'Brand author' a 'vulgar' term says Jeffrey Archer

Multi-million selling author Jeffrey Archer can’t stand being labelled as a “brand author” he has divulged.

Speaking to The Bookseller as his novel Kane and Abel get its 100th reprint, the prolific writer said the term ‘brand author’ was a “vulgar word! Like a can of baked beans”.

"Publishing houses use it all the time now. My publishers say, 'oh no Jeffrey you're a brand now'. But I hate it. I say I'm an author, and they say 'oh no you're a brand'. And they say Kane and Abel is a brand. It's a new concept in publishing I haven't quite got used to,” he said.

Archer has penned 35 books, selling 275 million copies worldwide across all formats. Kane and Abel, his third novel which has been reissued this month for the 100th time with a “striking" new cover, “changed his life” when it was published in 1979. Archer, today a multimillionaire, was plunged into debt in the early seventies after losing £500,000 in a fraudulent investment scheme, after which he quit his role as an MP in 1974.

“I was in debt at the time [of writing] by a quarter of a million," he said. "And I knew it had sold to the Americans for $3,300,000, so I knew they thought it was going to be a big success. The first cheque, which was one third, was due on publication day. So [my life] changed in the sense we bought the old vicarage in Grantchester, where Mary and I still live; that was the big change. The next big change is that was really the breakthrough of my writing career."

He added: “Most books have a shelf life of really two years max. Some go on; you don't expect to get 35 years.”

Kane and Abel, the first of a trilogy, follows the rivalry of two men born on the same day into very different circumstances. It shifted over one million copies in its first week of sale and has been translated into 35 languages worldwide to date with sales now in excess of 34 millions copies.

Archer's inspiration for Kane and Abel was a man who ran a helicopter company and his friend, American politician and businessman Rockefeller, who in Archer’s fictional retelling turn against one another. "Many of my stories I pick up from real people, because they are often the best stories of the lot,” he said, before adding of his methods: “I think if you're a storyteller you tell stories. That hasn't changed at all.”

Looking ahead, Archer swears he will never co-write a book - unlike some of his "brand author" contemporaries, such as Wilbur Smith, recently at the centre of an eight-figure sterling deal with Bonnier Zaffre - despite seeing the temptation to co-write as "easy money".

"No, never," 77-year-old Archer responded point-blank to the suggestion. "My style and what I do, I can tell from the hundreds of emails I receive [my readers] know me so well they would know if someone joined in. It's an easy way of making money but I won't have anything to do with it!"

As the Clifton Chronicles come to a close with his 2017 paperback This Was a Man selling 64,000 copies since May, Archer is next publishing a collection of short stories this year, out 2nd November, and concentrating on his next project, Heads You Win - a new novel he says that has been "the biggest challenge of my life”.

The project is the culmination of an idea arrived on mid-way through writing the Clifton Chronicles that “just developed and got bigger and bigger”. It follows a boy, born in the Ukraine, whose family must decide between a new life in the UK or the US on the toss of a coin. Showing the outcome of both possibilities through the story’s telling, Archer promises it will be “as big as Kane and Abel” as “a one off with an absolute shock ending”.

Known for writing in the region of 18 drafts per book from his villa, named Writer's Block, in Mallorca, Archer is now on the 14th draft of the novel, meaning Pan Macmillan are now just a few months away from receiving the finished manuscript. “Frankly I don't know what will happen after this. I'm just so excited about Heads You Win; my concentration is on that at the moment,” he said.

Speaking about the impact of the digital revolution on his career, Archer said Amazon has “changed the whole world” and there are “no rules nowadays”. The author’s e-book sales have soared from 5% of his overall sales to 42% in the last five years.

“Amazon has changed the whole world,” he said. “And with Kindle and e-books as well it's changed everybody's life, because more people are reading books because of Amazon, not less.” He continued: “It was very much more conventional when I started out 40 years ago, very much more orthodox. Publishing was an industry run by a handful of people who chatted to each other and made the rules. There are no rules nowadays. You can read a book on a phone. Everything has changed.”

He advised fellow authors to “move with the times” and said not to take an interest in promotions for books would be “short-sighted”.

“You're wise to move with the times, so it's lucky I have a very young team at Macmillan who brief me the whole time,” Archer said. “If they were to say to me, ‘oh you'll never believe it, Jeffrey, but everybody is buying tortoises so they can read the inscription on their backs’, I wouldn't be surprised, by anything!

“You just have to move with the times and I've taken a very big interest in how the sales are done, how the promotions are done...Because I want to be read by more people. And for any author not to take an interest is really rather short-sighted.”

As for whether Archer would be tempted to move publisher like some of his contemporaries, the writer said he was “very happy” with Pan Macmillan. “I started with Hodder and Stoughton, then Harper Collins and now finally with Pan Macmillan, which is where I shall remain. I'm very happy there,” he said. Expanding on the reasons he wants to stay with the firm, Archer said: “They are a young team, very bright. The women in that team are quite exceptional. I know many publishing houses, like premiership football teams, have been trying to buy them and what is so pleasing is the team of eight, I haven't lost anybody and that's been the thing I like most.”

Kane and Abel will be re-issued by Pan in celebration of its 100th reprint next week on 24th August as a £8.99 paperback. 

Archer, who served two years in jail in 2001-03 for perjury, will also see his non-fiction Prison Diaries re-issued this year, and the publication of his new volume of short stories, Tell Tale, on 2nd November.