Triumph of an odd couple

It was Jamie Byng who snatched the winning novel, Life of Pi, from the clutches of Faber, who had published Canadian Yann Martel’s two previous books. And it is Jamie Byng who snatched Canongate itself from the hands of the receivers in 1994. But this week he has decreed the spotlight must expand. He’ll suffer no more profiles probing his aristocratic roots, questioning his student dress-sense or his untamed hair. Canongate is not the personal plaything of the Honourable James Edmund Byng, youngest son of the Earl of Stafford; it never was. With 15 full-time staff and literary clout massively disproportionate to its size, it is a pioneering company of very serious intent. And to emphasise the fact, Byng insists that he will only answer questions accompanied by David Graham, Canongate’s managing director. Not because he can’t talk about his work and ethos without back-up, but because "two people run this company. It’s a partnership, and it’s time that this was recognised."

So Byng and Graham sit side by side, tugging at their cigarettes with a relaxed symmetry. Though they mirror each other in body language, their appearance is vividly contrasting: Graham, corporately smart in checked jacket, deep blue shirt and polished shoes, Byng still favouring the sartorial equivalent of an unmade bed. Together, they stage a delicate pas-de-deux of mutual appreciation. Very, very British, and very, very polite, though to my surprise it is David Graham rather than Winchester-educated Byng who sports the posher voice.

"The atmosphere at Canongate is brilliant," Byng’s sales-pitch begins. "There is total involvement from everyone, and no real hierarchy ..."

A slight pause (possibly while he considers the last time he shouted at someone or withheld a salary increase) allows Graham to glide his own chocolatey vowels to centre stage. "It is quite difficult to describe the relationship between the two of us, and it confuses a lot of people, because it’s not a divisional structure. Jamie’s the publisher and I’m the MD, but I get involved in what are basically publishing decisions, and he gets involved in what would traditionally be management decisions."

What’s so confusing about that? In a company with fewer than 20 employees, multi-tasking is scarcely revolutionary.

Graham was appointed MD in February 2000. His career background had always been publishing. "I had actually worked at Canongate back in 1987, with Stephanie Wolfe-Murray," he adds, like a veteran displaying campaign medals, "so I knew Canongate of old, and have always watched its progress, and … " (here he bestows an avuncular smile towards Byng) "especially watched its progress under this young person who took it over and was creating such a storm with the Bible series: a truly remarkable piece of publishing."

Aha! Now I see the real benefit of the twin-speaker interview. The duo can unfurl a carpet of congratulation between them which would otherwise appear nauseatingly fulsome.

Five years ago, the device was almost as successful when the Times announced that Jamie Byng and Kevin Williamson had "made publishing the new rock’n’roll" via a superbly seditious pro-drugs imprint named Rebel Inc. Williamson and Byng made provocative press statements about drugs culture having no voice, and Byng insisted there was nothing unusual in a publishing house promoting a campaign to legalise drug-taking.

"It’s a publisher’s duty to publish books that question the status quo," Byng said at the time. I ask him if he has changed his opinion.

"No," he says emphatically. "I still believe that. It’s the underlying principle about what we publish. There are lots of responsibilities about publishing, one of them is taking risks and one is supporting the writers you believe in, and publishing books you believe in."

Rebel Inc certainly reflected that, but so did another of Byng’s remarkable ideas, Payback, a subsidiary imprint devoted to little-known (and mainly dead) black American writers. Both of these are to be transferred to Canongate.

"Without sounding too cynical, they have served their purpose," explains Byng. "When we first started Payback in 1995, it was a very conscious thing , an attempt to redefine Canongate by focusing on black writing and books about black culture, so that there was no way London literary editors could say: ‘this is local, parochial, and only of Scottish interest’. There was huge resistance to Scottish writers then; it was really difficult to get London-based people to look at new writing from Scotland because there are just so many books being published. way, way, too many if we’re honest."

For the problems Byng inherited at Canongate were much more than simply financial. The company, which had been founded in the 1970s by Stephanie Wolfe-Murray’s husband Angus, had initially focused on reprinting Scottish classics such as Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s Sunset Song. And despite significant successes with titles like Alasdair Gray’s Lanark, Charles Palliser’s The Quincunx and Jimmy Boyle’s A Sense of Freedom, the company was never identified with anything remotely hip.

