The E-Survey Says . . .

By PT Editors
April 1, 2001
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With Vista Computer Services’ survey of publishers’ attitudes toward ebooks and new technology about to be unleashed, and Simba’s just-released E-ssential Knowledge: The Consumer E-Books White Paper ($495 from simbanet.com), Publishing Trends decided to ask a (very) few questions of its own. We emailed a sampling of our correspondents and subscribers a brief questionnaire, and herewith are some highlights:

• Seventy percent of our respondents do believe that the ebook market will grow into a real distribution channel, though there were endless cavils — it will only be robust in certain segments of publishing (academic and educational were most often mentioned); e-paper is the way to go; the prices (of both handhelds and ebooks) will have to go down — and even under the best circumstances, it will evolve into only 10–20 percent of the book retail market.

• Most respondents thought it would take 2–5 years before publishers felt compelled to produce a significant portion of their titles as ebooks as well as p-books.

• Somewhat surprisingly, respondents thought it would take five or more years before print-on-demand would be available in bookstores, though many thought the chains would get there a lot faster, probably in 2–3 years. As one respondent asked, “How does a store set up a kiosk or somesuch to sell PoD books that will give as much exposure as even a book-laden shelf?” Another, however, opined that “Once books regularly come in electronic form, PoD will be the ‘special order’ item available to those who still cling to ‘hard-copy’ books.” One respondent called PoD “probably inevitable . . . regrettable, but inevitable,” while another echoed that print-on-demand messiah, Jason Epstein, writing that “PoD, not ebooks, is where the action is.”

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Book View, April 2001

By PT Editors
April 1, 2001
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PEOPLE


Gene Brissie, previously Editor in Chief at Prentice Hall Trade Publishing, has left to become a partner with Bert Holtje in the James Peter Associates Literary Agency. . . . Some changes in the S&S group: BJ Gabriel has been named VP National Accounts, with responsibility for sales of all S&S products, including adult hardcover and paperback, children’s, and audio at major national retail outlets and demand distributors. She was previously at Henry Holt. . . . Jane Rosenman has left Scribner. Jason Kaufman has left Pocket to become Senior Editor at Doubleday. (Shawn Coyne left Doubleday earlier.) And Seale Ballenger has joined Pocket as VP and Publicity Director (Ballenger was most recently communications director at Outside magazine, where he helped develop their book line).

Barnes & Noble Publishing’s Jennifer Grace moved to Crown to take the Subrights Director position vacated by Rebecca Strong when she moved to Harmony, as Senior Editor. . . . Valerie Garfield, most recently executive editor at HarperCollins’ HarperFestival, has been named to the newly created position of Publishing Director for Sesame Workshop, where she will oversee the Book Publishing Group.

Neal Goff, mostly recent SVP Marketing at BMG Direct, has left the company. He may be reached at 212 683 1643 or at nealgoff@aol.com. Goff previously held positions at Bowker, Prentice Hall, and Time Inc.

Mariann Donato, previously Sales Director for Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers, has been promoted to VP Sales and Marketing, following the resignation of Angus Killick, VP Marketing. . . . Hyperion’s Jill Sansone, Director of Subsidiary Rights and Special Markets, will oversee Hyperion AudioBooks, which launches this Fall, and the ebooks line, coming in July. Time Warner Trade Publishing, which distributes Hyperion’s books, will distribute the audio titles, and its iPublish will distribute Hyperion eBooks. . . . Rebecca Carroll, in charge of contributing editors at Contentville, is one of the casualties of the recent layoff. She may be reached at rebsimone@aol.com.

DULY NOTED


The Council of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP) has hired Beth Harrison as Development Strategist for Literary Publishing, to provide information and services about foundation funding for CLMP publisher members. The organization also announced the launch of CLMP Newswire, a bi-weekly e-mail news dispatch covering the world of literary publishing. Leslie Schwartz has been hired to cover “literary publisher news including notable achievements, innovative marketing and fundraising programs, people news, e-publishing ventures, grant making and fundraising trends, politics and policy issues affecting small literary publishers, and awards and grants deadlines.” Go to clmp.org.

• Pen American Center is also in a launch mode, with the publication of Pen America, a literary journal edited by M. Mark, founding editor of VLS. Go to www.pen.org/journal.

• Spike Lee is writing a sports column and Elizabeth Manus, last seen at The New York Observer, is now responsible for the book pages in new monthly Gotham. They will regularly carry short reviews, author interviews, and industry stuff. She may be contacted at 212 496-1391.

• Columbia Journalism Review’s “The Shapers” list of 200 New Yorkers who shape the national media includes a number of book publishing folk, most of them the usual suspects like Morgan Entrekin, Jason Epstein, Alice Mayhew, and Phyllis Grann, but including the publicity director turned publisher (of One World Books), Ballantine’s Anita Diggs.

• Looking for a few good interns? We have received several impressive resumes from college students looking for summer jobs. If you have any need/interest, please contact us at 212 447-0855, or email shanley@publishingtrends.com.

• Despite impressive sales increases of The Guinness Book of World Records in the last few years (more than 800,000 were sold last year in the US alone and the Financial Times estimates its profit at £8.6 million on revenues of £23 million) parent company Diageo moved the distribution from Mort Mint Publishing to Time Warner, even as it put the company on the block. The Guinness World Records business, which also includes a related website, spinoff TV shows, and The British Book of Hit Singles, is being shopped by Goldman Sachs.

PUBLISHING ANNALS


Publishing Trends meandered back to April, 2000, to see what was happening in the premillennium. The digital scene was, of course, dominant, with Reed announcing at the LIBF that it had taken a stake in RightsCenter, Microsoft launching its new MS Reader, and Random announcing its stake in Xlibris. Meanwhile, to protect itself against the incursion of dotcoms into the talent pool, Random announced it would be raising its starting salaries to $30,000 a year.

