A week in the life - Victoria Barnsley

A Week In The Life
Sunday Times
JULY 2009


The book business is facing its great revolution since the invention of printing, but Victoria Barnsley, CEO of HarperCollins, says it’s an exhilarating time.

“I predict that, within ten years, fifty per cent of all books will be read electronically. We’re at the black and white TV equivalent now, but once the technology is perfected everything will change.”

Barnsley, 56, oversees the publisher globally – bar North America - from its Hammersmith HQ. This year has brought both personal achievements and professional challenges.

Books sales are down, the collapse of Woolworths severely disrupted distribution to supermarkets and job losses have slimmed the workforce to just over 1,000.

But Barnsley marked 28 years in the business and 25 years since founding the publishing house 4th Estate, whose sale to HarperCollins made her rich and propelled her towards her present position. She was also awarded an OBE for services to publishing.

It’s the digital future that demands her attention. “This move to digital does occupy an enormous amount of my time and we take it incredibly seriously. It is throwing up completely new business models. Will we go on charging for individual content, or will readers subscribe to libraries of content or will material be totally free and supported by advertising? The answer is probably a bit of all of these. Things are changing at such speed.”



She says the nature of books will also change. “Consumers now want images, music, video as well as words. It is no longer enough to say to authors you have to produce text. We need things to go with that text. Our business is not just about words, but content in all its guises. There are not many authors engaging with this yet.”

“I love change. There are incredible opportunities including a direct dialogue with consumers. This will make for better publishing.

HarperCollins is part of NewsCorp. Barnsley travels to New York at least 10 times a year, and also visits HarperCollins offices in Australia and India. She’d recently been to proprietor Rupert Murdoch’s summer party and was due to dine with him later in the week. Then there is the upcoming authors party where she’ll mingle with hundreds of writers.

“If you work in publishing you have to be a sociable person and much of my time involves meeting people. I see at least two authors a week and meet with agents. In publishing private and business life tend to merge and lot of what I do involves evenings – things like book launches or prize giving events.”

Barnsley ensures weekends are kept for an escape to her country house for family, to garden and read. “I read a lot for work, but on holiday I escape to the classics like Dickens or the Russians as I don’t have to worry about how they connect with my business. I recently re-read Vanity Fair for the first time since university. It was sheer bliss.”