Book News
Judy Quinn -- 1/3/00
Daughter updates and honors mother's legacy with new design, new acquisitions
A New Look for Marion Boyars
In February, Catheryn Kilgarriff will make a graphic statement alerting the U.S. book world that she's keeping the esteemed independent house Marion Boyars Publishers on target.
That's when a new bull's-eye logo will appear on the first U.S. releases of the Marion Boyars titles Kilgarriff has overseen following the death of Boyars, her mother, last year.
In fact, Kilgarriff, who has worked in publishing but in recent years had moved into the design industry, will have the rare opportunity to serve as publisher for some of the very books she has designed.
"It was time to bring a new look," she said during a visit to PW's offices, just before she clinched a new distribution deal with Consortium (which will take over for current distributor LPC Group in June).
As Kilgarriff noted to the Bookseller last month upon the occasion of her first U.K. releases, the Marion Boyars list "represents every modern movement in the second half of the 20th century, from literary and music to drama or social theory. But most of the books are locked up in dreary covers: Marion considered them as 'difficult' books, but we will be making them more accessible."
One of the new list's first offerings is also one of Kilgarriff's first book purchases: Prozac Highway, Persimmon Blackbridge's novel about an Internet-savvy lesbian performance artist. The novel, originally published in 1997 by small press Press Gang, attracted critical attention, including a starred review in PW. Kilgarriff hopes to expand the book's readership both in the U.K. and here with this reprint.
Kilgarriff is, of course, also inheriting books her legendary tastemaker mother acquired -- including those from the increased flurry of buying in 1997, following the windfall of a British publisher buying U.K. paperback renewal rights from Boyars for Ken Kesey's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest.
Indeed, Boyars was well known for being ahead of the curve -- not only was she savvy enough to snag U.K. rights for Cuckoo, but she was also a crusader for free expression. She and then partner John Calder were brought to court in Britain on obscenity charges in the 190s, for example, after they published Hubert Selby Jr.'s Last Exit to Brooklyn.
Selby is now one of the many well-known authors on Boyars' still-valuable backlist, and newly packaged reprints of his short story collection Song of the Silent Snow, as well as his novels The Room and The Demon, are on Kilgarriff's inaugural list.
Another intriguing title to come is Nikolaj Frobenius's Sade's Valet, a Norwegian novel based on a real-life servant -- and apparent s&m accomplice -- of the famously depraved aristocrat. In its French translation (Boyars's will be the first English translation) the book sold a healthy 15,000 copies, and has been optioned by Hollywood. Kilgarriff plans to release the book in this country in late 2000.
March 2000 will bring the first English translation of a much bigger seller in France: Le Monde literary editor Genevieve Brisac's Losing Eugenio, a tale of single parenthood that sold 150,000 copies in her native country. Marion Boyars's U.K. edition is just out now, and Brisac is set to discuss the controversies of modern child-rearing with author Nick Hornby (About a Boy) at London's French Institute.
As many publishing execs are doing nowadays, Kilgarriff is planning to trim annual output and spends a lot of time assessing the merits of hardcover versus trade paperback. Given her U.K. roots and the dominance of trade paper in that market, it's no surprise this format is most often her choice.
Kilgarriff also told PW she plans to reduce the typical 30 yearly releases down to about 22”six new books and 16 reprints.
But Kilgarriff will definitely continue her mother's mission of advocating authors. Also first out in February 2000 is Paddy Figgis's On the Bright Road. The book is a retelling of the Arthurian legend by an author who previously published with Boyars under the name Helen Wykham, best known here for Irish country house-set literary fiction Ribstone Pippins.
But Kilgarriff seems unfazed by this author's reinvention -- perhaps because she's conducting one of her own. "I remember meeting her when I was about 12, when she came for one of my mother's book parties," Kilgarriff recalls. "I remember saying to her, 'Isn't this exciting?' "
Prepub Buzz
Building Buddies for 'Buddy'
At Algonquin, having a new book by Lewis "Buddy" Nordan almost ready for release means it's time for his house-sponsored fan club to shift into high gear for another round of celebratory activity for the native Mississippian.
So with pub date for his Boy with Loaded Gun set for January 14, an excerpt highlighting the memoir's zany "New York City" episode was mailed in September to the two-year-old club's nearly 1,000 members (in addition to 2,000 independent and chain booksellers, plus a 3,000-member media list), accompanied by an announcement designating February 1“7 as the third annual National Lewis Nordan Appreciation Week.
