Scott Pack is associate editor at Unbound, the world’s
first crowd-funding platform for books. He is also editor-at-large at Eye Books and the co-founder of Abandoned Bookshop, a digital imprint that reissues out-of-print titles as ebooks. During his two book world decades he has worked in retail, at Waterstones, and at several publishers, including a lengthy spell at HarperCollins.
1. What was the last book you read? The last book I read for pleasure was Mansfield and Me, by Sarah Laing. It is a graphic memoir, partly about the New Zealand writer, Katherine Mansfield, and partly about Laing herself. A wonderful literary comic.
2. What did you read it on? My backside.
3. What’s next on your reading list? Funnily enough, The Collected Stories of Katherine Mansfield. I love it when reading one book leads you to another.
4. Which writer would you have loved to have met and why? Georges Perec, a great French experimental writer who was full of crazy ideas. What a brain to be able to pick.
5. You are stranded on a desert island. What three books would you want with you? The Iliad, The Odyssey and The Diary of Samuel Pepys.
6. Name your favourite app and why. It is probably the TuneIn Radio app. I use it to listen to radio from around the world, particularly the excellent arts broadcasting from New Zealand, Australia, and Canada, which really is first rate. At least 3 or 4 books I have published in the UK have come about because I heard them reviewed or discussed via this app.
7. Go on, let us know your musical guilty pleasure. Now, I am going to have to tell you off here. No one should feel guilty about enjoying any form of art. But, I know you don’t quite mean it that way. In terms of something people might be surprised for a middle-aged publisher to be listening to, I do have a tendency to play ‘Don’t Kill My Vibe’ by Sigrid at high volume.
8. And your one from the world of fiction? I love the 1950s Village School series by Miss Read. Wonderful social commentary that is probably viewed as a bit twee these days.
9. What is the silliest thing you have on your desk? My pen and pencil holder is a sort of decoupage construction decorated with images from old children’s comic. So I can see Bagpuss, Parsley the Lion, the Munch Bunch and others as I glance over.
10. What was your favourite childhood book? The Satanic Mill by Otfried Preussler. It was the first book to scare the living bejesus out of me and I was proud to be able to republish it later in life, under its original title of Krabat.
Catch Scott at The Writer’s Summit this November: http://www.londonbookfair.co.uk/writerssummit