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Ion in the fire

09.10.08 Tom Tivnan

Ion Trewin learned a most valuable lesson early on in life when he was starting out on a career in journalism.

It was the early 1960s and he was a cub reporter, fresh out of Highgate School in London, working for the Plymouth-based newspaper the Independent. He was assigned to cover a corner of Devon—"real parish pump stuff"—and became friendly with the locals, including a village publican who was an ex-copper who would tip Trewin off whenever somebody escaped from nearby Dartmoor Prison.

Trewin says: "I realised the importance of contacts. The more people you knew, the better stories you got and that was maybe the best training I ever had. It stands you in good stead for whatever you do in life."

Cultivating contacts has served Trewin well throughout his professional life, enabling him to move back to London for a lengthy spell in journalism. This segued into a longer publishing career where the right agent contacts, in part, enabled him to secure two of his greatest successes, Schindler's Ark and Alan Clark's Diaries. As the Man Booker Prize literary director since 2006, contacts are crucial, helping him choose the right mix of judges which he says is the most important part of his job.

The annual controversy
Of course, all the contacts in the world do not necessarily help stave off the inevitable Booker controversy. They stretch back to 1971, the third year of the prize. That year one of the judges, Malcolm Muggeridge, said he found himself "out of sympathy" with the submissions and withdrew from the panel "nauseated and appalled". In 1974, Trewin himself came under scrutiny. Then the Times literary editor, he was chair of the judges along with novelists A S Byatt and Elizabeth Jane Howard. The shortlist included Kingsley Amis' Ending Up (Cape), and Amis just happened to be married to Howard.

"In the first meeting Jane said: ‘Kingsley has written the most wonderful novel and I think he should win,'" Trewin explains. "Antonia [Byatt] and I looked askance at each other. But his book was strong enough that it justifiably merited being on the shortlist." Further controversy was somewhat averted when Amis did not win, though the prize did have its first split award, going to Nadine Gordimer's The Conservationalist (Cape) and Stanley Middleton's Holiday (Hutchinson).

During Trewin's Booker directorship the dust-ups have continued. In 2007, the chairman Sir Howard Davies used his speech at the award ceremony to lay into the book reviewers and newspaper literary pages for being "overly reverential". This led to much hand-wringing on the books pages, including the Observer's literary editor Robert McCrum notably calling for "root and branch reform" of the Booker Prize.

This year, the controversy started earlier with Canongate m.d. Jamie Byng becoming incensed that one of his own titles, Helen Garner's The Spare Room, was left off the longlist. Posting a note on the Booker website forum shortly after the longlist was announced in July, Byng wrote that he could not respect a judging committee that overlooked The Spare Room for a book like Tom Rob Smith's Child 44 (Simon & Schuster). Adding a bit of spice to Byng's tirade was that one of this year's judges—the writer, actor and TV presenter Hardeep Singh Kohli—is a Canongate author.

Trewin, however, is unfazed. "I admire Jamie Byng and what Canongate publishes," he says. "What I don't think was right was for him to start ringing up Booker judges, including Hardeep, his own author. If it is this year's controversy, so be it."

Sales savvy
During Trewin's directorship, the Booker has become far more commercially minded. Last year, the prize embarked on its first print advertising campaign, which has increased this year. Marketing has been stepped up, backed by powerhouse PR firm Colman Getty. This year, a sampler booklet of the first chapters from the shortlist is available free to bookshops and sampler audio files can be downloaded from the Booker website. Hiring a web editor and building an active online community was one of Trewin's priorities when he started, and he is rather pleased that Byng's Booker post started a torrent of debate.

"On the web we are trying to get the conversation going in those four months from longlist to shortlist, engaging people. It is the healthiest thing for the state of fiction. And this year, I have to say, thank you, Jamie."

Retailers are listened to more and more: the advisory committee includes Waterstone's m.d. Gerry Johnson and Topping & Company owner Robert Topping, and Ottakar's founder James Heneage was one of this year's judges. Trewin has initiated meetings with publishers, chain and indie retailers and suppliers to ensure shortlisted titles are available to shops.

Trewin is unapologetic about trying to shift more copies: "When the prize started out it tried to emulate the Prix Goncourt and encourage the sale of books. Some people think there is something vulgar about selling literary fiction in vast quantities, but that was the whole point."

