I, ROGER JEREMY MYNOTT, of The Edinburgh Building, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 2RU MAKE OATH AND SAY as follows:-
1. I am the Editorial Director and Deputy Managing Director of the Cambridge University Press.
2. Now produced and shown to me marked "RJM 1" is a copy of a report relating to a typescript produced by Andrew Malcolm entitled "Making Names an introduction to eponymics." This report accurately sets out my opinion on the typescript.
Sworn at Cambridge, 21st June 1991
Introduction
1. I have been asked to report on Making Names by Clifford Chance on behalf of Oxford University Press ("OUP"). My report is provided pursuant to the Order made under the Summons for Directions on 19 April 1991.
2. I have seen the following documents and material:
i. The typescript Making Names, which I understand to be the revised version of this work;
ii. Andrew Malcolm's Points of Claim;
iii. OUP's Points of Defence and Admissions of Facts;
iv. Andrew Malcolm's Points of Reply;
v. The Judgment of the Court of Appeal;
vi. OUP's Publishing Proposal Form;
vii. Letters of Alan Ryan (11th February 1984 and 18th July 1984), Galen Strawson and Adam Hodgkin.
Terms of Reference
3. I am asked to report on the sales prospects of Making Names as a philosophy book or as a general book or as some combination of these. In making this report, I have found it inevitably necessary to consider the publishability of the work as a preliminary to determining its sales prospects. I shall go on to discuss the market for philosophy texts of different kinds, appropriate royalty arrangements for these, and the format in which they are likely to be published. I will relate these answers to the present case in so far as I am able.
4. It may be helpful if I mention briefly such of my professional experience as may be relevant. I have for some years been Editorial Director at Cambridge University Press ("CUP") with responsibilities for our output from all groups and sectors worldwide. I am also currently Managing Director of CUP. Before being promoted to these positions, I was for many years Commissioning Editor with worldwide responsibility for philosophy at the Press. The CUP Philosophy List is one of the largest and, I believe, the best in the English-speaking world (rivalled only by that of OUP) and I was in charge of its management and development - commissioning and assessing new proposals, reading typescripts, discussing projects with authors at all stages of their evolution, seeing books through to publication and planning and monitoring publication strategies. In this role I met a very large number of philosophers in all parts of the world, read a great deal of philosophy, attended conferences, visited universities and generally immersed myself in the subject as much as I could. It may also be relevant to mention that I have a Ph.D from Cambridge on a topic in Greek philosophy and have some experience in teaching philosophy both at Cambridge University and as a schoolmaster in Oxford.
Making Names
5. Mr. Malcolm's work is unusual in some ways. It is a wide-ranging discussion of various traditional philosophical problems in metaphysics, epistemology and the philosophy of science, but it is set in the form of a dialogue between two men and concludes with an allegorical drama (based on the Electra story in Greek tragedy). The first eight 'dialectical' chapters introduce and explore many of the standard philosophical problems which figure in most introductions to the subject: minds and bodies, other minds, induction, cause and effect, freedom and determinism, universals and particulars, consciousness, language and the world, the definition of good, and the nature of explanation in scientific theory. This last topic emerges as one of the central themes of the work and the progress of the 'dialogue' challenges, both directly and by implication, what are taken to be the guiding assumptions of modern physics and cosmology, particularly in respect of particle theory. The general tendency is highly critical of positivism and the scientistic attitudes it is associated with; and this in turn is connected with attitudes to modem technology, nuclear weaponry and other socio-political issues of that kind. The purpose of the final chapter is to express and dramatise some of the central conclusions of the work in a different, more purely literary, medium.
6. This would make a very large book. An earlier version of the typescript was apparentiv estimated to be 180,000 words long. The OUP Publishing Proposal Form assumes an extent of 400 printed pages in a 216 x 138 format; I should be surprised if that were not a significant underestimate. The question of length is relevant to some of the issues concerning cost and market which are discussed below.
7. My overall assessment is that this work is not publishable in its present or in anything like its present form. I believe that this was recognised by the many publishers who declined it fairly promptly and I think it should have been recognised at a much earlier stage by OUP. This is not at all to say that the work is without merit or is 'wrong' in some technically demonstrable and disqualifying way. The author is evidently well informed about these issues and debates, has his own views about some of them, and is convinced of the larger importance of the themes he is presenting. But the work is in the end unpublishable because it would not find a real readership and is not addressed to a real readership. It is aimed at everyone and no-one.
8. This is not a criticism of this or that section, this or that argument or conclusion. Even if the work's merits were greater than they are, and even if it had no demerits, I do not believe that it would succeed in this form. The book is not conceived and executed in a way that would successfully attract and hold readers from any of the potential constituencies to whom the author might have been appealing.