Perhaps more important to the education and feeding of publishers was the launch of both Publisherslunch.com and Inside.com. As though that weren’t enough, PW Daily Online’s Steve Zeitchik announced he was leaving to go to The Industry Standard (he’s since left, in the company’s downsizing).

Some traditional publishing deals were still making headlines: S&S did a 5-book deal with Mary Higgins Clark, in the 25th year of publishing her, and at a moment when her novels were ranked #1 in hardcover and paperback.

MISCELLANY


Some of you may have met Amsterdam restaurateuse, Inez Bon, either at BEA or Frankfurt or maybe while hanging around Peter Mayer’s. She has just opened her Dutch restaurant, NL, at 169 Sullivan St. (Bleecker). A first, says the NYT, for the city that was once New Amsterdam.

IN MEMORIAM


A memorial service for Candida Donadio will take place on Tuesday, April 17, at 6 p.m. at All Soul’s Church, on Lexington Avenue and 80th Street. Call Donadio & Olson at 212 691-8077.

APRIL DATES


(Don’t forget to check our Calendar on page 8 for major worldwide events through Fall 2001.)

• The LA Times’ Festival of Books is held April 28–29 on the UCLA campus, with the 21st annual Book Prize awarded on the 28th. More information is available at www. latimes.com/festivalofbooks.

• The James Beard/KitchenAid Book Awards will be announced at a gala on April 30 at the Marriott Marquis. Thirty six books in twelve categories have been nominated; the KitchenAid Cookbook of the Year will be chosen from among them. More details are available at jamesbeard.org.

• The Third Annual Koret Jewish Book Awards will be presented on April 23rd at the Harvard Club. Art Spiegelman is the featured speaker. Call 212 629-0500 ext. 333 for info.

• A tribute to US Poet Laureate Stanley Kunitz, presented by The Academy of American Poets, The New York Times, Poetry Society of America, Poets House, and YMCA National Writers Voice, will be held on Wednesday, April 11, at 8 p.m. at Town. For ticket information call 212 274-0343 ext. 10.

• The University of Virginia and the Library of Congress are hosting Publishing in the 21st Century: Managing Our Own Evolution, at the Library of Congress on April 19–21. Speakers include John Kilcullen, CEO of Hungry Minds, along with the epublishing trio of John Feldcamp, Chris MacAskill, and Richard Tam.

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Your Ad Here

By PT Editors
March 1, 2001
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Industry Ad Spending Holds Steady, But Media Choices See-Saw

As reports of widespread layoffs ricochet along Madison Avenue, and billboards still bear Christmas greetings downtown, the prospect of an advertising biz downturn has highlighted the fact that book publishers’ advertising habits — in terms of fact-based, industry-wide data — remain among the great unknowns of the publishing business. The problem is, we all mutter, few really believe that advertising works for books. As big authors get even more expensive to acquire, bigger and bigger consumer ad spending promises are indeed a juicy carrot to proffer. But many feel that the real value of advertising remains questionable when compared with investing the same dollars in a good round of price-slashing or a strong trade campaign. “We all know that advertising doesn’t work for books,” admits a marketing director from a major publishing house, “unless you have enough money to make it significant and repetitive. It’s mostly to please the author and agent.”

Indeed, book advertising amounts to a pittance when compared to the nation’s deepest ad pockets. According to industry tracking figures obtained by Publishing Trends, book publishers spent approximately $160 million on advertising last year (not including co-op or Internet expenditures), an increase of some $250,000 from 1999. To put that figure in context, Advertising Age reports that 1999’s total US business ad spending was $215 billion. In other words, the book business accounted for a tiny 0.07% of all advertising spending in the US last year. And although ad space is generally getting more expensive, budgets aren’t budging.

The relative flatness of advertising expenses is not greeted with surprise by senior voices from inside the trade. All the marketing departments contacted by PT confirmed that little has changed significantly in terms of budgets. “Spending is not significantly rising or falling,” says Betsy Hulsebosch, vp and creative marketing director of Bantam Dell, a publishing house whose belief in ad campaigns for books is probably higher than most. “The marketing focus is continuing in traditional forms with event-based promotion and heavy focus on the trade,” she adds. “You really need to get the booksellers behind you.”

It’s an attitude heartily embraced by the trade’s major advertising organ, Publishers Weekly. Fred Ciporen, PW’s publisher, agrees that the support of the trade is the first step in growing a successful title, though he’s critical of the ways in which publishers are using trade advertising. “If book-marketing could be summed up by one word, it would be enthusiasm,” he says. “Publishers should advertise once a book is in the market, not just to announce it. I would be using the trades to say, This book is making money here, have you ordered this book?” The problem is, he continues, that “publishers can measure return better from co-op. Returns from advertising are hard to quantify.” PW is holding steady at about 2200–2300 ad pages per year, though that number is softer than Ciporen would ideally like it to be, partly because agencies make more money from advertising directed at the consumer than from ads aimed at the trade.

But reach for the remote, and you’ll see that level spending is not true of all media. “There’s a general pullback from TV,” says Ronni Stolzenberg, who founded independent marketing agency Launchpad after 20 years with HarperCollins. That assertion is reflected in the numbers. Book advertising on cable television, which was worth over $20 million in 1997, slipped to an estimated $12 million in 2000, a plunge of 40%. By contrast, however, ad spending on network TV increased steadily during the same period, shooting up more than ten times from $483,000 to nearly $6 million. (Interestingly, the cable pullback happened immediately: just one year later, 1998, the enthusiastic spending was cut in half to $10 million.) Overall, TV has lost nearly half its book advertising in the last three years. What was a $38 million industry in ’97 declined to $21 million in 2000, a dip of almost 45%. Why the steep drop? “TV advertising for publishers is cyclical,” says Michael Kazan of the Spier agency. “Some years it’s hot, some years it’s not. While most publishers are still advertising their blockbusters on television, they aren’t giving the broadcast dollars to ‘make books’ like they used to. I’m not surprised to see that the spending is down, especially in cable. Network cable TV used to be much more affordable than it is now, because it didn’t have the audience it has now.”

