David Robinson: Byng demonstrates his commercial flair

Published on Sunday 14 March 2010 21:54

IF PUBLISHING is a casino, Canongate boss Jamie Byng is the kind of gambler whose bets are keenly watched by everyone else around the roulette wheel.

They're right to do so. No other Scottish firm has ever produced a million-selling Booker Prize winner, as Canongate did with Yann Martel's Life of Pi. And if that was the moment publishers started paying attention to which books Byng was betting on, his track record since then has only confirmed his reputation for shrewdness and commercial flair.

By the time Canongate was voted Britain's publisher of the year last July – the top award in the industry, again unmatched by any other Scottish publisher – the evidence for that was all over the bestseller charts.

Barack Obama's Dreams of My Father and The Audacity of Hope – signed up back in 2007 when the Chicago senator was trailing Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries – was the most obvious example. But Rebecca Miller's The Private Lives of Pippa Lee was also selling well and an innovative marketing drive had boosted The Mighty Book of Boosh high up the Christmas bestseller charts the previous year.

On the face of it, publishing Hugh Ambrose's The Pacific might seem a riskier bet for the British market. A detailed military history telling the story of the war against Japan through the eyes of five men who fought in its key battles, it is exclusively American in focus.

Then again, so was The Wire creator David Simon's Homicide and The Corner – both snapped up for a song by Byng and also published last year. And as the HBO series of the book, to be screened early next month, is its biggest-ever production, with writers such as The Wire's George Pelecanos scripting two of the ten episodes, there's every sign that it'll be worth watching.

Will that translate to bestsellerdom for Canongate? I have my doubts. But betting against Byng? I have even bigger doubts about doing that.