Barnsley urges publishers to remember their 'true strength'

04.07.13 | Joshua Farrington - The  Bookseller

The outgoing c.e.o. of HarperCollins Victoria Barnsley has warned publishers against trying to become tech companies, urging them to remember their roots as content businesses.

Barnsley issued the call during her speech at the annual HarperCollins author party, held in Kensington Palace Gardens yesterday (3rd July).
She also hinted at future plans of her own, mentioning a possible "Fifth Estate".

Barnsley said: "My advice to publishers, and I think on this occasion I'm probably allowed to give a little piece of advice, is by all means play with tech companies, but please please don't try and become one. Remember where your true strength lies—we are content businesses."
Barnsley, who has been at HarperCollins for 13 years, since selling the publisher she founded, Fourth Estate, to HC, described her career in the industry, from being "a lowly editor" to celebrating HarperCollins being named as the publisher of the year at the Bookseller Industry Awards last year. She said: "Ever since I started in publishing as a lowly assistant editor 32 years ago, all I ever wanted to do was discover and nurture really great writers and to give them an environment where they could flourish and really live up to their potential, and I think we've achieved that with HarperCollins . . . If the team now show the same drive and creativity that won them that award they are going to thrive and go from strength to strength."
She also described how her "entrepreneurial" style often failed to fit in with HarperCollins' parent company, NewsCorp. She said: "I used to report to the rather indomitable, but actually rather loveable, Jane Friedman, and she used to ring me about once a month and give me a ticking off, and she used to start each conversation with the same words: 'Vicky, HarperCollins is not your company.'

"I think she had a point—there were times where, with my entrepreneurial past, I sort of forgot it wasn't my company. I had such a clear vision of what I wanted the company to do and the company I wanted to create that I forgot it sometimes doesn't fit in with corporate agendas."
She added, to a round of applause: "And my close colleagues have often told me my one great weakness, my Achilles heel, is that I'm not very good at 'managing up', as they call it. And I think in the last few days I've really realised that."

Speaking about what she plans to do in future, she said: "So, 'what next', that's what everyone has been asking me—Fifth Estate perchance? Well I can't deny that in recent years I have been thinking about my future, but first of all I'm going to be going on an extended period of gardening leave, and I don't know if everyone here knows it, but gardening happens to be a passion of mine so I'm actually going to be doing a lot of gardening."
But while gardening, she added, she would be "sowing seeds" of her own, and thinking "quite a bit about the future of the book industry and where it's going.

"Depending on your view, from all of us, the future is either terrifying or exhilarating. I'm probably in the latter camp. The only certainty at the moment is that it's all change. We've seen agents becoming publishers, authors becoming publishers, tech companies becoming publishers, we've seen publishers being fined eye-watering sums of money for just talking to each other and having lunch, so the publishing world has sort of gone mad.

"But the one thing that is never going to change is the inspiration of great stories, of great narratives—it's what inspires all of us in this room. And of course we need to embrace all the things that digital change can bring us. HarperCollins has always been at the forefront of digital innovation."
Author Max Hastings spoke on behalf of authors to pay tribute to Barnsley, saying: "We must take this opportunity to raise our glasses to Vicky, and thank her from the bottom of her hearts, not only for what you've done for us and for HarperCollins, but for publishing and books in this country." Nicholas Pearson, publishing director at Fourth Estate, also spoke on behalf of staff, praising Barnsley as "a c.e.o. who truly loves books".
Barnsley leaves HarperCollins tomorrow (5th July). Pottermore chief executive Charlie Redmayne will step into her shoes on 5th August

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