Nigel Beale's Biblio File Podcast

John Metcalf  is angry that after working in Canada as a "storyteller, editor, novelist, essayist, and critic" for more than fifty years his books still only sell about 500 copies each. Regardless of this, he's made a significant contribution to Canadian literature through his editing, teaching, critiquing, compiling of anthologies, publishing, and promotion generally of Canadian writers and the s...

In an email I received several months ago, the owners of the iconic Washington, D.C. based independent bookstore Politics & Prose wrote that Mark LaFramboise, their chief book buyer, had died. “Mark was the best book buyer any independent bookstore could hope for,” Brad Graham and Lissa Muscatine said in their note. "Not only did he know books; he knew P&P’s customers, who gravitated to him becaus...

Shannon DeVito is Barnes and Noble 's 'Director of Books.' We met via Zoom to discuss the roles and duties associated with this intriguing-sounding position. I discovered that they include co-ordinating the relationship between national and local book-buying teams; 'assortment' work; creating initiatives - including prizes ( e.g. the Discover Prize; most recent winner: The Rabbit Hutch , a debut n...

In many ways Tom Devlin 's career mimics the evolution of the graphic novel. As founder of Highwater Books, a publishing house he set up in the early 2000s, he treated alternative comics audiences in North America to their first book-length exposure to future star cartoonist/authors such as John Porcellino, Marc Bell, Ron Rege Jr., Brian Ralph - many of whom subsequently joined him at Drawn and Qu...

Earlier this year a tiny Quebec-based children's publishing house, Monsieur Ed , won the prize for Best Children’s Publishers of the Year in North America at the Bologna Book Fair. It won, judges said, for being at the forefront of innovation in the creative nature of its editorial choices during the past year. I thought this was a big deal so I contacted publisher and creative director Valérie Pi...

Allan Fleming  (1929 – 1977) was a Canadian graphic designer best known for having created the Canadian National Railway logo, for designing the 1967 book Canada: A Year of the Land and for "revolutionizing" the look of scholarly publishing in North America in the 1970s with his work at University of Toronto Press. In 1953 Allan moved to England to work as a graphic designer and to learn about the...

Photo Credit: Nina Subin I first became aware of the graphic edition of Timothy Snyder's book On Tyranny during a visit to the National Socialist Documentation Centre museum in Munich about a year ago (revel in the backstory here). I bought and read a copy of the original edition shortly thereafter. It's a powerful book, full of important, actionable lessons. This past Summer I picked up a copy of...

Naomi Bacon is a seasoned book marketer, and founder of The Tandem Collective. She has worked with JK Rowling’s agency, The Blair Partnership, as well as Pottermore, Pan Macmillan, Penguin and Hachette. Her ambition has always been "to be at the forefront of digital innovation, creating meaningful connections between publishing partners, content creators and brands to generate word of mouth around...

Michael Žantovský is a Czech diplomat, author and translator. He is a former Czech Ambassador to the United Kingdom, as well as to Israel and the United States. He has translated more than fifty works of fiction, drama and poetry, mostly by contemporary American and British writers including James Baldwin, Norman Mailer, Joseph Heller, E.L. Doctorow, and Tom Stoppard. Non-fiction translations incl...

John Owen is a bookseller who runs the events program at the English Bookshop at Dussmann das KulturKaufhaus in Berlin. That English Bookshop? Probably the best I've ever been in, in my life. We talk about, among other things: being blown away; bookshop lighting; window seating; how to display books; mixing things up and discovering new titles; bookshops as cultural institutions; Sally Rooney; sal...

Nick Anthony is a stand-up comic, a screen-writer, and a former magician. He's participating in this year's Prague Summer Program for Writers and his novel, tentatively entitled Two Hits of Acid in Cambodia , was just workshopped this past week. We talk about the experience, but not before discussing magic, stand-up comedy writing; new material that kills; God complexes; screen-writing; Tarantino'...

Why listen to Alexandra Pringle? Because Richard Charkin told me that she's the best editor in the English speaking world, that's why. Alexandra was editor-in-chief at Bloomsbury Publishing for more than two decades. She was recently appointed Executive Publisher. She began her publishing career at the British magazine Art Monthly before joining the women's publisher Virago in 1978. She became Edi...