Dabbling on the Web

Where then, has all this money gone? Not, it would seem, into the Internet. While traditional event-based marketing is being tested on the Web, publishers have shied away from straightforward Internet advertising. “It’s definitely not being redirected into the Internet,” Stolzenberg confirms. “Online money is much more likely to be spent on author websites and online events. Some money is going into co-op with online booksellers, though the fever has cooled in that direction.” Kazan agrees that publishers are not very serious about Internet advertising, noting that they’ve maybe got “one tiny little baby toe wet.” Hesitancy over the new medium seems to be widespread, perhaps reflecting the way that continuing embroilments over electronic book editions have been confounded with all things digital.

Nonetheless, web watchers report that Internet ad spending from media companies has increased by an average of 125% over the last year, with total online advertising revenues pegged as high as $12.2 billion. The tracking firm AdZone Interactive estimated online ad spending for January 2001 at $1.87 billion, although such figures have not been broken down by industry. At the very least, certain publishers are taking a stab at the online audience. Hulsebosch says that “there is some money going into online sites such as USAToday.com, NYTimes.com, and Salon — places where readers congregate.” Judging by the blank panels marked simply “advertising” at the USAToday.com Weekend section page, however, that opportunity isn’t being snapped up by too many.

More often, the Internet’s stickiness factor is its chief appeal. Laurie Rippon, svp and creative director of the general books group at HarperCollins, reports that the company has seen several bestsellers grow out of well-targeted Internet marketing campaigns, such as that for Ophelia Speaks, the compilation of commentary from adolescent girls, which was accompanied by many online events. But no money was directly spent on advertising. Rippon believes the Internet is crucial for targeting specific markets, but, as with traditional media, there are better and relatively cheaper ways to spend money. Site-enhancing content such as excerpts and competitions is generally believed more effective than banner advertising, for which click-through rates are decreasing.

With web spending negligible and TV on the wane, traditional print media have been making out most handsomely, with the best news for national newspapers. What was a $32 million industry in 1997 was up to $54 million last year. The Sunday magazines have increased their ad revenues from books by over 30% from $430,000 to $580,000, while magazines and other newspapers have held their ground at around the $50 million and $18 million marks respectively. “The greatest advantage that newspaper print advertising offers is timeliness,” Hulsebosch explains. “When we see action on a title or publicity breaking, we can turn an ad around swiftly and get a message in front of consumers in 48 hours. Only daily papers offer that immediacy.” And as for magazines, some argue that the $50 million cited above is an inflated figure, because the numbers do not take into account the many off–rate card deals that exist. “Magazines are notorious for discounting most aggressively to the book publishing industry, upwards of 50–60% off,” says a trade executive. Meanwhile, network radio is reporting a solid expenditure of $7 million dollars, back up from $5.5 million last year, though still down from ’97 and ’98 highs of over $8 million. National spot radio has also grown from $1.4 million to $2.2 million in the last year, after a peak of $2.5 million in 1997.

In the end, if publishers aren’t reaching for the phone every time they see a “Your Ad Here” placard, it means two things. Book publishers’ relative prudence in ad outlays may be a welcome sign in an industry of tightening margins. But diffidence in the face of a complex and changing media landscape also means this: Like so many other things in publishing, advertising remains very much more an art than a science.

Annual Book Publishing Industry
Advertising Expenditures

(Year 2000 Total)

Television: $21 million
National Newspapers: $54 million
Other Newspapers: $18 million
Magazines: $50 million
Network Radio: $7 million
National Spot Radio: $2.2 million
Other: $7.8 million

Total: $160 million

Source: Competitive Media Reporting and Publishers Information; Publishing Trends. All figures are approximate.

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The Young and the Profitable

By PT Editors
March 1, 2001
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It’s a two-way street for young writers in today’s book biz, contends Marian Wood, vp at Putnam and publisher of Marian Wood Books. Here’s an excerpt from her essay, “Is Publishing Dead?”, which appeared in the LA Times Book Review.

It is easier today to publish a first novel than ever before. Armed with the necessary endorsements from their famous writer teachers, these young novelists are gaining lucrative contracts. That’s because they come with no track records: There are no bad reviews, no mediocre sales. They are tabula rasa. It’s also because there have been enough success stories of “literary” first novels becoming commercial blockbusters to make management hungry for more. Many of these books disappear without leaving much more than a remainder sale (if they get that) as a trace, but the fact remains that the doors have never been so open. The real question is why is it so hard to publish second or third novels, and the answer is obvious. Too little return for too much money on the first: There is no incentive for the publisher to continue the relationship. And every publisher knows what those sales were. It’s all in the computer. Once upon a time, publishers paid rotten advances, nurtured their writers regardless of sales, and waited for the book that broke the writer out. Today, the cash nexus of publishing — begun, I would add, by agents seeking as much money up front as they could get (and that is their job today) — makes such touching loyalties a thing of the past. (That is an overstatement: There are still editors and houses who fight to keep the connection going.)

Writing is hard, lonely work. Great writing calls for resources few very young writers have. It’s a rare young writer who has the freedom from his past, the originality of voice, the independence of mind, and the iconoclastic spirit needed to make a contribution. Publishers always knew this and made space for young writers to grow and learn. The game has changed, but the fault isn’t that of publishers alone. Publishers may prefer short-term profits, but writers lust for instant fame. These are perhaps the most telling and destructive factors to emerge in the last 30 years.