Potential Readership
9. I have considered the categories of readers to whom a work of this nature might be expected to have some appeal, and have formed the following views:
Professional Academic Philosophers would not find it sufficiently original, and they would not feel that what was original and distinctive justified or was required by the very extensive introductory manoeuvres.
Students of Philosophy would not stay the course. They might initially be attracted by the unconventionality of the form of presentation but would, I am sure, fairly quickly become bored and disaffected. The dialogue is not badly done but it quickly becomes routine and goes on far too long; the little jokes and interludes are not nearly sufficient to maintain the momentum for pedagogic purposes. The work does also become noticeably denser as it proceeds and assumes a stronger interest in physics and the philosophy of science than most beginner-level students of philosophy would have.
The famous general readers, alas, are never there when you need them. But this work is just not compelling enough on philosophical, literary, or broader intellectual grounds to excite and hold them. It is a very hard slog to get through to the end of the philosophical dialogue and the dramatic epilogue does not work so well that one feels adequately rewarded for the effort. I find the comparisons made with Colin Wilson's The Outsider and Douglas Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, Bach entirely far-fetched and indeed I would not really count these two works as works of 'philosophy' in the sense in which Mr. Malcolm's work for the most part presents itself. I would certainly count Hare's The Language of Morals, Parfit's Reasons and Persons and Raphael's Moral Philosophy as works of philosophy in this narrower sense.
10. Thomas Nagel's What Does It All Mean?, which is referred to by Mr. Malcolm's Points of Reply, is indeed an excellent general introduction to philosophy. It is very well written, is by an outstanding philosopher with an international reputation, and is only 108 pages long. Whilst there is some correspondence between the stated aims of Mr. Malcolm and those of Nagel, for the reasons set out above I do not believe Mr. Malcolm, unlike Nagel. succeeds in his aims.
11. It is not a solution to this problem of readership to say that since all these constituencies have some potential interest in the work they can all be counted as 'the market'. There is a classic publishing equation which has to be solved for every book and that is the equation which relates price, print run and cost. The equation is successfully solved when one can say - this is the sort of book this is, this is the price its market will expect to pay, this is the number I can sell at that price, and this is the cost to produce that book at that price. I do not see how the problem could in this case be solved, for the reasons explained.
Publishing Alternatives and Likely Sales
12. There would be no sense in publishing Making Names as an expensive academic monograph - printing, say, 1000 copies at £35. By virtue of their international strength and reputation OUP would no doubt achieve a few library sales (possibly up to 500) at that level, but they would have misrepresented the book and would certainly not sell sufficient to justify the operation.
13. If the book were to be produced instead in a cheap (under £10) paperback format for the student market it would need to sell in many thousands and achieve a large (four figure) annual sale. But I am confident that it would not achieve the necessary course-adoptions in the UK, or more importantly in the US, to realise such sales.
14. The OUP seems to have considered an intermediate strategy of publishing a reasonable quantity at a lowish hardback price (2000 copies at £15 were projected); that is a not uncommon strategy for a general trade book but it relies for success very heavily on some or all of the following: favourable reviews, a high profile author, heavy promotional expenditure, and (most importantly) an accessible, exciting book, which attracts the impulse purchaser. I do not believe, and evidently OUP came not to believe, that OUP would have sold anything like that number; my guess is that they would have managed well under 1000 sales.
15. So I have to give a rather 'Irish' answer to the apparently straightforward question - how many copies would this book sell? In my judgment it could not actually be published successfully in any of the three ways mentioned above, or in any variants of them that I can envisage. The first option (expensive hardback only) is probably the course that would have minimised OUP's financial losses, but it is also the course that least faithfully represents the nature of the book and would have been cynical and defeatist.
What is the market popularity of general philosophy texts now and what was it five years ago?
16. I will cite some sales figures for some of the better selling general philosophy titles from the CUP List. I should make it clear, however, that for the reasons given above I do not judge Making Names to belong in this category of publication or ever to have had the same sort of sales prospects. Thomas Nagel's Moral Questions was published in 1979 in hardback and paperback (extent 213 pages) and has to date sold just over 25,000 copies in paperback and 1890 sales in hardback; it is still averaging about 1500 sales a year in paperback. That was a book written by a distinguished US philosopher which tackles some of the 'big' problems in ethics and which achieved good individual and textbook sales, especially in the USA. In terms of content and kind of readership it does have something in common with Jonathan Glover's book Causing Death and Saving Lives which is referred to in these papers. Bernard Williams' Problems of The Self is a volume which combines and relates an interest in ethics and metaphysics. It was published in 1973 (extent 268 pages) and has sold 3037 copies in hardback: the paperback edition was published in 1976 and sold 7748 copies to date. Finally, Hilary Putnam's Reason, Truth and History, which was published in 1982 (extent 222 pages), sold 14,000 copies averaging still nearly 1000 copies a year. This is used as an intermediate text in metaphysics and its title recalls, and is meant to recall, A.J. Ayer's classic Language, Truth and Logic. Putnam is another famous US philosopher with a most distinguished record of publication both in books and professional journals, and is regarded very much as an iconoclast within the subject.
