Over the past decade, Morty Mint, founder of the distribution company Mint Publishers Group, has put together an eclectic mix of clients with books ranging from estate planning to cooking. His newest addition, Gallery Six in Rockport, Mass., is no exception. Cofounder Phil Hopkins describes the three-year-old record label/publishing house as "a boutique company that does music, DVD and book projects." Following the success of Gallery Six's April audio venture, a recording of the lost songs of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, From a Window, this October it will release its first book and audio package—actually a book and two audio CDs—Doctor SAX and the Great World of Snakes, a rediscovered screenplay by Jack Kerouac. The project was a natural for Gallery Six, because cofounder Jim Sampas is Jack Kerouac's nephew. His aunt, Stella Sampas, was married to Kerouac and served as the executor of the Kerouac estate.
"We're getting an excellent response to Doctor SAX and the Great World of Snakes, " Mint told PW. First printing is 15,000 copies. Mint, who is distributing the book-and-CDs set in the U.S. and Canada and selling rights in England, describes the package as roughly the same size as a book, 7-½"×5". "It's our first book and we decided it needed to be a bookshelf book," explained Hopkins.
Like Kerouac's novel Dr. SAX: Faust Part 3, first published by Grove Press in 1959, the screenplay is set in Kerouac's hometown of Lowell, Mass. Gallery Six worked with graphic novels artist Richard Sala to put together 70 illustrations for the screenplay about Kerouac's alter ego, 11-year-old Jacky Duluoz. Among the readers on the CDs are poets Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jim Carroll and Robert Creeley; John Medeski composed the musical score.
