THE BIBLIO FILE is a podcast about "the book," and an inquiry into the wider world of book culture. Hosted by Nigel Beale it features wide ranging, long-form conversations with authors, poets, book publishers, booksellers, book editors, book collectors, book makers, book scholars, book critics, book designers, book publicists, literary agents and many others inside the book trade and out - from writer to reader.
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Typography Dojo is the place where we explore the traditions and techniques in the practice of type and typography with lessons and insights from visual design masters. Join me to learn more about typesetting, readability, hand lettering, editorial design, type design, Calligraphy, logo design and how they improve graphic communication.
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Ian Birch is "former editorial director of Hearst UK and Emap. He began his magazine career in the late 1970s as a reporter for Melody Maker before moving to Smash Hits where he was assistant editor for three years. His first launch and editorship came in the late 1980s with Sky Magazine. At Hearst UK he was publisher of Company, Esquire and Harper…
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Paul Wells on Writing Politics for Newspapers, Magazines, Books & Substack
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Paul Wells is a leading Canadian political journalist and author. We met at his offices in Ottawa to talk about his impressive career, and his craft writing about politics for newspapers, magazines, books, and now Substack. Topics covered include: observing and interviewing politicians; reading and remembering history; putting events into context; …
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Christopher Long on the Genius Graphics of Lucian Bernhard
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“Lucian Bernhard (1883-1972) was one of the great founders of modern graphic design. In a career spanning nearly five decades in Berlin and New York, Bernhard laid the foundation for a new language of form and communication. His brilliant posters, advertisements, book designs and typefaces created the very look of the twentieth century and beyond. …
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Nick Anthony on AI, and writing his first Novel
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I interviewed Nick Anthony a year or so ago about his experience writing a first novel and getting parts of it work-shopped. Today I catch up with him to find out what he’s been doing and where he’s at now on the road to getting his first book published. We talk about, among other things, how AI has helped him in the writing process; subjective and…
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John Sargent on beating Amazon & Google, and saving Books
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John Sargent was too young to fight in WW ll but he spent years battling Amazon and Google in the trenches on behalf of publishers and authors, protecting copyright and defending book prices. John grew up on a cattle ranch in Wyoming. Over forty years he worked at six publishing companies, including Simon & Schuster where he was the publisher of th…
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Joshua Doležal is a writer and award-winning teacher with 20 years of experience in publishing and editing. His mentor was Ted Kooser, former Poet Laureate of the United States and Pulitzer Prize winner. Josh's work has appeared in more than 30 magazines including The Kenyon Review and The Chronicle of Higher Education. His memoir Down from the Mou…
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Andrew Franklin "the best of the best in U.K. publishing"
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James Daunt calls him "the best of the best in U.K. publishing, constantly challenging the industry to move on when it drags its feet." Listen to my conversation with Andrew Franklin to learn why. Andrew is founder and, until recently, publisher of Profile Books, an award-winning British independent publishing house which launched in 1996. Best-sel…
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Michael Schmidt on 50+ years publishing poetry
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Here’s how the Carcanet Press website describes him: Michael Schmidt FRSL, poet, scholar, critic and translator, was born in Mexico in 1947; he studied at Harvard and at Wadham College, Oxford, before settling in England. Among his many publications are several collections of poems and a novel, The Colonist (1981), about a boy’s childhood in Mexico…
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Andrew Nash on the value of Publishers' Archives
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Andrew Nash is Reader in Book History at the Institute of English Studies, University of London (a leading book history scholar in other words) and Director of the London Rare Books School. We sat down in the stacks at the Mark Longman "Books about Books" Library at the University of Reading (well, actually the Museum of English Rural Life in Readi…
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Sir Tim Waterstone on Building a Bookselling Empire
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Sir Tim Waterstone revolutionized bookselling in Britain and changed the country's cultural landscape. He also wrote a memoir, called The Face Pressed Against a Window (Atlantic, 2019). We met at The Garrick Club in London to talk about the book, and about how he accomplished what he accomplished. Topics covered in our conversation include Tim's tr…
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Novelist David Mitchell on What he Does and How he Does it
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I was in Ireland recently to interview two of the best novelists on the face of the planet. John Banville, in Dublin, and David Mitchell, in Cork. As a cost-cutting measure I decided to ask them both the same questions: What do you do? How do you do it? Why do you do it? And: Why does it matter? I got diametrically opposed answers. So much for my c…
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John Banville on how and why he writes novels
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Early on in this conversation there's a dead patch. The mic didn't pick up the glorious seagull call that comes reverberating down the chimney into the room John Banville and I were sitting in. John Banville is an Irish novelist, short-story writer, and screenwriter who hates his own work. He's won a ton of prizes ("hundreds") including the Booker …
