PW met with Zacharius, founder and CEO of Kensington Books and author of Songbird, in his booklined Midtown office.
PW: You're a veteran, respected publisher. Why have you written a novel?
Walter Zacharius: Since I was 14 years old, I wanted to be a publisher. My other dream was to write a novel. This is a novel that was in the back of my mind for many, many years. It's a story that I told Roberta Grossman, who was then [in the 1980s] my partner [at Zebra Books]. She challenged me to write it. And I went to work on it, did a lot of research, had over 800 pages done. Then she passed away and I put it in a closet at home. A few years ago my wife said, "What are you going to do with this novel?" That provoked me to start reading it, and I realized that it was not the book I actually wanted to write. The book I wanted to write was a love story between a young girl in Europe and a young man in Brooklyn, and what happened to their lives and how the war [WWII] affected their lives. And in many ways, how the war affected my life.
She [Mia, heroine of Songbird] is a real person. It's written as fiction, because I had to cover up many things. There were many unsung heroes in this war, people who never got medals but who helped save a lot of the Allied troops' lives. Somebody needed to tell the story of some of these heroes.
How did you manage to write the story convincingly from the point of view of a young woman?
When I did it, I didn't realize what I was doing. I was telling a story, and I had a feeling, and you can't lose that kind of feeling.
Why did you write it in the first person?
It was easy. I'm thinking of writing an article for PW headlined, "I'd rather be a publisher than a writer." Because it's easier to be a publisher than to write. First of all, as a writer, you're really exposing yourself. Also, you write and then you rewrite. And rewriting is one of the worst things in the world to do. And then you start cutting, and it's like taking blood.
The book jacket suggests the book is directed toward a female readership.
It is directed toward a female readership. Females like to read adventures too, especially when there's a young girl in there. I think many books catch on because of word of mouth. I think women will talk about it, and then men will pick it up—because it deals with WWII. And also that cover, I thought of a movie poster. When I wrote this book, I wrote it with a movie in mind. William Morris has it at some studios.
The cover does indicate adventure as well as romance.
For 40 years I've been publishing romances, so I never lost sight of the market. But it is an adventure. I remember something said to me years ago: "If you ever want to write, write a page-turner." Understand? So when I sat down to do this, stripping the book down, I decided to write a page-turner. I had to cut a lot of it.
You were a pioneer of jazzy covers in publishing.
I think we started the foiling and embossing. I learned it from greeting cards. And then I was the first to do holographic covers, three-dimensional covers. I cannot compete financially against the giants in this business. So we have to be different, we have to be innovative. We have a saying around here, "We cannot out muscle the giants. But we can outsmart them."
What are you going to do to publicize the book?
I have a schedule going all over this country in a lot of bookshops. I'm going to be talking to some of the veterans groups. I'm going to be talking to the Jewish community in a lot of places, you understand. And I'm going to talk to women's groups and some Holocaust groups. We'll be advertising the book, and I hope to get on some of the programs. I think I will. I'm hoping that some of those big programs will ask, "How did a guy who's 80 years old write a book about a girl 17 years old? And how did a guy my age, who still runs a publishing house on a daily basis, take the time to write this book, take the time 10 years ago to decide to learn the piano, take the time at the age of 45 to learn to play tennis, at the age of 47 to learn to jump horses, and the age of 65 to learn to play squash?" I don't care your age, if you have it in your head to do something, if you find the world an exciting place, and I always have, you can accomplish almost anything.
