News

Publishers Briefly
Calvin Reid -- 12/11/00

The British Are Coming! | 73 Days 'til Spring Training | Land of Lakes and Indie Presses


The British Are Coming!Actually, they're already here, in a small office in downtown Manhattan. Ellipsis is an aggressively quirky publishing venture focused on unusual city guides and books on contemporary art, architecture, culture, technology and more. Based in London, the company opened its New York office just above the legendary Ear Inn on Spring Street. Ellipsis books feature a delightfully compact format (books range from 4"x4" to 4"x6") and smart design, and examine an unusual combination of urban and cultural interests.
Ellipsis:
Saatchi bashing.
The firm was founded by Tom Neville, formerly an editor for a number of U.K. publishers, who oversees editorial, and by Jonathan Moberly, who handles design. In an e-mail interview, Neville said the company concentrates on publishing "highly focused, selective visual guides," and what he calls the Unpopular Culture series, "something of a tangent, as most other publishers seem to have a popular culture list." The Unpop list includes books about "the Internet, contemporary art and a little science fiction." The firm was previously part of a Swiss publishing concern called Artemis Verlags, and Neville and Moberly acquired and renamed it in 1995 after it fell into financial trouble.
Ellipsis publishes 25 books a year with U.S. distribution by W.W. Norton. U.K. sales are impressive for a small house. Eat London ("the only restaurant guide to avoid talking about food") sold 10,000 copies in four months; London Walking, an architecture guide, sold 50,000 copies. The firm also has books on U.S. cities, including Art New York and Museum New York, both just out. The Unpopular Culture series includes SuperCollector, a "hostile" treatment of advertising and contemporary art mogul Charles Saatchi. Last but not least, is The Internet and Everyone by John Chris Jones, a handsomely designed, 592-page, 4"×6" hardcover that defies easy description. Ellipsis can be reached in New York at (212) 925-6478.


73 Days 'til Spring TrainingDepressed after the baseball strike of 1994 (what fan wasn't?), Richard Peterson, an English professor at Southern Illinois University, approached the director of the SIU Press about starting a baseball writing series. "Fools rush in," Peterson told PW, "He liked the idea." That describes the humble beginnings of the SIU Press's Writing Baseball series, specializing in "quality
SIU Press:
Cuban baseball.
reprints of out-of-print classics and good original manuscripts" on the national game. Since 1997 the series has published two or three titles a year, distributed by Ingram. The series launched with James T. Farrell' s My Baseball Diary, a memoir first published in 1957 and out of print for 30 years; and a long out-of-print novel, Man on Spikes, by Eliot Asinof, author of Eight Men Out. Peterson calls Man on Spikes "the most realistic baseball novel ever written."
This year the series published its first originals, including a murder mystery by Asinof, Off-Season; and Full Count: Inside Cuban Baseball by Milton Jamail, a history of the sport in a baseball-crazy country. Coming in 2001 is The Sunlit Field by Lucy Kennedy, the first serious baseball novel by a woman. SIU plans to reprint a series of histories of each major league team, originally published in the 1940s by Putnam.

Dan Seiters, publicity manager at SIU Press, told PW, "The books sell well and are getting notices in the national media." Seiters also pointed out that the SIU Press publishes about 60 books a year in the humanities, theater and history. The SIU Press Web site is at www.siu.edu/~siupress or call (618) 453-6633.


Land of Lakes and Indie PressesWith a little help from a private foundation and an unusual collaboration with nonprofit publishing house Graywolf Press, the College of St. Benedict has launched the Literary Arts Institute, a publishing education program that brings together a variety of book publishing resources in the Twin Cities area.

The Literary Arts Institute will feature Inside Books, an annual weeklong, publishing seminar modeled after the Radcliffe Publishing Program; an annual $15,000 literary prize for an unpublished manuscript; master classes with Graywolf authors; Reader's Theater, a local program that adapts Graywolf titles to the stage; and an ongoing studio program focusing on book design and letterpress. St. Benedict is located near Minneapolis, a hotbed of small press activity, and because of that, said Mark Conway, director of special projects at St. Benedict, the LAI will focus on alternative publishing.

The program was launched with $450,000 in challenge grants from the Teagle Foundation, and funding includes the LAI's "unique relationship with Graywolf," said Conway. Graywolf and its authors are involved in virtually every aspect of the program. This summer, the Inside Books seminar taught 30 students from around the country and featured presentations by p t Jorie Graham, Penguin associate publisher Jane Von Mehren, agent Ira Silverberg and Graywolf Press publisher Fiona McCrae.

Conway noted that the winner of the inaugural literary prize is Loverboy by Victoria Redel, the story of a mother/son relationship that will be published by Graywolf next spring. The Web site is www.csbsju.edu/LiteraryArts or call (320) 363-5399 for more information.