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Looking Back on 2022, Another Good Year in Editing and Agenting

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Yesterday I began totaling up the volume of business for Philip Turner Book Productions in 2022, to prepare to send agency clients full accounting of monies we received from publishers for them in 2022, and to write an annual year-end blog post. I’m pleased to note the figures confirm how it felt while we working at it—2022 was a very productive year for the company I founded in 2009, which I began operating with my adult son Ewan three years ago.

It’s fun and rewarding to have such a knowledgeable colleague and partner whose instincts and judgment I trust completely. When the year began he was our Managing Editor, and then mid-year I promoted him to Executive Editor and Literary Agent, which was announced in the Publishing Trends newsletter in July. The dual role is emblematic of our makeup as a joint editorial services consultancy and literary agency. He’s heading our New Stories division, devoted to cultivating new work in fiction, narrative nonfiction, and memoir.

Looking back on the year that ends this week, I see that

• On the editorial side, we edited manuscripts and book proposals from 15 different authors;
• On the agency side, we made seven new deals with book publishers and audiobook publishers for titles that will be published in 2023 and beyond;
• With a backlist of author clients and their books that have now been published and selling for a decade or more, we also paid out advances and royalties from various publishers to seventeen different authors and rights holders.

Some of our sales in 2022:

• PUBLIC/PRIVATE: My Years with Joe Papp at the Public Theater by Gail Merrifield Papp to Applause Theater and Cinema Books; audiobook rights sold to Audible who is working with the author to recruit an A-list actor to provide the narration. Told in an entertaining way, the book blends an affecting memoir of the author’s life and work alongside the founder of the Public Theater, Joe Papp, with a behind-the-scenes portrait of the influential theater’s dazzling history. News of the book deal appeared first in Publishers Weekly’s Deals column. The book will be published in October 2023.

• MOLYVOS: A Greek Village’s Heroic Response to the Global Refugee Crisis by educator and humanitarian John Webb, sold to Potomac Books, for publication in 2023. Webb’s book tells the little-known story of the intrepid Greek villagers, who in the early months of 2015-16 bootstrapped an effective humanitarian response to aid the tens of thousands of Syrians, Afghans, Ethiopians who’d launched themselves in flimsy vessels across the Mediterranean and the Adriatic seeking safety and succor in Europe, before well-known NGOs were on the ground, months before those vaunted organizations mounted no response at all, while people of Molyvos did heroic work.

• In the popular POT THIEF mystery series—whose author J. Michael Orenduff we’ve been representing since 2010—we placed his tenth title, THE POT THIEF WHO STUDIED CALVIN, to be published by Open Road Media in coming months. Orenduff will also be publishing a nonfiction book with Open Road in coming months, details to come.

• We arranged for the writing of a history of a regional American theater by a prominent arts critic whom I represent, and engaged the participation of a theater benefactor in the project, details to come.

Books we had sold in earlier years, set to be published in 2023:

• THE NEEDLE AND THE LENS, on the interplay between music and storytelling in movies, by Nate Patrin, author of Bring that Beat Back: How Sampling Built Hip-Hop, University of Minnesota Press, May 2020; Nate’s second book will also be published by UMP.

• CINEMA OF SWORDS: A Popular Guide to Movies & TV Shows About Knights, Pirates, and Vikings (Plus Samurai and Musketeers) by Lawrence Ellsworth, translator of four Alexandre Dumas novels we’ve sold to Pegasus Books; we sold Lawrence’s new book to Applause Theater and Cinema Books.

• THE ULTIMATE PROTEST: Malcolm W. Browne, Vietnam, and the Photo that Stunned the World by Ray E. Boomhower (author of Richard Tregaskis: Reporting under Fire from Guadalcanal to Vietnam, University of New Mexico Press, 2022); Ray’s new book on Malcolm Browne will also be published by UNMP.

• THE KREMLIN’S NOOSE: Vladimir Putin’s Blood Feud with the Oligarch Who Made Him Ruler of Russia by Amy Knight, author of Orders to Kill: The Putin Regime and Political Murder (St Martin’s Press, 2017). We sold Knight’s new book to Northern Illinois University Press distributed by Cornell University Press. Amy’s new book is a dual portrait that documents the rise of Putin and the mogul Boris Berezovsky, who helped make Putin ruler, then feuded with him till his death in London, which like so many Kremlin critics, occurred under unexplained circumstances.

Books we had sold in earlier years, published in 2022:

THE BARRENS: A Novel of Love & Death in the Canadian Arctic by Kurt Johnson and Ellie Johnson (Arcade Publishing, May 2022), sold under our New Stories rubric. Chosen by the Women’s National Book Association for their annual Great Group Reads program, attesting to its suitability as a novel for book clubs. “Two young college women embark on a canoe trip down the Thelon River in Canada’s Barren Lands when a tragic accident turns a wilderness adventure into a battle for survival in this debut novel…A poignant and engaging thriller with a formidable lead character.”—Kirkus

ROOSEVELT SWEEPS NATION: FDR’s 1936 Landslide and the Triumph of the Liberal Ideal by David Pietrusza (Diversion Books, August 2022; Blackstone Audio). “Historian Pietrusza creates a brisk, spirited narrative, abundantly populated and bursting with anecdotes, revealing the president’s trials and turmoil as he faced reelection….Prodigiously researched and exuberantly told.”—Kirkus, starred review

HEROES ARE HUMAN: Lessons in Resiliency, Courage and Wisdom from the COVID Front Lines by Bob Delaney with Dave Scheiber (City Point Press, September 2022; audiobook, Tantor Media). “Offers insights into life on the front lines during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic…An eye-opening work about health care workers’ sacrifices and burdens.”—Kirkus

