When
I finally got my hardcover copy of 1Q84 some two months ago, I was
appalled. It was the UK edition – the paper was coarse, the printing
uneven, typography chunky and the cover design cheesy. I kept drooling
over the American editions I saw online. You can accuse me of being
fussy or call me a “Yankee lover’, but facts are facts. I have been
selling books for over 12 years, and I have never understood why UK
editions of the same titles are so crappy. Britain produces more titles
per capita than any other country in the world.Some years ago, when we were selling the Faber & Faber edition of Orhan Pamuk’s My name is Red, in A-format, another distributor imported an American edition of the same title (albeit in the larger B-format) with a selling price of RM39.90 (that is, 5sen less than the British edition). We took 20 copies immediately, not because it cost 5sen less, but because it was far better designed and manufactured. The difference was so apparent, it was embarrassing. Why are you still selling that crap edition, some customers asked? Yes, the British edition really did look bad. The book was twice as thick, threatened to scream like a vestal virgin if one opened it out by more than 15 degrees (wtf… how does one read it?), had schoolboy typography, was printed on cheap yellowing bulky newsprint, and looked as if it was cyclostyled using a 1950s Gestetner.
Have you ever seen the UK Vintage edition (also-A format) of JM Coetzee’s Disgrace? I will toss it even if it comes with a free magnifying glass. Don’t even ask about the page layout, text margins and alignment, typography, binding and printing. Okay, the A-format is really meant for us poor third-world country cousins; the natives should be grateful. But how does one explain the difference in quality in the B-formats? Take an American edition of a Vintage, place it side by side with a UK edition of the same title, same format, and you will see the difference – quality of paper, design, typography, printing and binding. And you know what? The American book would often cost less. (Even if it cost more, I’d prefer to pay the extra – the book will open smoothly and comfortably to at least 150 degrees, will not threaten to break its spine, be easier on the eyes and will not yellow so easily.)
One
can also compare American and UK Penguin paperbacks (or any other
common imprint) side by side. UK editions fare less badly in the case of
hardbacks, but they still cannot compare with the ones from the US:
more stylish, better printed and bound and, usually, cheaper.Some years ago, Silverfish published a book by an Englishman (who was in Kuala Lumpur for the 2004 literary festival). He bought several copies of his book to give/sell to friends and to place in a local bookshop. He later sent me an email saying how surprised most people were at the quality. In Frankfurt, too, I’ve got very favourable comments (though, to me, the East – the Czech ambassador insists it’s Middle -- European books are to die for).
Recently, I had an interesting exchange of emails with a publisher in the UK. When he was here last year, I had suggested that he print the books in Malaysia to save costs. He had also been impressed with the quality of our books. He sent me an email recently, saying that he was finally ready and asked me to get him a quote. I gave him a list of things I’d need for a proper quote, including a cover design in Adobe Illustrator with proper crop/registration marks and colour bars. The text document he had attached (pdf) was in A4 size and appeared to have been done on a word processor. (I didn’t even bother to comment on the typography.) His return email asked why I wanted all those things – he had his cover design only in Photoshop. When I suggested that Photoshop might not be the best design tool, he threw a hissy fit, saying that’s how it was done in the UK, how they’d simply give printers the pdfs of the text and covers for them to sort out, how what I was asking seemed like a lot of ‘faff’, and that ‘these are book covers, not works of art!’ implying that it was about time tree-dwellers learnt how the modern world worked.
I told him he could do it himself. Sheesh.
A joke, albeit a cruel one, often heard, in the shop is about the quality of books from India – with their crooked layout, ‘potato-printing’ text with missing words/lines/paras and the recycled ‘toilet-paper’ pages. But, the quality of books from India is improving rapidly and, the way things are going, will soon be better than those from the UK.
First, they forgot how to make nice cars. Now, they can’t even make nice books.
