, are very slow
beasts indeed. I've been involved with books that have been three years
in the making, whereas a newscast can take three minutes. In newspapers
you are, for the most part, aiming your output at the next day. My
message to Arnold Kemp is that I will be happy to edit The Herald just
one day a week, the eighth day.
I have an abiding passion for sport which, if I let it, would take up
every spare minute available. Golf and tennis . . . I would love to
spend a lot more time becoming good at them, taking lessons and
practising. Playing golf about twice a year is not very good for the old
handicap. Just now it's not worth me even contemplating joining a club.
I play at any local public course in Edinburgh when I can. I will hack
around for 17 of the holes and have one glorious shot. And, funnily
enough, it's that shot I remember, forgetting the abject misery of the
rest of my performance.
In October we will be celebrating our 15th anniversary at Mainstream.
I realise just how the time to devote to anything else has been
shrinking when I think that we were doing four or five titles a year at
first. Now we are publishing about 70 books. So the demand on the time
is concomitant with that kind of growth. For every million words I read
it goes without saying that a lesser number gets into print. I would
guess that of the unsolicited manuscripts that come in, the success rate
would be one per cent.
The number of unsolicited manuscripts we get in a year is in the
region of 350, at an average of 80,000 words each. And that's just the
bulk of the material we don't publish. I get through up to two books a
day. Amazingly enough, I still have good eyesight and don't need glasses
to read all these words. I put it down to my healthy lifestyle. I do a
lot of the reading at home, get away from telephones in the morning and
I like to think that there is nothing that goes through this office that
does not touch me at some point.
Somehow, I still manage the complete get-away. Go on lots of holidays
with the kids. And with the age the kids are at, holidays tend to be
child-related. It's got to be somewhere with a beach and a pool. Last
year it was Florida and Disney World. This year it's down the southern
tip of Portugal. I take stacks of books with me. That's when I do my
reading for sheer enjoyment. These tend to be thrillers -- spy
thrillers, political thrillers, that kind of escaptist literature.
A case full of books on holidays. But never any manuscripts. I think
my wife would throw them in the swimming pool if I did.
* Bill Campbell is director of Edinburgh-based Mainstream.
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