17. These are all substantial major general texts by major authors and represent about the best you can do with this sort of book at this level. The market for philosophy has remained much the same over the last five years or so, although all academic publishers have become increasingly dependent in recent years on sales overseas (especially in the US market) and all publishers are currently suffering badly in the recession.
What royalty arrangements would normally be made in respect of general philosophy texts and over what period would such arrangements subsist?
18. I can confirm that general texts of this sort do attract the overall level of royalty payments OUP was contemplating in the case of Making Names, though different publishers structure these payments in rather different ways, depending mainly on their overseas marketing arrangements. An average royalty of 12.5% of net receipts (published price less discount) in respect of sales of a hardback in the UK and overseas is not "unusually low"; a royalty of between 10% and 12% is quite common.
19. In the course of the 1980s many major publishers moved from paying royalties on published price to paying a royalty on net receipts on UK sales, and it has for decades been common practice for publishers to base royalties paid on overseas sales on net receipts. The level of royalties varies somewhat from publisher to publisher. The discount can also vary quite significantly according to the category of bookseller and according to the marketing and agency arrangements in the relevant overseas territories.
20. It is also quite common to have an escalator clause for hardback sales rising from say, 10% to 12.5% after 5,000 sales, and 15% after 7,500. It is less common for there to be an escalator on paperback sales since reprint margins on those are generally tighter.
21. In the case of more specialised monographs, it is usual to pay either a reduced royalty (e.g. 5% rather than 10%) or to defer the royalty until a certain proportion of the print run has been sold (e.g. to pay a royalty after 500 copies have been sold).
22. It is rare for academic publishers to provide royalties at six monthly intervals for any of their publications. The average time for CUP to produce a book of this kind is about 10 months, and CUP would expect to publish 12 months after accepting [amended by hand to: 'receiving the final version of'] the typescript, since about two months elapse between the end of production and publication.
Would a publisher commit to a paperback edition at the outset?
23. I can confirm that academic publishers like OUP and CUP do tend to commit themselves to paperback publication from the outset if they see an immediate student market of a reasonably substantial size. In the case of monographs and more specialised or original works it is usual to publish just in hardback in the first instance and only in paperback if and when the importance of the work is taken up and recognised within the subject in such a way that a secondary paperback market is thereby created. This usually happens, when it does happen, 2 to 5 years after first publication. I would say that it happens more often in philosophy than in most other subjects in the Humanities and Social Sciences.
24. Paperback royalties are normally calculated on net receipts and may be at any level up to 10%, but would most usually be at the level of about 7.5%.
Style, Presentation and Content of Making Names
25. I have not commented on specific deficiencies of style, presentation and content in the work Making Names. I have noted some such but thought it night to emphasise the much more fundamental publishing problem described above, compared with which these deficiencies are subsidiary, if occasionally contributory, factors. I should, however, briefly record that the work does seem to me far too long, in a rather undisciplined and self-indulgent way, for its intended purposes, that it sometimes feels parochial in a way that an international readership would react against, that it feels extremely dated now and would have felt dated, I believe, even in the early eighties, and that the style and tone in places would now be found by many at best wearing and at worst offensive. This, I feel sure, would have been commented on by reviewers and would inevitably have had a deleterious impact upon sales.
26. In considering the questions of readership and market which I elaborated above I did in the end come to feel that the author was, in a sense, writing primarily for himself, paradoxical though that sounds. He presents us with a sort of voyage of discovery which, because it was his voyage, was of great interest to him. This is in its way admirable, and is one sort of justification for a work of philosophy or literature. But the author is too often insensitive to the needs of his intended readers for one to believe he has a clear view of them or a sympathetic interest in helping them on their journeys.
R. J. Mynott
Cambridge University Press
21 June 1991
Doctor JEREMY MYNOTT, sworn, examined by Mr Malcolm before CHANCERY MASTER BARRATT
Malcolm: In the third paragraph of your report you talk about the book's 'publishability'. What you mean by 'publishability'?
Mynott: Suitability to be published by the publisher in question. Whether the work is viable as a book, whether it is intended for a particular readership, whether I can conceive of it as a book.
Malcolm: So a judgment about whether the book is publishable or not - is it a judgment about the quality of the writing or is it a judgment about 'the market'?
Mynott: It is no one thing. It is both those factors and others too, no doubt.
Malcolm: Because it seems to me there is a bit of a confusion here. My contract was with OUP, and it was OUP's judgment, or at least Henry Hardy's judgment, that the book was marketable. I had assumed that you would be here to pass judgments on the quality of the writing, the quality of the arguments, whether it is well constructed - more literary questions rather than questions of market.