LURKING UNDER THE SURFACE: Horror, Religion, and the Questions that Haunt Us by Brandon Grafius (Broadleaf Books, October 2022; audiobook, Tantor Media). “Grafius teaches us how to welcome horror as a constant companion in a world plagued by real evil.”—Sojourners

LAST CIRCLE OF LOVE, a novel by Lorna Landvik (Lake Union, Amazon Publishing, December 2022; audiobook narrated by the author, Brilliance). “This warm and funny book is vintage Landvik, with an ensemble cast of salt-of-the-earth women with names like Marlys and Charlene who tiptoe into the world of lust and examine what, as they say, turns them on. None of it is really erotica, of course, but more practical things like gallantry, compliments, understanding and forgiveness.”—Laurie Hertzel, Minneapolis Star-Tribune

After 2023, we eagerly anticipate publication of DEVOURING TIME: Jim Harrison, a Life by Todd Goddard, the first biography of the acclaimed master of the novella, gourmand, ardent friend, hunter and fisher, which will be published by Blackstone Publishing.

Major thanks to all the authors who entrusted us with editing and representing their work in the past year. We really appreciate it.

Also doing our own creative work in 2022:

Under Ewan’s pen name, M.G. Turner, he published essays on this website about Ernest Hemingway; photojournalist Ruth Gruber; and special effects film pioneer Ray Harryhausen, and continued developing his fiction, with a completed short story collection and novel which we’ll be circulating in 2023. He also assisted children’s book scholar Michael Patrick  Hearn in lectures for the Grolier Club.

I published a review/essay on a formidable nonfiction trilogy about Canadian indie rock n’ roll by Michael Barclay and other authors, highlighted by Barclay’s book, HEARTS ON FIRE: Six Years that Changed Canadian Music, 2000-2005 (ECW Press, 2022), and a review/essay on Robert Gottlieb’s enjoyable publishing memoir, AVID READER. I also contributed an essay, “The Education of a Bookselling Editor,” to AMONG FRIENDS: An Illustrated Oral History of 20th Century Publishing and Bookselling, to be published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2023.

We’re each looking forward to a great year in 2023. As always, please get in touch if you or someone you know is seeking guidance about publishing. Ewan can be reached at ewanmturner [@] gmail [.] com, while my contact info is philipsturner [@] gmail [.] com. Our company email is ptbookproductions [@] gmail [.] com.

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Avidly Reading Robert Gottlieb’s Memoir “Avid Reader”

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I greatly enjoyed reading Robert Gottlieb’s publishing memoir Avid Reader (FSG, 2016; Picador Books, 2017), so was excited to recommend it to friends on Twitter recently as my offering under the popular #FridayReads rubric. Now, I’ll back that up with a recommendation to visitors of my blog The Great Gray Bridge.

With a confident but not cocky voice, the longtime editor and publisher chronicles the six-plus decades he’s been in the book trade working with authors, editing and publishing hundreds of books, dozens of them bestsellers, and many, many imperative books of our time. His long run began at Simon & Schuster in 1955, when the publisher was still run by its founders, Dick Simon and Max Schuster. Gottlieb recalls how a third leader emerged at the helm, Leon Shimkin, who had a dominating personality and took charge of many things. After Schuster died in 1957, as well as top editor Jack Goodman, Gottlieb recalls that one wag “rechristened the firm Simon and Schuster, but Shimkin.”

In this era, up till the mid-60s, close-held or family-held publishing companies in America were still common.

At S&S, Gottlieb formed a troika of teamwork and powerfully productive publishing with two co-workers who would become longtime colleagues, and book business legends in their own right:

  • Nina Bourne (1916-2010), advertising maven and copywriting wizard
    and
  • Tony Schulte (1930-2012), jack of many trades with a good head for business known widely for his likable demeanor.

S&S had a raffish character to its book list, more so than was then the case with other, longer established publishers. S&S published calorie counters, diet books, self-help (Dale Carnegie was an S&S author), puzzle books, collections of S.J. Perelman’s pun-filled essays, and other very commercial titles. In fiction, for women readers, the trio engineered a smash with Rona Jaffe’s breakthrough novel, a debut, The Best of Everything. Joseph Heller came along in 1957. Gottlieb relates how Catch-22 came to be the forever name of Heller’s hugely consequential anti-war war novel—also his debut—after its draft title was abruptly coopted by another novel coming from an established bestselling author. This story is a treat and highlights that an iconic title may look obvious only in hindsight.

The next job Gottlieb took would highlight the rise of corporate ownership.

Moving onto Knopf

In 1967, in a move that might’ve foreshadowed professional sports leagues’ high-profile trades of athletic superstars—though S&S didn’t end up with any star players in return—Gottlieb, Bourne, and Schulte announced they would be decamping as a trio to go work at Alfred A. Knopf , a more prestigious and established house. It was such a seismic event that they arranged to leave at three-week intervals, minimizing the disruptions to the old firm and to their authors with upcoming books who were staying behind. A friend of mine who worked at S&S then, Mildred Marmur—who would later become the first woman to be the chief executive of a major publishing house—recalls that even after Gottlieb left S&S he helped her. She was newly responsible for selling paperback reprint and book club rights, and he schooled her in the job of subsidiary rights director, such that some years later when she was named President and Publisher of Charles Scribner’s Sons, the NY Times reported that she was “considered the dean of subsidiary rights directors.”

Alfred A. Knopf (1892-1984) had founded his company in 1915, and it gained renown for publishing the best foreign language authors in translation, Thomas Mann, Sigrid Undset, and Andre Gide, and the Japanese masters Kawabata, Tanizaki, Mishima, and Abe, among many others. Blanche Knopf, his wife, also played a key role in the company, bringing Albert Camus onto the list. In American letters, Willa Cather was “probably the writer Alfred was proudest of having captured” for their list. In later years Knopf editor Judith Jones began working with John Updike, who continued with the house his entire career. They also brought out the novels of the first generation of hardboiled detective writers, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and James M. Cain, and then those writers’ notable heir, Ross MacDonald, creator of the Lew Archer novels.

