News and Events - Scribe Publications

A note from the publisher on launching Scribe UK

2013-05-21T00:00:00Z

The launch of Scribe’s UK website marks an important development in the company’s history. It signals Scribe’s expansion overseas, at a time when the book industry is under great pressure in much of the world. As such, it is a mark of confidence in the future of the book itself, as well as in our staff’s editorial judgements.

Reflected on the site is an array of books to be published in the UK for the first time, along with a backlist of titles that have never been made available in this country before. All of the books represent what I might call Scribe’s sensibility — a dedication to books that matter, whether fiction or non-fiction, and the pursuit of excellence in the development and presentation of our list.

We believe that books are vital to the health of any civilisation, and that good books don’t appear by accident — their authors have to be nurtured, and their works have to be attended to fastidiously, and then championed. Ultimately, good books depend on good publishers, both using a range of high-level skills, in the service of the wider society.

We hope to demonstrate, with this list and this website, that we have joined that cohort in the UK.

Henry Rosenbloom

The DSM and The Book of Woe

2013-05-15T00:00:00Z

The media is already abuzz with news of both the forthcoming new edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, and Gary Greenberg’s The Book of Woe, a brilliant investigation of everything that’s wrong with it.

Considered the bible of modern psychiatry, the DSM is used to classify and diagnose mental illnesses. But it’s now coming under fire from professional bodies who say that they will not be supporting its use, from the National Institute of Mental Health, who say ‘Patients with mental disorders deserve better’ to the British Psychological Society.

In The Book of Woe, practicing psychotherapist Gary Greenberg takes this critique further, arguing that the DSM is dangerously unscientific, all too vulnerable to social and historic forces, and increasingly defined by market values.

The Book of Woe is already receiving rave reviews overseas, and the Australian edition is now available to pre-order or buy – for more information see here.

Canadian Jewish Book Awards 2013

2013-05-03T00:00:00Z

Matti Friedman’s The Aleppo Codex has won the 2013 Canadian Jewish Book Award History category. Judges said ‘Part history and part whodunit, Friedman’s fascinating book chronicles the Codex’s remarkable and controversial journey from 10th century Tiberias, to Syria, and eventually Israel.’ You can read more about the award here.

Behind the Beautiful Forevers wins LA Times Book Prize

2013-04-23T00:00:00Z

Congratulations to Katherine Boo, whose stunning work of non-fiction Behind the Beautiful Forevers has won the 2012 LA Times Book Prize in the Current Interest category. You can see the full list of winners here. Katherine was also a finalist in this year’s Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction.

Independent Foreign Fiction Prize Shortlist 2013

2013-04-12T00:00:00Z

The Detour by Gerbrand Bakker has made the shortlist of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. Previous recipients of the prize include Orhan Pamuk, Milan Kundera, José Saramago, W.G. Sebald, Per Olov Enquist, Per Petterson and Philippe Claudel.

NSW Premier's Literary Award Shortlist

2013-04-11T00:00:00Z

Running Dogs by Ruby Murray and Sufficient Grace by Amy Espeseth have been shortlisted for the UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing in the 2013 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards.

The Kibble Award Longlist

2013-04-11T00:00:00Z

Cate Kennedy’s Like A House On Fire has been longlisted for the Nita B Kibble Award 2013. The Awards recognise the works of women writers of fiction or non-fiction classified as ‘life writing’. The full longlist can be seen here, and the shortlist will be announced on the 5th of June.

Scribe seeks a Sales and Distribution Manager

2013-04-05T00:00:00Z

We are seeking to appoint an experienced sales and distribution manager to act as the main point-of-contact for Scribe’s sales and distribution agents, and for our dealings with booksellers. The main other responsibilities of the position include (but are not limited to) the following functions:

• Liaising with key sales and distribution personnel on trade promotions and seasonal catalogue presentations.

• Developing and maintaining non-trade sales channels and identifying special sales opportunities.

• Acting as the main sales point-of-contact for Scribe’s e-book vendors.

• Liaising with our publisher over the setting of print-runs and sales targets for new titles, and reviewing sales results.

• Monitoring sales and stock availability of existing titles, and recommending print runs for reprints to the publisher.

Several years’ experience in trade publishing or general bookselling is essential. You will need to demonstrate excellent written and verbal communication skills, and an eye for detail, as well as initiative, insight, a keen customer and industry focus, and the ability to work in a small office with good humour.

