I Never Had a Best-Seller: The Story of a Small Publisher

In 1949 Steinberg, producing translations of Chinese classics, invested $8000 to found Twayne Publishers. His eventual success, however, was to stem from the Twayne Authors Series, proposed in 1958 by Indiana University professor Sylvia Bowman and which by 1991 included nearly 2000 critical studies of individual authors and literary movements. Despite sometimes ponderous excerpts from correspondences, this memoir yields many insights into decisions and people behind a firm whose slogan was ``BOOKS not bucks.'' Amid the usual cash shortages and other problems, Steinberg and his editors (most notably poet John Ciardi) shaped a list ranging from poetry to science fiction to Judaica, including early work by Donald Hall, Norman Rosten and Edward Gorey. Prepaid library sales, Steinberg claims, helped make the Authors Series ``the largest single project'' in the history of publishing. Twayne has been part of Macmillan's reference division since 1991. (Apr.)