Byng changed all that. He was only 24 when he began working at Canongate as a part-time publicist. His enthusiasms were in keeping with his age: rock music and low-key sedition. During his three years at Edinburgh University he had shared a flat with Charlie McVeigh, an American with a 2000-disc record collection and a beautiful artist sister, Whitney, whom Byng later married. So the fascination with black culture and writing came initially from his love of black music, which he played on his own club nights at Chocolate City throughout his last year at university. A challenging antidote to London of scorn anything perceived as tartan-trimmed.

But, understandably, Byng and Graham want to spend this week focusing on the future, not enumerating the leaps and bounds which brought the company to its present sunny plain.

"My job is to channel the huge entrepreneurial energy there is at Canongate, and to convert that to sales and profit, crudely speaking. But you can’t do that effectively unless you participate and support that entrepreneurial spirit: it is a very quixotic and mercurial thing. If you try to grasp it too firmly, you can kill it, so letting that spirit thrive while directing its focus is the basic business challenge for me."

This sounds so headmasterly that Byng interrupts. "One of the questions David and I have been asked constantly in the last three days is: What will this prize do to Canongate? The answer is that there will be no fundamental changes. We’ll continue to publish writers we feel passionately about and who say something important, and who write beautifully."

So there will be no shift in the "alternative" aura which surrounds the operation?

"We could allow that to happen, but we won’t. In purely business terms, it would be destroying our own brand identity. It would be self-defeating; like Coca-Cola deciding to make socks."

But how , I wonder, do these astonishing, avant-garde writers and Canongate find each other? Where and how is the marriage made? The synopsis of Life of Pi - the story of a boy trapped on a life raft with a hungry Bengal tiger and a broken legged zebra, sounds more than a little bizarre.

"That’s what made it so easy to sell," Byng laughs. "People in the trade are bombarded with pitches for books, and this one certainly grabs the attention because it’s like nothing else they’ve ever heard of, and so they immediately snap out of their torpor."

Even so, Byng found Yann Martel almost by accident. "I happened to be in the right place at the right time." Faber had published Martel’s first two books, and would have published the third had an enthusiastic New York editor not told Byng he would love it. She was right, he did. Meanwhile Faber, who had not been bowled over by huge sales on the other Martel books, were dragging their feet. Byng was told that if Canongate could match their advance, Life of Pi would be theirs. So he did, and for what must now seem like a derisory 15,000, he acquired a book which will potentially make his company 2 million.

"But the size of the advance does not necessarily reflect our opinion of the book," says Graham hastily. "And it’s by no means the biggest advance we have paid, though in retrospect, it does seem cheap. But four years ago we would never have been offered the opportunity. Books come to you in a variety of delicious ways," sighs Byng, sounding almost dreamy.

But not often in a handwritten envelope it seems. Canongate receive 40 unsolicited manuscripts every week. There are nine "readers" within the company. "We do go look at everything we receive … eventually," says Graham. "As a purely business decision, that may not be the most effective use of company time, as it’s highly unlikely to be rewarded by the one-in-a-million brilliant find. But we do it, because that’s what we’re here to do, and it would be woeful and cynical and wrong not to."

And have they ever unearthed any gems this way?

"Um, not in my time. No," Byng replies, only to be interrupted by Graham who insists he is reading something by a schoolboy at the moment which seems "quite remarkable".

Not altogether as remarkable as their next big thing, a book called The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break, by Steven Sherrill which they hope could achieve the same success as Life of Pi and has a plot every bit as wacky.

"The same wonderful imagination, beautiful writing, genuine compassion and humanity," enthuses Byng.

"We are really evangelical about the books we publish. That’s what makes me happy … I wake up every morning feeling happy to be alive, because I’m doing something that inspires me."

The last word goes to David Graham. "Publishing is not a vocation that generally gives huge financial rewards; so if you’re not happy, go and do something in the City and make ten times as much money. Luckily we are all very, very happy here."

And for a moment they look so cosy and content, it wouldn’t have surprised me if they’d kissed.