Big daddy Robert Thomson has already made clear News Corp is going to embrace AI in all its glory, so better to take the reins than be dragged along regardless.
If it’s July, it must be time for the annual summer party at HarperCollins UK, where CEO Charlie Redmayne will either be shouting from the rooftops about how well books are selling, or mumbling about those nasty “challenges” that somehow crop up year after year to explain any dip in sales.
Summer party 2015: “I genuinely believe publishing is entering a golden age. There are more people reading than ever (and) although we face certain challenges from our friends in Seattle, who seem to want to take over the world, that’s OK, we deal with it, it’s what we do.”
Summer party 2017: “A terrific year.”
Of course, back in the 2010s Amazon was the bogey-man du jour, the just-add-water instant excuse for any publishing problem, with a side salad of screen fatigue, attention deficit, unlimited subscription and any other two-word soundbite that might keep a headline editor happy and sound like a good excuse of less than stellar performance.
Summer party 2023, referencing 2022: “A really strong year.” Redmayne added, “we’ve faced many of the same challenges that many businesses face, but have had the benefit of brilliant books.“
Oops! Maybe not such a clever thing to say when this year it’s roll-out-the-excuses time, despite 2023 having been a “fantastic year with an incredible array of really brilliant books.”
It’s not clear how Redmayne defines “really good” and “fantastic“, and UK sales are rarely separated from the bigger HarperCollins operation, but the “fantastic” year was juxtaposed this time around by a new set of challenges in what The Bookseller‘s Heloise Wood called “an unusually sobering speech.”
Per Wood’s summary: “The publishing industry is facing three very significant challenges,” they being AI (of course), the decline in British kids reading for pleasure, and freedom to publish (Amazon, it seems, is no longer a challenge).
Taking those in reverse order, Redmayne opined, “We publish books from the right, from the left and from the centre—from all sides of the argument, and we do without fear or favour because that’s what a publisher must do.”
Which of course is nonsense. No publisher is obliged to publish anything if it chooses not to. There’s a reason you won’t find books published by HarperCollins advocating paedophilia or racial violence or anti-Islamic sentiments or terrorist bomb-making manuals or books full of addresses and phone numbers of celebrities.
The choice to publish the Boris Johnson memoir is the right one, but done for simple commercial reasons with a sprinkling of public interest and tempered by social responsibility.
HarperCollins UK’s Booksquad initiative is an attempt to arrest the decline in reading for pleasure that threatens to pull the rug from the British publishing industry as today’s kids become tomorrow’s adult buyers.
But it begs the question why, if HarperCollins has been publishing all these “brilliant books” all this time, this decline is happening at all. But Charlie is quite unwilling to go down the education rabbit hole to see what is really causing this decline.
AI of course had to be mentioned this year, although somehow it didn’t warrant a nod last year.
What changed? Popular opinion, as Chat GPT took AI to the masses, including authors.
Redmayne reassured HarperCollins party-goers, “I know it’s a troubling time seeing generative AI come down the road. It’s like the digital revolution which came before it. We see threats but also huge opportunities.”
“A troubling time seeing generative AI coming down the road,” Charlie? Hachette UK’s David Shelley was talking about AI back in 2018.
And Redmayne’s oh-so-comfortable position on the fence – his non-committal words suggest he has a sofa, bookshelf, TV and a year’s supply of pizza up there – is in stark contrast to HarperCollins’ parent company, News Corp, which in May 2024 signed a landmark deal with OpenAI. Charlie, here’s the link to the News Corp press release, in case you were busy reading the Boris Johnson manuscript when the announcement was made.
Back in March, Thad McIlroy singled out HarperCollins for the way it artfully avoids taking a stance on AI.
Charlie, you know the Luddite side of the fence offers HarperCollins no future, and on the other side of the fence big daddy Robert Thomson has already made clear News Corp is going to embrace AI in all its glory, so better to take the reins than be dragged along regardless.
Take a deep breath, pull on those 100% pure wool nettle-grasping gloves, and announce HarperCollins is going to lead book publishing into this brave new world. Then sit back and enjoy the ride.
