The final day of Winter Institute has become the day for indies presses to court their indie retail counterparts, beginning with the Small and Independent Press breakfast.
J.P. Leventhal, founder of Black Dog & Leventhal, said that his press got its start in a big way with bestsellers that included Skyscrapers (18 inches high) and The Complete Cartoons of the New Yorker. Having learned everything he knows about books from the remainder side of things, Leventhal said that the press is very focused on the three p's: pricing, promotion and placement in its publishing program. He pointed to several moderately priced, heavily illustrated titles on its most recent and upcoming lists, including The Secret Language of Color by mother-and-daughter team Joann and Arielle Eckstut; The Secret Language of Animals by Janine M. Benyus; and National Wildlife Federation's World of Birds by Kim Kurki.
The latter two titles are powerful tools "for kids to get to know to love nature," he continued. While showing a few amazing slides of animal communicating in nature, he commented: "When elephants come together, it's a high five."
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(l to r:) Malcolm Margolin, Heyday Books; Rhonda Hughes, Hawthorne Books; Michael Reynolds, Europa Editions; Patrick Thomas, Milkweed Editions; J.P. Leventhal, Black Dog & Leventhal; Peter Mayer and Mark Krotov, Overlook Press.
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Michael Reynolds of Europa Editions recalled that 10 years ago NPR's Maureen Corrigan called Jane Gardam "the best British writer you probably never heard of." Today, he said, Gardam might still be the best British writer, "but very few booksellers have never heard of her." In May, Europa--which has sold more than 200,000 copies of Gardam's books--is publishing The Stories of Jane Gardam and has discovered that, at 84, the author remains "somewhat of a rock star."
Reynolds also presented a debut novel, Revolution Baby by Joanna Gruda, a rare acquisition by the company's founder, Sandro Ferri. A World War II story based on the author's father's life, Revolution Baby is being compared to Life Is Beautiful and The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. "It's a very, very sweet book, with one of the most charming young narrators that I have read in the long time," Reynolds said.
Rhonda Hughes, founder of Hawthorne Press, admitted she was shaking as she made her Winter Institute debut as a presenter. "You all inspire me so much to keep publishing and doing what I do," she said. She gave a nod to the press's early bookstore supporters, like Paul Ingram at Prairie Lights, Iowa City, Iowa; and to distributor PGW's Elise Cannon, who suggested Hughes ask Chuck Palahniuk to expand a blurb for Monica Drake's novel Clown Girl into an introduction (which he did). The book sold more than 20,000 copies, and film rights went to Kristen Wiig. Hughes also credited indie support for the success of Hawthorne titles The Well and the Mine by Gin Phillips, and two by Lidia Yuknavitch: The Chronology of Water and Dora, a Headcase, which was just optioned for film by Big Easy Productions.
Looking forward to this spring, Hughes talked about I Loved You More by Tom Spanbauer--a love triangle being compared to Jeffrey Eugenides's The Marriage Plot and Jonathan Franzen's Freedom, except with a gay central story--and Ariel Gore's memoir, The End of Eve. Gore is launching an indie-only 16-city promo tour from her neighborhood store, DIESEL in Oakland, Calif.
Malcolm Margolin, who founded Heyday Books in Berkeley, Calif., 40 years ago, expanded on WI9 opening keynoter Dan Heath, who had introduced the acronym WRAP. "I thought, what four-letter word would I put forth?" wondered Margolin. "F is for fun," he said. "L--fooled you, didn't I?--is for local." (Heyday is a regional publisher, he said, "because I love to know the people I deal with.") He continued: A is for the Hindu concept of Advaita, and W for the willingness to take risks. He may have spelled FLAW, but Margolin was flawless as he gave booksellers a preview of two of Heyday's signature, beautifully illustrated titles: Scrape the Willow Until it Sings: The Words and Work of Basket Maker Julia Parker by Deborah Valoma and Looking at Art, the Art of Looking, featuring the photography of Richard Nagler, with a foreword by Margolin.
"Independent booksellers are the vanguards of debut literature," proclaimed Patrick Thomas, adding that without them, places like Milkweed Editions "would not exist." The indie press editor went on to pitch some titles from the spring list: Inappropriate Behavior: Stories by Murray Farish, who is being compared with Adam Johnson and provides one of the best author audio bits on the publisher's website, Thomas said; Stilwater: Finding Wild Mercy in the Outback by Rafael de Grenade, about how the author volunteered her services on an abandoned cattle station in Australia "the size of Rhode Island"; and Things That Are: Essays by Amy Leach, who sold 5,000 copies of a previous book after Milkweed brought her to the WI Indie reception in New Orleans in 2012.
Peter Mayer said he's spent 20 "happy years" at Penguin and 42 years as the publisher of Overlook Press, the latter named for both the mountain in Woodstock, N.Y., and the press's talent for publishing books that might be overlooked by larger houses. These include 97 P.G. Wodehouse titles and the Freddy the Pig children's books (300,00 copies sold), plus back-in-print titles like True Grit and Psycho. Although Mayer said he had never done a puzzle in his life, Overlook was the first to publish sudoku in the U.S.
Like a good publisher, Mayer shared both the glory and the floor with his staff--he introduced editor Mark Krotov to present Wonderkid, the new novel by Wesley Stace (aka singer-songwriter John Wesley Harding). Of course, Krotov joked, he didn't tell his boss he'd always wanted to be a rock star, and emphasized instead that Wonderkid was a rock 'n' roll book by someone who knows what he is writing about--except that the band in Stace's novel is a kiddie rock band that "still wants sex, drugs and rock and roll," but whose audience is either "breast feeding or being breast fed."
Year after year, the indie publisher-bookseller connection proves a great way to wrap up the buzz of Winter Institute. --Bridget Kinsella