Texere’s Web

By PT Editors
September 1, 2001
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Texere may be the Latin word meaning “to weave,” but it is also the name of an international publisher specializing in books on business, technology, and finance that launched in a public-relations frenzy less than two years ago. What happened to the company whose self-stated mission is no less than to become “the most progressive and authoritative voice in business publishing by cultivating, enhancing and disseminating ideas that will inform and illuminate the global business landscape”?

Confounding some industry observers, who wonder about the odds for an independent publisher of high-end business books, Texere prevails — despite what founder Myles Thompson admits is “a tough market that we’re all experiencing.” Created in January 2000 by Thompson, onetime publisher of the successful finance program at Wiley, Texere almost immediately became a global English publisher when it bought Orion Business Books in the UK in March. The first list of 19 titles was launched in Fall 2000, just as the economy began its nose dive. But sales, which were in the “one to two million dollar range,” exceeded budget. This year another 28 are scheduled, including Hoover’s Vision by Gary Hoover, co- founder of Bookstop, and The Agent by the poster boy for authors’ control of copyright, Arthur Klebanoff. Still, this year will be difficult. “We’re assuming any recovery will be a gradual one,” Thompson says, adding that “there’s been so much over-publishing in this category.”

On the other hand, Thompson’s wife, EVP and Director of Marketing Lee Thompson, says that the breadth and range of their titles has helped get them through the crash. Think pieces are fading fast, but a book like Tom Copeland and Vladimir Antikarov’s Real Options is doing “brilliantly,” she says. And Thompson and company have no shortage of boosters. Jack Covert, president of the B-to-B division of Harry Schwartz Bookshop, calls the couple “two of the more savvy people in this industry.” Still, he acknowledges that “it’s hard to get traction in this market.” Even Gary Hoover’s book, which Covert thinks will have potential if the well-connected author gets behind it, was to have a 75,000 first printing, but that figure has since been downgraded to a more modest 25,000 first run.

Indeed, Texere seems to be taking a bit of its own financial advice. Many of its services are outsourced: it is distributed by Norton; Gail Blackhall handles its subsidiary rights; Sally Dedecker handles marketing; the website, catalogs, and promotion are all outsourced; and its publicity is done by Planned Television Arts and its parent Ruder-Finn. Finally, Texere is partially funded by — and housed in a building owned by — Swiss Re, a multinational reinsurance company. Another factor is that Texere does not generally compete in auctions, and in fact, on some books like Nassim Taleb’s Fooled By Randomness, pays no advance at all. “We are not willing to give interest-free loans,” says Thompson, who industry observers also describe as perhaps a bit pompous. On the other hand, Texere does not touch highly remunerative “buybacks,” where the author’s company will take books for distribution to employees or business associates. “We do no vanity publishing,” maintains Thompson, “no matter how profitable it may be.” That view may surprise industry players who perceive such deals to be the bread and butter of Texere’s business.

Looking to the future, Thompson plans to bump up the number of branded store sites (there are now two, one at Heathrow and the other at the Economist bookshop), and to continue publishing translations like Absolut: Biography of a Bottle (from Swedish). Like many in the post-dotcom reality, alas, innovations touted at Texere’s launch — journals, web-based applications, video conferences, ebooks, and the like — will have to wait for another uptick in the economy to weave their way into reality.

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Time’s Travails

By PT Editors
August 1, 2001
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Calendar Publishing Clocks Another Year. But Is There Life After ‘The Far Side’?

The Far Side Off-the-Wall Calendar, Gary Larson’s page-a-day phenomenon that has been the number one selling boxed calendar for more than a decade, is history. “He decided that 17 years was enough,” says Michael Nonbello, VP for Andrews McMeel Publishing. “Larson wanted to go out on top.” To mark the passing of this 3-million-copy-per-year publishing manna, which concludes with the 2002 boxed calendar (the company’s still negotiating for other formats), Andrews McMeel has drummed up a final Far Side edition with six different box designs, each sporting a signature character from the cartoon. Call it the gilding on the calendar coffin. “By far the biggest calendar that was ever done — probably that ever will be done — is retiring this year,” says Mike Brown, owner of Canadian book and calendar publisher BrownTrout. “Next year everyone has to figure out how to plug the holes.”

Indeed, as the season’s new offerings hit the racks this month, calendar publishers — who comprise an estimated $300 million industry in the US — could use a few of Larson’s sure-fire laughs. Sales last year at Calendar Club, the Barnes & Noble affiliate whose 520 kiosks and mall outlets in the US account for almost 25% of all calendar sales, were “somewhat flat,” and B&N’s first-quarter results this year chalked up a $2 million Calendar Club loss. Factor in a dearth of licensed hits, a stagnant number of shopping malls in the US, and a highly fractured market teeming with new competitors — all in addition to the mercenary cycle of the six-month sales window — and you’ve got a business in no mood for jokes. “Calendar publishing,” as one gift-market veteran says, “is a very dangerous business.”

Even as they push ahead with new calendar lines and products, many publishers are bound to agree. “It’s a very difficult business at the moment,” says Charles Miers, publisher at Universe, the Rizzoli-owned company whose calendars are distributed by Andrews McMeel. “There’s a lot of competition fragmenting the market. There isn’t quite the demand for traditional subject matter that there used to be.” Miers, whose calendar line has nonetheless grown by about 25% in recent years to 60 titles, points out that the industry’s tried-and-true subjects aren’t looking so failsafe anymore. “The days of Ansel Adams and swimsuits and even Monet are wearing a little thin,” he says. “I’m not sure that the young new customer has the same allegiances that the traditional customer had.”

As license-hopping continues (the powerhouse Anne Geddes line, for example, has moved to Andrews McMeel this year), and new formats are launched and abandoned instantaneously (the ill-fated “calendar cube”), lasting allegiances of any kind seem few and far between. “Loyalty,” says Lisa Gulick, national accounts manager for California-based wholesaler Sunbelt Publications, “doesn’t seem to be a big part of the calendar business.”

Norwich Terriers, Anyone?