The Booker has to shout a little louder these days. Though there is still spring in the "Booker Bounce"—last year's less-than-easy read winner, Anne Enright's The Gathering (Cape), has sold more than 500,000 copies worldwide and all of the shortlist more than 100,000—there are far more prizes than 40 years ago and there is competition for the book reading public's attention from the likes of "Richard & Judy".

"Ultimately, it is about trust," Trewin explains. "It is demonstrating that if a book is shortlisted or if it wins the prize, people can trust the Man Booker judgement. Years ago, you had key book reviewers that were very important. People would say: ‘Oh, if he or she likes a book, I might buy it.' Reviewers don't have that impact any more. What has changed, and you could see it with ‘Richard & Judy', is that readers are looking for someone to trust."

Plymouth to London
Both of Trewin's parents were journalists so it is perhaps inevitable that he wanted to be a journalist from an early age. After three years learning his craft in Plymouth, he was offered a job as an assistant on the Sunday Telegraph books pages, through a contact of his father's. He later switched to the Times to work  on the diary pages. A few years later, he wanted to try something different and approached the long-time editor William Rees-Mogg, asking to change jobs. Within a week, Rees-Mogg offered him the literary editor position.

He enjoyed his time as the literary editor, and the freedom of working under Rees-Mogg. Trewin says: "His idea was you hired somebody and let them do the job. If they didn't do it well you fired them and if they did it well you left them alone."

Yet Trewin began to get itchy feet during the 11-month printers strike in 1979. The journalists were kept on staff, yet had nothing to do. He says: "It sounds ideal yet it is one of the worst things you could ever do. If you enjoy something, you enjoy doing it."

He was approached by a few publishers at the time to make the move over, opting to go with Hodder & Stoughton which was looking to build up its non-fiction list. Rees-Mogg was not impressed by the switch. Trewin says: "He looked up at me and said ‘You want to leave newspapers? For publishing? But working for the Times is almost like working for the civil service.'"
Trewin quickly warmed to publishing: "It is the most satisfying of jobs because at the end of day you back your judgement. You persuade everyone that an idea is worth taking on or a book is worth doing."

His biggest success at Hodder came about because another of his contacts, the agent Tessa Sayle, handled Thomas Keneally. Keneally was contracted at Collins for several novels, but he had an idea for a non-fiction piece about a German who saved thousands of Jews from Nazi concentration camps. Trewin was "totally enraptured" by the proposal and quickly signed Keneally for a biography of Oskar Schindler.

A few months later, however, Keneally wrote to Trewin saying he was having difficulty with the biography and wanted to write the book as a novel. Trewin says: "I said OK and I don't think I consulted anyone. You couldn't get away with that today." The book, of course, was an astonishing success, went on to win the Booker in 1982 and, boosted several years later by the Stephen Speilberg film, has sold over one million copies in all editions.

Anthony Cheetham and Alan Clark
In 1992, Trewin jumped ship to run Weidenfeld, which had recently been acquired by Anthony Cheetham for his newly formed Orion group. The move was prompted after Hodder began to experience financial woes. He says: "When a company gets into trouble people get terribly cautious. Understandably so, because money is tight and you play it safe. But I found this very frustrating and I wasn't enjoying it." At Weidenfeld he was able to snare Alan Clark's Diaries, in part, from his relationship with agent Michael Sissons (who is now Trewin's own agent). A roaring success, the Diaries spent more than 20 weeks atop the bestseller lists. Trewin went on to edit two more editions of Clark's diaries after he died and is currently writing a biography of Clark for Weidenfeld due in 2009.

He was approached by the Booker committee to succeed the retiring prize administrator Martyn Goff (the title was subsequently changed to literary director). "By the time I became the Booker administrator I had edited a winner, chaired the judges and sat on the advisory committee so I thought: I am quite well qualified for this."

He is unstinting in his praise for the free reign he has from both prize backers, the Man Group and the overseeing committee. "I don't go to them and ask, ‘Can I do this, can I do that?' I just do it,"  he says. "It goes back to the old Rees-Mogg principle: they let me get on with it and if they don't like it, they can fire me."

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