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Tim Parks on how to be a better reader
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Last year I interviewed Margaret Atwood about "the role" of the writer. No such thing she informed me. So we talked about the "non-role." Combatative she is. Just like Tim Parks. He talks with me here about the other end of the spectrum, the reader. How to be a better one. I want him to be prescriptive, he won’t be. But he does provide a lot of exc…
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Marta Sylvestrova on Czech Film Poster Design
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Marta Sylvestrova is a curator and art critic, and has headed the graphic design department at the Moravian Gallery in Brno, Czech Republic, since 1986. She is a graduate of Masaryk University where she studied art history, and has, over the years, been involved in the organizing of many Brno Biennieles. They feature and evaluate graphic designs fr…
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Nic Bottomley on his Reading Spas and the future of Bookselling
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Nic Bottomley is a bookseller, and co-owner with his wife Juliette of Mr B's Emporium of Reading Delights, an independent bookshop based in Bath that has twice been named UK Independent Bookshop of the Year. Prior to setting up shop Nic was a capital markets lawyer. He currently serves as Executive Chair of the Booksellers Association of UK and Ire…
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Nana Lohrengel on booksellers school in Milan
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The Umberto and Elisabetta Mauri Booksellers School was founded in 1983 by Luciano Mauri in memory of his father and his daughter, who died prematurely. "In the course of almost thirty years of teaching activity it has trained new generations of booksellers and has become a laboratory for experimentation and discussion on the possibilities of the b…
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Ricky Cavallero on Book Publishing as Partying
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Ricky Cavallero was CEO of the Spanish-language publisher Random House Mondadori for eight years. In 1995 he joined Mondadori as Director of Marketing Books; two years later he was appointed General Manager of the Spanish subsidiary and launched the Alexandros trilogy by Valerio Massimo Manfredi which became a huge best-seller. In 1999 he inaugurat…
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Matteo Columbo on Falling in Love with Margaret Atwood
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Matteo Columbo is Margaret Atwood's publicist and personal magician at the Ponte alle Grazie publishing house in Italy. We met in Milan to discuss, among other things, the relationship between magic and publicity, the things that Margaret's handlers insist must be present in her hotel rooms; banana tricks, surprises, examples of how to gain the att…
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Dan Fridd on the latest in Bookselling Technology
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I saw Dan Fridd in action promoting Edelweiss "the book industry's platform to market, sell, discover, and order new titles" at the RISE Bookselling Conference in Prague a few weeks ago and knew I had to have him on the show. Dan is Client "Success" Manager for Edelweiss. We talk about the company, his career in bookselling IT, and how "Above the T…
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Maria Hamrefors was appointed chairwoman of the Swedish Booksellers Association in 2019 after a long career in the book industry. Previous positions include CEO of Akademibokhandeln, CEO of Bokus, CEO of Norstedts Publishing Group, CEO of Thomson Corp in Sweden and director of Sweet & Maxwell Group in the UK. She is the treasurer of the European an…
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Barbara Hoepli on how they love Bookstores in Italy
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Putin is murdering Ukrainians. Xi is likely perpetrating a genocide on the Uyghurs. He's also threatening to murder Taiwanese, and he's crushing democracy in Hong Kong. Trump is ignoring the rule of law. Florida is censoring books. Why am I doing what I'm doing? Why have I interviewed more than 600 people about the book? Well, precisely to help con…
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Jeff Deutsch on a new kind of bookstore and the paradox of the browse
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Jeff Deutsch is a devoted reader, browser and lifelong bookseller. He's the director of Chicago's iconic Seminary Co-op Bookstores, and has written a book entitled In Praise of Good Bookstores (Princeton, 2022) in which he calls for a re-imagining of the current bookselling model, one that incorporates more than just retail, that adequately values …
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Book Designer Jerry Kelly on what to do once you've written your Manuscript
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I've long been interested in rhetoric, the techniques of persuasive argument, propaganda; the use of passionate language. It's why I collect publishers' sales and bookseller catalogues, I'm sure! Ever since first laying hands on the bookseller catalogues that Jerry Kelly has, over the years, designed for the likes of Jonathan A. Hill and Glenn Horo…
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Justin Pemberton on how to adapt an 800-page best-seller into a documentary film
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About a month ago I watched a documentary entitled Capital in the 21st Century. It was pretty riveting, describing much of what, and how, I've been thinking over the past few years about the American take-over of Canada, and the belief that the country "developed" largely because the very rich were too lazy, risk-averse and unpatriotic to invest in…
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Scott Ferris on Artist and Book Illustrator Rockwell Kent
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Scott R Ferris, is a researcher, writer and specialist in the art of Rockwell Kent (1882-1971). He has conducted many lectures on Kent and has served as curator for a lot of Kent exhibitions. Here's a thumbnail of Kent culled from what Zoë Samels has written on the U.S. National Gallery website: He attended the Horace Mann School in New York City w…
