Huge day for publishing news yesterday – the Dan Brown verdict; Virgin Books’ MD resigning and them laying off staff – and of course it was Friday so any self-respecting journalist is in the pub by noon.

Perfect day, then, for a piece of news you’d been planning to hold on to until next week to finally wriggle free.

So yes, yesterday afternoon, the Bookseller got hold of the news that Scott Pack – currently Buying Manager at Waterstone’s – will be joining Clare and me in running The Friday Project from September. He’ll be Commercial Director, with overall responsibility for driving the future commercial success of the company, particularly the book side of things. He’ll also have a place on the board of The Friday Project and FPM Plc.

Scott has been described as ‘the most powerful man in the books trade [whose] decisions can make or break an author’s career.’ (by The Observer, and almost everyone else) and his commitment to new publishers is well documented, not least here on Vox.

In fact, as I told the Bookseller this morning, when they called to ask me if the rumours were true, if we had sat down with a blank piece of paper and drawn our ideal Commercial Director – someone who absolutely ‘gets’ TFP but also happens to possess the best commercial brain in European publishing – we’d have drawn Scott. (Although we’d probably have added a little comedy moustache and then giggled about it for half an hour. Simple pleasures.)

I think the Bookseller bought all that – but, between you and me, the two reasons we wanted to bring Scott on board were really these…

a) it was costing us a fucking fortune to buy him lunch every couple of months, and we’d rather spend the money on desk toys

and

b) we wanted to ensure that none of our books ever gets a positive review from Tim Adams at the Observer.

But then as a wise man once asked, “Who on earth could care less what Tim Adams of The Observer thinks about anything?”

Onwards!

…

P.S.

We had a nice mention in the Bookseller today as well – all about our public offering. It’s all going rather fantastically, since you ask. Less than a month to go, in the unlikely event that you haven’t already bought shares.

Cough.

…

P.P.S.

Vox is currently first result on Google for the phrase “Contra bonos mores et decorum”. Life really is exceptionally good this week. Bon weekend.