The Knopfs’ son Pat* (“officially Alfred, Jr.”) worked at the family firm for a time, but bullying ways of the elder Knopf had soured the younger man on taking over the firm someday. In the mid-60s, Alfred chose a succession plan: he sold the company to Random House, which itself had earlier been bought by RCA.**

Though no longer running Alfred A. Knopf, Alfred and Blanche still worked there, while Gottlieb, Bourne, and Schulte began livening up the place. Their infusion of new ideas sometimes clashed with Alfred’s former ways. Gottlieb tells a scalding tale of how Nina Bourne became the target of a “furious memo” from Alfred. This occurred after a book ad ran in the NY Times that in its design played with the sacrosanct Borzoi logo. Amid the tempest, Gottlieb was “itching to storm into Alfred’s office to tell him to fuck off. No, Nina said; she wanted to deal with him in her own way.” The details of how she did so are delicious.

Gottlieb added much high profile nonfiction to the list, including most famously The Power Broker by Robert Caro, who later undertook his multi-volume enterprise chronicling the life and career of LBJ with Gottlieb editing. Memoirs came from Gloria Vanderbilt (Once Upon a Time), Lauren Bacall (By Myself) and Liv Ullman (Changing). His accounts of working with these authors is consistently entertaining. With Bacall, he reports, “We had only one difficult moment. There was a gorgeous picture of her on the front cover, and on the back I showed her with Bogart. Absolutely not, she exploded; this was her book, not his. That really pushed my buttons. ‘Listen…’ I said, ‘people want to know about you and him, and you’ve written hundreds of pages about him. It’s my job to sell your book.’… ‘Fine,’ she said.”

Noting the show business books and fizzy celebrity titles, it must also be said that Gottlieb showed wide range and consistently good taste with books that ran from the commercial to the literary; consider that not only did he edit a number of Michael Crichton’s science-y medical thrillers, like his debut The Andromeda Strain, he also worked with Doris Lessing on several of her major novels, and many of Toni Morrison’s books.

During this period, the house also retained and attracted many stellar editors who acquired great books for the house of Knopf, such as Ashbel Green and Victoria Wilson, to name only two.

A Bookseller’s Perspective

I was a retail bookseller during much of this time, with Undercover Books in Cleveland, the indie bookstore chain I started in 1978 with my two siblings and our parents, and I can attest to the appeal and sheer salability of Knopf titles, and books from the whole Random House domain. During a visit to New York City in the 1980s, my brother Joel (1951-2009) and I paid a call at the Random House building in Manhattan, where the director of sales Dennis Hadley welcomed us. He was grateful to our stores for having helped make Martin Cruz-Smith’s thriller Gorky Park (Random House, 1983) into a bestseller. (Knopf and Random House were sold by the same sales reps.) We’d received a galley of the Cold War suspenser from our rep, and loved it, and were excitedly talking it up to our customers prior to the arrival of finished books. Hadley knew about this and, through the company’s adroit sales and publicity channels, word got to Edwin McDowell, publishing reporter at the NY Times, that he could contact our store for a bookseller’s take on why we were confident we would do very well with the book, having already placed a seventy-five copy opening order for the upcoming hardcover. When McDowell phoned I answered and was quoted in his “Behind the Bestsellers” column about how engrossed we had all been by the book, passing around what became an increasingly bedraggled galley among all five of us. I told McDowell that at one point, the contents of a bottle of shampoo had been spilled on the galley, but we dried it out and continued passing it on to the next one of us in line, a colorful detail he included in his story.

At one point during the conversation in Hadley’s office, he stood up, briefly excusing himself. Upon returning he announced he wanted to give us a gift. He presented each of us with the celebratory two-volume slipcased set pictured below. Surely, one set would have been dayenu, (enough) for me and Joel, but instead we each left with one, deeply grateful for the gesture. The commemorative set was privately published for “friends of Alfred A. Knopf” in 1965, the company’s 50th anniversary year. Knopf’s stylish Borzoi colophon, and the stunning design and typography of their books were marks of excellence, so evident in this package. That milestone year also led to a special volume edited by Clifton Fadiman—this one was offered for sale to the reading public—and which I later added to my library (pictured at the bottom of this post).

After more than twenty years at Knopf, Gottlieb writes that “the amusement was draining out of things. I was doing more and more, and our profits were consistent, but the personal cost was mounting. When a book hit the bestseller list, when an important author joined us, when a major award was won, it had always been a moment for celebration. Now it was just a relief—okay, this worked, so onto the next. It wasn’t being jaded, it was exhaustion.”

With that, Gottlieb became editor of The New Yorker in 1987, a job he held for about five years.

Significantly for Gottlieb, it was also around this time that he began publishing written work of his own, with a number of books focused on dance, jazz, the American songbook, literary classics, and this memoir. In Avid Reader it’s exciting to see him recount taking these steps in his own writing. I too hope and expect to begin publishing written work of my own in book form at some point. Meantime, I publish essays like this one, as well one about a professional encounter I had with William Styron, and essays about bi-nationalism on my other website Honourary Canadian.

Gottlieb writes that he is sometimes asked to address college students who are considering a career in publishing or journalism. His advice is pragmatic and sensible. To illustrate his central idea that publishing is a service business, and that editors work for the book and the author, he relates a memory from his years at S&S:

“My love affair with readers was ignited…by the message that Richard L Simon expressed to the entire staff [with] bronze paperweights on which were etched these words:

GIVE THE READER A BREAK

That succinct philosophy can be adhered to in many ways. For me: Keep the price of a book as low as possible. Make sure the type is legible—when possible, generous; readability is all. Don’t talk about an important photograph or portrait and then not show it. Deploy useful running heads—the name of a particular story or essay rather than the name of the author….Don’t over-design.”

