It began with a reader, an author and a problem. "Here's somebody I've always been meaning to read," said the reader, looking at the list of books the author had written. He scratched his head, and realized he didn't know where to begin. The author was V.S. Naipaul, though any number of writers with outsize literary reputations and voluptuous bodies of work might present the same challenge.
Every reader has to start somewhere, but what made this situation different is that the reader was Marty Asher, editor-in-chief of Vintage and Anchor Books, who had recently come into control of the author's backlist.
Asher's dilemma seeded an idea that grew into a book series, Vintage Readers, which makes its debut this week. Each of the 12 trade paperbacks in the inaugural list offers readers a sample of the major works of a respected and prolific writer. Kicking off a year in which Anchor celebrates its 50th anniversary, the series represents a unique strategy for enticing readers to try heftier works by authors who are mainstays at both imprints.
"One of the things that we're really celebrating is an extremely diverse backlist," said Anne Messitte, group publisher for Vintage Anchor. In addition to Naipaul, the first dozen authors featured in the series include writers as varied as Richard Ford, Joan Didion, Barry Lopez, Alice Munro, Vladimir Nabokov, James Baldwin and Sandra Cisneros.
Vintage plans to publish four more books in the series next fall, and to release 10 to 12 titles a year beginning in 2005. "It's very much about invigorating interest in a writer's work," Messitte said. "In particular, it's about introducing a new generation of readers to a writer."
Packaging Elite Writers for the Masses
Planning for the series began more than two years ago. From the beginning, Vintage sought to make the books as accessible and inviting to as wide audience as possible.
At $9.95, they're designed to fit into a college student's budget. But Lopez said students aren't the only readers for whom price matters. "For some people, $9.95 is a pretty big deal and $18.95 puts a book out of reach," he said. "Our folklore leads us to believe that it's just the young kids who don't have the funds to buy books, but really, it's most of us."
At around 200 pages each, the books are slimmer than most chick lit novels. That's a key distinction between them and say, the Viking Portables series, another prestigious paperback anthology series that collects work by writers such as Joseph Conrad, Walt Whitman and Dorothy Parker into 650-to-800 page paperbacks. "I really wanted Vintage Readers to be short and user friendly," Asher said.
But brevity also presented an editorial challenge. How does one select 200 pages from thousands of pages of accomplished writing? In many cases, Vintage conferred with the authors.
"There was a little bit of horse trading involved," said Richard Ford. In the end, an excerpt from his novel The Sportswriter didn't make the cut, while a novella, The Womanizer, was included, partly to show that Ford has written in that form. Vintage also wanted to include nonfiction, so the book ends with the memoir "My Mother, in Memory." That meant cutting a short story, "Empire," that Ford liked for its third-person point of view. "I would have liked to have my Vintage Ford be everything I ever wrote," he joked. "But that wasn't going to happen." Despite the compromises, he's not complaining. "People write books so other people will read them, and Vintage is a pretty shrewd deliverer of books to the public," Ford noted.
Lopez wrote to five trusted friends for suggestions about what to include, then checked his records to see which of his works had been reprinted most often. If Vintage was going to introduce him to a whole new set of readers, he wanted to make a good first impression. "I deliberately did not include those pieces of mine that had a smaller audience; it's just not fair," Lopez said. Among the pieces in Vintage Lopez are the prologue from Arctic Dreams, a collection of essays that won the National Book Award in 1986, and several short stories, such as "The Entreaty of the Wiideema" and "Teal Creek."
Buyers Won't Be Able to Miss Them
The series' covers feature black-and-white photographs, some taken decades ago, set against blocks of gray and white. "We wanted something that could be construed as iconic looking," said art director John Gall. "We achieved that by making them as simple and elegant as possible."
At Politics & Prose Bookstore in Washington, D.C., co-owner Carla Cohen said the covers will be a big draw. "They're very attractive, and we'll have a display. I think people will pick them up because of the way they look," she said. Other booksellers clearly agree: Vintage is putting out close to 2,000 floor displays (most hold 24 copies), including 320 to independent bookstores, 100 to Waldenbooks stores, 100 to Borders stores and two for each of Barnes & Noble's 630 superstores.
Vintage is also sending out 920 merchandising kits, which include posters of the covers. "I can't remember a time when we've put out as much POP," said marketing director Roz Parr, "except for when we launched Cold Mountain in paperback." The imprint is also backing the series with a full-page ad in the New York Times Book Review on January 18 and a M@x Rack postcard campaign in six cities.
With first printings of 17,500 to 20,000 copies each, Vintage obviously isn't banking on Cold Mountain—size sales. But the imprint is counting on bookseller support, not only to push the series, but to guide customers from Vintage Readers into the Vintage backlist. Parr and Asher reached out to booksellers early, meeting with them last spring to talk about the books and the marketing plan. It was booksellers who told them to use the word "readers" instead of "anthologies."
Though the timing of the series meshes well with Anchor's 50th anniversary, Messitte stressed that this is an ongoing program, not a promotional gimmick. On next fall's list are Willa Cather, Michael Ondaatje, A.S. Byatt and John Cheever. After that, there should be plenty of contenders. "We had a number of authors who found out through the grapevine and wanted to be included, so we have a kind of waiting list," Asher said.
As for his own reading, Asher said he's begun making his way through Naipaul. He's also been inspired to read more Nabokov. "I've been slyly taking the books home," he said. "It's a great way to plan your reading."