Credit: Bobbie K What's not to like here? Marius Kociejowski is charming, erudite and funny. Why should you listen to him? He's just written a memoir about the soul of the book trade. What happens in bookstores doesn't happen elsewhere​ he says. The multifariousness of human nature is more on show​ here​ ​t​han anywhere else, he says, and ​"​I think it’s because of books, what they are, what they...

​ I'm in Prague for the Summer. Going to be participating in one of the world's leading creative writing programs. I interviewed its founder Richard Katrovas.   Why listen to Richard? Having run the Prague Summer Program for Writers for more than two decades, he knows a lot about the process of teaching creative writing; plus he knows karate. We talk about listening and critiquing artfully, not f*...

Why did I interview Mark Andrews ? Because he's a fellow Canadian, he's an exceptional book collector who brings an engineer's mind to the task, and he's just published a beautiful book featuring selections from his book collection, entitled The Science and Engineering of Water; An illustrated catalogue of books and manuscripts on Italian hydraulics, 1500 - 1800 ; it's exemplary. Exactly the kind...

Why am I interviewing Mark Samuels Lasner for a third time? Because he's a recognized and respected book collector who knows how to speak intelligently and amusingly about books. And though we've already talked about his impressive collections that cover late 19th century British literary culture , and The Bodley Head , I wanted to learn about what happens "after the dopamine" hits. What he's done...

I came across Kat McKenna 's name in an article written by Alison Flood in The Guardian last year . I'd googled Tik Tok's "Book-Tok" because I'd heard it was moving a lot of YA books and wanted to learn more. Kat was quoted in Alison's piece. It was clear she knew what made BookTok tick. I contacted her and now she's on the show. Kat has worked in UK publishing for almost 15 years specialising in...

Stephen Enniss is director of the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas in Austin. Previous posts include Head Librarian at the Folger Shakespeare Library and Director of Emory University's Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library where he made a series of impressive acquisitions including the archives of Seamus Heaney, Salman Rushdie and Ted Hughes. Since taking over at the Ransom Cen...

Sarah Miniaci is a freelance book publicist with fifteen years of experience in the New York and Toronto markets. Ken Whyte's Sutherland House is one of her clients. Ken interviewed Sarah for a recent issue of Shush , his excellent Substack newsletter on the publishing business. Together they surveyed today's new publishing landscape. With the help of  Michael Legat's An Author's Guide to Publishi...

Bob Rae is a Canadian diplomat, lawyer, former Premier of Ontario, and former interim Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada. A Rhodes Scholar and graduate of the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, he is currently Canada's Ambassador to the United Nations. He has been elected to federal and provincial parliaments 11 times (between 1978 and 2013), and reveres the English novelist, essayist, journ...

Author/historian Stuart Kells has been chasing rare books and other bookish treasures since childhood. In the 1980s he went for classic sci-fi paperbacks from Ace and Dell, and authors such as Philip K. Dick and Robert Heinlein. When he moved to Melbourne in the summer of 1989 he was amazed by the city’s bookshops, especially secondhand shops - notably Alice’s and Sainsbury’s in Carlton. When ​he ...

Over the past half-century, bookselling, like many retail sectors, has evolved from an business dominated by independent bookstores to one in which chain stores have significant market share. This transformation has often been a less-than-smooth process, especially so in bookselling, argues Laura J. Miller, because more than most other consumer goods, books are the focus of passionate debate. What...

Jonathan Kay is a Canadian journalist. He was editor-in-chief of The Walrus  magazine, and is a senior editor of  Quillette.  He was previously comment pages editor, columnist, and blogger for the Toronto-based Canadian daily newspaper National Post, and continues to contribute to the newspaper on a freelance basis. He's also a ghostwriter, best known in this capacity as the author of Justin Trude...

Kathryn Schulz joined  The New Yorker  as a staff writer in 2015. In 2016, she won the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing and a National Magazine Award for “The Really Big One,” her story on seismic risk in the Pacific Northwest. Previously, she was the book critic for  New York , the editor of the environmental magazine  Grist , and a reporter and editor at the  Santiago Times . She is the author...

James Wood is a literary critic, essayist and novelist. He was The Guardian 's chief literary critic between 1992 and 1995, and a senior editor at The New Republic between 1995 and 2007. Since roughly that time he's taught the Practice of Literary Criticism at Harvard University and has been a staff writer and book critic at The New Yorker magazine. In 2009, he won the National Magazine Award for...