Now in his nineties, Gottlieb and his longtime author Robert Caro are the subjects of a new documentary by Lizzie Gottlieb, daughter of Robert Gottlieb and his wife, actress Maria Tucci. The film is titled Turn Every Page—The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb. I’m excited I’ll have a chance to see the editor and author at the NY Public Library on December 12. More info on tickets for that screening here, which will be viewable in-person and virtually.

As an editor for almost thirty-seven years myself, I am always excited when I have an opportunity to work on books that I know readers will find engrossing, and which I believe they will be apt to read avidly. Among the books I’ve edited that display this quality are The Revenant: A Novel of Revenge by Michael Punke, the historical novel about the American frontiersman Hugh Glass, and The Last Battle: The Mayaguez Incident and the End of the Vietnam War by Ralph Wetterhahn, on the hijacking of an American merchant vessel in Southeast Asia during the waning days of the Vietnam War. In fact, it strikes me that the attribute of avidity is the most valuable coin of the realm in book publishing. I would devise a formula to mint more of it if I could. At the time of Gottlieb’s move to Knopf in 1967, one newspaper headline trumpeted “Avid Reader to Head Knopf.” Robert Gottlieb’s own writing in this book displays that quality in abundance, making the title he chose for his memoir, such a pleasure to read, supremely apt.

Lest I seem to be idealizing Gottlieb unduly, I’ll add that just like anyone who’s worked in publishing alongside other people, with ambitious people striving to do good and important work, I don’t doubt that he didn’t get along with everybody, nor all with him. Few people in any field get along with everyone. In a discussion of the fact that authors sometimes moved on from Knopf (pg 176), and that he was sometimes the beneficiary of a writer leaving another house, Gottlieb writes that he “disliked” Don Delillo’s “agent, and no doubt she reciprocated.” But he doesn’t name the agent, perhaps not wanting to needlessly stir up old acrimony, though people in the book business will readily know who Delillo’s agent of long standing was. Though not a saint, Robert Gottlieb comes off as genuinely likable, certainly to me.

If I meet Gottlieb someday, I’ll be eager to tell him that back in the day I worked for the US outpost of Kodansha, the large Japanese publisher, around the time he was a judge for a translation prize they sponsored. We share an affinity for modern Japanese cultural arts. I would also tell him that in my bookselling career I personally sold many of the books that he edited and published, including the bestsellers mentioned above, and others, such as David O. Selznick’s Hollywood by Ron Haver. I would add that in 2006 I edited and published a notable memoir by the under-appreciated writer, and one-time Hollywood talent agent, Clancy Sigal (1926-2017), which included much about his life with Doris Lessing in London in the 1960s, and the couple’s engagement with a social and literary circle that included the gadfly psychiatrist R.D. Laing.

Gottlieb describes an annual celebration that longtime Knopf co-workers still enjoy, and the day I was reading that passage in Avid Reader, I came upon this item in the book industry newsletter Shelf Awareness, marking the 50th anniversary at the company of the aforementioned editor Victoria Wilson, shown here in the photo are former and current Knopf colleagues, Alice Quinn (started at the company in 1972), Martha Kaplan (1970), Wilson (1972), Andy Hughes (1979), Jane Friedman (1968), Kathy Zuckerman (1988), and Kathy Hourigan (1963). The photo is credited to Nicholas Latimer, another erstwhile Knopf colleague (1983).

A final note on reading Avid Reader, and writing about it: The nearly two dozen authors and books I’ve mentioned in this essay, books that Gottlieb was responsible for editing and publishing, are only a bare fraction of the dozens of books about which he tells stories in his enjoyable memoir. In fact, the book’s index is devoted only to names of people who come up in the book, but I noticed, not to book titles—doing so would have probably made the index much longer for FSG to print!

—

Endnotes

*In 1959 Pat Knopf (1918-2009) was among the founders of Atheneum Publishers. Atheneum later merged with Scribner, and that combined entity was acquired by Macmillan in 1984. My second editorial job was with Collier Macmillan from 1986-89, and Pat still worked there then. My office was next door to his, and I found him a friendly neighbor. Though I’m glad to have had that brush with a figure connected to so much distinguished publishing history, I regret I never engaged him in a full conversation about the business and his time in it. At the time, I was unaware of most of the backstory involving him and his parents’ company. Some of that backstory can be gleaned from this NY Times obit of the younger Knopf.

**The Radio Corporation of America, RCA’s full name, was the first major corporation I know of to own a US book publisher, when that new owner had no prior interest, financial or intellectual, in books.

***A note on terminology: I use “publisher,” “publishing company,” and I’m partial to the expression, “publishing house.” In fact, publishing companies have long been known as ‘houses’ because they (are supposed to) offer hospitality to writers.

 

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Looking Back on 2021, Our Year in Editing and Agenting

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Yesterday I began totaling up the volume of our business in 2021, to prepare for writing an annual year-end blog post, and I’m pleased to confirm it was by far the best year Philip Turner Book Productions has had since I began operating outside the staff job/corporate publishing world in 2009. My son Ewan, 25, has been working with me for the past two years; it’s good to have a colleague and partner. As Executive Editor and Literary Agent, he heads up our New Stories division, devoted to cultivating new work in fiction, narrative nonfiction, and memoir.