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Stephen Marche on Writing and Failure and Getting your Balls Hacked Off
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Is failure an inherent part of the writing "enterprise"? Yes, I'd say, this is undoubtedly true. If seen, however, solely as an "exercise" in itself, does this still hold true? I'm not quite so sure. These are the axes along which I tread during my conversation with Stephen Marche about his valuable new book On Writing and Failure: Or, On the Pecul…
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Sasha Tochilovsky on one of the greatest partnerships in magazine history
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Sasha Tochilovsky is a graphic designer, typographer, curator, teacher and head of the Herb Lubalin Study Center of Design and Typography at the Cooper Union in New York City. We talk here about one of the greatest creative teams in magazine history: author, editor, publisher and photo-journalist Ralph Ginzburg and graphic designer and typographer …
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Andy Hughes on Bob Caro and Book Production at Knopf
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Andy Hughes is Senior Vice President of Production and Design at Knopf Doubleday, and I really wanted to know what he had to say. During a recent conversation with Lizzie Gottlieb about her new documentary film Turn Every Page, listen here, she mentioned that she regretted not being able to include what Andy had had to say about producing Bob Caro'…
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Gerry Butts and John Duffy on How Canada Works
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Last year when John Duffy, a Canadian political strategist and writer, died at the age of 58, I noticed an outpouring of genuine love, and sadness, on Twitter, along with frequent references to his book Fights of our Lives. It was called one the best ever written on Canadian politics. So I picked up a copy. It's filled with dozens of old photograph…
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Michael Geist on the pathetic argument for extending copyright in Canada
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I booked a room at the Intercontinental Hotel in Montreal through Hotwire a couple of days ago. When I arrived at the hotel the receptionist asked me for a $250 deposit for incidentals. Next morning, without my permission (sure, okay, it's likely buried in the small print) they charged my card an additional $200. I subsequently learned that this w…
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Director Lizzie Gottlieb on her documentary Turn Every Page. And Books, Writers, and Editors
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My GP took off on me last year. Landed some big gig in Geneva I think. He's a bright one. Not that I knew him very well. Only met him twice in six years. Anyhow, I went in for my tri-annual (once every three) check-up the other day. The nurse was pleasant. Told me he'd been working in the same clinic for 30 years. Adventurous, I thought. Then a stu…
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Richard Charkin on how you too can set up a successful publishing business
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A perceptive devotee of the podcast told me last week that he thought I was an ignoramus. 'You don't think it takes talent to be a photographer (referring to something said during this conversation with Michael Torosian, maker of fine press photography books, here)?' 'I do think it takes talent,' I responded. 'I just don't know how much. The case h…
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Michael Torosian (Part ll) on How to Interview an Artist for a Book
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Here is Part ll of my conversation with Michael Torosian featuring his soon to be released memoir/bibliography Lumiere Press: Printer Savant and Other Stories (listen to Part l here). This episode gets to the essence of Michael's book writing/publishing practice: the interview. We discuss a list of guidelines Michael has developed based on his expe…
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Michael Torosian on Photography & making Fine Press Photography Books
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Michael Torosian has spent his life taking photographs, interviewing great photographers, and making fine press photography books. He's in the process of making another entitled Lumiere Press, Printer Savant and Other Stories to commemorate the establishment of the Lumiere Press Archive at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library in Toronto. It's full o…
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John Metcalf on a lifetime of editing and publishing short stories
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John Metcalf is angry that after working in Canada as a "storyteller, editor, novelist, essayist, and critic" for more than fifty years his books still only sell about 500 copies each. Regardless of this, he's made a significant contribution to Canadian literature through his editing, teaching, critiquing, compiling of anthologies, publishing, and …
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Anton Bogomazov on Mark LaFramboise and the role of the Bookstore Book Buyer
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In an email I received several months ago, the owners of the iconic Washington, D.C. based independent bookstore Politics & Prose wrote that Mark LaFramboise, their chief book buyer, had died. “Mark was the best book buyer any independent bookstore could hope for,” Brad Graham and Lissa Muscatine said in their note. "Not only did he know books; he …
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Tom Devlin on the rise of Drawn and Quarterly, and Graphic Novels
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Tom Devlin is a key figure in the world of graphic novels. His career mimics the evolution of the genre. As founder of Highwater Books, a publishing house he set up in the early 2000s, he treated alternative comics audiences in North America to their first book-length exposure to future star cartoonist/authors John Porcellino, Marc Bell, Ron Rege J…
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Shannon DeVito on her role as 'Director of Books' at B & N
