"I've always had entrepreneurship in my blood," said Kenzi Sugihara, the founder and publisher of SelectBooks, a nonfiction trade publishing house in New York City. "My father was an entrepreneur. He said he ultimately preferred to be his own boss, and so do I."
 |
|
|
Kenzi and Kenichi Sugihara |
|
SelectBooks is a family business: Kenzi's son, Kenichi Sugihara, as well as Kenzi's wife, Nancy, also work for SelectBooks, as marketing director and managing editor, respectively. By design, it is a small operation: only Kenzi and Kenichi are in the house's Union Square office on a day-to-day basis, with various freelancers brought for specific projects. Kenzi, who has worked in publishing since the late 1960s and has held high-ranking positions at Random House, Bantam and other houses, founded SelectBooks in 2001 on two principles: publishing strong, legitimate voices from a variety of disciplines, and streamlining the publishing process in order to remain nimble and give the best possible experience to authors.
"Around 15 years ago, I identified the breaking technologies that would lower thresholds for a number of industries, including book publishing," explained Kenzi Sugihara, referring to the proliferation of Internet access and the increasing sophistication of computer tools. "These things have led to a lowering of costs, and just as critically to us, to a lowering of the success threshold for a book," he continued. "At larger publishers, you'd have to publish at least around 20,000 copies for each title; we don't have any restrictions like that."
"We can get away with fewer," added Kenichi Sugihara, who has himself accumulated some 20 years of experience in the publishing business. He got his start in music publishing, and worked at Oxford University Press before joining his father at SelectBooks. "At other, bigger publishers, they might be presented with a book and see that there's clearly a good book there, but the numbers might not justify picking it up."
SelectBooks usually is able to acquire a book and bring it to market much faster than most publishers. Kenichi stressed, however, that it isn't a haphazard or hasty process. "Our authors contribute a lot," he said. "A big part of how we work so efficiently is that we bring in the authors at every step of the process."
"Our process is very full service," continued the elder Sugihara. "We truly do this as a partnership."
SelectBooks now publishes around 20 titles per year, most of which are in three broad categories: business books (generally on leadership, management, sales and marketing, etc.), self-improvement and mind-body-spirit. SelectBooks has had several recent successes, including A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State by John W. Whitehead, Conversations with the Universe: How the World Speaks to Us by Simran Singh (sister of Nikki Haley, governor of South Carolina) and People Tools by Alan C. Fox, which recently appeared on the New York Times bestseller list for business books. SelectBooks' most successful title, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits: What You Must Do to Increase the Value of Your Growing Firm by Verne Harnish, was published early on in SelectBooks' lifetime; more than 100,000 copies were printed. SelectBooks titles are distributed by Midpoint Trade.
As "a matter of course," SelectBooks publishes an e-book version of all new releases, but the Sugiharas view themselves as print book publishers first and foremost.
"One thing we've found is that over the past year, the e-book market seems to be leveling," remarked Kenzi Sugihara. "We're very appreciative of e-book sales, but what we love best is print." --Alex Mutter