On Bowie, a meditation on the life of the late David Bowie by Rob Sheffield (Love Is a Mixtape), is landing in bookstores next week. The quickly turned around title was something of a feat for its publisher, Dey Street, since it was conceived and executed in less than six months.
The book, which will hit stores on June 28, was a project that Sheffield and Dey Street editorial director Carrie Thornton were each pondering, unbeknownst to the other, on January 10, the day Bowie unexpectedly died. Thornton, who has been Sheffield's editor since 2004, said she immediately thought about her author that day.
“When I got to work, the first conversation I had was with my publisher [Lynn Grady],” Thornton said. She then made a call to Sheffield's agent, Daniel Greenberg, with a singular idea: "I've got to get Rob to do a book."
Cooking up a book, even one under 200 pages like On Bowie, in less than six months is a tall order. But according to Thornton, her long-standing relationship with Sheffield helped...tremendously. That and the pair's shared love for the subject matter.
When Bowie died, Sheffield was in the process of writing another book, about the Beatles, which was going to be his fourth; that book was sidetracked off in favor of this one. At a lunch a week after Bowie's death, the duo agreed that they wanted to produce something different from the obituaries and tribute pieces that stressed the artist's chameleon-like nature. They decided, instead, for Sheffield to focus on the relationship Bowie had with his fans.
"[Rob] wanted to do a rumination on Bowie's importance from an American perspective...a fan perspective," Thornton said. "Rob always writes with his heart on his sleeve."
The angle, and the timing, have paid off. Dey Street announced a first printing for On Bowie of 50,000 copies, and has already gone back to press due to post-publicity order creep.
Thornton also got unusually involved in designing the book's cover, to ensure it stood out from its competitors. The final product is a white paper over board treatment featuring the singer's famous Ziggy Stardust-era lightning bolt.
“I didn’t want to put [Bowie's] picture on [the cover]. His picture was on everything," Thornton said. "I had it in my head. I came up with the title, so I wanted something very elegant and intellectual. Something that was very much an object."
In Thornton's eyes, she and Sheffield were the most logical people to oversee as many aspects of the book as possible. “Because we’re both such über-fans, we both knew the book we wanted to read,” Thornton said. “[Bowie] speaks to the weirdo in all of us.”