You might think the industry is like the kid in Larson’s cartoon rendering of “Midvale School for the Gifted,” who mightily pushes against the door that says “pull.” But some of the biggest retail players are banking on calendars, including B&N, which last year spent $11 million to take a controlling interest in Calendar Club, and was rewarded with sales of $66.3 million and an operating profit of $1.4 million for the unit. “We have a distinctly seasonal product that we’re selling at the biggest season of the year,” says John Lash, Calendar Club’s Marketing and Design Director, who adds that Larson or not, some calendars simply will not die. “The standby is animals, dogs particularly,” he says. Also tireless sellers are James Dean, Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, and the Beatles, known in the trade as “dead celebrities” who sell well year after year. In fact, Lash says about half of his top ten has remained the same as it was five years ago. Over the long term, such constancy has been good for business. The Austin-based company began with 63 stores in 1993, and now counts 520 locations in the US, plus 250 stores ranging across Australia, Hong Kong, and the UK. Each one carries 2,500 calendar titles, with an average price of around $11. Demographic research has shown that 60% of the company’s customers head to the mall with Calendar Club as their primary destination, and in 1999 the top store did almost $500,000 in sales.

Those aren’t bad numbers, considering that such opportunistic retailers (including the Arizona-based calendar chain The Date Place) are run by independent contractors, and generally colonize vacant mall space from September through January. The down side is that growth is slowing. With the country’s 1,000 major malls saturated, B&N and Borders (which operates its own Day by Day calendar stores) have been reduced to fighting trench warfare and have battled themselves to a stalemate. At press time the only advertised openings for Calendar Club were in Eden Prairie, Minnesota and Des Peres, Missouri, slim pickings indeed.

Moreover, those registers won’t be ringing without the requisite pop-culture sizzle. “Nothing’s hot this year,” Brown of BrownTrout says. “We went to the Licensing Show a month ago, and they were trying to sell the rights to Chiquita Banana.” Brown, whose Ontario, Canada–based company expects to pump out 11 million units of more than 700 titles this year, falls back on dogs: specifically, their calendars for each of 102 dog breeds and varieties (Black Pugs, White German Shepherds, Norwich Terriers, and Salukis are new this year). It certainly takes the edge off such vagaries as the Star Wars debacle (“the biggest bomb in the calendar business since I’ve been in it,” says Brown), and the “very disappointing” Harry Potter showing. BrownTrout’s hottest title at the moment is actually The New Girls of Maxim. As further insulation, however, Brown has been working on extending the sales life of calendars, shipping to the major chains in April. He also opened his own printing plant, Chess Press, in 1998. Run out of BrownTrout’s warehouse in Vacaville, California, the press takes care of about half of BrownTrout’s calendar printing (the remainder is handled in the Far East). “It’s a godsend to have our own printing in our backyard this time of year,” he says, adding that the press has enabled just-in-time printing, “which is one of our great competitive advantages.”

Sitting on the Sidelines

Those advantages are ever more precious in a field crowded with the likes of At-A-Glance, and calendar publisher Date Works, a unit of American Greetings. Not to mention Workman, which invented (or at least trademarked) the boxed, “Page-A-Day” concept in the first place. Workman advertises its 86 calendar titles on the 2002 list as “our leanest but most guaranteed-to-be-successful list in years.” Yet as Brown points out, the field is largely bereft, for better or worse, of book publishers. “The major publishers have watched the whole business grow exponentially, and they’ve been sitting on the sidelines,” he says. “The book publishers really missed it.” Mostly, they seem to have signed deals with Andrews McMeel, as did Simon & Schuster two years ago, when it launched a joint venture designating Andrews McMeel as the house’s calendar publisher. A similar deal was struck with Hyperion in 1998, and a licensing arrangement with Penguin Putnam allows Andrews McMeel to base calendars on book titles. Other publishers, such as HarperCollins, make use of their handy corporate siblings. Tom Dupree, marketing director of HarperEntertainment, says his unit publishes a handful of tie-in calendars for properties owned by sister company Twentieth Century Fox, including Simpsons and The X-Files, plus some Tolkien products. But all the calendars are produced by outside packagers, and though “we may continue to do more years of our current titles,” Dupree says, “I don’t expect us to have more titles than we now have on the list.”

Not all publishers are so wary. Mike Hejny, VP of Sales and Marketing for Motorbooks International, says the Minnesota-based company will publish about 20 calendars this fall and distribute 15 others, all of them in core areas of transportation and military subjects. “Our books have had a stellar reputation over the years among the enthusiasts,” Hejny says. “That has allowed us to move into the calendar business and be successful.” He says retailers such as Calendar Club turn to Motorbooks to fill in the gaps when they’re desperately seeking, say, those luscious spreads of American Farm Tractors. Most calendars are sold nonreturnable, and Hejny remains upbeat on expanding the line. “It’s a terrific business to be in,” he says, “and we’ll probably be exploring additional calendar opportunities going forward.”

You may chuckle at farm tractors (or Belgian sheep dogs, for that matter) but such calendars placed in the haunts of enthusiasts are the golden key to sell-through, says Sunbelt’s Gulick. Though attacking specialty markets is more work, greater benefits accrue from the transaction. “If you put a ski calendar into B&N, they might order 6,” she says. “But a sporting goods store might order 12 or 24.” Those looking for other nuggets of calendar wisdom will want to know that wall calendars outsell any other format three to one. And a safe bet is always Ricky Martin, who was a surprise hit last year when another title was cancelled at the last minute and Gulick put the young crooner back in rotation. Don’t touch the massively competitive market for dogs, however, and stay away from the endless cavalcades of horses and wolves. The hot tip of the day for publishers seeking a wide-open niche? Just one word, Gulick says: “Skateboarding.”

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For Americanized Brit Books, A Snog Is Just A Snog

By PT Editors
August 1, 2001
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ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED AT INSIDE.COM (8/15/01)

Goodbye, pudding … hello, Jell-O. That’s what millions of children recited as the battle over packaging Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone for the American market flared a few years back. In the stateside edition, gelatin prevailed, while “crooked” morphed into “wonky,” school “holidays” became “vacations,” and “bobbles” were no match for “puff balls.” Blasted for its heavy hand, Scholastic went easier on the subsequent Potter books.

Though Americans are still airbrushing the nipples out of illustrated U.K. children’s trade titles — and though many editors still disrespect “Mum,” putting “Mom” in her place — the days of loutish Americanization seem to be waning. As British books invade our best-seller lists and Web-savvy American kids hit U.K. book-selling sites, U.S. houses are printing locutions formerly deemed outré.

“The early ’90s heralded a politically correct era, in which editors strong-armed racist or loaded terms,” says Susan Van Metre, senior editor at Penguin Putnam. “The trend now is toward Americanizing the spelling and punctuation, and changing only those words that lead to potential misunderstanding.” So although U.S. youngsters may have seen the last of “hooter,” when a British usage is authentic and intelligible in context, Van Metre leaves it in.

