‘Not one publisher or author would speak to me about [Scott] Pack on the record, however, since it would be, one suggested – publishers being at least as paranoid as writers – like ‘a suicide note’ for his list of authors.’

Not my words, of course, but those of Tim Adams in last week’s Observer.

Scott Pack, for the uninitiated, is the head buyer for Waterstones. He’s also the man who I – on this very blog – offered to fellate if he bought a few extra copies of our books this Christmas.

So you can imagine my trepidation at the idea of actually meeting him to talk about The Friday Project and our upcoming titles for 2005/2006. Not that I should have cared too much. After all, according to Tim Adams of the Observer…

‘To a large degree, ‘Scott Pack’ has simply become shorthand for the ways in which bookselling has changed since the abolition of the Net Book Agreement, which fixed book prices, a decade ago… Publishers are held to ever tighter margins: for some Christmas promotions, I was told, Waterstone’s is demanding 65-70 per cent discount on all titles, in addition to contributions of £30,000 or more towards marketing costs for each promoted book. Independent publishers, who have generally spent far less than that amount on an advance to their author, are particularly reluctant to take the risk.’

Fuck, we’re a small publisher. We can’t afford £30,000 for promotion. Our books are risky. Pack is going to have us for lunch.

Well, I was slightly right. This afternoon, Scott Pack had lunch with us.

And you know what? It turns out that Tim Adams of the Observer is absolutely, 100%, entirely full of shit. Like a over-stuffed sack of shit that has been injected with shitty-collagen implants that someone had – cruelly – replaced with vials of 100% shit.

Instead what happened is we had a really nice lunch, during which Scott (who has read our site – and this blog – and pre-emptively, yet politely, declined my offer of oral loving) listened to Clare and I boast about The Friday Project and our list of upcoming titles before very, very politely giving us feedback on them (suggesting that one might sell better if we published it a month earlier; but it was entirely up to us). He then gladly took away copies of manuscripts we’re in the process of editing, promising to read them and give feedback.

Then we stopped talking about ourselves and spent the rest of the lunch discussing all manner of worldly topics – returning time and time again to the trials and tribulations of allotment keeping (both Scott Pack and Ed Ripley, our primary contact at Pan Macmillan keep allotments. This is a fact that may or may not mean anything significant).

Oh, and he didn’t suggest that we pay any money for promotions. Not a single penny. And certainly not £30,000. Instead he invited us to email or call him whenever we have an interesting book on the go that we’d like feedback on – or that we’d like him to draw to his fellow buyers’ attention. That’s all. A thoroughly nice, funny, personable, non-scary, book-loving, professional chap.

Is that On The Record enough for you, Tim?

And the funny thing is, we’re not the only small publisher who have found dealing with Waterstones, via Scott Pack, to be a pleasure. Regular readers of the blog will probably remember this link to a post on Snowbooks’ ‘Snowblog’….

‘When we do eventually get a book onto a major literary prize long- or short-list, I’ll be the first to pop open the champagne. And then I’ll send a magnum to Scott for being the one Snowbooks owes its survival to.’

Just how hard did Adams look to find that elusive on-the-record quote?

But of course I could be lying. It could be that Pack sat us down, demanded money from us and then threatened to break our fingers if we didn’t write a complimentary blog post about him. That could be what happened.

Alternatively it could be that a prissy Observer journalist got upset about being criticised on Radio 4 and decided to do a particularly lazy hatchet job on an easy, powerful target.

As Fox News says… We report. You Decide.

…

Oh, look, I don’t know. Maybe I’m going soft in my old age. Maybe I’m a sucker for a good lunch. Maybe Waterstones is evil and their continued expansion means the end of niche titles being stocked in major high street chains in favour of big-name bestsellers.

But maybe that’s going to happen anyway. Maybe the future of big bookshops is to be like the current state of big cinemas – offering only blockbusters, backed up with big budget promotions while those wanting niche titles will have to look elsewhere.

But if that does happen (which I think it will) then you can be damned sure it’ll be entirely down to the ability of online retailers like Amazon to stock huge numbers of niche titles, while high street stores with their limited space can only stock a relitively small selection, all of which have to sell well to justify their position – and absolutely nothing to do with Scott Pack. Or anyone else at any other high street chain.

Still, as another – less lazy – Observer journalist once wrote: I blame the scapegoats.