Mystic Meg's predictions for Legend Press in 2008

Coming back to my desk today after a lovely long Christmas and New Year break I've just been scouting around and updating myself on publishing news headlines and various blogs to make sure I'm not too out of the loop. In doing so I came across this poll on the Bookseller's homepage asking viewers to vote on which thing they think is more likely to happen this year out of such eyebrow raising options as Katie Price (aka Jordan) winning the Booker Prize, Katie Price judging the Booker Prize and Crockatt & Powell buying Waterstone's (that's the one my money's on!). Plus, I also enjoyed reading Scott Pack's predictions for 2008 on his blog Me and My Big Mouth. He says some are serious and some not so serious and that we have to work out which are which -- they are:

No high street book chain will make a profit during 2008.

But many independent book shops will.

A publisher will sign up a debut novel for a £2m advance.

It won't sell very well.

The Man Booker Prize shortlist will feature at least two books from independent publishers.

Waterstone's new distribution centre will experience 'teething problems' (to be fair, all distribution centres experience teething problems) leading publishers to voice their 'concerns' to the trade press.

Limited edition copies of The Equivoque Principle by Darren Craske will be selling for £100 on eBay.

The independent books on the Man Booker shortlist will turn out to have been completely ignored by the broadsheet press when they were first published.  The papers are then forced to review them and discover (surprise, surprise) that they are better than most of the stuff they review by default.

Borders will radically overhaul its head office team following a review of Christmas.

Sebastian Beaumont's superb novel Thirteen will eventually be stocked by more than the current seven Waterstone's branches (I am betting on a final tally of 13, funnily enough).

Kate Swann will leave WH Smith to head up HMV Group.

The eventual Man Booker winner will be a huge commercial success, outselling the Richard & Judy titles for the year.

Haruki Murakami will win the Nobel Prize for Literature.

An online retailer will offer weekly free book downloads for customers.

But Amazon Kindle will make no real difference to sales of e-books.

Bloggers will overtake reviewers as the publishers' favoured tastemakers.

Richard & Judy will divorce prompting a huge slump in all book-related share prices.

Marie Phillips will be signed up as TV columnist for The Guardian.

John Self will be signed up as a reviewer for the same paper.

I won't be signed up for anything.

So, what are the potential options for Legend Press in 2008? (All non-serious by the way, before you start worrying about our sanity...)

• The publishing world discovers that Tom is actually 38, not 28 as previously publicised, and realise that he is in fact not eligible for all the 'young people' awards he's been shortlisted for.
• Having said that children's books and boy wizards just aren't Legend Press' thing we suddenly have a change of heart and with misguided £ signs in our eyes encourage all our authors to refashion their sequels and second novels into a series suspiciously titled 'Henry Porter'.
• Tom will actually take a holiday (as laid out in his New Year's Resolutions) but, being the first one in 3 years, it causes such a shock to his system that he has to be surgically removed from his pina colada in order to be escorted home and back to his desk.
• Richard & Judy's next book club will consist soley of Legend Press titles -- why bother with anyone else?
• The winning titles of the next Man Booker Prize will consist soley of Legend Press titles.
• I could go on here in this theme, but I think you get the picture...
• Legend Press buys a digital TV channel to publicise and dramatise all its books.
• Our online shop sales starts rivalling Amazon in total books bought per month....ok now I'm just getting silly. Wishful thinking is allowed in the first week of January though!

Happy New Year to all and, on a serious note, I know that a great many things are in the pipeline for Legend Press and its authors this year - so bring on 2008!

Emma

Comments

[Janilou]

You forgot the part where the latest Legend Press "Short Story Reinvented" book for 2008, becomes an overnight success and rockets to the top of the New York Times Best Seller list! :-)