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The saving grace in Pandora’s box
I don’t want to get too lyrical here when Milan Kundera has raised his head to say again that lyrical is the weakest form of literature. But it’s Spring.
When we were at Putnam, Greg and Caitlin and I traveled to New York six times a year for meetings. And on each trip, as I recall, we would be handling at least three lists in their various stages (because the Island publishers run three full seasons). All of that seemed dauntingly confusing and fairly far removed from the arts of writing and editing, much less from reading. Words didn’t really seem to matter much in those rooms. It was all fairly frantic and only quantifiable — the opposite of what I think when I think of books. It was in those days that I used to joke with my family about “publishing emergencies.”
I remember more than once sitting down at a table above Houston Street and asking the folks on the other side (or at the far end — which seems more metaphorically apt), what season they wanted us to talk about just then. They didn’t usually think that funny.
At Unbridled, we run two seasons. Most independents do, I think, but here it’s because that’s all the books I can think about cogently at one time.
Yesterday, we had the positioning meeting for the Fall list: editorial, sales, and marketing first discussing how best to describe and bring good attention to our forthcoming books. After two long hours, I listened as each attendee’s phone blipped off line, and then I closed the relevant files on my computer screen. Another cup of coffee and I realized that we haven’t yet reached the first publishing date for our earliest Spring book: The Unnatural History of Cypress Parish.
Having talked with such passion about my titles in the Fall list, I suddenly felt a bit unfaithful to our Spring authors. I hope they don’t find out.
I know that marketing is hard at work on Cypress and Hick and Lost Son and Devils in the Sugar Shop. Those are the books we’ll be showcasing at BEA in a couple of months. We’re awaiting early reviews for most of them. And we’re all making phone calls on their behalf. We have good industry news about them. And we’re receiving personal responses to the bound galleys — the wonderful responses that such books deserve.
But I’m already completing the edits on the Fall titles. And I’m even reading manuscripts to acquire for the following Spring. Thinking of the books for next Spring, when this year’s matches are only just now burning in the crocuses in my yard.
Isn’t publishing, by nature and necessity, a hopeful business?
I wish I could attend next week’s PW/Bookspan breakfast panel on technology: “Opportunities and Threats for the Book Publishing Industry.”
“Threats for”?
Fred Ramey
posted 3/13/07
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