How do you take a publishing house on its last legs and transform it

Sunday Herald, The, Oct 27, 2002 by Iain S Bruce

It's 2001, and Jamie Byng has just persuaded Yann Martel's agent to hand Canongate the UK rights to Life Of Pi, his spiritual tale of a boy and a Bengal tiger floating across the Pacific in lifeboat. As he was leaving, Byng turned and said: "We're going to make this win the Booker." They both laughed at a throwaway line that was half jest, half declaration of faith, but neither could have genuinely believed it was possible.

Then this week, something quite remarkable happened. In a move that cast asunder years of establishment domination, the Booker Prize committee this week put their heads together for a final fevered consultation before emerging to make Byng's bold promise come true, handing the country's most prestigious literary prize to an unknown author who had emerged from the depths of Edinburgh's old town to dazzle the nation's readers.

Even amidst the cacophony of congratulation, adulation, bitterness and bile that traditionally accompanies the Booker announcement, few of those in attendance at the British Museum ceremony failed to appreciate the significance of the tale they were watching unfold. Bucking all the odds and expectations, a tiny Scottish company had been catapulted into the literary limelight, taking centre stage on a platform previously commanded by multi-million global corporations. It is the stuff of dreams, but this yarn is no fantasy - this is the story of Canongate, the little publisher that could.

"It was unreal, a completely bizarre experience that bombarded us with a mass of conflicting emotions," recalls Canongate chief Jamie Byng, his head still whirling from the media circus which has engulfed his company this week. "There was a real feeling of mellow calm that came from the fact I always knew the book was good enough, but surrounding that was sheer elation. No publishing house of our size had ever won the Booker and we consequently couldn't afford to go in there with high expectations.

"The moment they announced that we had won, the impact that this is going to have on us hit me between the eyes. It really is unbelievable."

The Booker win is expected to boost Martel's sales by some 300%, and Canongate - whose turnover was already up 44% - is on the verge of having an unprecedented two titles on the New York Times bestseller list as Life Of Pi moves up the charts to join Michel Faber's The Crimson Petal And The White in the prestigious top ten.

It is a truly remarkable story with beginnings that do nothing to dilute its fairytale quality. Back in 1994, Byng joined Canongate as an intern to gain post-graduate experience and found a company on the edge of bankruptcy.

The son of the Earl of Stafford, he saw value within the ailing house and stepped in to rescue the floundering operation with the financial help of his stepfather, former BBC chairman Sir Christopher Bland.

If his background reeks of privilege, the Byng that many people in the publishing world have come to know defies such expectations. Gently bohemian and blessed with incredible energy levels, his life is a jumble of complimentary passions a rich brew of clubs, books, music, alternative culture and children that is much more urban hipster than landed gent.

Throughout our interview, he balances questions about sales figures with animated asides on subjects ranging from art to music, answering a deluge of phone calls in between. The conversation is frequently punctuated by the demands of his children, who embroil us both in robust cushion fights and impromptu primal-scream sessions, a pastime in which the wunderkind of Scottish publishing takes an enthusiastic part.

Authors will tell you tales of spending drunken nights in the pub with Byng and staggering home to discover he has already returned to the office and sent them a detailed memo confirming their discussions, others will spin stories of exhausting publicity tours in which the publisher works an 18-hour day, then takes command of the decks at the after-launch club night. The man himself will tell you that Canongate is a team effort, but there can be little doubt it was his maverick style and passion for music and its attendant sub cultures that formed the driving force behind the company's transformation.

Almost immediately after he took the reins, the rather pedestrian publisher of Scottish literary mainstays began to evolve into a thoroughly modern company pushing a blend of contemporary classics and new Caledonian fiction. It picked up the UK rights to authors such as Charles Bukowski, Nobel prize-winner Knut Hamsun and counter- cultural super-scribe Jim Dodge while new imprints appeared carrying a range of acclaimed alternative authors from Gil Scott Heron to Laura Hird.

Canongate had metamorphosed into a hip house with a distinctive street-hardened edge and an obvious talent for savvy marketing. Offerings such as the Scottish urban fiction collection Children Of Albion Rovers and a set of repackaged books from the New Testament - The Canongate Canons - awoke media attention, and even before this week's triumph the company had opened eyes with a talent list that saw no less than two of its authors nominated for the 2000 Whitbread Prize.