Henry Holt has teamed up with fellow Holtzbrinck publisher Picador USA in a joint venture that will have Picador publishing many of Holt's fiction titles in trade paperback. The first three titles to be published by Picador will be Salman Rushdie's The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Stewart O'Nan's A Prayer for the Dying and Helen Humphrey's Leaving Earth; the titles will appear on Picador's winter 2000 list. Elizabeth Shreve, director of publicity for Holt, said that Picador will most likely publish three or four Holt titles in each of the house's three seasons.
Shreve told PW the arrangement with Picador was not related to cutbacks made earlier this year at Owl Books (News, Feb. 1), but was rather spurred by the success Picador has had working with Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Holt president and publisher John Sterling said the new venture will permit Holt and Picador to "look for opportunities to jointly acquire the hard/soft rights to appropriate works of fiction."