Looking back on the year that ends today, I see that in 2021,

  • We edited manuscripts and book proposals from twenty-five different authors;
  • We sold ten new titles to book publishers, books that will be published in 2022 and beyond. and one title to an audiobook company which came out in 2021. We dispersed advances and royalties to fifteen authors and rights holders. Our sales this year were:
  1. THE BARRENS: A Novel of Love & Death in the Canadian Arctic by father-daughter duo Kurt Johnson and Ellie Johnson, sold to Arcade Publishing, who will publish it on May 3, 2022. This is the first title we’ve sold under our New Stories rubric.
  2. PICTURE SHOW PLAYLIST: Pop Music in Film from the Crystals to Rihanna by Nate Patrin, sold to University of Minnesota Press, whose first book Bring that Beat Back: How Sampling Built Hip-Hop, we also sold to UMP, which they published in 2020.
  3. LURKING UNDER THE SURFACE: Horror, Religion, and the Questions that Haunt Us by Brandon Grafius, sold to Broadleaf Books, which will be published around Halloween 2022.
  4. YOURS, FOR PROBABLY ALWAYS: Martha Gellhorn’s Letters of Love & War, 1930-1949 by Janet Somerville, sold to Penguin Random House Audio with actress Ellen Barkin as the narrator of the audiobook, published in May 2021.
  5. CINEMA OF SWORDS: A Popular Guide to Movies & TV Shows About Knights, Pirates, and Vikings (Plus Samurai and Musketeers) by Lawrence Ellsworth, translator of Alexandre Dumas, sold to Applause Theater and Cinema Books

    6. .

  6. THE ULTIMATE PROTEST: Malcolm W. Browne, Vietnam, and the Photo that Stunned the World by Ray E. Boomhower, sold to University of New Mexico Press, which in November 2021 published Boomhower’s Richard Tregasksis: Reporting Under Fire from Guadalcanal to Vietnam
  7. ROOSEVELT SWEEPS NATION: FDR’s 1936 Landslide and the Triumph of the Liberal Ideal by David Pietrusza, sold to Diversion Books, to be published August 2022.
  8. LAST CIRCLE OF LOVE, a novel by Lorna Landvik, acquired by the Lake Union imprint, Amazon Publishing
  9. HEROES ARE HUMAN: Lessons in Resiliency, Courage and Wisdom from the COVID Front Lines by Bob Delaney with Dave Scheiber, co-authors of the bestselling Covert: My Years Infiltrating the Mob, placed with City Point Press, distributed by Simon & Schuster, to be published Fall 2022.
  10. THE KREMLIN’S NOOSE: Vladimir Putin’s Blood Feud with the Oligarch Who Made Him Ruler of Russia by Amy Knight, sold to Northern Illinois University Press distributed by Cornell University Press; we earlier sold Knight’s Orders to Kill: The Putin Regime and Political Murder (St Martin’s Press, 2017).

In 2021, books that we had sold in earlier years were published:

1) Ten Garments Every Man Should Own: A Practical Guide to Building a Permanent Wardrobe by Pedro Mendes, published by Dundurn Press.
2) Emily Mann: Rebel Artist of the American Theater by Alexis Greene, published by Applause Theater and Cinema Books
3) Between Two Kings: A Sequel to The Three Musketeers (Musketeers Cycle, Book 5) by Alexandre Dumas, translated by Lawrence Ellsworth, published by Pegasus Books
4) Richard Tregaskis: Reporting Under Fire from Guadalcanal to Vietnam by Ray E. Boomhower, published by University of New Mexico Press, and as an audiobook by Blackstone Publishing.
5) The Pot Thief Who Studied the Woman at Otowi Crossing (The Pot Thief Mysteries Book 9) by J. Michael Orenduff, published by Open Road Media.
6) In addition, a manuscript I edited in 2021, THE MOST PRECIOUS GIFT: Memories of the Holocaust, A Legacy of Lisette Lamon, was self-published by David Mendels, the late author’s son.

Also, coming in 2022 will be an anthology about the book business, Among Friends: An Illustrated Oral History of 20th Century Publishing and Bookselling edited by Buz Teacher, co-founder of Running Press. It will be published by the University of Pennsylvania Press, and I have contributed a personal essay entitled, “The Education of a Bookselling Editor.”

Ewan continues to write his own fiction, having completed a story collection in the realm of anthology horror, and is working on a novel. As he likes to say, his touchstones fall somewhere between F. Scott Fitzgerald and Rod Serling. His work may be read upon request.

After 2022, we eagerly anticipate publication of DEVOURING TIME: Jim Harrison, a Life by Todd Goddard, the first biography of the acclaimed fiction writer, master of the novella, gourmand, ardent friend, hunter and fisher, which we sold to Blackstone Publishing.

Entering what will be my thirteenth year working as an independent editor and literary agent—a longer tenure than any of my in-house positions—I am more energized than ever by the opportunities to work closely with authors, more than closely than I was able to do during my latter years in corporate publishing. Even with the many challenges the book industry is facing, such as many bookstores open for only limited, distanced hours due to the lingering pandemic, I am optimistic about the book business, as readers are eager to have the companionship of books, and writers are driven to tell their singular stories.

We work on a wide range of material with special affinity for imperative books that really matter in people’s lives. I’m always interested in first-person work from authors who’ve passed through some crucible of experience that leaves them uniquely equipped to write their book. If you have a project you’re developing, or a personal essay, and want to discuss your work, or a project you think may be ready to offer to publishers, please don’t hesitate to contact one or both of us. We already have a number of terrific projects lined up to edit and represent in the new year, and we’re hopeful 2022 will be a strong year in publishing and the book business, , and a better year for us all. 

As always, please get in touch if you or someone you know is seeking guidance about publishing. Ewan can be reached at ewanmturner [@] gmail [.] com, while my contact info is philipsturner [@] gmail [.] com.

