The Friday Project

The Friday Project is a London-based independent publishing house founded by Paul Carr and Clare Christian in June 2004. It evolved out of "The Friday Thing", an Internet newsletter taking an offbeat look at the week's politics, media activities and general current events, originally written together with Charlie Skelton.

The Friday Project are notable for two main reasons. First, they believe themselves to be, at present, the only print publisher wholly concerned with finding material on the web and then turning it into traditional books. Lots of other publishers source books from web properties but TFP do so at the exclusion of normal publishing models. Second, they have made a large amount of their output available free to download as part of the Creative Commons license.

In 2006, The Friday Project announced that it had hired Scott Pack, [cite web
title=The Bookseller
url=http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1753554,00.html
publisher=The Guardian
date=2006-04-15] then Buying Manager at bookshop chain Waterstones, as TFP's Commercial Director. Pack took up the post in September 2006 at the end of a six-month notice period. In his job at Waterstones, Pack was once described by a newspaper as being seen by 'many' otherwise unidentified people as 'the most powerful man in the books trade' [cite web
title=Authors try to turn Waterstone tide
url=http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1651774,00.html
publisher=The Guardian
date=2005-11-27] for his ability to decide which new titles will be successful.

The Friday Project also have an audio arm which is responsible for the CD Fitness to Practice by Amateur Transplants. The album includes the internet hit Fact|date=July 2007 London Underground which has spawned a popular Fact|date=July 2007 viral video.

During 2006, The Friday Project's Commercial Director Scott Pack courted controversy with his Me And My Big Mouth blog. Positioned as an irreverent commentary on the UK book trade it sparked a number of national press stories [cite web
title=Smith's drops small publishers
url=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2006/09/18/cnwhs18.xml] and was highly critical of lead retailers Waterstone's and WH Smith. He also launched personal attacks on journalists he claimed had reported on his time at Waterstone's incorrectly. These included Nick Cohen, Norman Lebrecht and D.J. Taylor.

In December 2006, it was reported [cite web
title=Paul Carr leaves the Friday Project
url=http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/revolving_door/paul_carr_leaves_the_friday_project_48671.asp] that Carr - along with Online Editor, Graham Pond, had left The Friday Project with Carr leading a buy-out of the company's Internet media arm to create a new company, Friday Cities.

In 2007, Clare Christian announced the launch of Friday Fiction, a new imprint for original fiction discovered on the web.

In March 2007 The Friday Project was shortlisted for two industry awards (or Nibbies), one for Innovation in the Book Industry for their commitment to making their books available under a creative commons license and MD Clare Christian was shortlisted for a second for the company in the category of UK Young Publisher of the Year.

On 1 May 2007 TFP MD Clare Christian won the Nibbie for [http://www.britishcouncil.org/arts-literature-ukypy-2007.htm UK Young Publisher of the Year] .

Following poor Christmas sales in 2007 and subsequent losses in excess of £700,000, the Friday Project went into liquidation on 30th March 2008 [cite web
title=Friday Project in administration
url=http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,2264447,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=10
publisher=The Guardian
date=2008-03-12] .

After much speculation, in May 2008 [http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/Pages/default.aspx HarperCollins UK] [http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/News/Pages/Friday_Project.aspx bought certain assets] of The Friday Project from its administrator. This included a number of front and backlist titles and the first title to be published under the new Friday Project imprint was [http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1906321051 The State of Me] by Nasim Marie Jafry.

Footnotes

External links

* [http://www.thefridayproject.co.uk/ The Friday Project]
* [http://tfpsgirlfriday.blogspot.com/ TFP's Girl Friday] (Now closed)
* [http://meandmybigmouth.typepad.com/scottpack/ Me and My Big Mouth]
* [http://the-friday-project.blogspot.com/ The Friday Project Discussion] (Now closed)