Although BFI authors have not yet been informed, the BFI Publishing/Palgrave Macmillan partnership deal was finalised on Monday 3 December. The Publishing unit will leave Stephen Street on 21 December and will be relocated in Palgrave Macmillan offices in King's Cross from January 2008.
3 comments:
What is LEFT of BFI Publishing will relocate to Kings Cross.
BFI authors are little affected by the indifference of the BFI Directorate. You will continue to be published (should you choose to be) under the BFI imprint.The staff and associates of BFI Publishing, all of them with financial and/or familial committments, have had no choice. From the accession of Nevill in 2004, the sale of BFI Publishing -the only commercially attractive proposition within the BFI-was as inevitable as it was predictable. Didn't you see it coming? Blimey.
Having a go at BFI authors doesn't help anyone -- they are regarded as bottom of the pile by management, and obviously by others too.
The idea that authors have the choice whether or not to publish with the BFI is misleading. Authors are tied by contract to the BFI and cannot withdraw even if they want to. In the current situation of a rapidly shrinking publishing industry, there is no guarantee that an academic, scholarly book will be published, something that particularly affects the livelihood of younger researchers.
When BFI authors found out about management's plans for BFI Publishing and the other departments at risk, many of them wrote to Amanda Nevill and Anthony Minghella, and published letters in the press, to protest vigorously about what was happening. They put their heads above the parapet when others preferred to remain anonymous. This protest was not about getting their books published, but about the damage that management's plans would do to the BFI itself. Partly as a result of the publicity generated, two out of three BFI Publishing staff will relocate to Palgrave Macmillan in January 2008. Not the ideal outcome, but better than it might have been.
BFI authors continue to protest publicly, in a variety of arenas, about management's 'realignment' plans, and about the lack of transparency in their decision-making.
It must be acknowledged that BFI Publishing has treated its authors very badly; and those being relocated are not the least responsible. This is too bad, because, finally, a publishing unit does need authors to stay in the game. This contempt for authors has alienated many of them, and the bad word of mouth it has generated is likely to make the BFI an untouchable for at least a generation, the most talented of which will simply go elsewhere, to other film series in publishing that are edited more imaginatively—and with better manners.
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