News

Sharpe Backlist Boasts Several Nobel Prize Winners
Jim Milliot -- 10/30/00
Sharpe title features
Xingjian play.
While trade houses were scrambling earlier this month to acquire rights to the novels of Nobel Prize winner Gao Xingjian, M.E. Sharpe was notifying its accounts that Xingjian's play Bus Stop already appears in Theater and Society: An Anthology of Contemporary Chinese Drama published by Sharpe in 1998. In addition, Sharpe's spring list included The Kwangju Uprising: Eyewitness Press Accounts of Korea's Tiananmen, which featured a foreword by Kim Dae Jung, the president of South Korea, who won this year's Nobel Peace Prize. Sharpe's backlist also features works by Nobel winners Kenzaburo (The Pinch Runner Memorandum) and economist Wassily Leontief. "I think it is a credit to our editors that they recognize such quality works early on," said Sharpe's director of marketing and sales, Diana McDermott.
Founded in 1958, Armonk, N.Y.-based Sharpe has seen its strongest growth over the last decade, during which its staff has doubled to its current size of 52, the number of titles released annually has increased from 60 to 100, and revenues have jumped by about 350%, with roughly 20% of sales coming from overseas markets. The majority of Sharpe's titles are geared for colleges and universities, although about 10 books per year find their way to the trade market. Through Sharpe Reference, the company publishes reference sets for the school library market, and the company also publishes 32 professional journals. Its backlist now stands at about 1,100 titles.

Sharpe's areas of focus are in economics, politics, political science and history. Its East Gate imprint publishes original works and translations in Asian studies, and the company also has a Russian and Slavic publishing program. McDermott said Sharpe recently hired an editor to expand its economics program into the management field.

Sharpe is slowly getting involved in electronic publishing; it has signed licensing agreements with netLibrary and Questia. "You can't ignore electronic publishing. We're closely monitoring developments," McDermott said.

Upcoming titles that McDermott believes will do well in a variety of markets include Women and Guns: The Politics and Culture of Firearms in America; Queer Airwaves, the story of gay and lesbian broadcasting; and The Making of Modern Economics: The Lives and Works of Great Thinkers.