For a full job description, please email info@scribepub.com.au

To apply, please send a covering letter and your CV to Henry Rosenbloom, Publisher, Scribe Publications Pty Ltd, 18–20 Edward St, Brunswick Vic 3056, or email applications to info@scribepub.com.au, by 5.00 pm on Friday, 12 April 2013.

Manning Clark House National Cultural Award 2012

2013-03-26T00:00:00Z

Congratulations to Ross McMullin, who has been awarded the 2012 National Cultural Award for his book Farewell, Dear People: biographies of Australia’s Lost Generation. The awards, administered by Manning Clark House, recognise “outstanding contributions to the quality of Australian cultural life”, and interpret culture in the widest sense.

The Stella Prize Shortlist

2013-03-20T00:00:00Z

Congratulations to Cate Kennedy, whose book Like a House on Fire has been shortlisted for the inaugural Stella Prize. For more information see here.

Scribe launches its first UK catalogue

2013-03-01T00:00:00Z

Today Scribe launches its inaugural UK catalogue, with its first titles to be published in June. Scribe’s first UK title will be J.M. Coetzee: a life in writing, by J.C. Kannemeyer, the first-ever biography of the Nobel and Booker Prize–winning author, presented in a handsome hardback edition. Other notable titles in this first season’s list include High Sobriety: my year without booze, by Scottish-born Melbourne-based journalist Jill Stark, Viennese Romance, the first-ever English edition of the previously unknown novel by the mid-20th-century European novelist David Vogel, The Eternal Son, by Cristovão Tezza, the multi-awardwinning Brazilian novel that was shortlisted for the 2012 IMPAC award and Sufficient Grace, by the American-born Australian writer Amy Espeseth, a stunning debut novel about a fundamentalist family in rural Wisconsin with a dark secret. It will also include The Best of Britain’s Political Cartoons 2013, edited by local author and political-cartoon exhibitor Tim Benson — our first work to be commissioned in the UK.

Download the full catalogue here.

RIP Stéphane Hessel

2013-02-28T00:00:00Z

Stéphane Hessel, the author of Indignez-Vous! has passed away at the age of 95. Born in Germany in 1917, Hessel moved to France with his Jewish writer father and mother in 1924. He fought in the French army in 1940 and escaped from a POW camp to join de Gaulle’s Free French in London. On his clandestine return to organise the Resistance in France, he was captured, tortured, and sent to the Buchenwald and Dora concentration camps. He escaped death to work after the war on drafting the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Publication of Hessel’s recent essay Indignez-Vous!, which sold more than 4.5 million copies in 35 countries, is credited with helping to inspire the Occupy Wall Street movement, and coincided with the Arab Spring revolutions. Protests in Spain against corruption and bipartisan politics drew their name, Indignaos, from the Spanish title of Hessel’s essay. A full obituary can be read here.

The ALS Gold Medal Longlist

2013-02-26T00:00:00Z

Congratulations to Cate Kennedy, whose book, Like a House on Fire, has made the longlist of the 2013 ALS Gold Medal. The full longlist can be seen here.

The Launch of Scribe UK

2013-02-22T00:00:00Z

Scribe’s Publisher, Henry Rosenbloom, flies to London tomorrow to officially launch our UK list. He will present Scribe’s inaugural UK catalogue at the Faber Factory Plus sales conference next Thursday.

Henry says: ‘In this season, and in later ones, we aim to present the fruit of our uncompromising labours — the best and strongest writing we can find, either selected or translated by us from international sources, or commissioned locally and edited assiduously in-house. We are delighted to now have the opportunity to commend our version of the best of the world’s significant books to UK booksellers and book-buyers.’

The UK catalogue will be available for download on our website from 10am EST next Friday 1st March.

The Stella Prize Longlist

2013-02-21T00:00:00Z

Congratulations to Cate Kennedy and Amy Espeseth, whose books Like a House on Fire and Sufficient Grace have been longlisted for the inaugural Stella Prize. Named after one of Australia’s most important female authors, Stella Maria Miles Franklin, the Stella Prize is a major new literary award for Australian women’s writing. The 2013 shortlist will be announced on Wednesday 20 March. For more information see here.

RIP Roger Horton

2013-02-06T00:00:00Z

As many people now know, our sales & distribution manager, Roger Horton, died suddenly last Tuesday.

Scribe’s publisher, Henry Rosenbloom, said today, ‘Roger’s loss is being felt very deeply by me and by his workmates at Scribe. Like Scribe’s authors and his many friends in the book trade and publishing industry, we treasured Roger as a kind, gentle, and thoughtful person. Roger was extraordinarily conscientious and passionate about his work, and contributed immensely to every aspect of Scribe’s operations.’