That’s a good thing, because if the wildfire sales of Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging are any indication, teens (or even tweens, as the sub-teen market is known) are coping just fine. No matter that most Americans don’t know a snog from a snivel, Louise Rennison‘s novel has stormed U.S. young adult best-seller lists, suggesting a teenage Bridget Jones’ Diary. Teeming with references to spots, blokes and breastiness, the book is an unabridged lexicon of British slang: words like “swiz,” “wally” and “prat” are thick on the page. “Snogging,” of course, means kissing, and that’s what American teens want most of all.

“Competition to sound more British than their friends is so fierce that thousands of teenagers in the U.S. are writing to Ms. Rennison demanding more Brit slang,” reports the London newspaper Express. As Rennison tells the paper, “American teenagers just cannot get enough of these old-fashioned English expressions, and I think it’s probably because they are a bit rude.”

Yet teens aren’t the only ones catching the craze. In the adult trade market, even the Americanizing of spellings is no longer obligatory. “Most readers here are sophisticated enough,” says Robin Straus of the Robin Straus Literary Agency, which represents Andrew Nurnberg & Associates in the U.S. “Look at the success of Zadie Smith or Nick Hornby. Sometimes an editor will say a book’s ‘too English,’ but that has more to do with its setting and sensibility than the language.”

Foreign markets vary in their preferred version of the language. British English naturally monopolizes former Commonwealth domains such as the Middle East, Africa and Southeast Asia. American English is meanwhile dominant in Northern Asia (particularly Japan, Korea and Taiwan), the Philippines, Central and Latin America, and any other locale conveniently located near a U.S. military base. “Getting the right English into the right market is determined by a combination of tradition, history, and current demand,” says Cyrus Kheradi, VP and Group Sales Director of the US, UK and Australia, for Simon & Schuster, “which in turn are affected by other factors, such as the rising dollar and the more stable pound.”

In parallel import markets such as continental Europe, packaging and genre also play significant roles, Kheradi notes. “A tie-in book for a Hollywood movie will be in much higher demand in American English than in British English,” he says, “as will a product linked to American holidays and Hallmark marketing, such as Halloween.” However, because buyers often base purchasing decisions on the aesthetics of packaging, U.S. and U.K. editions of the same title can be found side by side on the shelves. “Ten years ago, British publishers had a monopoly on sophisticated packaging, and American covers were more garish and text-heavy,” Kheradi adds. “We are now moving towards a blending of best practices in packaging books, particularly for those with world rights.”

Nonetheless, American English may be capturing a larger piece of the global pie. Last year a Dutch study found that one-third of the commercials on Dutch television contained English words and phrases based on American English. And in Taiwan, language students will tell you they’re not studying English — they’re learning American. In the good old U.S.A, however, things aren’t so simple anymore. The proof, as any Harry Potter fan knows, is in the pudding.

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Of Jobs and Jump-Cuts

By PT Editors
August 1, 2001
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Every publishing career follows a narrative arc. For some, it’s the Proustian ebb of Swann’s Way. For others, it’s Finnegans Wake. And the most gripping career stories tend to be those that jump out of the genre altogether. As conversations with a dozen book-world veterans show, life after publishing does exist, and what’s more, there’s a world out there that — mirabile dictu — values the skills honed in editing and marketing authors. So as a companion to our look at the incoming publishing Class of ’01 (see p. 7), this month we survey the outgoing crowd and their often impressive career jump-cuts.

Going boldly beyond galleys and blads — from the top levels, no less — has been Charlie Hayward, once President and CEO of Simon & Schuster and Little, Brown, who left publishing five years ago to the month. “Sometimes it seems like yesterday,” he says, “and sometimes it seems like a lifetime ago.” After launching his own management consulting firm, Hayward helped Steve Crist and Alpine Capital go after the Daily Racing Form (the track being his passion) in 1997 and again — this time successfully — in 1998. He’s now President and COO of the company. Does he miss his old job? “The main thing I miss about publishing is the people,” he claims. But it’s a relief to find that turning an avocation into a job works: “I still love the track.”

Then there’s Michael Lynton, who left Hollywood in 1996 to become Chairman and CEO of Penguin, overseeing the purchase of Putnam by Pearson before leaving in early 2000 to become President of AOL International. Asked about his sortie, he emails PT that he misses publishing, but not “pub lunches.” Another top manager who has moved into a new direction is Willa Perlman, most recently President of Hasbro Property Group, and before that, President of Golden Books. She is now with the small consulting and recruiting firm The Cheyenne Group. The shift from S&S to Golden was, she says, the beginning of a move into different distribution channels, and an “emphasis on brands rather than the individual story.” Then Hasbro allowed her to “exploit properties in a more diverse set of circumstances,” while the latest hop (in May) to Cheyenne yields “a different vantage point to see if the balance would be better.” It’s looking good so far.

Others ride the osmotic tides between the book and magazine worlds. Bob Wallace, once of ABC News, and later Editor in Chief at St. Martin’s, moved to Talk Magazine in 1999 as Editorial Director. Laura Matthews, who spent most of her career in magazines until moving to Putnam as Senior Editor, has just returned to ’zine-land at Martha Stewart Living (see People). And Andrea Chambers, who moved from People to Putnam, where she worked until 1995 as Executive Editor, is back in magazines as Editorial Director of international editions for Seventeen and corporate owner Primedia, as well as editor of the book division and editorial projects director. Perhaps trumping them all is Michael Naumann. He’s been shuttling around Holtzbrinck, from Rowohlt to Henry Holt, where he was Publisher, back to Germany as Minister of Culture, and then Co-Publisher of Die Zeit, where he was a correspondent in Washington in the ’80s — turning a career arc into a neat circle.

