The Biblio File hosted by Nigel Beale

Henry Hitchings is an author, reviewer and critic, specializing in narrative non-fiction, with a particular emphasis on language and cultural history. His second book, The Secret Life of Words: How English Became English, won the 2008 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. He is the president of the Johnson Society of Lichfield. As of 2018, he is chair of the drama section of the UK's Critics' Circle.

He was a King's Scholar at Eton College before going to Christ Church, Oxford, and then to University College London to research his PhD on Samuel Johnson.

In 2016 Hitchings edited a collection of original essays about bookshops, entitled Browse: The World in Bookshops. Its contributors included Alaa Al Aswany, Stefano Benni, Michael Dirda, Daniel Kehlmann, Andrey Kurkov, Yiyun Li, Pankaj Mishra, Dorthe Nors, Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, Ian Sansom, Elif Shafak, Iain Sinclair, Ali Smith, Sasa Stanisic and Juan Gabriel Vasquez.

We met in London to talk about Browse, and our experiences in bookstores around the world.

I met with members of the Canada Council's Supporting Artistic Practice Program team last month to discuss changes made in 2017 to the literary book publishing grant program. Among other things we talk about the fact that programs are designed to benefit all Canadians, about phases in the spectrum of activities in artistic creation, supporting writers versus book production, professional development for arts professionals, new opportunities for literary publishers to get funding, the digital strategy fund, whether or not publishing is an artistic endeavour, literary non-fiction, Ken Whyte and Procupine's Quill, filling in profiles, project grants, core support and juries.

* Please note that Guylaine Normandin is no longer with the Canada Council.

The Bookseller is a British magazine reporting news on the publishing industry. In 2010 it was acquired from Nielsen by its then Managing Director, Nigel Roby, who is now Chief Executive, Owner and Publisher of the new, expanded entity.

I met with Nigel at The Bookseller's offices across the Thames from the Houses of Parliament, in London. Among other things we talk about the history and purpose of The Bookseller and its related enterprises; telling the trade about new books, informing rivals about their competitors' releases; quasi-catalogues; the Blitz; libraries under pressure; Waterstones; Mr. B's, Toppings and high streets; Tim Waterstones's new memoir; Blackwell's; the leveling off of e-book sales and the production value of print books; subscription book clubs; and click and collect...plus we mull over some of the hotter topics that today face the book publishing and selling world.

James Daunt is Managing Director of the Waterstones chain of bookstores in England. Has been since 2011.

We met at the Piccadilly store in London to talk about, among other things, J.P. Morgan, New York, silver spoons and begging bowls, genuine passion, store energy, author event programs, bookshops as social places, a core of regular customers, identifying up-and-coming writers, booksellers who read, booksellers who treat publishers with suspicion, Waterstones not selling shelf-space, caring enthusiasm, shocking and fabulous bookshops, plastic flowers, bookseller personality, how to display books, book-selling being visual, recommending books (never more than three), Brexit, Amazon, screwing with algorithms, slippery squid, freedom to price, the perceived value of books, pre-orders, employee uniforms, changing chains, the purpose of chain bookshops, Indigo Books, introverted booksellers, poor writers, curating books, raising bookseller staff salaries, making Waterstones more like Daunt Books, returns as a measure of bad buying, dropping the apostrophe in Waterstones, demystifying Kindle, holding entertaining events, and being a fun place in the community.

Stephen Page is the Chief Executive Officer at Faber & Faber.

We met at his offices in Bloomsbury, London, and invited Geoffrey Faber into the room. The three of us talk, among other things, about publishers being a race apart, comets, the unevenness of publishing, the low barriers to entry, maintaining humility, Paul Hamlyn, colour books and technological breakthroughs, the elasticity of books, e-books and the beauty of analogue, reading and shopping environments, seduction and hand-crafted books, millennials and the book as object, the Mainstreet Trading bookshop, starting the process of getting people to read a book, Milkman and the difference between originality and difficulty, "legacy" businesses, trust and relationships, providing value to writers, the 'ff' colophon and cultural value, CATS, risk and editorial impulse, Kazuo Ishiguro and honouring authors now, sales and realism, superlatives, copy and honesty, formats and creating energy, design briefs, Woody Allen, the vocation of publishing, the gift of social media, advertising, James Daunt, Waterstones, independents and Amazon, The Doves Press, and books as a life-blood of civilized humanity.

