Jamie Byng

James Edmund "Jamie" Byng (born 27 June 1969) works for the independent publishing firm Canongate Books.

Family and education

Byng is the second son of the 8th Earl of Stafford and Jennifer May, brother to the author Georgia Byng and grew up in Abbots Worthy, Hampshire. He was educated at Winchester College and Edinburgh University. While attending Edinburgh University he ran a funk, reggae and rare groove night club named Chocolate City (after the Parliament classic) at The Venue with his first wife Whitney McVeigh, a talented figurative painter, with whom he has two children - a daughter Marley and son Leo. Whitney McVeigh is the daughter of Charles McVeigh, the wealthy co-chairman of the multinational investment bank Salomon Smith Barney. The couple separated in 2001 and Byng has since married Elizabeth Sheinkman.

Publishing career

After graduating, he convinced Scottish publisher Stephanie Wolfe Murray to give him a job at Canongate, then a respected but still somewhat marginalised Scottish company founded in 1973. When Canongate was on the verge of bankruptcy in 1994, Byng, then in his mid-20s, instigated a buyout, aided by his business partner Hugh Andrew, his stepfather (former BBC chairman Sir Christopher Bland) and then father-in-law (co-chairman of the multinational investment bank Salomon Smith Barney). His first move in overhauling the company’s image was to establish the ultra hip Payback and Rebel Inc imprints, dedicated to championing cult authors. The Pocket Canons (1998) published in partnership with Matthew Darby was Byng's first runaway success: selected books from the Bible individually packaged with new introductions by the Dalai Lama amongst others. In the wake of the two-million selling, Booker-winning Life Of Pi, Canongate won Publisher Of the Year at the British Book Awards in 2003, reportedly posting pre-tax profits of more than £1 million for that year.

Byng is the initiator and Chair of World Book Night, an event in which on 5 March 2011 (following World Book Day on 3 March) one million books - 40,000 copies of each of 25 carefully selected titles - were given away to members of the public in the UK and Ireland. It entailed 20,000 "givers" each distributing 48 copies of their chosen title to whomever they choose.

External links

• The Peerage: The Honorable James Edmund Byng
• Interview by Peter Murray
• Time Magazine interview: "The Big Byng Theory" by Lauren Goldstein, 27 October 2002
• The Guardian, "Posh and books" by Libby Brookes, 1 November 2002
• The Scotsman, "Canongate...I liked it so much I bought the company" by Stephen Jardine, 23 September 2003
• The Times, "Loose Canon of literary publishing" by Andrew Billen, 10 January 2005
• The Scotsman, "The mane man" by Catherine Deveney, 23 October 2005
• The Telegraph, "Barack Obama's publisher: Wild child Jamie Byng" by Rowena Mason, 13 January 2009
• Vulpes Libris, "Interview with Canongate – Publisher of the Year" by Lisa Glass, 9 June 2009
• "Interview: Jamie Byng, publisher" by Chitra Ramaswamy, 6 March 2011