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Q&A with Paulette Myers Rich—Photographer, Printer, and Curator of No. 3 Reading Room & Photo Book Works

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I’m handing over the blog today to my wife, artist Kyle Gallup, for a guest post in the first of what will be a series of interviews by her with artists and writers. Kyle last wrote for The Great Gray Bridge with a post on the painter J.M.W. Turner. I am really excited to publish this post, because it draws on the rich literary tradition of Minnesota, such a vital place in America for book arts and fine printing. —PT
—-

Paulette Myers Rich. Photo credit: Donna Turner

Paulette Myers Rich is a photographer, artist, fine art printer, maker and collector of artists’ books. She is also the curator of the exhibition space, No. 3 Reading Room & Photo Book Works in Beacon, New York. With Covid restrictions she has reoriented her space to show art in the front windows of her gallery. It seemed to me like a good time to check in with her and see how her own work’s going and what she sees for the future of her gallery space.

You moved from Minnesota to New York City and now upstate, to Beacon, New York. Can you tell me a little bit about what led you from the Midwest to the East Coast, and how this has influenced your work as a photographer and artist?

I was teaching and working in Minneapolis/St. Paul for many years, but major life changes prompted us to take time off to decide what would come next. My husband David Rich is a painter and educator who has deep roots in NYC and in 2012 we decided to spend a year there to immerse ourselves in our work and consider our next steps. The year turned into five before we completely relocated from Minnesota.

We had a live/work loft in lower Manhattan that gave us each a small studio space, but I was going back and forth from NYC to my letterpress studio in St. Paul for months at a time. Finding the right kind of space for my equipment in NYC was tough because so many larger studios have been chopped up into tiny spaces with high rent. I began looking north for a place on the train line and in 2015, finally found a derelict commercial building for sale on Beacon’s Main Street where we could live and work, although I wasn’t looking forward to yet another gut renovation. This became our fourth such project. We sold our St. Paul building, moved everything into storage until the renovation was done a year later, then moved from our loft in the city up to Beacon. I got very good at logistics.

The move to Beacon allowed me to open No.3 Reading Room & Photo Book Works in the storefront adjoining my letterpress studio. It’s an extension of my studio practice, designed for viewing artists’ books, photobooks and small press poetry from my collection along with work on paper and photography by guest artists. Exhibitions of artists’ books tend to show the work in a vitrine out of reach with only a page spread on view, which was frustrating for me as an artist as my work is intended to be interactive. I decided to make a space where readers’ copies of my artists’ books are accessible to viewers. Books are meant to be handled and read and the experience is incomplete without this. No.3 offers visitors access to experience the entire book at their own pace in a context with related work. I also make myself available for conversation or questions as viewing books tends to generate a response and many times, looking at one book leads to another. It’s a form of engagement that’s rare in viewing art.

I also invite exhibiting artists to include personal copies of books that informed their practice, or alternatively, a reading list. The artists I show are readers and they’re generous in their sharing. Some of these books have traveled with them or were gifts from loved ones, many have marginalia and tabs that reveal what’s important to them. But if the artist needs to hold onto their books, I’ll acquire a reader’s copy to share. This hybrid approach to showing artwork opens up conversations in a meaningful way that doesn’t often happen in a commercial gallery.

I read that your photographs are about landscape, place, and time. How does your locale influence what you photograph?

My current locale in Beacon and the Hudson Valley is new to me and I’m still exploring it. I’m surrounded by wilderness and mountains, which is very different from the urban post-industrial landscapes I’ve been living in and photographing for the past forty years. However, it’s the remove from familiarity that’s been most influential in my current practice. I returned to the studio about ten years ago, spending more time in what I see as a necessary and compelling phase of my landscape work, which means delving into my photo archives, revisiting these sites and reconfiguring them through collage and new juxtapositions. I’m also photographing constructed spaces that explore the metaphysical, mathematical and spiritual dimensions of place once again. There’s a quietude here that I’ve never had elsewhere that I find I need in this time.

Are there particular subjects and themes that you most gravitate or return to?

Most sites I photographed were once active industries on acres of land that were abandoned and left vacant in the midst of working class neighborhoods or along the Mississippi River, and there were many of them. It was hard for me to fathom how a company could just shut down, throw so many people out of work and walk away from such a massive property, usually very polluted, that we as residents had to deal with in the aftermath before gentrification. However, aside from the social indifference and environmental impacts that I contended with as a citizen at City Hall, as an artist, it was the mysteries of the site that I sought out; the lingering energies, the aftereffects of abandonment, evidence of the former life of the place, the encroachment of nature, and the momentary landscapes that emerged from the demolition process that combined to make strange, poetic juxtapositions and layers. I’m striving for that kind of mystery and energy in my current work in the studio through combinations of ephemeral installations and constructions set up for the camera, as well as in the reworking and reconfiguring of my Work Sites series photographs.

Your artistic practice is wide ranging, from photography, to fine art printing, to handmade book-making, to being a collector of artists’ books, and director of No. 3 Reading Room & Photo Book Works. How have these different aspects come about and how have they evolved?

I came to my photo-based artist book practice through experimental films I was making in the early 1970’s as a youth, at a media arts center called Film in the Cities, where I was immersed in contemporary alternative and experimental media projects. I was especially interested in film-as-film, where the material qualities of light, emulsion, grain and surface are a part of the content. But to continue making this work as a working-class mother of two required resources I didn’t have, so I scaled back to still photography, working experimentally, abstractly and sequentially to simulate the pacing of film. I exhibited this work as sequential stills but wasn’t satisfied with this form of presentation. It felt static to me.

When the Minnesota Center for Book Arts (MCBA) opened in Minneapolis in 1985, I became an intern in the papermaking studio to study sculptural techniques using handmade paper for still-life constructions, my primary photography subject at the time. Initially, I had no notion of making books, but when I was exposed to contemporary book art practice in MCBA’s studios and gallery, I realized I could reintroduce a sequential and temporal element back into my work, along with the tactility of materials and forms designed to activate the narrative. Eventually though, my industrial landscapes became my primary subject as it came to dominate my life in many ways.

