BookBlast interview with Rose & Barnaby, Eland Books
Rose & Barnaby, tell us a bit about yourselves. Were your parents great readers?
ROSE: No, but there were books around. I was quite a lonely child, and books were a marvellous escape. They provided adventure, friends, and role models — Noel Streatfield, E. Nesbit, Johanna Spyri, L. L. Montgomery, Louisa M. Alcott, and Lucy M. Boston. Just remembering makes me want to get back under the sheets and counterpane with a pile of them.
BARNABY: No, I can remember them both being rather concerned that I was reading “yet another book” instead of riding a pony or playing with the dogs. There were many books in the tiny, dark Tudor cottage in which I was brought up, but they were mostly all inherited. They included a vast shelf of bound Punch magazines and a full set of Jorrocks. At a young age, I used my pocket money to acquire the Ladybird history books, but before the age of seven, I had graduated to Jackdaws — fascinating folders of facsimile historic documents and maps.
Did you want to work in the publishing industry from the start?
ROSE: No. I was in the film business at first, but I married a bookaholic, and books took over our lives.
BARNABY: No, I had imagined I would either be a Naval Officer like my father and grandfather, or in the cavalry like my other grandfather, which would be combined in old age by brewing beer or becoming a clergyman like my ancestors.
Has your vision from when you bought Eland fifteen years ago changed?
ROSE: No, not really. We do what we do out of the belief that fear is born of ignorance, something so very visible in world politics today. My current fantasy is to drop Donald Trump in the middle of that magnificent Naqsh-e Jahan Square in Isfahan, built at around the time of the Mayflower, without telling him where he is, get him talking to some of the locals, and then see if he can call Iran evil. Or get him to read a book about the place, though I think that might be even more fantastical. Eland offers an armchair way of getting to know our fellow earthlings.
BARNABY: No, I adored the Eland approach to publishing years before we acquired the business. The role model set by the founder of Eland, John Hatt, remains our absolute guiding example. Though as the years progress, I have learned to combine ever more scrupulous financial caution with the passion necessary for publishing with conviction.
How do you balance originality and profitability?
ROSE: Our lives are only made profitable by doing other things as well as publishing.
BARNABY: We imagine our market (made of individual readers) to be just as interested in the world and passionate about fine writing as we are. We have never yet patronized our readership by publishing anything that we do not also cherish.
What was the book that made you fall in love with reading?
ROSE: I can’t remember exactly, but one of the above authors.
BARNABY: One of my happiest memories as a child is being read The Water Babies by my mother when I was very ill, supported by my father’s habit of reading to us from Kipling or Stevenson on the family holidays that we took in a very isolated cottage in the mountains of North Wales, where sheep used to graze the grass on the thatched roof.
What makes you decide to publish one writer and not another?
ROSE: Readability, truthfulness, and the extent to which it conveys the essence of a culture.
BARNABY: We look for books that have been written with inner conviction and truth about the world. We want them to be observant of others, capable of summing up a spirit of place and catching the moment on the wing — aside from such everyday literary skills as being funny, wry, intelligent, human, universal, self-deprecating, and idiosyncratic. Plus, the whole book has to be held together by a page-turning gift for storytelling.
Technology and the rise of Kindle and iPads have revolutionized the publishing industry. How well have publishers adapted to industry changes?
ROSE: I don’t know how to answer that — some better than others, I suspect. There are some who still set things in hot metal and others who inhabit “paperless” offices. Digitization hasn’t been as dramatic in its effect as in the music industry, so we’ve had a bit of a breather in a way. There was terrible fear for a while.
BARNABY: I am a technophobe who loves the way books were made in the 18th century, but in order to protect our company and expand our readership, we have (due to my wife and business partner’s energy and ability) speedily embraced every new medium of storytelling. E-books are an especially valid way to read if you wish to pack light, and through Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, we can talk and communicate with our readers as well as with our traditional bookshop outlets.
Do you enjoy reading e-books? Will the physical book die away eventually?
ROSE: No. I check our e-book proofs on a Kindle. But I rarely read on it otherwise. I much prefer not to use a screen when I can, and I love a well-made paperback.
BARNABY: I have never read an e-book, and if the physical book is to die away, I would like to be buried with them or burned on a pyre of books.
Your views on marketing and distribution? And on social media?
ROSE: Crucial to have your books as available as possible, but not at an unsustainable discount. Social media — I’m glad I don’t have to do it, but I recognize its value as a way of getting news out there. It’s here to stay, and I think I’m going to have to grow up.
BARNABY: I have spent decades looking for outlets outside the traditional trade. As I get older, I realize that book-lovers (like me) not only love books, they love bookshops. When we work best, it is when we integrate and partner with a traditional bookshop.
How important is funding for independent publishers?
ROSE: We are very lucky to have a few consistent sellers which support the whole list. We like to be debt-free and have managed to stay that way.
BARNABY: We have never applied for any government money but have often received grants for translations, which have been vital. If I was in charge of a grant-giving body, I would concentrate on supporting bookshops.
Your motto?
ROSE: Kindness wins.
BARNABY: Another glass?
John Hatt’s Eland Books was the first of a wave of travel lists that emerged in the early 1980s, quickly joined by Century Travellers, the Penguin Classic Travel Library, Picador, and Virago. Fifteen years ago, former travel guidebook authors Barnaby Rogerson and his wife Rose Baring took over, and although its list has diversified into biography and fiction, the majority of the titles remain tales of travel.
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