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Dear Howard Schultz

This in The Seattle Times on Sunday, October 29 from Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz:

“We’re looking into publishing books, too,” reveals Schultz. “There’s so much talent out there, and they can’t find a publisher. It’d be a great service for emerging authors. Even as we speak, we have someone at William Morris [Literary Agency] who is reading scripts and treatments. It’s more than an idea. It’s something we’re serious about.”

This appeared, of course, in an article about the coffee chain’s selling 45,000 copies of a best-selling book — For One More Day — by an already best-selling author, Mitch Albom.

I’d like to send a letter:

Dear Mr. Schultz,

The New York Times has touted Starbucks’ ability to affect culture, and much has been written elsewhere about your foray into bookselling. And I admire your willingness to head to the single most powerful and established New York literary agency to uncover manuscripts that “can’t find a publisher.” In fact, I’m fascinated by the realization that William Morris handles such things.

I don’t think they submit their authors to us.

I would submit to you that there are tens of thousands of works of fiction published in this country every year and that it might be valuable for you to take a look at some available titles that are not already on the best-seller lists. You might find some books out there that are worthy of your attention.

What would be the reason to skip over the lists of small literary publishers, or even to overlook the beautiful titles that are occasionally to be found buried and unacknowledged in the catalogs of the big houses? There are so many talented and potentially important authors out there who have been able to get published but haven’t been able to get noticed.

You could do so much good in expanding the narrow focus of the chains, supporting the independents whose eyes often are already on the nearly unknown writers who are all around you — writers who are talented and hopeful but whose books are unreviewed and “undesignated” by either Island publishing C.E.O.s or the media. And you would be doing this without taking the big-name events out of the hands of the booksellers.

Now that would be “a great service to emerging authors.”

Fred Ramey

 
 

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