Some opt for a loftier calling. Greg Tobin, SVP, Editor in Chief of Ballantine Books, left a year and a half ago to complete two novels under contract to Tom Doherty’s Forge Books imprint at St. Martin’s. His first novel, Conclave, the story of the “next” papal election, was published last month. Tobin also tells PT that since January 2000 he’s been a graduate theology student at Seton Hall, where he’s working toward a Master of Theology degree with a focus on Church history. In May 2000, he received the Jubilee Medal Pro Meritis from Archbishop Theodore E. McCarrick, then-Archbishop of Newark (before he was transferred to Washington, D.C. and elevated to cardinal). Asked whether he misses the industry, Tobin says, “I do miss the daily roller-coaster of book publishing, but I’m enjoying the life of an author-scholar even more than I thought I would.” Also taking a more spiritual turn is Audrey Cusson, proprietor with her husband Jeff Cuiule of Mirabai, a bookstore in Woodstock, NY branded as “A Resource for Conscious Living.” Cusson has been EVP Marketing of Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers, until she and her husband decided to leave NYC last year for “a simpler, more meaningful way of life in the tranquil countryside,” and buy the bookshop. Cusson says that the transition has been “remarkably smooth,” and believes that there was karma at work in their finding this particular store and town. Their advertising and marketing backgrounds have made it easier to find ways to increase attendance and sales, and books now make up about 50% of the total inventory. Also returning to more grounded bookselling roots is Tom Simon, most recently VP, bn.com. This month he is opening a small bookstore, Seventh Avenue Books, in Park Slope, featuring both used and new titles, plus remainders. Strand watch out.

Pat Mulcahy has one foot in two worlds. She is co-owner of Tillie’s, a Brooklyn-based coffee bar that offers readings by local authors, like neighbor Myla Goldberg. But Mulcahy also keeps up her writing, editing and literary consulting, working with James Lee Burke and helping Quincy Jones on his forthcoming autobio. Another voyager into the semi-public domain is Ronni Stolzenberg, who was once VP Creative Marketing Director at Dell. When she saw an ad (in the New York Times) for an Associate Marketing Director for the Museum of Natural History, she decided to send in her résumé. Now she works for the museum’s Marketing and Communications Department, where her job is “getting people to come to the museum.” She’s tackling database development, as well as the launch of the museum’s new ice-cream parlor (“The Big Dipper,” natch). The job is “wildly fascinating,” she says, but she’s amazed to be using the same skills she honed in publishing.

The biggest geographical leap has been taken by ex-Ingramite Director of Marketing Sue Flaster, who just married Harald Henrysson, Curator of the Jussi Bjöörling Museum in Borläänge, Sweden. The couple “will probably be buying into a gym” while she’s “trying to learn Swedish” says Flaster, who also consults for RealRead. But the Most Fun Beyond Publishing Award may go to 44-year-old Steven Schragis, the new chief of the Learning Annex, that adult education emporium with courses such as “Telepathic Communication with Animals.” The former Carol Publishing chief sold the company for $2.5 million last year and now wrangles teaching gigs from the likes of Jerry Lewis. Those seeking radical career moves may be interested in the Annex’s upcoming course, “How to Open Your Own Laundromat & Turn Coins into Ca$h!” Then again, there’s always the ever-popular “How to Get a Job in Publishing.”

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International Fiction Bestsellers

By PT Editors
August 1, 2001
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Ashcan Memories
Mauvignier Talks Trash in France, Celery Stalks Italy, and Holland Peeps at Lost Souls

The dustbin has popped open in France this month and rendered up Laurent Mauvignier’s elegiac second novel, Learning to Finish, which details the plight of a trash collector who announces he is leaving his wife — only to maim himself in a bad car wreck on the way out. As we learn from the heroine’s monologue, she takes her hubby back in hope that nursing him to health will repair the marriage as well. Psychic debris from the war in Algeria interferes, however, and then there’s that junk heap known as the Other Woman. Critics have invoked nothing less than Stephen King’s Misery, marveling at the book’s “hypnotic structure” as it lays bare “the silence of a defunct love.” As the 34-year-old Mauvignier explained, “I write like a brute, without limits.” In fact, an act of violence hobbled his writing ability when he was 16. But four years ago, he picked up the pen and out rushed his first book, Far from Them, to which Minuit’s Irène Lindon responded within 48 hours (it was published in 1999). Though it has slipped off the top ten list, the new novel won the Wepler Prize last fall and has sold over 80,000 copies in France. Rights have been picked up in Germany (Eichborn), Taiwan (Crown), and Israel (Kinneret), with negotiations continuing in Korea and China. US rights are available from agent Georges Borchardt.

Also of note in France, the beguilingly titled And Rising Slowly Into Immense Love by former journalist and feminist-provocateur Katherine Pancol rises right into the top ten. It’s a tale of love found in — where else? — the elevator, where a man (named Mann) and woman (Angelina) discover fleeting but all-out-dizzying passion on their brief ascent between floors. Alas, she’s due to be married the next day, and much amorous intrigue ensues, the upshot being a dramatic rescue from the altar that plays into Pancol’s pointedly thoughtful consideration of nonconformity and social mores. The title, incidentally, is a line from Rimbaud. Last we heard, all rights were available from Albin Michel.

The hugely popular comic actress Luciana Littizzetto puts Italy in stitches this month with Alone Like a Celery Stalk, her new volume of “high-pitch confessions” on the plentiful perils of womanhood. Every chapter takes up a different theme, probing it from both the male and female point of view and yielding a ribald collection that is said to be “caustic, irresistible, and without modesty.” As Littizzetto puts it: “Every woman, sooner or later, looks at herself in the mirror and would like to slice her face off with a machete.” While men gain points with age, she adds, “women are more like gorgonzola.” All rights are available; see Emanuela Canali at Mondadori.

Also on tap in Italy, the flabbergasting Luciano de Crescenzo has been giving readers some Of This and That in his latest volume of pop philosophy, Neapolitan style. The book ponders the oddness of time’s passage after the protagonist wanders into a secret room where time stands still, and includes a bonus trip to the underworld of Naples, all told with Crescenzo’s trademark nonchalance. (Who else could spin the pre-Socratics as “a most likeable parcel of rogues,” as the author did in his History of Greek Philosophy?) As all Italians know, the 73-year-old Crescenzo is a former engineer whose first book sold 600,000 copies and launched a career spanning 24 titles and 18 million copies worldwide. The new one had a first print run of 100,000 copies, and at press time, no rights had been sold, according to Chiara Ferrari at the Laura Grandi agency.

All of Holland has been “peeping at stranded lives” as a sequel of sorts to Vonne van der Meer’s bestselling 1999 novel The Silence of Small Things hits the lists. The new book, The Last Boat, extends the tales of the first novel, which offered a collection of seven portraits that read as short stories, each one tracking a different visitor to an island cottage that serves as a bed-and-breakfast for lost souls: a pregnant teenager, a woman dying of cancer, and a maritally challenged couple among them. The cottage’s “cleaning woman” tidies up their lives with her “special view about hospitality,” prompting one reviewer to dub the series a “modern Book of Hours.” Both titles have been sold to Germany (Kiepenheuer) and Serbia (Prometej), and US rights are still available from Contact.