Will Atkinson is Managing Director of Atlantic Books, U.K. Prior to this he was, for many years, with Faber & Faber, serving as Director of Sales & Marketing from 2006 to 2014. During this time he spearheaded the Independent Alliance, a very successful sales organization that comprises some of the U.K.'s leading independent publishers, including Granta and Canongate.

I met with Will at his offices in Bloomsbury, London. We talk here, among other things, about the Alliance (Faber, Canongate, Granta, Querus, Profile, Atlantic, Short Books, & Icon), access to book buyers, Steig Larsen, must-have books, faith and trust, selling books abroad, being misquoted, brands, car-dealerships, Waterstones' golden era, Michael Joseph, grounding, classic sales people, enthusiasm, libraries, T.S. Eliot, catalogues, book wholesalers, Gardners Books, Amazon, Call me by Your Name, the Net Book Agreement, Harry Potter, best-sellers and over-publishing, big data, the law of threes, publishing popular people, social media, Rome by Matthew Neale and fluff.

Hannah Knowles, Senior Commissioning Editor at Canongate Books in London, tells me what she does. I question her with the help of Geoffrey Faber. We talk, among others things, about track records, The Beautiful Poetry of Donald Trump, books with legs, back-lists, bestsellers, Robert Webb's How Not to be a Boy, selling rights internationally, inclusive lists, illustrated books, the right length of a book, redundant and obscure passages, the first 50 pages, popular culture, being on the writer's side, auctions, lizards and sex in Cold Skin, Rob Sears, libel, parody, the wallpaper in Canongate's London boardroom, editorial and acquisition meetings, florid style, the best literary agents, great works seeing the light of day, idealism, Tom Jones's Tired of London, Tired of Life, Gina Miller's Rise, people who live their lives for the good of others, advances (a slightly irritating and discursive diversion), I Go Quiet by David Ouimet, and the power of books to show us all that we have a place in the world.

Richard Charkin is a British publishing executive who has worked in the publishing business since 1972. He has held executive positions at Pergamon Press, Oxford University Press, Reed International/Reed Elsevier and Current Science Group, and is the former Chief Executive of Macmillan Publishers Limited and Executive Director of Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck.

We met in Bloomsbury, London to discuss some of the challenges Richard sees facing the publishing business. Among other this we talk birth control for books, gatekeepers, the exponential growth of scientific research papers, the continuing success of Harry Potter, hitting it big with best-sellers, the elephant and the codfish strategies, the erosion of copyright laws, salami slices, Brexit, the poverty of authors and demise of public libraries, more authors less money, why British and America editors, aubergines and eggplants, literary agents making work, legal monopolies, Penguin Random House, hardbacks versus paperbacks, Bloomsbury, China and cricket, managed economies and free enterprise, bringing Chinese books in English to the world, Mensch Publishing, Time to Go, Guy Kennaway, how to measure commercial success, publishing assets, and the attraction of combining commerce, culture and creativity.

Throughout my twenties I harboured a strong desire to read the Great Books, but it wasn't until I'd finished university and come across Clifton Fadiman's Lifetime Reading Plan at the now defunct Book Den in Ottawa on MacLaren street, that I started to act seriously on the urge. It, and the 100 books recommended, had and continue to have a profound impact on my life. So, I was thrilled to learn that Anne Fadiman had written a memoir about her father called The Wine Lover's Daughter.

Anne is an essayist and reporter. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, her account of the cross-cultural conflicts between a Hmong family and the American medical system, won a National Book Critics Circle Award. Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader, is a book about books (buying them, writing in their margins, and arguing with her husband on how to shelve them). At Large and At Small is a collection of essays on Coleridge, postal history, and ice cream, among other topics; it was the source of an encrypted quotation in the New York Times Sunday Acrostic.

I met with Anne at the Brattleboro Literary Festival to talk, among other things, about opening sentences, erotic relationships with wine, male chauvinism, wine libraries, 900 bottles of wine, childhood poverty, Columbia University, leaving parents behind, Jewishness, Irving Wallace, cut roots, John Erskine, Great Books, The Lifetime Reading Plan and life lessons, prisoners, oaklings, Information Please, Harpo Marx, a patrician mid-Atlantic accent, translating Neitsche, retrieving wives, lovers that don't disappoint, Simon and Schuster, The New Yorker, multi-tasking, self-deprecation, counterfeits, mailing home toilet paper, hatred of television, open-mindedness and The New Lifetime Reading Plan, and the ability to take hedonistic pleasure in books and wine.