Legends profile: Jonathan Ball

When and how did you start in the book business?
I joined an American company, Collier-Macmillan in late 1970. I was about to finish my National Service in the Air Force and applied to an advert in the newspaper. I hitched from Pretoria to Johannesburg in my blue step-out uniform. Too late to make it home to change into ‘civvies’ I went straight to the interview in my Air Force blues. This turned out to be fortuitous as the person conducting the interview, Rudi Houwert, had been in the Royal Dutch Marines. Lean (having never had a publishing lunch), sun-touched, short haired – Houwert like the ‘cut of my jib’ and took me through for an immediate interview with the boss Ad Donker.

Donker was more of a classic Dutch liberal and the Air Force get-up didn’t wash with him. A more vigorous questioning session followed, but I passed muster and I got the job. Collier-MacMillan was mostly an academic book publisher so I called on universities and bookshops across Southern Africa. A great start for a young man with R250 per month and a Peugeot 404 with all petrol paid for.

Donker became a great, formative influence in my life. He later started Ad Donker Publishers which again later, but many years later, I bought. It was a great acquisition which paid for itself over and over and Ad Donker remained a valued and trusted advisor to me until his death.

Ad and Rudi Houwert were great mentors and I learned a lot, travelled a lot and sold a lot of books. Donker had grown up in Amsterdam during the war. He had gone through the Nazi occupation and all its privations. He was the son of a distinguished Dutch publisher. He knew how to keep a tight ship and was a publisher to his fingertips, full of publishing stories and publishing lore. He was a great influence on me, but I too influenced him. I took him a copy of Sounds of a Cowhide Drum, a volume of poetry by Oswald Mtshali. This quickened his pulse and when he started Ad Donker Publishers he published many of the black poets.

Jonathan Ball Publishers was launched in 1976, how did this come about?
This was a watershed year in South Africa. June 1976 and the Soweto riots. I wanted to publish books about South Africa, especially in the areas of politics, history and current affairs. I knew we were in for change and there would be much to publish books about.

I left Macmillan and set up with limited capital and backing from my brother David, who helped me through those difficult early years. He kept an eye on our finances, mainly because he had frequently to contribute to them. He also provided the benison of his own down-home business wisdom. It went like this: when I presented my expenses to him for signature he scrutinised them long and hard and said, “I went into publishing with you and lose money, but I see I have caused a boom in the restaurant industry”.

Quite soon after starting I was joined by Alison Lowry who was our first editor. She went on to have a distinguished career in publishing. Nick Britt also joined us and did our sales for many years, retiring a year or two ago.

Tell us about the growth of Jonathan Ball Publishers into the entity that it is today.
The early years were not easy. To start from scratch was not easy. At times interest rates soared. The Rand weakened, authors did not knock on the door of an unknown publisher. I commissioned books and many were political books and especially books that other publishers did not want to touch. Because they were scared. Yes, they were scared. All of them except David Philip and Ravan. The record shows that.

I am an Anglo-South African and unashamed to say so. I like the fact that we were (and still in many aspects remain) a part of the English speaking world, the Anglo-sphere. So from the outset I was determined to represent British and American publishers in South Africa as I had at Collier-Macmillan and Macmillan.

So, as well as publishing South African books I wrote countless letters to publishers abroad offering my enthusiastic services as a sales agent. I had some contacts made mainly in my Macmillan years. But getting agencies was not easy. South Africa was a significant market for publishers and it would be risky to leave your business to an enthusiastic but small business.

A breakthrough came when I published The Boer War by Thomas Pakenham with Weidenfeld & Nicolson – doing a quantity far larger than their agent forecast to do. This led to Weidenfeld giving us their agency in South Africa. That was in 1979. We still represent them today.

Later, I had a joint venture with Hodder & Stoughton, which went sour after I had proposed that we merge with Macmillan. This deal was done but not with me heading the business.

So I left and started all over again. We soon attracted more agencies, published more books, and in 1992 with the backing of Naspers and Ton Vosloo in particular, we bought HarperCollins South African subsidiary with its excellent distribution set-up in Denver.

Following this we added other major lists – the ones that now constitute the Hachette Group – including Hodder & Stoughton. Soon after came Bloomsbury which brought us Harry Potter, Simon & Schuster, Faber & Faber, Profile and others.

To each of these their own story, but I don’t want to be a bore. Each story mainly to do with the right contacts, track record and financial security.

Remember, all the while we also published.

‘Mornings, evenings, afternoons…’ I measured out my life, not in ‘coffee spoons’ but in the books we published from JBP and released from our glittering list of principals. My enthusiasm for this, as well as the enthusiasm of many at JBP, never diminished.

Are any of your compatriots from the early days still working in the industry today?
Yes. The two formidable ladies may not like my drawing attention to their great ages, but Maureen Hargraves was around. Soon thereafter Henrietta Dax appeared on the scene. Peter Adams was in bookselling but working in England, he returned to the family business soon after I started in publishing. Basil van Rooyen of Bookstorm, is a stalwart of the industry. Benjamin Trisk is back at Exclusive Books, he succeeded Philip Joseph at Exclusive Books, then moved on.

I can’t think of many others. I have mentioned Alison Lowry who still edits books.

How has the publishing industry changed over the years that you have been in business?

I think about this often. There is much more South African general book publishing, far more active players in the market. The spread of titles, subjects and authors is encouraging for what is, effectively, a small market with a small, fully literate population who can afford to buy books.

I have also seen the type of book which sells shifting and changing. Celebrity books – one can effectively only sell celebrity cookbooks these days – do well.

History appears not to do as well as it once did which distresses me.

I think we have become more inwardly focussed on a number of fronts. Old ties – to Britain – are minimal at best.

Of course there will always be the global mega-sellers we all know about, but mainly in fiction.

Television in 1976 changed the book business, killing off certain genres and creating huge sales for others. The internet had a significant impact which is settling now – and the book is still around. Many techies postulated that it would kill the book business completely. I never lost the faith.

What are you up to nowadays?

I remain connected with Jonathan Ball Publishers. I am called Publisher at Large. I commission books and have about nine on the stocks which will start appearing in 2017. I give advice to my successor, Eugene Ashton, but only when asked. He and I worked together for a long time, eighteen years or so.

How do you see the future of publishing in South Africa and globally developing?

This is always a difficult question. Throughout the unfolding of the great internet developments, as I have said, I kept the faith. Books would survive and sometimes prosper.

I continue to think that this will be the case. A percentage of the populations of countries read and have the requirement to read. A smaller percentage writes. Remember that books too are a significant source of films, television series and plays. They are a central component of human creativity and will continue to be so.

Books too, are the best warriors in the war against ignorance.