A memorial to celebrate Roger’s life will be held at 2.00 p.m. on Sunday 17 February at Scribe Publications, 18–20 Edward St, Brunswick. All are welcome to attend. Roger’s family has requested that, in lieu of flowers, donations be made to the Salvation Army’s Hope for Life program.

For more information, please call Tamsin Wagner at Scribe on 03 9388 8780 or email tamsin@scribepub.com.au

Why Nate Silver counts

2013-01-14T00:00:00Z

Something very important happened during the 2012 US presidential election-campaigns — and I’m not referring to the campaigns themselves, or to the behaviour of the candidates.

A New York Times blogger called Nate Silver predicted all of the key results with unerring accuracy. He got each of the 50 states right. This meant that he got the key ‘battleground’ states right, including those with very close margins, such as Florida. He got the popular vote right (he predicted that Obama would get 50.8 per cent against Romney’s 48.3 per cent — the actual margin was 51.1 per cent to 47.2 per cent); and he got the electoral-college vote right (he predicted that Obama would get 313 electoral votes against Romney’s 225 — the actual margin was 332 to 206).

I could go on, but you get the picture. What makes this all the more impressive is that the US’s voluntary voting system makes it very difficult to make accurate forecasts in tight races, because it’s hard to know what the turnout will be like, or whether it will differ significantly either demographically or ethnically from previous turnouts — and opinion polls have to not only capture voting intentions accurately, but to build in assumptions about both these key factors. He was also making forecasts that differed significantly from those provided by large, well-endowed national polling companies.

At a personal level, Silver kept updating and holding to his predictions (which he calls ‘projections’) while he was under ferocious criticism from conservative pundits as being a liberal who was running a self-serving Democratic Party line. The same commentators criticised all opinion polls they didn’t agree with on similar grounds. (As it turns out, they’d swallowed their own Kool Aid.)

Silver’s blog, FiveThirtyEight (which is the total number of electoral-college votes up for grabs) has been hosted by the Times for a couple of years. So far as I know, Silver hasn’t revealed the full details of the model he uses, but it’s apparent that it’s based on a judicious interpretation of opinion polls. Because of the US’s electoral-college system (which we in Australia would think of as an indirect first-past-the-post system), Silver is less influenced by national opinion polls than the media and the usual suspects are. Instead, he has compiled a history of opinion-polling results in each state, a set of local characteristics that he calls ‘State fundamentals’, and a discount factor that he applies to the polling results to produce what he calls an ‘adjusted polling average’. This ends up being expressed as a projected vote-share, and a probabalistic figure for the outcome, which he summarises as the candidates’ ‘chance of winning’.

For example, in one of the key battleground states, Virginia, where the opinion polls had Obama leading by only just over 1 per cent, Silver came up with a projected vote for Obama of 50.7 per cent to 48.7 per cent, and gave him a 79 per cent chance of winning the state. Obama won by 50.8 per cent to 47.8 per cent.

Silver seems to apply discounts to national polls as well, and is clearly much more interested in updated polling averages than in the latest poll/s at any given time. Because of America’s size and relatively dense population, he’s helped by the vast number of local polls that are carried out during election campaigns. In other words, he has a lot of information — both current and historic — at his disposal. But, clearly, he applies a great deal of statistical expertise to these numbers.

Readers of Silver’s bestselling book, The Signal and the Noise, will know that he comes from a background of statistical analysis of baseball, and of professional poker-playing. He understands the basis for establishing probabilities in a wide range of fields (including weather forecasting), and isn’t frightened of following the evidence wherever it takes him.

Apart from anything else, he could see that Obama was ahead where it mattered — in the battleground states — and that he wasn’t relinquishing that lead as the election neared.

This is where Nate Silver’s achievements have local significance. Before and during the election campaign, he kept showing Obama as having a very high chance of winning; in fact, by election eve, he nominated that chance as being 90.9 per cent; conversely, he said that Romney had a 9.1 per cent chance.

This, at a time when national opinion polls showed only a small gap in Obama’s favour. In Australia, US-based print and TV correspondents all opined that the election was — you guessed it — ‘too close to call’. This was particularly noticeable on the ABC’s radio and TV news programs, as well as on its flagship TV current-affairs program, 7.30.

Not to put too fine a point on it, these journalists didn’t know what they were talking about. The election was only too close to call if you weren’t looking in the right places. They were doing what was easy, and what they thought was safe.