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Shannon DeVito is Barnes and Noble's 'Director of Books.' We met via Zoom to discuss the roles and duties associated with this intriguing-sounding position. I discovered that they include co-ordinating the relationship between national and local book-buying teams; 'assortment' work; creating initiatives - including prizes ( e.g. the Discover Prize;…
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Dan Paisner on being the voice of Ivanka, Serena, Whoopi, Denzel and Steve Aoki
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Where does editing leave off and ghostwriting begin? How cool is it to pass yourself off as the writer if you haven't done any of the writing? How much recognition do "collaborators" deserve? Should ghostwriters be completely anonymous? When should they refuse assignments? How does one work with a person whose views are opposed to yours? Where does…
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Valerie Picard on winning Best Children's Publisher at Bologna
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Earlier this year a tiny Quebec-based children's publishing house, Monsieur Ed, won the prize for Best Children’s Publishers of the Year in North America at the Bologna Book Fair. It won, judges said, for being at the forefront of innovation in the creative nature of its editorial choices during the past year. I thought this was a big deal so I con…
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Martha Fleming on Canada's greatest graphic designer
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Allan Fleming (1929 – 1977) was a Canadian graphic designer best known for having created the Canadian National Railway logo, for designing the 1967 book Canada: A Year of the Land and for "revolutionizing" the look of scholarly publishing in North America in the 1970s with his work at University of Toronto Press. In 1953 Allan moved to England to …
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Nora Krug on vigilantly illustrating Timothy Snyder's On Tyranny
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I first became aware of the graphic edition of Timothy Snyder's book On Tyranny during a visit to the National Socialist Documentation Centre museum in Munich about a year ago (revel in the backstory here). I bought and read a copy of the original edition shortly thereafter. It's a powerful book, full of important, actionable lessons. This past Sum…
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Jiri Nenicka on Samizdat and Resisting Totalitarian Censorship
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Libri Prohibiti is a nonprofit, independent, archival research library located in Prague, Czech Republic that collects samizdat and exile literature. Founded by Jiri Gruntorad after the fall of the communist regime its holdings include some 40,000 monographs, periodicals, reference resources, and audiovisual materials. In addition to dissident arti…
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Naomi Bacon on Marketing Books on Social Media
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Naomi Bacon is a seasoned book marketer, and founder of The Tandem Collective. She has worked with JK Rowling’s agency, The Blair Partnership, as well as Pottermore, Pan Macmillan, Penguin and Hachette. Her ambition has always been "to be at the forefront of digital innovation, creating meaningful connections between publishing partners, content cr…
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Michael Zantovsky on Vaclav Havel and writing the biography of a close friend
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Michael Žantovský is a Czech diplomat, author and translator. He is a former Czech Ambassador to the United Kingdom, as well as to Israel and the United States. He has translated more than fifty works of fiction, drama and poetry, mostly by contemporary American and British writers including James Baldwin, Norman Mailer, Joseph Heller, E.L. Doctoro…
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John Owen on the best bookshop I've ever been in, in my life
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John Owen is a bookseller who runs the events program at the English Bookshop at Dussmann das KulturKaufhaus in Berlin. That English Bookshop? Probably the best I've ever been in, in my life. We talk about, among other things: being blown away; bookshop lighting; window seating; how to display books; mixing things up and discovering new titles; boo…
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Elisabeth Ruge, Germany's leading literary agent
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Elisabeth Ruge is a German editor, publisher and literary agent. She currently heads the Elisabeth Ruge Agency which she founded in 2014. In 1994 she established the Berlin Verlag publishing house together with her then husband Arnulf Conradi and Veit Heinichen. I met Elisabeth at her home on the outskirts of Berlin to discuss the roles she has pla…
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Jonathan Landgrebe on Suhrkamp Verlag, Germany's Faber & Faber
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Jonathan Landgrebe is the publisher of Suhrkamp Verlag. We met at his offices in Berlin to talk about his role as head of one of Germany's most revered publishing houses, and to riff off Siegfried Unseld's book The Author and His Publisher. Topics covered in our conversation include: important books that just don't sell; the publisher-author relati…
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Pamela Paul on her role as books editor at The New York Times
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Pamela Paul was books editor at the New York Times from 2013 to March 2022 when she became an opinion columnist for the newspaper. We talk mostly about the role that books editors play in the lifecycle of 'the book.' I also whine a fair amount about how I don't like the fact that she left her position plus we diverge into discussion about Pamela's …
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James Marsh on making love and encyclopedias
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Why listen to James Marsh? Because he knows about love and encyclopedias. He grew up in The Junction district of Toronto surviving a difficult childhood, and began his career in publishing at Holt Rinehart and Winston where he was editor of a Centennial history of Canada entitled Unity and Diversity. He later became executive editor of McClelland a…
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