For those not familiar with the name, Tom Maschler was the managing director and later chairman of the publishing firm Jonathan Cape for many decades. He died in 2020 aged 87 and this is the first and apparently only edition of his book published in 2005, interestingly by Picador which is a division of Pan Macmillan rather than Jonathan Cape which by 2005 was part of the Penguin Random House group. I can’t even find a paperback edition, suggesting the book rightly disappeared without trace. Having read it I doubt whether anyone from Cape, or indeed Penguin, would have been interested in this terrible example of vanity publishing so it’s hardly a revelation that it turned up under a different publishing house, the only surprise was that Picador actually picked it up. Oddly the photographer of the portrait on the front cover isn’t credited in the book.

I had hoped for some sort of insight into the world of publishing but all you get is an insight into an apparent egomaniac who considered that he knew best even when starting as a junior at the publishing house André Deutsch where he lasted a few months and by his own admission started selling ski tours whilst working for them, even running his operation from his office at André Deutsch. From there he moved to MacGibbon & Kee where he lasted somewhat longer but was reprimanded by the firms owner because even then he liked to give the impression that he ran the business and was not so lowly as to just be an employee. This two and a half years employment is dismissed in three pages of the book and is followed with the a year and a half at Penguin which is similarly summarily dealt with, this time with 4½ pages most of which is moaning that he is not treated as more senior than he actually was. This is all to get to his next job, this time at Jonathan Cape where he could let his ego fly.

There are some interesting short sections covering authors he dealt with but the overwhelming impression is that none of them could have succeeded without him, even the already famous ones before he published them. I really cannot recommend this book, even assuming you could find a copy to read and fortunately they are in short supply even on the secondary market which says a lot about how many were sold.. If ever a book was about me, me, me this is it, the only vaguely comparable experience would be Englebert Humperdink on the BBC radio programme Desert Island Discs where the the guest is supposed to choose eight records that would give them pleasure to listen to if stranded on a desert island and uniquely Humperdink chose eight records all sung by himself.

I’ll finish with an extract from his obituary in The Guardian newspaper which deals with the book and sums up my reaction to the overblown, self-aggrandising text I have just read, indeed I wish I had read this before wasting my time on this book. The obituary had just covered his first assignment for Cape, which was to help Mary Hemingway go through the trunk full of papers left by her husband Ernest after his suicide.

The episode provided Maschler with the opening line for Publisher (2005): “I was 27 when Hemingway killed himself, and I had just joined Cape.” It set the tone for a much-parodied memoir, in which his guiding mantra appeared to be “when in doubt claim credit”. Which he did, for books and authors with which he had little or nothing to do: Midnight’s Children, for example, even though Salman Rushdie had followed his editor, Liz Calder, from Gollancz. Calder was also responsible for acquiring the debuts of Julian Barnes (and his alter ego Dan Kavanagh), and Anita Brookner. In the London Review of Books, John Sutherland declared that Publisher was “dead on arrival”, but acknowledged Maschler’s effectiveness and the loyalty his authors had for him, as well as more widely held reservations.

As for the reference to ‘much parodied’ I refer you to a brilliant review of the book also in The Guardian from 21st March 2005. Read it here.