Subscribe to RSS 2.0Friday's Project is full of woe
I wonder if the saga of The Friday Project is finally coming to an end. According to their insolvency firm (quoted in a Bookseller article), their list is currently being sold off. I don't believe that publishers sell off their titles shortly before making a comeback. I think it's safe to say that they are being wound down.
Perhaps it's considered inappropriate to idly speculate on such things, but I'm not not just indulging in gossip. In past years, I've put a lot of work into keeping The Friday Project going. I've taken heaps of IT support calls at odd times and spent many dozens of hours unclogging e-mail, resurrecting their website and crawling under desks with bits of cable (favours for which they very kindly ended up reimbursing me). We are also one of their creditors (among other things we've handled some of their cover design), although we are realistic about our chances of seeing that money. Not to mention that Scott Pack, who had been so personally supportive of us when he was at Waterstone's, and who we'd got to know in those days, made the move to become their commercial director. It's our personal belief that without his influence The Friday Project (TFP) would have long since gone under. So I don't feel my interest is idle and I also tend to think that when a firm is in debt, insolvent, in administration and its assets are being 'disposed of', it also isn't speculation to suggest that they're being shut down*.
Besides Snowbooks, I've only known two other small businesses with any familiarity and both of them have hit problems and become slow torture for those involved. Small firms are labours of love and if they founder, which they often do, it's a wrenching experience. Anyone considering embarking on such a venture would be well advised to put themselves in Scott's and Clare's shoes and to think how difficult it must be for them. Once all this is concluded, I hope Clare is able to find a job without the stress and the demands she inherited when she found herself in sole charge of TFP. And I hope Scott gets some credit for the solid work he did in keeping a leaky ship afloat as long as he did. Just thinking about it is enough to stop Em and I grumbling that Snowbooks isn't more profitable and instead have us feeling relieved that we're not having to speak with disappointed staff and authors about their futures. Regardless of mistakes that may have been made in the past, it's not a situation I would wish on anyone.
*Please note, I'm basing this view on public domain info like published articles and not on any insider knowledge, of which I have known.
Comments: 5
Do you think TFP would have done better if they had not put all their eggs into one genre basket (the blog-memoir), nor been in such a rush to get so many titles out in the first few years?
Snowbooks, in comparison, has very wisely spread the risk over several genres, and not rushed dozens of books into print.
Posted by: NaomiM on March 13, 2008 01:36 PM
Given that the latter is a question facing any new publisher, Naomi, it's obviously worth considering. But right this second, we're wondering if we shouldn't have put out more titles, reasoning that lots of minor successes is an easier goal than a few larger ones. As for the original web focus, I don't know that Scott has let it stop him finding interesting conventional titles. Purely my viewpoint, but what it lost them in sales opportunities I should think it made up for in giving investors and the media a catchy reason to be interested. And we've lost count of the people who told us that dotting our titles across multiple genres was commercial suicide.
Posted by: Rob on March 13, 2008 01:44 PM
This is really sad and chilling. It's my feeling that the small presses, with their inventive ways of doing business, are the best - possibly the only - way of keeping publishing from becoming moribund in the way the record industry was before people discovered you could make good music in your garage and market it online.
although I've never been published by a big house, I know a lot of people who are, who might have as many as three different editors over the course of a single book, who can never get hold of anyone to answer their queries etc. etc. (Presumably if you're a teenage celeb with a ghost-written autobiog this is different)
The proliferation of new small presses over the past few years has been really healthy and we should worry like hell when one goes to the wall.
Posted by: Sarah Bower on March 14, 2008 10:45 AM
I find your posts quite interesting. It sounds to me like you have some sort of grudge against TFP. Given that there is no firm information available on this, accusations of leaky ships and the like seem a bit presumptive.
Can I also ask what exactly it is you did that, as you say, "kept The Friday Project going"? It sounds like you should have been on the payroll if you've done that much.
And as a small publisher yourself, I would have expected more sympathy and solidarity, rather than sharpening your knives. It comes across like smug satisfaction..
Posted by: Paul Greaves on March 21, 2008 07:35 PM
Huh? Paul, how do you get 'smug satisfaction' from me talking about a wrenching experience that I wouldn't wish on anyone? And as regards what I did for them, they called me when their website was hacked and also when their office server crashed or when they'd had no e-mail for a week. Things like that. Though why it matters I don't quite see.
Posted by: Rob on March 22, 2008 09:51 AM