Roddy Bloomfield: 70 not out

Aged 70, and with more than 1,000 titles across 66 sports under his belt, Bloomfield still travels into Euston Road every working day. "I’m still excited by what I’m doing, and working on books that give me a lot of pleasure," he says.
And why shouldn’t he be? For the man who actually edited Fly Fishing by J R Hartley and who transformed sports publishing with Dickie Bird’s White Cap and Bails, England’s Ashes win last summer was further proof of his sure touch. In September he had three hardbacks in the Sunday Times top 10 in the same week: Freddie Flintoff, Richie Benaud and Michael Vaughan. This year brings the paperbacks, alongside Bobby Robson and Mike Atherton.
We meet the day after HarperCollins has signed Wayne Rooney for £5m. "[An advance] that high is a risk, but risks are being taken all the time on all publishing subjects," Bloomfield observes. "Rooney still has it all to do though."
He compares the deal to his signing of Sir Alex Ferguson, who had a full story to tell. "We also got the timing right--Manchester United won the treble. Timing is important. If Rooney scores a hat trick in the World Cup Final I shall be jealous."
The ubiquity of agents in the top sports makes it harder for Bloomfield to forge bonds with a player or manager. He looks fondly back to when he would woo an author over lunch and agree deals on the golf course; he even managed to build a rapport with Geoffrey Boycott.
He’s worried by the distortions of the serialisation market: "Sometimes you look at a book and see it’s far more aggressive than you thought it would be--that material may have been paid for by a newspaper." Bloomfield prefers to predict sales and calculate the advance accordingly, rather than "take a punt" on a serial deal.
But he is not naïve: he hails the media obsession with sport that has turned players into celebrities, and provided unparalleled opportunity for book promotion.
He knows most of the key sports journalists well, and believes finding the right ghostwriter is the most important factor. "It is essential that there’s a lot of trust between the co-author and the player. Then they can capitalise on a window of opportunity such as when it’s raining at Lords, and the player doesn’t mind the guy going to his house."
Bloomfield’s most significant book was Practical Golf by John James--an instructional title which stayed in print for 40 years. "Everyone saw how good it was so it led in all sorts of directions--I was suddenly doing books all over the place."
His biggest recent achievement was Being Freddie. The rest of the Hodder staff moved to a different floor, but Bloomfield was too busy to leave his office and the builders worked around him. "I knew we had the best and most saleable Ashes title, but at the same time didn’t want anybody to come out before us."
Whether at Lords, Queen’s, or the Open Golf Championship, life and work blend seamlessly for Bloomfield. The football team he supports even changes depending on who he is publishing: this season it is Bryan Robson’s Middlesbrough. "It is more nail-biting than ever because they are trying to stay up."