Andrew Latimer famous quotes

Once upon a time, an editor could try out one or two wacky books, knowing full well that their list would counterbalance any risk with a stable of best-sellers and safe bets. Nowadays, every book must earn its own bread. With low overheads and an often episodic operating status, the small independent press is nicely placed to snap up the most innovative literature going at the moment. To take the risks. Meaning that small presses are no longer just outfits set up to publish your or your friends' work. They have something genuinely important to offer.
-- Andrew Latimer

#Book #Independent #Risk

One of the challenges faced by the little press like Little Island Press is as always, tricking people into buying books. I'm told that the next generation will be more interested in "experiences" than in tangible objects like books. That's a pretty big challenge to a publisher of any size.
-- Andrew Latimer

#Book #People #Challenges

One of the great advantages of only publishing five books per year is that I get to be excited about every book.
-- Andrew Latimer

#Book #Excited #Publishing

Like a lot of small press founders I was looking for a way into publishing - as well as a way out of academia. Without moving to London, I couldn't see a way of working for a publishing house whose work I liked. Believe it or not, the simplest way for me to get into publishing was to start my own press.
-- Andrew Latimer

#Believe #Moving #House

Despite wanting to work in publishing, I was a publisher's worst nightmare: I rarely bought new books. So my goal was to publish the kind of books I would buy, and read. My reading habits have changed since starting the press. The only other "goal", per say, is to continue to experiment. I don't want the press to ever fall into a formula, or to be pigeonholed - "They do great reissues of modernist poets!" - I want to keep pushing, exploring the kind of title we can get away with. And working with authors who challenge the way I think about writing, editing and reading.
-- Andrew Latimer

#Book #Fall #Reading

There's a reason that so much good material is coming down to the small presses: it's difficult to turn a profit, all things considered. But you can't go into small press publishing and complain about the money. Our Little Island publishing just needs to survive. If we're still around in a few years - in vaguely the same shape as we are today - then, to me, that's success.
-- Andrew Latimer

#Complaining #Today #Reason

In one sense, you put a lot of yourself into a small press - it's your personal tastes that are on the line - so when criticism is levelled it can feel personal. But, on the other hand, it can be very welcome and necessary. You're never entirely impervious, and one of the main benefits of being a small operation is that you can change the way you do things quickly in response to criticism. In all instances it pays to have a sense of humour and perspective.
-- Andrew Latimer

#Perspective #Criticism #Welcome

An American has invented a remote control that will turn off any telly within a 20ft radius. What a marvellous device! What a splendid invention! What a really helpful and improving way of devoting your time to building something that turns off culture. Next week, I'm instigating Burn a Book Week, to encourage even more conversation. I've come up with a fantastic little device which I'll call a box of matches.

The Old Testament is responsible for more atheism, agnosticism, disbelief - call it what you will - than any book ever written; it has emptied more churches than all the counterattractions of cinema, motor bicycle and golf course.

A diary need not be a dreary chronicle of one's movements; it should aim rather at giving salient account of some particular episode, a walk, a book, a conversation.

The selection of a book-plate is such a serious matter.

Even when reading is impossible, the presence of books acquired (by passionate devotion to them) produces such an ecstasy that the buying of more books than one can peradventure read is nothing less than the soul reaching towards infinity ... we cherish books even if unread, their mere presence exudes comfort, their ready access, reassurance.

It comes back to the old question: How can the Bible be so wise in some places and so barbaric in others? And why should we put any faith in a book that includes such brutality?

My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.

The more a man is successful in getting out (or coming out) from his own individuality, of his egoist self, and to control (or dominate) the instincts of his physical nature, the more his character, by rising above material contingencies, widen, become free and independent.

Hitler's dictatorship differed in one fundamental point from all its predecessors in history. It was the first dictatorship in the present period of modern technical development, a dictatorship which made complete use of all technical means for the domination of its own country. Through technical devices like the radio and the loud-speaker, eighty million people were deprived of independent thought. It was thereby possible to subject them to the will of one man.

While forbidden fruit is said to taste sweeter, it usually spoils faster.