India’s abuzz over Ladies Coupe, the second novel from Bangalore-based Anita Nair, which chronicles five women as they embark on a train ride in the “ladies coupe,” as the women’s segregated compartment was known in the dark ages of gender history. Things get chugging when the fortysomething Akhila suddenly decides to climb aboard and ride to Kanyakumari, the farthest point on the map of India. The women trade tales (and also trade scathing remarks about Margaret’s “drawer-of-genitalia-in-library-books husband”) until Akhila reaches her destination and flings off the shackles of her tradition-bound family. The new one is a gender-switched counterpart to Nair’s first novel, The Better Man, an “imposing debut” with an “impact that sneaks into one’s dreams.” Rights for the new one have been sold in Spain and Holland, and others are available from Penguin India.

Shackles are also flying off in Australia this month, where the biography Nancy Wake chronicles the exploits of the Australian war heroine who was one of the Gestapo’s most wanted people, and who survived in German-occupied France working as a secret agent with the French Resistance. The 90-year-old Wake is renowned for her “casual impudence” and “film-star glamour,” and given her youthful follies, a reviewer writes, “It’s hard to resist planning the film version that must surely follow.” Fortunately, Sydney journalist Peter FitzSimons captures all the right shots: “Ever conscious of the finer things in life,” says the promo copy, “[Wake] still managed to sleep in a silk nightgown, even when camping deep in the forest.” Almost 20,000 copies have been sold, and US and UK rights are available from Curtis Brown Australia’s Fiona Inglis.

Lastly in Australia, Cecilia Dart-Thornton’s first novel The Ill-Made Mute has received a big holler from the fantasy crowd, as it plunges into the history of Scotland and Ireland to spin a tale “drawn from obscure folklore and the more secret places of the human heart.” The book opens with a “horribly scarred, mute creature” that tumbles into a series of adventures on the path to an ancient treasure. Warner will publish this one and two sequels in the US, and a deal has been sealed in the UK. See agent Martha Millard.

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Graduation Daze

By PT Editors
August 1, 2001
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As the flashbulb-packed parties hosted by Condé Nast’s Steve Florio wind down — and the well-burnished résumés mound up — you know the summer’s publishing courses are drawing to a close. Amid the ritual job fairs and commencement speeches, PT checked in with the summer courses to see how this year’s crop of candidates is faring as their mortarboards flip off into the global economic dust storm.

“I had fallen into the trap of generalizing about a whole generation, and this one was, to me, the Napster-stealin’-where’s-the-quick-moolah-Gimme Generation,” says Book Sense guru Carl Lennertz, who was on hand at the Columbia Publishing Course to expound upon Book Sense’s successes, shortcomings, and future plans. “What I got was a jolt of energy from and hope for the next generation.” The amps may be cranked up due to the program’s new quarters at Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism, where the course formerly known as Radcliffe moved from Harvard. “There’s a big difference being at Columbia,” explains Director Lindy Hess. “We’re at a place where they understand and like books and magazines.” Another bonus is that students can start hitting up brokers and doormen the moment they land in the city. “The transition from Cambridge to New York has been very difficult for students to make,” she says. “Now they can interview for jobs and look for apartments while they’re here.” The six-week course is at its 100-person capacity, Hess says, and has 19% persons of color this year. The Class of ’01 is also “a little more sophisticated” and “slightly more conservative” than in years past. Find out for yourself at the job fair (see below), but don’t be late, as over the last five years the program has averaged 93% job placement.

Meanwhile, the summer institute at NYU’s Center for Publishing unleashed 69 graduates from the six-week course last month, says Program Coordinator Megan Gleeson, adding that many students had landed jobs even before the program wrapped up on July 13. Agent Peter Rubie came on board this year as core faculty for the book program, and has been pleased with the results. “I’m happy to be a reference for any one of them,” Rubie says of the grads. “These kids are really sharp knives.” The most riveting issue for students this year? “It wasn’t technology,” says Rubie. “It was multiculturalism and diversity. They were looking for great foreign writers who should be translated, as well as books that spoke to a much broader audience than the publishing world commonly addresses.” Look out, New York. Call 212 790-3232 or email pubcenter@nyu.edu.

Beyond Manhattan, the University of Denver’s Publishing Institute boasts its largest class ever this year, with 99 students enrolled in the four-week session, which concludes on Aug. 3. Now in its 26th year, Denver focuses solely on book publishing, rather than splitting time between books and magazines, says institute Director Elizabeth Geiser. About 85% of graduates get jobs within the first post-grad months, and the institute maintains a database of all graduates for recruiting and networking (call 303 871-2570 or email egeiser@worldnet.att.net). The Denver climate doesn’t hurt, either. “People think it’s a great place to be in the summer,” Geiser says. “It sure beats being in Manhattan.”

Also getting high marks for low humidity are the two summer courses for mid-career professionals. The nine-day Stanford professional course wrapped up on July 28 with 170 students, according to Director Holly Brady, who notes that the number of international participants has “skyrocketed” to about 40%, and says the book-to-magazine ratio is about 50/50. With enrollment up, the cooling economy certainly hasn’t cut into those tuition checks. “We were worried about a slump in registrations this year, but we didn’t see it,” says Brady. “A lot of people are finding this a time to regroup, rethink, and retool their own career skills.” Nearby Silicon Valley also serves as the course’s high-tech talent pool. Call 650 725-5311 or email hbrady@stanford.edu. And the University of Virginia’s six-day summer course finished up on June 29, with about 30 senior-level publishing types enrolled, according to Director Beverly Jane Loo. Now in its third year, the course targeted a broad range of epublishing issues. “The biggest mistake a lot of trade houses made was to hire techies to run their new media divisions,” Loo says. Now’s your chance to repent. Call 804 982-5345 or email beverlyloo@virginia.edu.

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Caffeinated at Columbia

By PT Editors
August 1, 2001
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Clearly, the students at the Columbia Publishing Course this year have lost nothing on their ultra-achieving predecessors in the move from Harvard to NYC. As in years past, we have compiled a composite biography of the terminally caffeinated graduate (achievements are from actual student biographies). Publishers may catch the buzz at Columbia’s Publishing Course career day, Monday, August 6, from 9 a.m. to noon at the Time Life Building. To RSVP call (212) 854-0034.

