This month marks the retirement of Peter Blake, the Sales Director of Penguin Books Australia. Peter’s name may not mean much to you but he’s probably touched your life in some way. Text publisher Michael Heyward called Peter a publishing genius for his simple yet brilliant idea of repackaging backlist titles in the distinctive orange and white livery of the Penguin Popular Classics at an affordable price – a bit like classy plain packaging!

Peter and I spoke about this idea recently. It’s one he had during 1998 and he tried for years to get the UK arm interested, believing that as they controlled the rights to many of the books he had in his sights, they would have to be involved. When he was lamenting the UK’s lack of interest to his MD Peter Field, Field asked him how many copies he thought he’d sell. Peter felt 500,000 copies at $9.95 would be achievable over ten years or so which translated to 50,000 a year. Field encouraged him to go ahead alone and the first 50 titles came out in September 2008. This number was quickly reduced to 49 as Peter, a big picture man, hadn’t checked the Australian rights situation; title 50 was Noam Chomsky’s Hegemony or Survival. Paul Donovan, Executive Director of Allen & Unwin at the time, rang Peter to congratulate him on his wonderful initiative but went on to point out that A&U had the rights to publish Chomsky’s book in Australia and would Peter be ‘so kind’ as to withdraw the Popular Chomsky from sale. Paul probably should have come to some arrangement with Peter as each of the titles have gone on to sell at least 5,000 copies since 2008. Another 151 tiles have subsequently been added and total sales of all the titles in the series are now at 3.2 million copies in Australia. The biggest seller has been The Great Gatsby at 100,000. ‘Many of these titles were selling 500 copies or fewer a year and include lots of Australian authors such as Helen Garner, Ruth Park and Sonya Hartnett,’ said Peter. Peter’s biggest thrill was when the late Nobel Laureate, Gabriel García Márquez, requested a full set of all the titles. Two Marquez titles, Love in the Time of Cholera and One Hundred Years of Solitude are out as Popular Penguins.

As I concluded my conversation, Peter, ever the salesman, said, ‘How about we do a promotion on them – buy two get one free? Don’t want to waste your column.’ So for the month of November, courtesy of Mr Blake, you can buy three Popular Penguins for the price of two!

In 1891, a collection of Victorian women’s suffrage groups organised a monster petition of almost 30,000 signatures for women’s suffrage. This month, the Victorian Women’s Trust is hoping to repeat that feat with a petition to the House of Representatives demanding immediate and effective action to significantly reduce carbon emissions. You can collect your own signatures by downloading it here or you can come in to any Readings shop and sign in-store. The idea is to present the petition before the G20 in Brisbane – so hurry as you’ve only got until Sunday 9 November to contribute your signature. And while you’re in-store, I recommend you pick up some Popular Penguins!

Mark Rubbo