Review of The Last Mad Surge of Youth and Pomona Books on Dave
Roberts' Books 'blog
There would, I imagine, be few people filling their shopping baskets exclusively
with the latest offerings from, say, Harper Collins or Hodder and Stoughton.
Brand loyalty amongst book lovers tends to be more about authors (many of
whom are described as 'brands' these days). The honourable exception to this
is the smaller, niche publishers - Salt and Bluechrome spring to mind - who
are not only passionate about what they do, but also have a consistent feel
to every book they publish, presumably because they reflect the tastes of
just a handful of people, as opposed to committees and focus groups.
A few months ago I ordered a book called 'Believe in the Sign' by
Mark Hodkinson, on the grounds that it had been grouped together with my latest
book on Amazon, in the 'Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought This' section.
Despite not really wanting to like something that had such a similar theme
to my book, I found myself absolutely loving it. I had never heard of the
publishers, Pomona, so decided to check out their website.
The first thing that struck me was that this was not a normal publisher.
Hodkinson himself seems to run it and, with author royalty rates of 50%, it
doesn't appear to follow any conventional publishing business model. But even
more notable was the line-up of authors. It was some of the people who made
me fall in love with reading in the first place - Hunter Davies, who wrote
'Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush', Barry Hines, whose 'A Kestrel
For A Knave' became the film Kes, and Trevor Hoyle, writer of cult
classic, Rule of Night.
This was incredibly exciting. So why had I never heard of Pomona? The answer,
according to Hodkinson when I emailed him, was something faced by most publishers
in their position. Distribution. They simply don't have the money to compete
with the majors, who can (rumour has it) effectively GIVE books to stores
and pay for them to be front-of-house.
I am now on my fourth Pomona book in a row and it's fantastic. A Barry Hines
book, called Looks and Smiles, which is a love story about a mechanic
and shoe shop assistant, set during the turbulent early 1980s. It's the kind
of thing Penguin used to do - real, passionate and unflinchingly honest. Before
that, I read Mark Hodkinson's latest novel, 'The Last Mad Surge of Youth',
which would be on the bestseller list if there was any justice in the world.
Perhaps inevitably, Pomona seems to be experiencing financial difficulties.
I don't know of any small independent that isn't. But they deserve to at least
be checked out at http://www.pomonauk.co.uk
And no, I'm nothing to do with Pomona. I'm just a huge fan. And how many
publishers can you say that about?