PW talks with Eric Kampmann

PW talks with Eric Kampmann, founder of Beaufort Books, which will publish O.J. Simpson’s If I Did It.

Why do you believe this can be a successful publishing enterprise?

When the bankruptcy court in the state of Florida awarded the Goldman family the rights to this book and all that that implies, suddenly this book became a book that was being authorized and, what is the right word? It opened the door that was closed. Once the Goldmans had the book they had a decision to make, and all decisions are moral in nature. There’s a right and a wrong and often times when situations like this change, what was wrong now becomes right. I feel that that’s the situation in this case. That the Goldmans, because they want the world to hear the voice of O.J. Simpson—and I’ve read it so I know what I’m talking about—describe—it’s not explained—describe, blaming his wife the whole time through the explanation for everything that is happening, then I can understand why the Goldman family wants the world to hear this guy condemn himself. And I think that that decision to have the world hear it is morally justifiable in every way, shape or form because he is not getting anything for this. He is not going to be on the cover of the book. We may use the title, we may not use the title. We’re adding to the book, but we’re not changing any of his words. Nothing. These are his words, we want his words to convict him. And I’m very, very proud to be a part of that.

What are you adding to the book?

There are going to be three things added. We can’t tell you at this moment. We know that, of course, the Goldmans will be adding either a preface or an introduction. It’s written, we have it, it’s been edited. There is another piece that’s a secret and there’s going to be an afterword by a very famous writer.

How do you plan to promote the book? Will Fred Goldman’s be doing any appearances for you?

. I’ve never been the subject of media myself, so I’m not used to this, but there’s kind of a feeding frenzy going on right now. There’s going to be very significant, media attention with the Goldman family when this book comes onto market.

What’s the initial printing going to be?

No comment.

Are you nervous that you might receive criticism for publishing this book, as you did with Denise Brown on the Today Show this morning?

I’m not nervous. And I expect it. Certainly because a lot of people are going to assume it’s the same situation where O.J. was being rewarded for a crime. I think that Judith Regan is a brilliant publisher. I think she actually put together a brilliant manuscript here. But on the other side of the coin I think that HarperCollins and the booksellers were right to say that this book—under those circumstances—should not be in the market. The Goldmans know the book. They’ve read it. They know this man. They feel at this point the whole scenario has changed, and the book should be in the market so that the people out there who are interested in this case should judge for themselves exactly what this man is, and trust me, he tells us who he is.

Beaufort is known as a “joint venture” publisher. But is this a traditional publishing deal or a shared cost/shared profit one?

No, this is a traditional publishing deal. I can’t give you the details of it. There’s only one aspect of it that’s different. I’ll tell you what’s different actually. Almost all of the pre-production stuff was done by HarperCollins. We’re going to change the jacket. We’re going to print the book, that’s all our cost. But the royalties which are actually—I won’t say what they are—they’re very traditional.

What’s the possibility of a change of title here?

The Goldmans feel that ....if it was me, it would be the same title. We’re working jackets with the two different things, reworking them graphically so that we don’t emphasis him. Hopefully, at the end of the day, they will agree with you.

How great is the input of Goldmans into this project?

We’ve put together a team. It’s the agent Sharlene Martin [of the Martin Literary Management]. It’s Michael Wright, the publicist. It’s Eric Kampmann, president of Beaufort. And it’s the Goldmans. It’s been a wonderful experience since last Tuesday when I first had my conference call with them. Last week. They responded to me. They interviewed me because Sharlene was agenting the book. I was not the only person they were talking to. And I really made some of the same points I’m making to you, that the situation is changed, that while people may be responding to this book as if it was coming out last November from HarperCollins, it’s a totally different landscape and we’re going to make sure the public understands that, to the extent that the public is interested in it.

Anything to add?

Yeah, this is an amazing experience. I’ve owned Beaufort since 1984. It’s a company that’s been in existence since 1980, but we just restarted it, not with the idea of doing a book like this—it really wasn’t what we were thinking about. We were thinking about working with authors who are agented. A list of our authors, not all, have been agented , and were striking out with the bigger publishers because most of the time the bigger publishers didn’t see enough of a market for the book. Because the way we’re structured we can sell fewer copies of a book and make it work for everybody. We would take on a book like Knock at the Door and we’re not trying to sell 20,000 or 30,000 copies. We’d be very please to send 10,000 copies.

What about this book?

This is different. This is an opportunity that presented itself only because we had restarted Beaufort. The idea with Beaufort was that a ton of people come to us that are not ready for Midpoint and we have to consult with them and do this and that and I said, “why don’t we just do the publishing?” We really modeled it very much on the financial arrangements of Midpoint with our publishers. The deals we’d been writing with people have changed, they different from almost everybody. It’s a little different than what we anticipated and this [OJ BOOK] was not anticipated at all.