Their failure is the take-home message from Nate Silver’s achievements. General correspondents have no right to editorialise about the implications of opinion polls if they don’t have a grasp of the nuts and bolts behind the polls — or at least don’t talk to people who do. In Australia, The Australian’s Dennis Shanahan has been shown up by electoral-specialist bloggers several times for his inadequate rendering of opinion polls conducted by Newspoll, the company owned by his employers. And our major newspapers, which commission the main polls, have a self-serving habit of splashing the latest poll results as though they were definitive.

Journalism is under enough external challenges without scoring own goals. Australia’s electoral system is very different from America’s (voting is compulsory for a start, so there’s much less need to enrol voters or to get them to vote), but in 2013, an election year, there will be immense pressure on political journalists to behave professionally. Some of them could do worse than start the year by researching the track record of Australia’s opinion-polling organisations, and try to come up with evidence-based probabilities of their own.

Henry Rosenbloom

Scribe UK to be established

2012-11-20T00:00:00Z

We’re excited to announce we’re setting up a UK office in the new year. Our sales and distribution will be handled by the Faber Factory Plus organisation.

Scribe publisher Henry Rosenbloom said, ‘I’ve been mulling over this move for a couple of years, as I was determined to find the best and most appropriate solution for our needs. I’m delighted that we’ll be one of Faber Factory Plus’s clients, and that we’ll be able to join the ranks of the UK’s notable independent houses that I’ve long admired from afar.

‘This is a big step for a small company to take, but the reasons for it are compelling, on both the buying and selling sides. It will give us the capacity to acquire UK and Commonwealth rights in some overseas-originated titles that would otherwise be denied us; and it also means that many more of our books, which come from many sources, will be available in much of the English-reading world.

‘Starting next June, we’ll be publishing 20–30 books a year in the UK, drawn from our local and international authors. Among our first titles will be JM Coetzee: a life in writing, by JC Kannemeyer, the first-ever biography of the Nobel and Pulitzer Prize–winning author; Futurevision: scenarios for the world in 2040, by London-based Richard Watson and his Australian co-author Oliver Freeman; and Cate Kennedy’s latest collection of short stories, Like a House on Fire.

‘I’m also delighted to announce that we’ve appointed Rina Gill as our publicity director. Rina, who won the UK Publicist of the Year Award in 2010, and the award for the best hardback non-fiction campaign in 2008, is a former publicity director for Corvus, deputy publicity director for Cornerstone, and publicity director for Century.’

Will Atkinson, the sales and marketing director and director of independent publishing services at Faber and Faber Ltd, said, ‘Henry embodies all that is great about independent publishing. Scribe Publications have consistently represented the highest of standards throughout their long and distinguished history. We are immensely proud to be partners and to be able to bring Scribe to readers in the UK.’

Katherine Boo wins the National Book Award

2012-11-15T00:00:00Z

We are delighted to report that Katherine Boo has won the 2012 US National Book Award for her stunning work of non-fiction, Behind the Beautiful Forevers. The prize, which was established in 1950, aims to enhance awareness of exceptional books. You can read a wonderful interview with Katherine on their website.

Raimond Gaita on Our Harsh Logic

2012-11-15T00:00:00Z

Our Harsh Logic: Israeli soldiers' testimonies from the Occupied Territories, 2000–2010 is the first book compiled by Breaking the Silence, one of Israel’s most internationally lauded non-government organisations. Philosopher and author Raimond Gaita gave this speech on the occasion of the book’s Australian publication.

‘Our Harsh Logic is a book of testimonies by Israeli soldiers who served on the West Bank and Gaza strip between 2000 and 2010. For obvious reason, its 374 pages make for depressing reading. How could it be otherwise? Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967 and withdrew from Gaza only in 2005, to invade it again in 2008. Its external control over Gaza remains so complete that many international lawyers argue that it is still in occupation of it. With a similar history, soldiers of an occupying army of any nation in the world would have similar stories to tell. No one should be surprised by the contents of Our Harsh Logic.

One of the most important lessons of the Holocaust, we have repeatedly and justifiably been told, is that ordinary people can do morally terrible things — things so terrible, indeed, that they can add up to the greatest evil in our recorded history. Why then should anyone be surprised that ordinary young Israelis should commit deeds such as are described in this book? They range from deeds that are obviously criminal according to international law — wrongful killings of various kinds and the use of human shields, for example — to deeds that are not criminal according to law, but which express disdain for the humanity of the Palestinians of the kind to be expected from an occupying army of long standing, often compounded by racist hostility to the Palestinians as Arabs.