Since, then there have been two developments, one enhancing the club electronically and the other extending its marketing outreach. The house has just opened a Web site, www.algonquin.com/ nordan, that so far features the critically acclaimed writer reading and discussing his previous three story collections and four novels ("Sounds of Nordan"), a fan message board ("Graffiti Wall"), the annual LNFC Newsletter and what publicity director Katharine Walton describes as "fun and informative book and bio facts" ("All About Nordan").
Perhaps better yet, the house has also announced a Lewis Nordan Appreciation Week Bookstore Contest. To participate, stores must report to Algonquin about promo activities they held during the appreciation week by March 1. Entries will be judged by Playboy book editor Lee Fr hlick and Carl Lennertz of BookSense, plus a third panelist to be named. Grand prize is a Mississippi weekend for one during April's Oxford Conference for the Book. The winner will meet Nordan, who teaches at the University of Pittsburgh and will be a featured speaker. Nordan will take the winner on a tour of nearby Itta Bena, his tiny hometown and fictional anchor. Beyond the grand prize, Algonquin also is offering promotion participants co-op dollars, an array of display aids and a signed copies of Boy with Loaded Gun for in-store raffles.
The Web site and contest, Walton posited, "are logical steps toward expanding the club's impact." Founded in 1997 as a publicity ploy for Nordan's novel Lightning Song, the hoped-for "grassroots groundswell" of enthusiasm for Nordan's work was ignited by full-page ads announcing the club in the Southern-oriented Oxford American and in PW. "Buddy's readers, we found from letters we receive and other evidence, love to talk about his books," said Walton. "So we made membership available to anyone who promises. by either card, letter or now e-mail. to loan or give a Nordan book to a friend. And now, for Buddy's first nonfiction book, we wanted to pull bookstores into the club's fun, too."
But has all this effort helped Nordan's sales? The answer, apparently, is in how you look at it. Boy's 15,000 first printing, noted sales manager Craig Popelars, is "in line" with those for the author's more recent novels. Nonetheless, the club has nurtured "a quicker sell in-of Nordan's newest book, and steady sales for his backlist. That's the club's word-of-mouth magic."
Apparently, too, that's not just Nordanesquely whistling Dixie. Booksellers beyond the South credit the club for greater awareness of this author.
"Nordan's audience here has grown ever since he began coming to the store for Wolf Whistle [1993]," said Carla Cohen of Washington, D.C.'s Politics and Prose. "Once readers discover him, they want to read everything he's written." The club, added the store's newsletter editor, David Patterson, a member, "is not only fun to belong to, but helps with handselling." And to Frank Sanchez, frontlist buyer for Kepler's Books & Magazines in Menlo Park, Calif., Nordan is "the best-kept secret in America. I doubt the club has many members out here in the Bay Area. Still, something is happening; to date we've sold about 125 copies of Lightning Song in Algonquin's trade paperback, eight in a recent week alone. We'll put his new book at the register, and I expect a good crowd when he comes here in February."
--Bob Summer
Made in Taiwan
While Pantheon-published Waiting, Ha Jin's China-set tale of an army doctor's years-long quest for a divorce, holds the spotlight thanks to its recent National Book Award win, Columbia University Press has also quietly been building modest yet significant success in a related arena with its Modern Chinese Literature from Taiwan series.
The third book in the series, the June release Notes of a Desolate Man, Chu T'ien-wen's elegiac novel about a contemporary Taiwanese gay man, was just selected as a New York Times Notable Book as well as a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year. Editorial director Jennifer Crewe told PW that the original series' first printings of 2,000 copies have been selling out fast, with quick reprints needed. Notes of a Desolate Man is now in its fourth printing.
Another recent title in the series has also received critical acclaim: Cheng Ch'ing Wen's Three-Legged Horse, a collection of stories about small-town life in Taiwan, published last January, won the esteemed Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize.
Columbia's series was launched in 1998 with Rose, Rose, I Love You, Wang Chen-ho's satiric tale of what happens when 300 U.S. soldiers come from Vietnam for a weekend of R&R at a Taiwanese resort town. It was the first novel by this popular Taiwanese author to be translated into English, and, indeed, that's the mission of this series, which is the brainchild of Columbia University Asian Studies professor David Der-wei Wang, who also serves as series editor. "We felt works from Taiwan were an under-represented area of translation," said Crewe.
Columbia expects to publish a total of 10 titles in the series, one each season, and is partially supported in its efforts by the Taiwanese CCK Foundation.
Next up, in March, is Hsaio Li-hung's A Thousand Moons on a Thousand Rivers, a Taiwanese family saga, that, when published in Taiwan in 1981, became an instant bestseller and went through more than 60 printings. Certainly Columbia can't expect that kind of activity here, but if the series' track record is any indication, the book should find a sizable audience. --J.Q. |
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