Mynott: Well, you have read my affidavit. I spend a good deal of time talking about its publishability, for the reasons I give in the affidavit itself.
Malcolm: Yes, but I am unclear about what this word 'publishable' means. Could a well-written book with original, novel ideas in it be unpublishable for some other reason?
Mynott: What I concentrate on in this report is whether the book would find a readership, and what that readership might be and whether the book would be well-suited to that readership.
Malcolm: I accept that, and I can see that is what you have concentrated on, but it seems to me that you cannot arrive at conclusions about that question until you have formed a judgment as to the qualities of the book. Presumably what comes first is your assessment of whether the writing and the arguments are any good?
Mynott: One doesn't judge things in that sequential way. Each of the judgments one tries to make about the possible readership for a book does of course involve questions about the content of the book, the characters, the writing, the level at which it is written and so on. One doesn't separate out all those things. What I was trying to suggest in my report was that there is a fundamental difficulty about publishability which is independent of any specific defects or merits the book might have.
Malcolm: You mention "whatever merits of the book might have". What merits do you think it does have? You imply that there are some.
Mynott: Yes, and I try to speak sympathetically about them, as I do in my paragraph 5...
Barratt: (interrupting) Mr Malcolm, I am sorry to say that my task is really one of trying to put a money value on something.
Malcolm: Yes Master.
Barratt: It may be unfortunate, but I am not interested in knowing whether something is of the very highest intellectual quality if it is not saleable.
Malcolm: Yes Master, but I think Dr Mynott has just suggested that these two questions are intertwined, that a book's publishability - his word - depends on the...
Barratt: I am sorry to say that it is the cash aspect that I am concerned with. Obviously something which had no quality at all would have no cash value, but I think when you ask Dr Mynott what he thinks are the good qualities of the book, that is irrelevant. It is only the saleable value that I'm really interested in.
Malcolm: Yes Master, but if the saleability, the publishability, involves in some way an assessment of the quality of the book - the writing and the ideas - this is a judgment that is obviously subjective. I suppose you would go along with that?
Mynott: No, I wouldn't, no. I would say that the quality of a book can be assessed relative to a particular readership, and that quality in respect of one sort of readership is not the same as in respect of another sort. The quality of a good textbook is quite different from the quality of an original monograph, and they are judged on quite different grounds.
Malcolm: Is it quite different also for a book aimed at the mass market?
Mynott: That is different again, I think, or different in some ways again.
Malcolm: Dr Mynott, can you say whether, in all your publishing experience, you have ever published a book that has been successful in the mass market? Anything comparable, for example, to The Outsider, or to Godel, Escher, Bach, or even to Causing Death and Saving Lives?
Mynott: Well (pause)... we do publish the Bible, I suppose that's a start...
Malcolm: (after stunned pause) I presume you're not suggesting that there is a comparison to be drawn there? (laughter)
Mynott: No.
Malcolm: Going to Mr Ryan's report on Making Names of 18th July, he says: "As you know, my feeling about the book is that it is well worth doing, both because it is interesting in itself, and because it's a bold attempt to do philosophy in an unusual literary format... Of course it might do badly, but every so often books like Colin Wilson's The Outsider or Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, Bach do exceedingly well, so a bit of boldness is in order... I hope that we can gallop ahead. It would be nice to take a chance and win."
Doctor Mynott, have you ever done that - taken a chance and won?
Mynott: We take calculated chances all the time. But I can't point to books that have quite the cultish quality which those two have, no.
Go/return to the affidavit of Alan Ryan or to Making Names reviewed.
Go to Malcolm's Statement of Claim, to the Case History, to the Affidavits: Ivon Asquith (1); Asquith (2); Henry Hardy; William Shaw (solicitor) (1); Sir Roger Elliott (1); Margaret Goodall; to the Witness Statements: Elliott; Hardy; Richard Charkin; Nicola Bion; Goodall, to the courtroom testimony of the Oxford Six, 14/3/1990: Elliott; Goodall; Bion; Asquith; Charkin; Hardy, to the testimony of Andrew Malcolm 13/3/1990, to the CHANCERY COURT JUDGMENT, to the Cambridge package and the Adrasteia package, to the publishing contract affidavits: Giles Gordon (1); Mark Le Fanu, to the APPEAL COURT JUDGMENT, to the damages affidavits: Alan Ryan; Asquith (3); Jeremy Mynott; Giles Gordon (2); Fred Nolan; Roy Edgley, to McGregor on Royalties (transcript), to the DAMAGES FINDINGS, and to the Settlement agreement.
Return to the Malcolm vs. Oxford I (1984-92) Index, to the Malcolm vs. Oxford II (2001-02) Index, to the blurb for Making Names, to its reviews, to The Remedy, or to the SITE INDEX.