Herman Graf, who worked in sales and marketing at McGraw-Hill and Doubleday before becoming a key figure in the independent press movement beginning in the 1960s, died February 27. He was 91.
Graf's involvement in the indie press world began in the mid '60s, when he joined Barney Rosset's Grove Press where he worked in sales and marketing. As Graf colleague Philip Turner wrote about Graf in an old blog post, Graf was "deeply involved in promoting Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, Jean Genet, and Mikhail Bulgakov to American readers, even while founder Barney Rosset was frequently in court, accused of distributing 'obscene' literature, like D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterly’s Lover," adding: "Herman rode that tiger with Barney, and other key Grove executives, such as Kent Carroll, Fred Jordan and Richard Seaver."
In a tribute, industry veteran Matty Goldberg said Graf relationship with Rosset "could be best described as tempestuous. Graf liked to say, 'I was the Billy Martin of publishing; Barney fired me three times, and rehired me twice.' There was something to this George Steinbrenner-Billy Martin analogy, as Herman, like the brawling, ill-fated Yankee manager, could handle himself in a tight spot, having been a fair boxer growing up in the Bronx.
Towards the end of his last stint at Grove, Graf took up the cause of The Confederacy of Dunces a well-reviewed novel by John Kennedy Toole that LSU Press had published. Convinced the book was being overlooked by mainstream media, Graf helped sell hardcover editions to the chains and wholesalers and when Grove released the paperback edition it became a giant bestseller.
Graf teamed up with Kent Carroll to launch Carroll & Graf Publishers in December 1982 when, he told PW's Michael Coffey in a 2007 interview, they didn't have five cents or a bank loan. What they did have was great editorial sense that produced important titles that often sold well. Graf told Coffey he believed Joe Wilson's The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies that Led to War and Betrayed My Wife’s CIA Identity, "could be around forever."
In 1999, Carroll & Graf, which had a backlist of about 700 titles, was sold to the Avalon Publishing Group where Graf remained publisher and Carroll stayed on as president. "I look upon this as a continuance, a merger of friends," Graf told PW at the time of the deal. "This gives us more financial security, which is very comforting." Carroll left C&G in 2001 and Graf became editor-at-large in 2003. In 2007, Avalon closed the C&G imprint and Graf moved to Skyhorse Publishing where he served a long stint as acquiring editor and consultant.
"I feel very bad about the people who lost their jobs, and that the name of Carroll & Graf will disappear," Graf told Coffey. "When companies own companies that they didn't create, it's going to be painful. We created a decent company with some books that will last."
Graf was much admired by his colleagues in indie publishing, and a number of people who worked for him started their own presses. One was Claiborne Hancock, who started Pegasus Books in 2006. “Herman was a legend of the publishing industry. He could inspire laughter and fear in equal measure, but his heart was always in the right place: how best to work to sell and publish good books," Hancock said. "Herman was one of the key mentors in my professional life, and I will always think of him as my grandfather of the publishing world."
In a story published shortly after the launch of Pegasus, Graf offered this observation of Hancock to PW's Peter Canon: "He observed and learned. He was very astute. Most important, he had a passion for the business. He had the hots for it. The man will go far." The same could be said for Herman Graf.