I’ve always been a reader and novice writer and wanted to integrate poetry and text into my work, so I enrolled in the College of St. Catherine’s weekend program to study creative writing and library science, then returned to MCBA in 1990 to intern with Gaylord Schanilec in letterpress printing, entering the world of fine press books. I continued on as a studio assistant on various projects, mentored by master practitioners while taking workshops to acquire the skills I needed, learning a trade in the working-class tradition as an apprentice, which felt comfortable to me. I did this all as a working mother; I wish I still had that kind of stamina.

Eventually I became a master printer-in-residence with assistants of my own, overseeing projects and teaching at MCBA and local art colleges. I acquired my own letterpress equipment and set up Traffic Street Press, named for the street adjoining my studio in the North Warehouse District of Minneapolis. Along with my personal work, I collaborated with poets I admired publishing fine press books in my Trafficking in Poetry series, and also produced a series of contemporary Irish poetry books and broadsides with the Center for Irish Studies at the University of St. Thomas, in St. Paul.

In 1990, I also became a news librarian at the St. Paul Pioneer Press, where I did research for reporters, helped manage the photography collection and cataloged books. It was my dream day job, but soon after, newspaper publishing was hit hard as a business and in time, most of the library staff was eliminated. I then picked up extra teaching in book arts, mentored grad students, and produced and sold my books.

Even before my time at MCBA, I had collected small press poetry chapbooks from a used bookstore in my neighborhood near Macalester College that carried a range of them. St. Paul is a city with a cluster of liberal arts colleges and the used bookstores were goldmines for me. When Allan Kornblum became the first printer-in-residence at MCBA and moved Toothpaste Press from Iowa City to Minneapolis to start Coffee House Press, you could buy his chaps at the Hungry Mind bookstore, so I have a box full of them. There were a variety of small presses, writers, editors and book distributors in the neighborhood. I was in a rich literary environment and took advantage of this.

With Covid-19 restrictions affecting artists around the world, how have you dealt with the quarantine and in what ways has this affected your work, artistic process, and thinking?

I’m trying to remain disciplined, reminding myself that I’ve endured deadly and frightening times in other periods of my life. I looked to women artists who went through difficult times, reading biographies and journals as a guide. As a former Minnesotan, I’m accustomed to hunkering down for long, extreme winters so my home and studio have always been set up for that. I’ve been revisiting photographs from my archives, experimenting with new forms and spending time in No.3 doing research, writing and cataloging new books. I value the quietude and concentrated thought that books provide, but I miss my engagement with artists and the community, so in warmer months I use the display windows of No.3 to install exhibits which works well, and I’ll continue to do that.

But I must say there were times I couldn’t concentrate enough to read or work and instead watched a lot of news keeping up with what was happening back home in Minneapolis/St. Paul after George Floyd was murdered in a neighborhood dear to me, because this could happen to any number of people there that I love. And of course, the 2020 election was stressful. I avoided social media and instead, called friends to talk, which made each of us feel much less isolated. One night during the riots in Minneapolis, while talking to a friend who lives a few blocks from Lake Street, smoke from the fires came into her windows. I had friends on neighborhood watch with their guns and dogs because white extremists had infiltrated the cities, instigating a lot of the destruction. Friends documented cars with Boogaloo Boys logos and out-of-state plates, and they found incendiary devices hidden in their alleys and backyards. People had their garden hoses pulled to the front door and turned on in case they needed to put out a fire. It was traumatizing to see all this unfold on national media and hear even worse news from our friends and family living through it. I’m hoping that Chauvin’s guilty verdict will secure much needed, long overdue police reform and that justice will be served in the ongoing violent episodes that have happened since.

Meanwhile, I’m looking forward to emerging from this strange, isolating time. Initially, No.3 Reading Room will reopen by appointment or invitation, so I can keep it safe for those who visit. I’m going to stay hopeful about reopening more fully as a walk-in space. I really miss that part of my life and I know people need a place to go have some peace and spend time sorting out the last year as well as to plan for the future. Books and the reading room offer that space.

On your blog, you have a new exhibit, Walking the Watershed, Photographs by Ronnie Farley, that is part of a larger project and exhibition, Extraction: Art on the Edge of the Abyss. Can you talk about this project and how it relates to your own work and interests?

Extraction: Art on the Edge of the Abyss, was initiated by Peter Koch, a fine press book artist, writer, educator and co-founder of the CODEX Foundation, a non-profit devoted to fine press and artist book practice. Peter is from Montana and experienced the impact mining has made on the environment and people there. In 2015 he produced a book called Liber Ignis; “…a collaborative project of appropriations, inventions, and constructs documenting the ongoing war against nature in the American West…”

When Peter encountered the book Black Diamond Dust in the Dia Beacon museum bookstore about a year later, he was inspired by this multi-site arts action about the impact of the extractive industries in Vancouver Island, B.C., and decided to initiate something similar in Montana about the mining industry there, but it expanded to a much larger scale and became what he calls a “global Art Ruckus.” I was supportive of this project early on, having photographed, lived near and worked in industrial landscapes set in big nature for many years, so I’m well aware of the impact these industries have on our environment. I’m honored that No.3 Reading Room & Photo Book Works is included as a site for exhibiting artists who focus on these environmental issues in their work as a part of the Extraction project.

Ronnie Farley is a photographer and writer I admire very much. Her work is deeply concerned with the environment and the Indigenous women who have been fighting polluters for decades. Her recent Walking the Watershed project features photographs from her 150-mile trek from the Schoharie Reservoir, following the path of the aqueduct that delivers water to NYC. She made it in stages, carrying a bucket of water from the reservoir and giving talks in each community she passed through. When she arrived in NYC at the end of her journey, she poured the water into the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir in Central Park, “returning the water to itself.” Ronnie lived in NYC for many years but is from upstate and wants New Yorkers to know what a long distance their drinking water travels and how fragile and precious it is. She has a companion book and film that will be completed soon that I’ll also feature.

