The joy of... the publishing anecdote

"Most conversations in publishing were vaguely Alzheimic, because everyone suffered from over-thinking and over-reading and no one could remember if this was the first time they’d said something today, or the fifteenth, and whether it was true or made up. You can identify someone who works in publishing because they tell every anecdote as if for the first time, with the same expression as someone giving you a tissue that they have just realised has probably already been used." (Our Tragic Universe, Scarlett Thomas)

What better time to celebrate this most classic of daily publishing joys, than the top manufacturer of all book people anecdotes: the Frankfurt Book Fair. It’s not terribly surprising that an industry devoted to storytelling would be so adept at finding the drama in their day-to-day lives, then packaging it up and passing it on, hoping it will make its way down the generations into the workplace gossip backlist – like that time Mick Jagger came to the LBF Canongate party and, according to the anecdotes, danced personally with about 150 different international editors. 

It’s a treat when the story you heard at 9.30am in the IRC from a colleague, which you told at 10.30am to a Dutch publisher, comes back round to you at dinner with flourishes which can only have been added by the world’s most talented editorial minds, all working alongside each other on one basic text. It’s less good if the names got lost somewhere, and "an agent" of the story, happens to be the one to whom you are recounting the new, embellished version... or when you are in fact the agent in question, but you really don’t remember it quite like that.

Knowledge really is power. If we don’t know who is doing what, we can’t buy and sell and publish.

The scouts have made a whole business out of getting the book gossip to their clients before anyone else does. What percentage of all our meetings is spent on who moved where, and why, and how many are in for some auction which has nothing to do with you? And can you believe what they paid? 

A former colleague ended up with a surprise auction one book fair, when someone innocently got the wrong end of the stick and started a rumour she’d had multiple bids for a book. In fact, she’d had none. But the news of the fake auction spread like wildfire through the halls and quickly manifested into a real one. 

And to defend our gossip-hungry publishing minds – knowledge really is power. If we don’t know who is doing what, we can’t buy and sell and publish. If we don’t know the gossip from the different markets, how can we expect our authors to do well there? I love hearing stories from more experienced publishing veterans – I’ve never forgotten the one about how David Godwin got on a plane to India to sign Arundhati Roy, the ultimate "show don’t tell" of potential author enthusiasm, and the other day the legendary Maggie Hanbury told me some excellent tales of life with both J G Ballad and Katie Price. I can only hope that one day I have my own library of anecdotes to inspire a future generation. 

But more than anything, talking to each other and telling our stories is what brings us together; and after years of being starved of the real-life contact which forges the most powerful publishing – and human – relationships, it’s the most joyous of joys to have it back.

Just remember: don’t believe everything you hear.