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Of Robots and Retrenchment: Toy Fair 2001

By PT Editors
March 1, 2001
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Advance publicity for this year’s Toy Fair generated all the thrill of a wet blanket, with announcements rolling in from industry giants Mattel and Hasbro that their presence at the 98-year-old show will be significantly notched down in 2002. As talk of “downsizing” and “retrenching” swirled in the press, we were also treated to the news that while 1999 toy sales showed the largest increase in a decade, last year’s sales dropped 1.4% to $16.4 billion, with units declining 4.9% to 3.4 billion. The industry blamed soft holiday sales on everything from a weakening stock market to the presidential election, according to Patrick Feely, chairman of the Toy Manufacturers of America. Indeed, the brightest spots in the toy biz playpen were the booming scooter industry, a 5.5% uptick in the infant/preschool category brought on by some high-tech gizmos, and the emergent field of robotic animals (see below).

Amid the gloomy outlook, it would seem that toymakers’ dependence on volatile movie-related licensing gigs (with the exception of flukes like Toy Story, of course) just confirms that book-originated characters are the ongoing lifeblood of the industry. To prove the point, once again the annual shindig at the Javits Center, the Toy Building, and other selected New York City venues was dominated by a book character: the ubiquitous Eloise (well, ok, Barbie was everywhere too, but she seemed to have lost some of her verve). Eloise has come into her own following the death of author Kay Thompson, who had heretofore rejected all licensing and repackaging attempts on the part of its original publisher, Simon & Schuster. Licensee itsy bitsy hit the ground running with Eloise, however, and their booth was dominated by the little lass. S&S, meanwhile, will be moving on with the launch of six new licensed properties this fall, including corporate cousin Nick-sourced Little Bill and Rocket Power as well as Peanuts and OshKosh B’gosh, among others. Book-originated characters, it seems, will always be sharing a portion of the Toy Fair limelight with their non-literary friends.

Still, the sassy young resident of New York’s Plaza Hotel even knocked Harry Potter out of the park, raising questions about Harry’s relatively understated toy presence. Normally one would expect about 100 movie tie-in licenses for such a major property, but Ms. Rowling’s interest in protecting her protégé from over-exploitation has resulted in far fewer toy releases for the Potter series. (Warner Brothers would not reveal the actual number, however.) All the same, the market can look forward to such wondrous Potter items as a Quidditch broom from Tiger Electronics; Hasbro’s “interactive candy” in the form of Bertie Bott’s Beans, with both good and bad flavors; and Mattel’s handheld “levitating” game. Spied here and there at the fair were also a kite, puzzles, board games, and paper goods, while apparel is said to be in the wings. Note: Last year’s desk diary from Andrews McMeel reportedly netted out at 1.2 million units, with a 1 million first printing, followed rather too rapidly by an equally huge second printing after advance orders ate up the first in five weeks. (A no-no in calendar publishing, but the flesh is weak — and greedy!) It was also reported that the Warner Bros. style guide was very difficult to work with, which might have scared off some potential licensees. And apparently Rowling won’t approve any subsidiary use requiring text — so everything is word-free. Despite the low-key role for Potter, there is said to be a global publishing tie-in deal which won’t be announced until the end of March — and by the time the movie hits in November, Harry could be the new mascot for Toys ‘R’ Us.

Most of the book publishers at Toy Fair — whose booths were looking rather more spruced up than usual — reported a solid response to their wares, even if they weren’t offering much that was novel. Booths for School Zone, Sterling, DK, HarperCollins, and Klutz were buzzing. And McGraw-Hill Children’s Publishing (formerly called Consumer Products, the unit was created following the acquisition of Tribune Education, which included Landoll) was crowing about its new status as the #1 children’s educational publisher (with more than 20 million children ages 3–13 using their materials daily) and its presence among the top 10 of US children’s publishers. With the latest acquisitions, McGraw-Hill is able to reach all markets from top to bottom, and their showroom in the Toy Building featured licensed products from the likes of Disney, Nickelodeon, Arthur, Little Critter, Henson, Warner Brothers, and their latest Nelvana — and they’re on the lookout for more. Incidentally, Jeanne Finestone was recently named vice president of marketing for the children’s unit (she was formerly managing director of McClanahan Book Company).

Goodbye Rambo, Hello Aibo

On the book front, Learning Curve International, the Chicago-based toy developer, will soon be a major publishing force, with the redoubtable Mike Morris and Patty Sullivan advising them on product development and sales, and Rachel Ginsburg handling additional markets. Their proprietary publishing line, originally spawned from a Lamaze license via B&N’s Michael Friedman, continues to expand. In response to many of the toys on display at the Javits Center, the president of Learning Curve, John Lee, in conjunction with Playing for Keeps, a broad-based coalition, announced the group’s second annual conference. Dedicated to promoting “the right of children to creative, imaginative, and non-violent play,” the conference — limited to a maximum of 250 people — will be held at Wheelock College in Boston on March 16–18. “This year’s conference,” says Lee, “will provide another opportunity for leaders in the children’s toy, media, and entertainment industries to come together with educators and family advocates to discuss play practices that will benefit children.” (For more information contact Linda Yates at 617 879-2185 or email lyates@wheelock.edu.)

But enough about books. The star of Toy Fair for many participants was clearly Aibo, the Japanese computerized dog, which retails at $1500. (“Personality Enhancement Aibo-ware” was available for an additional $90.) TV cameras followed fair spectators around, recording their reactions to this sleek critter, who wags his tail when petted, and will kick a ball placed in his path. An overheard comment, which made him seem more human, was that Aibo will “forget” if he isn’t played with constantly. (One wonders if he bites, too.) On the other hand, for a mere $99 wholesale, you can get two Insectazoids, which are hideous, radio-controlled cockroach-like beasts that are quite a bit larger than life. Looks like Aibo’s got his work cut out for him.

