Canongate: We were right to publish Julian Assange's book

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Publishing Julian Assange: The Unauthorised Auto­biography has been one of the most unusual, fascinating, frustrating but exciting journeys that Canongate has ever been on. By the time this piece appears, a lot of ink and airtime will have been given over to the drama behind the book's publication and our decision to go ahead without Julian's approval.
The fact is he was given five and a half months to read the manuscript and during this time he contributed not one written word by way of response. It became increasingly clear that he was never going to approve the book, despite signing a contract to write such a book and happily taking a significant amount of Canongate's money.
This was never going to be a quiet affair but what I still hope, above all, is that people actually read the book. For the book is remarkable. Whatever your opinion of Julian Assange, and he polarises people like few contemporary figures, this memoir offers unique insights into who he is, how he thinks and how WikiLeaks came into being.
It is also superbly paced and riveting. The moment we finished reading the first draft (we being me, Nick Davies, Canongate's publishing director, and Julian's editor in New York), we all felt that we had the makings of a phenomenal and highly commercial book on our hands. Everything seemed to be going to plan. We talked ambitiously of a June publication date as the three of us and the ghost enjoyed a high-spirited dinner together. We were going to make publishing history.
Then the problems began. I'm not going to dwell on the gory details of why the project began to lose its way, but it certainly was not for lack of effort on our part. And it is hard to overestimate the amount of pressure the subject of the book was under. However, there comes a point when you sometimes have to accept that the best-laid plans are fundamentally flawed. This was one of those instances.
Publishing books is not meant to be easy and it is inherently risky. And some authors are more tricky than others. But we have never been afraid to publish what we think is important, even if that involves upping the ante and doing things differently. And with Julian's book it seems entirely appropriate that the publishing of it should break all the rules.

Julian Assange's memoir should not have been published

AppId is over the quota AppId is over the quota  Julian Assange: The Unauthorised Autobiography on sale in London. Photograph: Facundo Arrizabalaga/AFP/Getty Images
The truth is out – or at least the "unauthorised autobiography". Opening with a dramatic scene in the back of a police van with "press photographers … scrabbling around the windows like crabs in a bucket", and ending in a Norfolk house that "was soon to become … [a] prison for the foreseeable future", the promised account of the "global struggle to force a new relationship between the people and their governments" hits bookshops today, after a cloak-and-dagger operation to prevent its subject from halting its publication.
But whose book is it? The subject, Julian Assange, disowns it, claiming in a statement on the Wikileaks website that his publisher, Canongate, is "profiteering from an unfinished and erroneous draft" which was never intended for publication, but was handed over "for viewing purposes only". According to the Independent, which has begun serialising the book today, ghostwriter Andrew O'Hagan became "increasingly uncomfortable about the furore", and appears only as an unnamed writer in the publisher's note describing the "more than 50 hours of taped interviews" on which the book is based. Perhaps the real author of the book is head of Canongate Jamie Byng, who splashed out on the Assange autobiography at the end of last year, presumably hoping that the man of the moment would deliver the kind of landslide publishing victory his house pulled off with Barack Obama.
But now, Canongate finds itself accused by Assange himself of "screwing people over to make a buck": he claims that the published version was in fact a draft, a "work in progress" and that he had promised to provide a new version of the book by the end of this year. According to Canongate the contract "still stands", since Assange had "already signed his advance over to his lawyers to settle his legal bills" before informing them he wanted to cancel the deal. They have "decided to honour it – and to publish" – but it's difficult to see where honour comes into this decision.
Canongate publishing director Nick Davies denies Assange's advance was the reported £500,000, but tells the Bookseller that the Independent was "left with no other option". Maybe you have sympathy with a small publisher straining under a "financial imperative", but isn't it just wrong to publish something against an author's wishes, even if that author is a little hard to work with? This autumn might have looked pretty bleak fior Canongate, without a book that has already shot to

Why we are publishing Julian Assange's (unauthorised) autobiography | Nick Davies

AppId is over the quota AppId is over the quota  Julian Assange – the Unauthorised Autobiography 'is a compelling portrait of one of the most mercurial figures alive today'. Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA
It wasn't supposed to happen like this.
Late last year Canongate, the publishing house I work for, signed Julian Assange's autobiography to huge media attention. Julian had just been released from Wandsworth prison and wanted to find a publisher for his book. And why not? Everyone else was at it. Daniel Domscheit-Berg, the disillusioned former WikiLeaks spokesperson, was busy spinning his memoir. The Guardian and the New York Times were eager to put their respective versions of events across. Here was Julian's chance to raise some much-needed money for WikiLeaks and to set his critics straight. And Canongate Books seemed like the perfect fit: a small, independent publishing house that has always been happy to take a risk and admired what Julian and WikiLeaks had achieved.
The first three months couldn't have gone much better. Canongate's managing director, Jamie Byng, and I travelled up to Norfolk to see Julian in early January. Our first priority was to find a ghostwriter to work on the project. Julian was very clear about what he wanted: "I have all the facts. Find me a novelist who can turn those facts into stories."
We struck it lucky with the writer we found: an award-winning novelist who was equally comfortable writing serious, hard-hitting reportage. He was a strong character too. Somebody who could put his hand up and tell Julian when he was talking shit or veering off subject. It was a brilliant combination and the two men worked late into the night, most nights, drinking whisky in the icy-cold drawing room at Ellingham Hall through January, February and March.
At the same time, Canongate – on Julian's behalf – struck rights deals with 38 of the best publishing houses around the world. This really would be a global book launch, which seemed fitting for the founder of WikiLeaks and his international fanbase. What could possibly go wrong?
Julian's ghostwriter delivered a brilliant first draft of the book, bang on schedule, at the end of March. We read it and loved it. Julian didn't. He didn't love it. We're not even sure how much he actually read. It was an extraordinary reaction to a manuscript he should have been grateful for and immensely proud of.
What followed was a series of broken promises. We set Julian free to work on the manuscript himself. He had six weeks to edit and rewrite. On the day he was supposed to return it to us, we heard that he'd lost all of his work. It was buried in one of his many laptops and he couldn't find it (dogs and homework came to mind). Then he told us he wanted to cancel his contract. But he couldn't repay his advance. He had already signed it over to his lawyers to cover his escalating legal bills.
There have been countless other twists and turns to this extraordinary story. But the reason we've decided to publish the book – against Julian's will, but with clear forewarning – is this: with no prospect of ever seeing Julian's advance repaid to us, and with little chance of convincing Julian to engage with that first draft, we had only one sensible option – to publish the draft that we felt was so strong and which conformed so closely to the original brief.
There is a financial imperative, of course. We hope that in publishing the book we will recover some of our losses. But we are also immensely proud of the book itself. It is a compelling portrait of one of the most mercurial figures alive today.
As for that much commented-upon subtitle, The Unauthorised Autobiography, it is definitely a publishing first. And given we're talking about Julian Assange and WikiLeaks there is, of course, a sweet irony to it too.
• Nick Davies, not to be confused with the Guardian reporter Nick Davies, is publishing director at Canongate