With the ink still drying on the emergency education proposal Ms. Student wrote for victims of the armed conflict in Colombia, President Bush chose her as a White House Fellow in 1991. Bouncing back from a stint as a corporate paralegal, she was again lured to Washington when President Clinton tapped her to transform the Education Department into a high-performance organization. Delving into Ashtanga Yoga and Zen meditation, she utilized her superior powers of concentration to lead a successful turnaround of Herman Miller East Asia, where she was president. A Phi Beta Kappa inductee at Dartmouth, Ms. Student taught her journalism professor to run, in exchange for lessons in ornithology. Though she only picked up a little Japanese while working in Japan as a Fulbright Memorial Fund Fellow, Ms. Student had ample time to learn both Russian and Ukrainian while a Peace Corps volunteer in Ukraine. More than fluent in Samoan and literate in French as well, she listens rapturously to Urdu ghazals when not transfixed by the fortunes of the Indian cricket team. Moving on to develop branding campaigns for USA Today, Ms. Student has written five Chinese-language bestsellers and, concurrently, has summited mountains around the world, including the Grand Teton, Mont Blanc, and Mt. Fuji, while also earning her first-degree black belt in tae kwon do. Fascinated by the Gosain sanyasi sect in India, which was the subject of her dissertation in medieval Indian history, her less cerebral but equally challenging pastimes include wrestling a world champion Siberian on his own tundra. Due to inclement economic conditions, Ms. Student has been working as a bartender, wearing the world’s most hideous vest. Happily, many children also know her as Bow Tie because she is a professional clown at birthday parties and other celebrations.

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Book View, August 2001

By PT Editors
August 1, 2001
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PEOPLE


HarperCollins has announced the long-awaited restructuring of its sales department: Josh Marwell has been named SVP Sales, with specific responsibility for Harper Trade Adult and overall corporate responsibility for special sales and sales operations (Business Manager Jeff Meltzer will report to him). Andrea Pappenheimer, SVP Sales, Children’s Publishing, and George Bick, VP Sales Morrow/Avon, will assume overall responsibility for their lines. All three will report to COO Glenn D’Agnes with dotted line reporting to their respective divisional heads. In addition, Jeff Hobbs, recently named head of sales for Harper San Francisco, will report to Marwell. Bick will continue to sell all publishing lines into the mass merchandisers.

Paul Bresnick, most recently at LiveReads and Morrow, is joining Michael Carlisle as an affiliate agent. He will continue to do editorial work for other clients. In the last year Carlisle & Co. has had a number of agents who have worked on an affiliate basis. Two, Marly Rusoff and Larry Chilnick, have since left (Rusoff to start her own agency, Chilnick to focus on packaging), while two others — Don Lamm and Bob Bernstein — are still involved. Lamm helped bring in David Kennedy’s American Pageant series and Bob Sutton’s Weird Ideas that Work, which will be published by The Free Press.

More movement in the children’s book arena: Victoria Welles has been named Editorial Director of the new Bloomsbury USA juvenile book division. She comes from Viking Children’s books. . . . Bonnie Bader has been named Editor in Chief of Grosset. She was Editorial Director at Golden. . . . Kathy Dawson has been promoted to Executive Editor of GP Putnam’s Children’s Books. She was most recently Senior Editor. Meanwhile, David Ford, founding President/CEO of Candlewick Press, has sold his flourishing bookshop in Georgia and will be moving to NY, “eager for a new challenge.” He can be reached at gjford1@bellsouth.net.

Christina Harcar goes to St. Martin’s as Director of Subsidiary Rights. She was previously at Random House Audio. . . . Laura Matthews has been named Deputy Editor of Martha Stewart Living. She was previously Senior Editor at GP Putnam . . . . Jeannette Watson has returned to bookselling with her acquisition of the Lenox Hill Bookstore, where she has worked off and on since starting her own Books & Co. imprint at Turtle Point Press, following the closing of the eponymous bookstore in 1997. . . Yulia Borodyanskaya has been named Subsidiary Rights Manager at Newmarket Press. She was previously an account executive at rightscenter.com, and before that, Foreign Rights Associate for Doubleday. . . . Hugh Shiebler has been named Sales Manager for Barrons. He was most recently at Zagat, and Barefoot Books, and before that, at Globe Pequot . . . . Skip Fischer has been named CEO of DK U.S., following the departure of Danny Gurr last month. He reports primarily to David Shanks, with a secondary reporting line to Anthony Forbes Watson, CEO of The Penguin Group [UK]. Meanwhile, Shanks announced that Liz Perl has been promoted to the position of Vice President Director of Marketing, Trade Paperbacks for the Berkley Publishing Group and NAL. She had previously been named Director of Marketing for Riverhead Trade Paperbacks. . . . Heather Byer has left Contentville, where she was Executive Editor, and is doing freelance book editing for McGraw-Hill’s college division, script reading for USA Films, and freelance magazine writing. She is reachable at heathbyer@earthlink.net.

Gotham Scouting Partners, formed by May Wuthrich in 1998, has added Terry Guerin (ex-Tapestry Films) as a partner, and DW Gibson as a scouting associate. Recent acquisitions by clients include Martin Dugard’s Blood Brothers, Craig Holden’s Jazz Bird, and Hodding Carter’s Viking Voyage.

Victoria Barnsley, Chief Executive Officer and Publisher at HarperCollins UK, announced that it is restructuring its UK publishing divisions into two halves, each with its own managing director. Amanda Ridout, currently the Managing Director of Headline, will become MD of General Books, which will combine the Trade Division, Fourth Estate, Thorsons, and Children’s. Thomas Webster, currently Publishing Director of Oxford University Press, will become MD of Collins, comprising Cartographic, Dictionaries, Education, and Reference.

DEALS


Gerry Howard bought a “fun” book (what other kinds are there, on this subject?) about bartending, “a kind of Kitchen Confidential of the bar world,” we’re told by Toby Checchini from Bill Clegg at his newish agency (Burnes & Clegg).

DULY NOTED


The Rights Report, published by Whitaker (publishers of The Bookseller), has announced that it has ceased publication of the printed version. Launched at Frankfurt 1999 as a report on international rights transaction in books, film, and TV, it recently “has proved impossible to convert high acclamation to a level of sales revenue needed for us to continue our extensive network of international correspondents. . . .” However, a web-based service “offering a database of rights stories and information” is still available to the publication’s subscribers. In other Whitaker news, veteran Louis Baum has returned to the company, after a foray into the dotcom world.