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Job Hunting? Click Here

By PT Editors
March 1, 2001
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Going, going, gone are the good old days of dropping lunchtime crumbs over the “Positions Open” section in the back of PW, when you’d gamely search for that next dream gig. (“Marketing Director, U. of Hawaii Press”? Hmmm.) Yes, clickability has hit the hiring game, with Internet job boards humming away 24/7 and recruitment field leaders HotJobs.com and Monster.com awash in resumés fueled in part by dot-com layoffs. (Monster is currently seeing 30,000 new resumés per day, up 50% from the end of last year, while HotJobs saw a 77% leap in January.) Now, such sites are being joined by job boards exclusively for the media and publishing industries, making vacancies that much easier to advertise and — hopefully — to fill.

The new job board section of Publisher’s Lunch, for example, grew organically out of job listings being posted unofficially on the site’s message boards, and within the first month is outdoing PW by 6 to 1. “It’s got off to a stronger start than I would have dared plan or expect,” says Lunch creator Michael Cader. Unlike PW, which will post only its print ads online for a small additional charge, or NYTimes.com, where you have to search the entire job board by non–industry specific categories (publisher, marketer, etc.), Cader’s boards use the same technology as HotJobs and Monster, which allows jobs to be searched in a variety of ways including location, industry, and keyword, but only lists jobs confined to book publishing. “There is an inherent insularity in this business that means broad-scale job boards are not effective,” Cader adds. “Publishers are looking for publishing people, and general job boards are drawing non-publishing people.”

Internet job boards also have the advantage of speed — and the relative absence of space constraints. Employers click on the “post a job” link and can post jobs immediately. Billing is done by mail, and costs are low, charged by listing, not by word count. Cader charges $150 per job per month, comparing to HotJobs’ $195 per 30-day listing, and Monster’s 60-day posting at $295. By contrast, the dead-tree posting method will run an absolute minimum cost of $144 for the NYT Book Review, while for PW it’s $54 (though you’d get only 15 words for that).

As for useability, Publisher’s Lunch and partner Media Bistro (which hosts its own listings of media jobs at mediabistro.com) are easy to use and trawl focused user bases. Monster boasts a slicker interface, international jobs, and more sophisticated search tools, but is lighter on media offerings. Meanwhile, HotJobs currently lists the greatest number of publishing jobs, the majority NYC based, though with a good spread through the rest of the US. Publisher’s Lunch, however, does not offer the resumé/job-matching service that the bigger, more established services do. (The Lunch job board is at publisherslunch.com.)

Susan Gordon, president of Lynne Palmer Associates, the publishing recruitment firm, believes job boards supplement rather than threaten traditional recruitment methods. “Job boards are another form of advertising,” says Gordon. “They are not going to make us disappear. When people come to a recruiter, they’re looking for deep industry knowledge. There will always be a lot of work ferreting through resumés, clearing the pap, screening candidates, advising. You can get a ton of information from job boards, but you still need to know what to do with it.”

But the boards do work. Esther Margolis, president at Newmarket Press, recently filled a mid-senior level post via HotJobs. “The professional level of the people who responded was excellent,” she says. “You could describe the position in detail, and it was a third of the price [of The New York Times].” Would she bother with print ads in the future? “No need — I was very happy with the response.”

College grads, probably the most Internet comfortable of job-seekers, have already been flocking to Jobtrak.com, the college career network serviced by Monster. Prospective employers are charged per college access ($25 per college up to $395 for a full national listing) and the listings are available only to students and alumni (50,000 of whom access the site daily) via passwords issued by college career centers. “A couple years ago I think students would have searched through a variety of means,” says one recent graduate, “but now my first stop would be Jobtrak, followed by HotJobs and Monster.” Another graduate who found her job at Penguin through HotJobs calls the site “the most useful for entry-level positions,” though admits that it wasn’t all plain-sailing. “I was excited when I applied, but no one ever called me back. I had to get my friend who already worked here to contact HR for me.” She’d definitely use the service again, though would not make scanning the boards a lunch-break habit: “Never! I spent too much time doing that while I was unemployed.”

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International Fiction Bestsellers

By PT Editors
March 1, 2001
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Bruit on the Baltic
Johansson in Sweden, Delerm Dines On in France, and Noll Gets Warped in Germany

A “determinedly girls-eye view of events” has captivated Sweden this month, as the third and final volume in 70-year-old Swedish writer Elsie Johansson’s trilogy hits the stands with what’s been praised as “an unusual kind of bildungsroman.” The new one, Nancy, is the latest installment in the emotionally charged story of young Nancy Petersson’s childhood in rural Uppland, following the tumultuous events in the wake of her father’s death. Exchanging pastoral village life for “a dingy little backstreet flat” in Uppsala during wartime rationing, Nancy and her mother delve into the town’s proletarian dross. Drudgery at a job sorting mail in the post office is only exacerbated when mom up and moves in with a “friendly butcher” she’s met at work. The earlier volumes in the trilogy — all of which are standalone works — were the highly acclaimed 1996 title Glassbirds (which opens with the discovery of a strange suitcase under an attic staircase) and 1999’s Wild Flower (about Nancy’s later teenage years, which involve heartthrob Lars). Some 60,000 copies of the new one have been sold since its January publication; together the trilogy is up to some 350,000 copies to date. Rights to all three books in the series have been sold to Gyldendal in Denmark, and we’re told a deal is pending in Germany. See agent Linda Michaels.

Meanwhile in Sweden, Joakim Pirinen has checked in with an “absolutely mad, dada-ish, and very talented” prose debut called The Swedish Monkey, which takes off to hilarious points unknown (“A challenge for a translator!” was all our source could report at press time), and clearly incorporates the zany gestalt of the young writer’s well-known comics. Pirinen has also been known for his radio drama writing. A first printing of 7,500 copies is going fast, with no foreign deals reported as yet; see Ordfront for rights. And finally in Sweden, a note of congratulations to Gao Xingjian, whose books continue to rise up the list.