Throughout 2021, I’ll be showing the work of painters, sculptors, printmakers and filmmakers, alongside books relating to their specific topics, including Black Diamond Dust. The Extraction project has produced a comprehensive catalog called the Megazine (pictured above), featuring writing and images by participants. I’ll be giving away 100 copies throughout the summer to visitors.

 What have you been reading over the last year?

I’ve been reading across disciplines, but the books that stand out for me are the biography and poems of Paul Celan, essays by Audre Lourde, and the new anthology Women in Concrete Poetry, 1959-1979. I’m also reading Ninth Street Women, by Mary Gabriel; Square Haunting: Five Writers in London Between the Wars by Francesca Wade, and Frantumaglia: A Writers’ Journey by Elena Ferrante. I’m always looking at new photography books, but Alessandra Sanguinetti’s The Illusion of an Everlasting Summer is a favorite, but there are too many more to mention; my research covers everything from industrial handbooks of the late 19th century to theory. One thing leads to another when you read.

No. 3 Reading Room & Photo Book Works, Beacon, NY

Ghost Poems for the Living, Traffic St Press, Paulette Myers Rich

Ghost Poems, interior, Paulette Myers Rich

Ghost Poems, interior, Paulette Myers Rich

Work Site Series, Paulette Myers Rich

No. 3 Reading Room & Photo Book Works

No. 3 Reading Room & Photo Book Works

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Sold to Broadleaf Books: “Living with Horror: Faith and Fright in an Anxious World”

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Delighted to have sold biblical scholar Brandon Grafius’s book “Living with Horror: Faith and Fright in an Anxious World” to Broadleaf Books of Minneapolis. It will be a thought-provoking study that explores the parallels between horror and religion, and the common ground shared by fear and faith, offering insight into many of the provocative and surprising theological themes that lurk under the surface of favorite horror films, while also discussing many of the movies, alongside a catalog of biblical stories that evoke fear and trembling. The fears that horror movies force to the surface of consciousness can help us reflect on our own troubled times, and will help readers gain a sense of understanding into the nature of fear and associated emotions. Grafius’s book will also provide an outlet for people struggling to contextualize what they are seeing each day on the news. By examining the themes of hope and faith, and justice and perseverance, all found in horror movies, it will show the reader how horror can help us make sense of the world, and help us all navigate the anxieties that are part of modern life, especially in pandemic times.

Delighted that the author will be working with a very engaged editor at Broadleaf, Lil Copan, who has a vision for the book that really aligns with the author’s book idea. Broadleaf has an interesting list which I commend to readers’ attention.

And, kudos to my adult son and business partner, Ewan Turner, who championed Brandon’s book from the first day he queried us about it.

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Sold: Pedro Mendes’s “Ten Garments Every Man Should Own: A Practical Guide to Building a Permanent Wardrobe”

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Delighted to report another sale I’ve made to a publisher from the literary agency side of my business, Philip Turner Book Productions. The sale is to Canadian publisher Dundurn Press for a useful nonfiction book titled  TEN GARMENTS EVERY MAN SHOULD OWN: A Practical Guide to Building a Permanent Wardrobe. The book, by my author client Pedro Mendes, is described in a Deal Memo I placed in Publishersmarketplace.com on Monday:

Men’s style journalist, editor of Toronto’s The Hogtown Rake menswear blog, and veteran CBC Radio producer Pedro Mendes’s TEN GARMENTS EVERY MAN SHOULD OWN: A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO BUILDING A PERMANENT WARDROBE, an illustrated guide to dressing well by building a classic wardrobe, an approach to identifying sustainable apparel that aligns with 21st-century environmental values, to Scott Fraser at Dundurn Press, in a nice deal, in a pre-empt, for publication in fall 2020, by Philip Turner at Philip Turner Book Productions (Canada).
philipsturner@gmail.com

For more background on the book, the author, and Canadian creatives I count among my friends please visit my other blog, Honourary Canadian. While we now have a Canadian publisher, I am still working to place the book rights in the States, so please reach out if you know of a US publisher who may be interested in the book.

 

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“Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York,” from Blog to Book

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Hooray for NYC writer Jeremiah Moss, proprietor of the blog “Vanishing New York,” who will be writing a book inspired by his blog for a HarperCollins imprint. H/t to Publishersmarketplace.com for reporting the news in their daily deals email. Subscription is required for viewing the book industry site, but here’s a quick screenshot of the item.  

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#FridayReads, August 2–Boris Kachka’s “Hothouse” & Lee Child’s “A Wanted Man”

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FridayReads, Hothouse: The Art of Survival and the Survival of Art at America's Most Celebrated Publishing House, a rich chronicle focusing on Farrar, Straus & Giroux, its charismatic founder Roger Straus, and its talented editorial chief of many years Robert Giroux. Established soon after WWII, FSG has over the decades published dozens of notable authors including Czeslaw Milosz, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Grace Paley, Tom Wolfe, Susan Sontag, Abraham Joshua Heschel, John McPhee, Bernard Malamud, and Flannery O'Connor. Kachka holds his narrative to quite a fleet pace, touching on some books and authors only briefly, but always situating his protagonists in the cultural moment. I have always enjoyed reading in the realm of books on books and I couldn't be happier reading Hothouse. Kachka's book delivers great literary stories in spades.

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I'm traveling this week and so happily succumbed to the purchase of an airport paperback, another terrific thriller by Lee Child, A Wanted Man, which places recurring series character Jack Reacher in a Nebraska winter trying to evade suspicion for several murders and disappearances even while trying to solve the case and convince FBI agent Julie Sorenson that he's not the culprit she and her agency bigs are pursuing. While Reacher is something of a brute when he needs to be, Child has an amazingly deft touch with great finesse as a storyteller.

 

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