For want of a motive for the book thief, let’s run through some possibilities
The theft of books occupies a complex place in our moral judgment, depending on motive. In Markus Zusak’s 2005 novel The Book Thief, the actions of the title character are heroic – she steals books to save them from destruction. During the 2011 London riots, it was frequently observed, with a hint of reproach, that the looters pointedly left bookshops untouched and this deliberate spurning was seen as further indictment of the mob’s character, as if we’d have thought better of the rioters if they had heaved a bollard through the window of Waterstones and made off with the latest Jeanette Winterson.
In the run-up to publication of the final Harry Potter novel in 2007, the publisher laid on extra security at the printworks after it was claimed that tabloid reporters were hanging about offering cash bribes to any worker willing to slip them a sneak preview. In this instance, the opprobrium was not because such a theft might have deprived the publisher and author of income, but because only a sociopath would deliberately ruin the ending for millions of children.
But motive is the one unknown quantity in last week’s story about book theft, in which a five-year-long mystery appeared to be resolved when the FBI arrested Filippo Bernardini, an employee in the rights department at Simon & Schuster UK, on suspicion of stealing hundreds of unpublished digital manuscripts.
The sustained scam seems to have been relatively sophisticated on one level; his knowledge of the industry allowed him to impersonate senior publishing figures online, his familiarity with names and jargon meant his phishing emails rang no alarm bells with their recipients and he registered more than 160 domain names from which to send his messages. But on another level, the operation was comically crude: his fake email addresses contained deliberate misspellings such as “@penguinrandornhouse” instead of “randomhouse”, yet for five years publishers, agents and authors were duped into sending digital copies of new books into the ether.
Bernardini’s alleged crimes are the more intriguing precisely because so far he doesn’t appear to have profited from them. None of the stolen books, which included big hitters such as Margaret Atwood, Stieg Larsson and Sally Rooney as well as unknown debut authors, was leaked online and no ransom or blackmail demands were ever made. It seemed the thief was not stealing the books either to liberate the texts or to cash in. Why, then?
Before Bernardini’s arrest, it was widely suspected that the culprit was a literary scout, engaging in industrial espionage. A scout’s currency is advance information: a heads-up on the next big thing can give their clients the edge when it comes to pre-empts and bidding wars on foreign or screen rights. My first job after university, 25 years ago, was working for a literary scout, the celebrated Anne-Louise Fisher, and I quickly learned that scouting is a highly refined art, built on powers of persuasion, mutual respect and trust established over years, an instinct for the market and the ability to speed-read. It also involved a tremendous number of lunches, but never anything so underhand as deception.
In those analogue days, of course, thefts such as Bernardini’s would have been impossible, unless you were prepared to mug a courier. Unofficial advance copies of hot new books crossed London in the form of typescripts, great breezeblocks of A4 paper bound with elastic bands in unmarked Jiffy bags, passed under tables at meetings, with both sender and recipient sworn to secrecy.
Often, especially before the London or Frankfurt book fairs, I would lug home a 400-page manuscript in my backpack to prepare a reader’s report by the next morning, living in mortal terror of leaving it on the tube or in the pub. If details of a closely guarded novel had escaped back then, it would have been an easy matter to trace the leak to its source. But I still remember vividly the thrill of turning over that first sheet, knowing that I was one of the first people in the world to dive into a book that would go on to be huge.
Perhaps the thief’s initial motive was no more sinister than this: he was hungry for a new story. But the longer the scam continued, the more it appears to have become a power game, with the scammer taking evident pleasure in manipulating some of the most senior figures in publishing and later turning abusive when his efforts were met with suspicion. That’s the interpretation offered by Daniel Sandström, a Swedish publisher who was repeatedly targeted by the book thief. “[I]f the game is psychological, a kind of mastery or superiority, it’s easier to visualise,” he told Vulture last year. “This is a business full of resentment as well, and in that sense, it becomes a good story.”
It is a good story and maybe we’re fascinated by instances of literary fraud precisely because publishing is still widely regarded as a business grounded in trust, relationships and old-fashioned courtesy. I’m thinking of Can You Ever Forgive Me? or the curious case of author AJ Finn, the pen name of former editor Dan Mallory, who allegedly spent years creating a fictitious biography for himself within the publishing world. The idea of someone abusing that assumption of decency for their own advantage seems more shocking in this context than it might in, say, the world of finance or arms dealing.
I find myself hoping that Bernardini’s motive won’t be anything as banal as money. Ideally, he’ll turn out to be a rejected author seeking revenge or looking for a novel he can fillet and pass off as his own, like the protagonist of Jean Hanff Korelitz’s The Plot. That’s what I’d go for if I were writing the inevitable film adaptation. In fact, I might suggest to my agent that he pitch the idea to a few production companies. I’ll remind him to check the spelling of their emails very, very carefully, though.
For five years, publishers, agents and authors were duped into sending digital copies of new books into the ether