A brief word in from Holland, which sees bestselling author Ronald Giphart return to the list with the 1992 novel I Love You Too (we’re told the book is hot again due to a related film release). The politically active, thirtysomething author is said to be “a great hero for young writers in Holland,” and more gala parties appear to be in the offing: his 1996 novel Phileine Zegt Sorry is reportedly under contract with the Oscar-winning production team of Antonia’s Line, which was directed by Dutch filmmaker Marleen Gorris.

On the subject of films, all of France has been howling over Pierre Pelot’s The Wolves’ Pact, which is based on a mega-blockbuster movie, apparently one of the biggest productions in the history of French cinema. Briefly, at the end of the 18th century, the Chevalier de Fronsac and his American-Indian blood brother Mani are sent to the province of Gévaudan to inquire about an “unknown creature.” It turns out not to be a wolf per se, but something “far beyond reason.” The upshot is “a detective novel, a love story, a fantasy, with the tremendous rhythm of an action movie, all rolled into one!” No foreign sales have been reported as yet; see the French Publishers’ Agency for rights. Also on the list in France, Philippe Delerm dines on in the tradition of his 1999 collection We Could Almost Eat Outside, and has just published Siesta Assassination, a series of 40 short evocative texts (“as delicious as ever,” says his publisher) that meditate on life’s small dramas, “those brief moments when your perfect happiness is suddenly invaded.” The 1999 work was published in 30 languages (including a Picador edition in English) and Gallimard expects the same or better of this book. The new one has already sold 170,000 copies in France; see the FPA.

In Italy, Susanna Tamaro has rocketed to the top of the list with Answer Me, in which an elderly Italian woman writes a letter of confession and advice to her granddaughter, who is estranged and living in America. Tamaro gained wide exposure in 1996 with her debut novel Follow Your Heart, which sold millions of copies in Italy alone. A second novel, Anima Mundi, which investigated communist prisons for Italians in Yugoslavia after World War II, sold 400,000 copies in 1997 (and was savaged by Italian critics as “a storehouse of clichés”; the author retorted that her anti-communism was at issue, and not her prose). In any case, despite taking a few knocks, Tamaro has remained staunchly in favor of keeping her particular brand of sentimentality in the arts: she once lamented that too many artists today have “a limited horizon that goes from the umbilicus to the feet, and this is very sad.”

Meanwhile, the diabolical Ingrid Noll is back in action in Germany, where Blissful Widow has landed at #8, giving readers another go at Noll’s knack for “the Eurocrime novel that focuses on the internal lives of its characters rather than fast-paced action.” Noll’s earlier mysteries have been praised for the deftness with which her collection of seemingly unsympathetic characters lures readers into the author’s unabashedly “warped sense of reality.” In Hell Hath No Fury, for example, Noll details the angst-ridden fallout when “a strait-laced spinster on the wrong side of middle age tumbles head over heels in love with a family man.” The grim but riveting work highlights, as one reviewer put it, “the futility and total desolation of a relationship where each is using the other for their own ends.” Read at your own risk. Noll was born in Shanghai in 1935; her novel The Evening Breeze is Cold had a first run of 100,000 copies. HarperCollins UK published Noll’s first three titles, but not the subsequent two books, so be advised that the search is on for a new English publisher, according to Hedwig Janes at Diogenes, which controls rights.

Lastly, Catherine Clement’s novel Theo’s Odyssey has wandered all the way to Brazil, and hits the charts there at #8 (having stopped off along the way to be published in the US in 1999 by Arcade — it was originally in French). The work, some may recall, chronicles a 14-year-old boy who is diagnosed with a mysterious and terminal tropical illness, and embarks upon a world tour of religious sites with his wise Aunt Martha, who impresses upon him the metaphysical subtleties of the world’s spiritual traditions. Comparisons to certain other bestselling juggernauts were coming fast and furious upon the book’s publication, though one reviewer opined: “Teenagers don’t act like that. This book almost doesn’t deserve to be compared to Sophie’s World.” Others, however, dubbed it a “perky pilgrim’s progress.”

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Book View, March 2001

By PT Editors
March 1, 2001
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PEOPLE


A relatively quiet month, personnel-wise: Peter Bernstein has taken a new position as Editor-in-Chief of the University Alliance for Life-Long Learning, an online venture of Oxford, Stanford, Princeton, and Yale Universities to develop distance learning courses. He had been working on an author website, AuthorByAuthor. . . . VP and Managing Director Scott Lubeck has left Westview (a division of Perseus) to become CTO of the Harvard Business School Publishing, reporting to CEO Linda Doyle. And Holly Hodder has been promoted to Westview’s Editorial Director
. . . . Kathy Gilligan has left McGraw Hill, where she had been subsidiary rights director for Professional Books
. . . . David Lappin, recently Director National Accounts at S&S, has joined ex-Henson publisher Jane Leventhal in Jack Hoeft’s new venture, which he will announce shortly. . . . As reported elsewhere, Kent Carroll has left Carroll & Graf, where he was publisher and editor-in-chief.

VIRTUAL PEOPLE


John Conti, most recently at Contentville, has joined a B2B startup called RealRead, a sampling service which gives publishers the ability to let online book buyers see what they need before they buy, as VP of Sales. The Japanese company is “well-funded,” with the US as the base of operations. . . . With its announcement of a new e-book initiative, HarperCollins promoted Chris North VP and General Manager, Electronic Publishing, reporting to David Steinberger. Sean Abbott will be senior editor of E-Books, and Leo Hollis will be Editorial Director of E-Books for HarperCollins U.K. . . . Rightscom, a UK consultancy business specializing in the rights management issues associated with the delivery of Intellectual Property in an online environment, announced that it has merged with Mark Bide & Associates.