• Marjorie Scardino’s latest letter to employees reviews the first-six-month results, which have disappointed investors. She writes: “Penguin’s core publishing in the US and the UK is in good shape, too — more bestsellers than ever, and more successful new authors. Australia, where we have a sizeable business, has instigated a new tax on books, so that’s hurting in the short run, but if I know our crowd there, they’ll work out a way to counteract the pain. Dorling Kindersley is turning out to be a great addition not only to Penguin, but also to Pearson Education, who can use the DK brilliance for creating books you just can’t resist reading to make textbooks just as compelling. DK has quickly combined some of its operations with Penguin while still keeping its own special personality. Just wait until you see the first in the newest DK line, Animal, a giant encyclopedia of wildlife — out in the autumn.”

• Target Marketing’s Denny Hatch, writing of “The Rise and Fall of Time-Life Books,” in the June/July issue, wonders what went awry with a company started in 1960 whose “titanic successes” made the division the company’s most profitable for several years. When Time-Life Books closed its doors this past January, Hank Steuver of The Washington Post wrote that it was “an early triumph of direct marketing, selling 30 million books a year at its zenith. That’s a lot of Middle American coffee tables.” Hatch comes up with some hypotheses about what happened to the company, suggesting that aggressive offers to would-be subscribers ended up bringing in worse customers who dropped out without buying or paying. Then, as Time-Life Music became more profitable, all the development money went into that division, rather than book development. Finally, “All these books were sold by stroking the intellectual egos of consumers, but they were bought as furniture — something warm and impressive to fill empty bookshelves in order to achieve respect and affirmation.” But the allure of information on an installment basis palled as the web offered more opportunities to find the information fast, and for free. Belt tightening and layoffs didn’t help stem the flow of red ink, and the merger of AOL and Time Warner ensured the division’s demise.

• EPM Communications, publisher of The Licensing Letter, just released its annual Licensed Property Benchmarking Survey. The book covers all sorts of licensing, but it’s no surprise that Literary Properties, a catchall that includes books and their characters, tend to have a much longer licensing life than other properties. But this is an area driven by both smaller properties — 59% have generated sales of licensed merchandise that are less than $10 million over their lifetime — and some behemoths that have generated $100 million or more. Books (mostly children’s) account for roughly half of all properties, but each segment — books, comic books, and comic strips — has an unusually high 10% of properties that are over the $100 million mark. Contact EPM at info@epmcom.com or call 212 941-0099.

MAZELTOV


Congratulations to Random’s Peter Olson and Candace Carpenter, Chair of iVillage, who will marry September 8.

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Hello, Generation Ñ

By PT Editors
July 1, 2001
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Spanish-publishing leaders from the book, magazine, and online sectors gathered at New York University’s Center for Publishing on June 26 for a day of digesting demographics and peering at new strategies to reach the sorely untapped Hispanic market in both English and Spanish. Things got off on a suitably controversial note as Mindy Figueroa, VP of Santiago and Valdes Solutions, dismissed the official figure of 35.3 million Hispanics, claiming that undercounts, population growth, and the inclusion of Puerto Rico bump that figure to 40.5 million people, who will bear a glorious buying power of $630 billion by 2002. Glossing over the apparently negligible medley of variations between one version of Spanish and another, she focused on the more compelling marketing angle: the Hispanic middle class is burgeoning. Market niches of pinpointable lifestyles, defined by age and length of duration living in the US, await the marketer keen to surf the Latin wave. But beware “Los Babys,” “Generation Ñ,” and the “New Latina,” who comprise the 70% of the Hispanic population under 39 years of age.

The self-appointed Latina Linda Goodman, President of distributor The Bilingual Publications Co., jumped in to report a breakthrough in librarians’ attitudes toward Spanish books. Those librarians who formerly snickered, “We don’t have that [Spanish] problem yet,” are now desperately stocking their shelves with Spanish books. Of dire need are works on diseases, citizenship, real estate, and ESL, among other topics. “Publish these books and you will succeed,” she intoned.

Then Christy Haubegger, calling herself “the only childless Latina left in the country,” regaled the lunchtime crowd with tales of single-handedly launching Latina magazine. Now with a paid circulation of 203,000, Latina reaches an English-preference, Hispanic market of women who allegedly consume 17.5% of the nation’s lipstick. And Elizabeth Bradley, magazine and marketing consultant, described the transformation of People en Español (with a circulation of 317,000) from a translation of People to a unique product with 90% distinct editorial. The key lies in supplying Hispanic-oriented content, instead of simply translating existing material.

On that note, Lisa Alpert, Publishing Director of Random House Español, lamented the lack of marketing and PR funding allocated to Spanish books, despite the enthusiastic response of Spanish media book reviewers to jaded publicists. (They are reported to cry, “Publish more Spanish books! We’ll buy them!”) The future of Hispanic markets appears to lie simply in providing more “in-culture” books in Spanish and English backed by marketing. And for an ironic socio-cultural postscript: apart from a general market two-thirds underserved, jails and correctional services librarians are said to be clamoring for material too.

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It’s Your Party

By PT Editors
July 1, 2001
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Pass the Chips and Dip, Y’all. Now Buy Some Southern Living Books.

You may not see any hot-rodding pink Cadillacs when more than 1,000 salespeople descend upon Birmingham this month to attend the first national convention for Southern Living at Home, the newly minted home sales division of the Southern Living publishing group. Those automotive trophies of the Mary Kay cosmetics empire, bestowed upon the firm’s top-selling sales associates and flaunted as emblems of persuasive prowess, are mere baubles to this fiercely partisan crowd. “Strange things happen when you say Southern Living,” explains Dianne Mooney, Southern Living at Home’s VP and Executive Director. “There’s a visceral reaction. This brand is magic. We have instant credibility.” Forget about Cadillacs. We’ve got chocolate-orange cream fingers — straight out of Southern Living Incredible Cookies. You can’t eat pink vinyl for dessert.

The evangelical zeal of this sales force is just one mind-bending aspect of the growing sales channel known as the “home party plan.” Think Tupperware, but think savvier. While the plastics giant synonymous with home party sales floundered in recent years, nimbler companies gamely charged ahead. More than 66,000 “kitchen consultants” from the Pampered Chef logged 1 million home parties last year. The basket-making giant Longaberger is a billion-dollar enterprise (not to mention the subject of a #1 New York Times bestseller of the same name). Even sex-toy parties have bloomed as the latest frisson in living-room demos. “We believe that direct sales is hotter now than it has been for many years,” Mooney says. “But it’s a word-of-mouth business. You don’t hear a lot about it.”

