Why publishers are such cowards

After publishing 17 books, I’m no stranger to the publicity campaign. In my no-name days, my publicist would purr that my novel’s release would be ‘review-driven’ – which decodes: ‘We don’t plan to spend a sou on your doomed, inconsequential book.’ By contrast, as we’ve seen writ large with Prince Harry’s Spare, your volume can be cast upon the public waters as not a mere object but an event. The intention is to convince book-buyers that unless they snap up a copy sharpish they’ll be caught up short at cocktail parties.

Thus quite some time ago, some editorial Baldrick at William Collins must have whispered to Nigel Biggar, a newly signed author at the HarperCollins imprint: ‘I have a cunning plan.’ Clearly the concept driving this week’s release of the Oxford professor’s Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning, which before our current Year Zero would never have caused a stir, was to convert misfortune to opportunity, much as manure can convert to fuel.