DEALS


Carlisle Agency’s Larry Chilnick sold the biography of astronaut Alan Shephard to Crown’s Emily Luce in a five figure deal. The author, Neal Thompson, is the military affairs reporter for the Baltimore Sun. Chilnick also sold The Sober Gourmet, by Elizabeth Scott, to Harvard Common Press’ Pam Honig. The book is a “healthful lifestyle” book that will include recipes for recovering alcoholics. . . . Jim Hornfischer of The Literary Group International, who agented Flags of Our Fathers, played author this month when his book, The Last Stand of the Tin Cup Soldiers (also about WWII), was sold in a preempt. His colleague Frank Weimann, president of the agency, handled the deal, but the lucky bidder was unknown at press time.

Scott Manning reports that clients Paul and Julie Lerner, authors of Lerner’s Consumer Guide to Health Care (which they published via their own imprint, Lerner Communications) are doing a five-part series on the Today Show. Paul used to be at Morrow, where he was Harvey Ginzburg’s assistant. Though they are not looking for a trade publisher for this title, they “wouldn’t rule anything out.” Check out www.lernerhealth.com.

DULY NOTED


Maria Campbell celebrates her first year scouting for Warner Bros. with five projects that the studio has snapped up, including Bryan Burrough’s “Hunting Hackers” article, Stephen Carter’s The Emperor of Ocean Park, and Joe Kanon’s new thriller The Good German, which was also taken by the scout’s publishing clients Karl Blessing (Germany) and Little, Brown UK. (Both had published him previously.) Campbell has just reupped for another year with the movie company.

• The Licensing Letter reports in its Annual Business Survey of retail sales of Licensed Merchandise 1992–2000 that the past year experienced a 1% dropoff from the previous year, which was unusually high due to the extraordinary sales of Star Wars properties (pace DK). Publishing was up 4%, however, and the Music category is the big winner, with a 23% increase in sales, because of “slick marketing and squeaky clean personas of a growing number of teen and tween-targeted bands.” Next is Celebrities/Estates, though most of that increase is attributable to Martha Stewart’s program with Kmart, which has surpassed the jackpot $1 billion mark. In general, though, it seems retailers are wary of going after hot licenses, until they start taking off.

• There’s the aforementioned Martha, and Rosie, and of course, Oprah, but no longer will there be Mary Higgins Clark’s Mystery Magazine, which Family Circle was publishing increasingly sporadically over the past four years under Editor Kathryne Sagan’s aegis.

• We await with bated breath the announcement of the 100 Great Jewish Books of the Modern era, which are to be announced this spring. In September the National Yiddish Book Center convened a panel of scholars, critics, and writers (including the LA Times’ Kenneth Turran, and scholars from England, Jerusalem, and the US to debate the list. Criteria include literary merit, Jewish authorship, and treatment of Jewish experience or sensibility. For further information contact Nancy Sherman at the National Yiddish Book Center, (800) 535-3595 x 111 or nsherman@bikher.org.

• Pat Holt confounded regular readers in a recent newsletter by mentioning that coverage of Amazon “borders on the hysterical.” She went on to critique the Washington Post story, saying “The Post story goes on and on, slicing and dicing Amazon.com as the Best New Fall Guy of the year. Every time something positive comes up — for example, nobody says Amazon ISN’T paying its bills; in fact, the data show that Amazon is paying its bills FASTER than before — the Post charges in with something negative.” Meanwhile The London Sunday Telegraph picked up the Post’s article, with its own headline, “Is Amazon up a Creek?” But the March 1 edition of Money has a more evenhanded approach, citing analysts, researchers, and retail experts, including Paco (Why We Buy) Underhill, who sees its “customers rule” philosophy as a continual lure.

• All good things come to those who wait: The price on Inside and PW’s March 19 Summit, Opportunity & Challenge, has dropped to $495, from its previous $795 price. Speakers include the usual suspects, as well as some timely additions, including Dave Eggers, Bob Stein (reincarnated, post-Voyager, as the founder of Night Kitchen), and Michael J. Wolf, the Booz, Allen media guru (as opposed to NY Magazine’s media pundit). Kurt Andersen and Nora Rawlinson (one of the two women listed on the roster of speakers) host the event. For information go to Inside.com, or call (888) 750-0716.

PARTIES


PT’s scout tells us that Bertelsmann’s US Scout Bettina Schrewe threw a “lovely fete” for Goldmann’s Georg Reuchlein and BTB Chief Andrea Best. “Among those spotted,” we’re told, “were smart young editors: Sarah McGrath (Scribner), Ethan Nosowsky (FSG), Dan Smetanka (Ballantine) and Courtney Hodell (Random),” along with agents Kim Witherspoon, Neil Olson, and Henry Dunow.

That same evening the Greenburger agency hosted a dinner for Rowohlt’s Georg Heepe, who has taken on the title “Editor Emeritus.” In attendance were agents Irene Skolnick, Wendy Weil, Cynthia Cannell, and writers Paul Auster, Sapphire, and Walter Abish.

In late Feb., crowds packed into the Carnegie Club at the invitation of Will Lippincott and Randall Rothenberg, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief respectively, of strategy+business, the (relatively) new Booz, Allen–backed business publication, and Myles Thompson’s new business imprint, Texere. S+B is poised to make a big circulation push, and had run an excerpt from the just-published Why I Hate Flying by management guru Henry Mintzberg. (The quote on the jacket was from “Marketing Maven” Philip Kotler, who said, “Now you don’t have to read Drucker On Management.”)

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In the Know

By PT Editors
February 1, 2001
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Vault.com is a web site used by job seekers to get the lowdown on what it’s really like to work for a company — in full, unexpurgated, and unsubstantiated glory. Many publishers aren’t even listed, including the entire Holtzbrinck group, while Norton gets little traffic and virtually no messages. Same with S&S, which has had all of three messages posted in the last year.

On several publishing message boards, however, the emails are flying. Not surprisingly, given its size, one of those is Random House (though it’s not up to the level of Barnes & Noble, which has had 137 postings in that time). Recently the subject of salaries at Random has become a hot topic, with several workforce entrants astounded at the high (relatively) starting salaries. This led to some mean spirited (and misspelled) emails suggesting that Random’s hiring practices are not all that they could be. One ex-employee called the company “Racist House,” while another offers a mock list of job qualifications: “Blond Hair, Blue Eyes. Long legs a plus. . . .”