Our Harsh Logic is therefore a depressing book, but it is also an inspiring one. It testifies to dehumanisation and worse, but it testifies also to courage: firstly to the courage of the soldiers who faced what they had done and witnessed, who in many cases faced truthfully their own dehumanisation and wrong doing; and secondly to the courage of members of Breaking the Silence. Anyone who knows Israel will understand that it requires courage to publish such a book into a public made up of citizen soldiers that venerates its defence forces, a public in which most families must know in their hearts that many of their friends and family members could tell the same stories.

The book is also admirable because its editors wisely avoided political comment except insofar as it follows unavoidably from what the soldiers said they did and witnessed. That ensures the book’s integrity as a book of testimony.

Our Harsh Logic is divided into four sections. The last section – Law Enforcement: A Dual Regime – has probably the most direct political implications because it makes undeniable to anyone who accepts that the testimonies are for the most part truthful, that the IDF has long been complicit in the settlement programme pursued by successive Israeli governments. Because there are now over 350,000 Israeli settlers on the West Bank, many people on the left and the right believe the two-state solution is unrealistic. No Israeli government, they think, would be prepared to dismantle as many settlements as would be necessary for a two-state solution that is acceptable to the Palestinians as even a minimal fulfilment of their national aspirations. But because this conclusion concerning IDF complicity is inescapable if the testimony is truthful, it is not the conclusion drawn in the pursuit of a controversial political agenda. It is quite absurd to say, as some of its critics have, that Our Harsh Logic is a book of propaganda.

The distinction between conclusions that follow inevitably from the testimonies in this book and those, which though they may be reasonable, do not and are therefore controversial, is very important. If Our Harsh Logic expressed conclusions of the latter kind — conclusions that are reasonable but which, because they do not strictly follow from the testimony, can also be reasonably contested — it would have undermined its integrity as a book of witness because it would have undermined trust in it. It would have given people legitimate reason to wonder whether the testimonies had been selected, perhaps even manipulated, to serve a political agenda.

Perhaps I lack imagination, but I cannot think of any political opinion about the options in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that need deny, if they are brutally honest, the testimonies in this book. Even radical settlers could accept them and then say that the deeds they record are the price they are prepared to pay for the success of their struggle for a Greater Israel (assuming they object to those deeds). The testimonies are consistent with a two-state solution and with the left- and right-wing varieties of a one-state solution. They are consistent with Zionism, post-Zionism, and anti-Zionism.

That, I believe, is true of the book considered only as a book of testimonies. The editorial position, however, appears to require that Jews retain an Israeli identity in any solution to the conflict, even if there is no Jewish state. That, indeed, is suggested in the book’s title – Our Harsh Logic, rather than the impersonal, ‘The Harsh Logic of the IDF’ or some variation on that. The explicit use of the first person plural indicates identification — regretful, sorrowful, ashamed identification, but identification nonetheless. It therefore expresses the only form of patriotism that is worth anything — truthful patriotism that desires to live a national life without the shame that would be the only honest and lucid response if the nation’s leaders and soldiers committed crimes that would justifiably bring them before an international criminal court. From the perspective of such patriotism — patriotism distinguished from the counterfeit of it that we call jingoism — even severe criticism of one’s country can be amongst the highest form of loyalty to it and an expression of the most serious concern for its welfare. In publishing Our Harsh Logic, Breaking the Silence expresses just such concern for the country to which its members belong.

Who should read this book? Everyone who is seriously concerned about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — Israelis, Palestinians, and most diaspora Jews, obviously. But also everyone who is not a pacifist. As I said at the beginning, no one should be surprised by the testimonies in this book, which, of course, is one reason why no one has any reason to doubt that they are on the whole truthful. If we are not pacifists, then we rely on our armed forces to protect what we cherish most deeply in our national lives. Yet hardly ever do we think seriously about how we might reduce the vulnerability of our soldiers to the dehumanising consequences of protracted war and the likelihood that they will do morally terrible things. If there is to be even a slight chance of this, we all need to acknowledge truths of the kind recounted in Our Harsh Logic, not only in our heads, but also deeply in our bones.'

— Raimond Gaita, 2012

Raimond Gaita is Professorial Fellow in the Melbourne Law School and The Faculty of Arts at the University of Melbourne, and Emeritus Professor of Moral Philosophy at King’s College London. Gaita’s books, which have been widely translated, include: Good and Evil: An Absolute Conception, Romulus, My Father; A Common Humanity: Thinking About Love & Truth & Justice, The Philosopher’s Dog, Breach of Trust: Truth, Morality and Politics and, as editor and contributor, Gaza: Morality Law and Politics. His most recent book is After Romulus.