Singing to the Choir

What Southern Living at Home aims to do — and what very few companies have done profitably — is to sell books into the home. Though cookbooks, gardening titles, and decorating primers will account for only about 30% of the company’s home party product line (the remainder being decorative products such as pie plates, carving sets, and tabletop votive cup holders) books remain a core asset for Southern Living at Home. Mooney, who has worked in the direct mail industry for nearly three decades, built her career marketing books from sibling publisher Oxmoor House to Southern Living’s now 2.6 million subscribers, a process company executives describe as “singing to the choir.”

But taking those books into the home via thousands of “independent consultants” is more like sight-reading an aria. “We’ve been marketing books since 1974,” Mooney adds, “and we’ve never done anything as out-of-the-box as this.” Early on in the project, focus groups turned up two relevant facts: many southerners were already involved in other party plan organizations, and the party plan concept did not reflect poorly on the Southern Living brand. Several direct sales staffers were soon brought on board, and the home division opened its doors in January with the hope of attracting 1,000 independent consultants. Already 4,000 people have ponied up the $199 for a starter kit — representing all 50 states — and the response has been so overwhelming that kits for July have sold out. “It’s been an avalanche,” Mooney says. “But we have got to control our growth, because if we let it grow unchecked, the word ‘implode’ has been mentioned.” Consultants make profits on personal sales, plus a royalty on the sales of other consultants they recruit — hence the term “multilevel marketing.” Books sold at home are priced at roughly the suggested retail price.

To some, the response has been no surprise. “If you’re in one of those 17 states that are considered southern, Southern Living is your bible,” says Gary Wright, Director of Special Markets for Southern Progress, the corporate parent of Southern Living, Sunset, and Cooking Light, among other ventures. (Southern Progress is itself a unit of AOL Time Warner.) All of which has been great fodder for Oxmoor House, which publishes around 100 new titles per year, sells into the trade through its Leisure Arts subsidiary (last year book revenues were split about 60/40 between direct mail and retail), and publishes for Martha Stewart Living, Jenny Craig, and others. Among notable triumphs have been the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. Cookbook, the Forrest Gump tie-in that sold on the order of 700,000 copies, and Southern Living Annual Recipes, with 11 million copies sold by mail and another million at retail.

Learning to Love the 1099

Call it the upside of the downsizing economy. “In the mid 1980s the prognosticators said this was a dead industry,” says Joe Mariano, Executive VP of the Direct Selling Association. “There were supposedly no women home to purchase the products. But instead of a demographic of women selling to women, we ended up with a dynamic of entrepreneurship and opportunity that appealed to people throughout the ’80s and ’90s. We’ve had 12 consecutive years of growth domestically and internationally.” Home parties accounted for at least $4 billion of the total $24.5 billion in direct sales in the US in 1999, according to the most recent data available. And though growth in the US slowed this year, international sales are booming. Direct sales in India are up 40% per year. In the UK, more than 500,000 people are in direct sales. And before a regulatory crackdown a few years ago, there were 500,000 Avon reps in one province in China.

Such freshened-up stats are no consolation to Dorling Kindersley Family Learning, the home sales unit that was axed last summer shortly after Pearson acquired DK and determined that DKFL and its nearly 30,000 independent distributors were gumming up the profit machine. Launched in 1991 and rolled out in the US two years later, Family Learning was built on high hopes. At one point DK planned to roll the program out in one country per year (at the time it was seen as a safety maneuver insulating DK from the savage CD-ROM market) and had established beachheads in Russia, Australia, South Africa, and India. But DKFL reportedly lost as much as $20 million globally in the year before it was shut down. Former DK executive Steve Cohen, now COO at St. Martin’s, points out that the launch of the Family Learning unit came at the expense of sales through mass merchandisers, as the company pulled out of those retailers to ensure that home buyers being pitched books at full price would not have just seen the same titles for 40% off at Costco. “Multilevel marketing requires big margins,” adds former DK President Danny Gurr, noting that the monster mark-ups for mascara are out of the question for the book business. Indeed, when every sales rep who refers a member gets a piece of the pie, margins on books look wafer-thin. “Tupperware can knock off new designs in seconds and for pennies,” Gurr says. “Books are expensive to develop and manufacture.”

The DK closure caused no heartache for Randall White, President of Educational Development Corporation, the exclusive US trade publisher of UK-based Usborne Publishing’s line of educational books. White signed on 1,000 former DK reps, who helped bump net sales for EDC’s home sales division up 15.2% during the last fiscal year, bringing net sales to $17.5 million. Almost 5,000 EDC “independent consultants” in 50 states sell more than 1,000 Usborne titles at home parties. The Tulsa-based company also markets books through trade channels, a strategy that at times irks its consultants. “Most home sales outfits are selling exclusive product,” White explains. “We’re on a tightrope, because we sell in both home and retail.” Sales are currently split about evenly between the two channels, although White says that the home segment is growing “much faster” than retail. “You walk into any major store and obviously there’s nobody demonstrating the books,” he notes. “In a home party you have a captive audience.” EDC’s party sales dipped in the ’90s when a commission structure change prompted a large number of associates to jump ship. According to White, the company is now on the rebound, with party sales up 30% in the first quarter. “Without question the home party is a viable method,” he says.

“You’re able to see how these books can benefit your child,” adds Cathy Adams, VP Marketing for home sales stalwart Discovery Toys. “It takes all the guesswork out of it.” Books account for 25% of the company’s business, with 50 books in the catalog that are mostly targeted for children age 6 and younger. The firm’s 25,000 educational consultants select titles depending on the party theme or age bracket. “Direct sales continue to be a growing opportunity for us,” Adams says. “Our sales are up.” Same goes for Susan Schilling, founder and CEO of home sales firm Books & Beyond. “I think there’s a huge need for families to be serviced with quality books,” says Schilling, who had been a national sales director with DK’s Family Learning unit before founding her company last September. Sales associates are now in 48 states, and new associates can join for $99. Books & Beyond carries titles from a number of publishers, including Barefoot, Kingfisher, and Tyndale House.

Some of these publishers can be circumspect when queried about home party sales. “We’re not ready to talk about that particular kind of distribution,” says a Tyndale House spokesperson. But back at Southern Living, where preparations are in full swing for this month’s power pep rally, there’s no time for circumspection. “We’re reinventing ourselves as we speak,” Mooney says, clearly relishing the thrill. “It’s a wild ride, but I’m enough of a cowgirl to enjoy it.”

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