The debate over hiring and salary practices, however, has been raging since the site launched in ’99, and Random is certainly not alone. An ex-Scholastic employee slammed the company last week for its low pay and long hours. Another slammed an individual, which is against Vault policy (PT has since brought the posting to their attention), while one particularly frustrated ex-employee railed, “I sometimes thought that the entire company was an overblown psychological experiment to see just how much ‘wacky’ behavior a ‘real’ employee could take.” As for “picking managers out of the hat” (the method another email suggested was used by the company), “I think they pick some off the wall of the post office.”

Others seem more generous. “Anonymous,” apparently fed up with the carping, wrote: “I left Scholastic 2 years ago and have been miserable ever since. I didn’t know I had it so good . . . I long for the good old days. . . .” Hire that email!

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Talk Miramax Books Finally Takes Off

By PT Editors
February 1, 2001
Comments Off on Talk Miramax Books Finally Takes Off

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED AT INSIDE.COM (2/6/01)

It’s been a dramatic couple of weeks for Talk Miramax Books, which, after a shaky start, seems to be finding itself as a nonfiction publisher of high-profile books. Last month the house bought super-lawyer David Boies‘s memoirs, and last week it paid $3 million for a memoir and a business advice title from New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani. Today, Talk executives are holding what will probably be the final meeting with Madeleine Albright, to convince the former Secretary of State that she should take their $1 million instead of Scribner‘s. Whether these high-priced books will earn out — something other publishers doubt — hardly seems to matter. What Talk seems to be after — and seems to be getting — is a lot of buzz. That and some fodder for its much-vaunted synergy.

”These books,” says Jonathan Burnham, president and publisher of Talk Miramax Books, ”don’t define the list but announce that we’re in the business of doing major nonfiction books. We’re a small publisher with big muscle.”

Talk is also a publisher with a built-in publicity arm, in the form of its monthly magazine, which has run an excerpt from every nonfiction book the house has published so far. Jerri Nielsen‘s Icebound, for example, which is No. 2 on the New York Times bestsellers list, is excerpted in this month’s issue. ”We usually acquire serial rights,” says Burnham. ”On most occasions the serial will run in Talk magazine, but if we felt that the extract would better suit another publication we would certainly do a deal, and would sub-licence serial rights in the conventional way.”

Until recently, Talk Miramax Books, which launched last summer, seemed not to have found its way. Its first nonfiction title, Martin Amis‘s Experience, while widely read and reviewed in literary circles (and excerpted in the magazine), sold only 3,700 copies* in hardcover. Simon Schama‘s History of Britain — for which the house paid $250,000 — sold just over 6,000 copies. An upcoming excerpt from Stolen Lives: 20 Years in a Desert Jail, by the Moroccan princess Malika Oufkir, who tunneled her way out of prison with a teaspoon, will appear when the book does. The plan now is to publish about 20 books a year in hardcover, plus some paperbacks, Burnham said.

The new political acquisitions will also make obviously valuable contributions to the magazine. If Tina Brown‘s Talk has never quite landed on the grand stage to which it has aspired, the book division may help it get there. Put another way: the company may be acknowledging the wobbliness of the magazine, and attempting to shore up its image through books. A former employee comments that it’s easier to turn around a books division by throwing a bit of financial weight behind acquisitions and marketing than it is to right a magazine, which could reasonably expect to take 5-7 years to see decent profits.

The breakthrough appears to be Icebound, the tale of a doctor at the South Pole who discovered and treated her own breast cancer. The house was said to pay about $1 million for the nonfiction title, by Nielsen with Maryanne Vollers. ”Talk Books is doing a really great job fulfilling the mandate set out for them: getting attention with high-profile books, making a splash, making some money,” says a former Miramax employee. But others within the industry gripe that Talk Miramax’s focus on buzz-generating, one-shot authors ignores the whole notion of a backlist, on which the success of a publishing house ultimately rests.

”They’re paying ridiculously high prices to be zeitgeisty, which makes noise now but doesn’t lay foundations for the future,” says one agent. Burnham, who was named publisher in 1999 after a brief stint at Penguin Putnam, is a much-liked editor among agents (it’s not unhelpful that his coffers run deep), and generally thought of as an intelligent buyer. But there is increasing talk about the type of purchases he’s making. ”There’s a certain amount of bafflement about what they’re trying to do with the books list,” says one agent. ”It does seem to be a bit of a puppet for the magazine.” That close association with the magazine — which some consider ”confused and silly” — may hurt the reputation of the book division.

And while the original objective of Talk Miramax seemed to be to publish articles that could become books, as well as vice versa, the magazine’s focus on celebrity and Hollywood would appear to inhibit that kind of synergy. Vicky Ward, the magazine’s executive editor, disagrees, saying, ”If you look back over the past issues, there’s a very deliberate mix of business politics, celebrity, culture, fashion and literature.” And Burnham insists there are several magazine-to-book projects currently in gestation — but declines to detail them.

Burnham concedes that recent acquisitions have been pretty expensive. ”We’ve laid out a lot of money in the last two weeks,” he says. He adds, however, that his overhead is not massive and so the risks are not that big, especially for a film company used to taking big risks. While the latest signings have been commandeered by Harvey Weinstein and Brown — which raises the question of how much pressure Burnham and the books division is under to perform — Burnham insists that he has absolute freedom to publish as he chooses. ”Every division makes its own creative decisions,” he says.

(*All sales figures are total sales through Jan. 28 at Barnes and Noble and B. Dalton stores and at Barnesandnoble.com. These numbers are thought to equal 20 percent of the total number of trade books sold nationwide.)

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