- Categories:
Booksellers Find “Meet the Editor” Visits Invaluable
Printer-friendly versionMore than 160 booksellers began Wednesday morning at BookExpo America with visits to “Meet the Editor” at various publishers’ offices around New York City to learn about the editing process and check out exciting upcoming titles.
Publishers welcoming booksellers to their offices included Bloomsbury, Disney Publishing Worldwide, Grove/Atlantic, Hachette, HarperCollins, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Macmillan, Melville House, New Directions, Penguin Random House, Perseus Books Group, Scholastic, Seven Stories, Simon & Schuster, Sourcebooks, The New Press, Workman/Algonquin, and W.W. Norton.
At the offices of New Directions in Chelsea, company president Barbara Epler welcomed four booksellers: incoming ABA President Betsy Burton of The King’s English in Salt Lake City, Utah; Eileen Miskell of Eight Cousins in Falmouth, Massachusetts; Suzanne Droppert of Liberty Bay Books in Poulsbo, Washington; and Elissa Englund, who will be starting as the events coordinator at Bank Square Books in Mystic, Connecticut, next month.
Established in 1936 by editor James Laughlin, New Directions offers a strong backlist of modernist writers — such as Ezra Pound, César Aria, Rachel Kushner, Tennessee Williams, and Franz Kafka — and about 30 new titles in hardcover and paperback each year.
To acquire new titles, the staff at New Directions is always on the lookout for a tip, said Executive Vice President Laurie Callahan, whether it’s an inquiry from an overseas agent with a work for translation, an up-and-coming writer whose piece made it into an obscure magazine, or discussions of favorite titles with booksellers across the country. No matter what the lead, said Callahan, “we’ll follow it and see where it goes.”
New Directions web director and marketing associate Mieke Chew also highlighted some of the publisher’s recent successes, including The Guest Cat by Takashi Hiraide and a collection of Emily Dickinson’s envelope writings called The Gorgeous Nothings, as well as upcoming titles such as Beauty Is a Wound by Indonesian writer Eka Kurniawan.
For their part, booksellers shared some issues of importance to the independent market, such as rapid replenishment and the significance of offering a unique, in-person experience to customers.
All of the participants were notably pleased with their visit to New Directions, commenting on the value of getting an inside look at the publisher’s list from an incredibly passionate staff member, as well as the meeting’s intimate nature, which was “great for exchanging ideas,” said Miskell.
Droppert said “Meet the Editor” was “a fabulous start” to BEA. The booksellers’ visit to New Directions ended with a tour of the publisher’s editorial and publicity staff offices, as well as its first-editions archive and the massive view of lower Manhattan from the company’s 19th-floor balcony.
“They were wonderful,” Droppert said. “That was a great stop.”
At Macmillan, which is located in the iconic Flatiron Building, editors welcomed Cristina Nosti of Books & Books in Coral Gables, Florida; Terry Gilman of Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore in San Diego, California; Cathy Langer of Tattered Cover Book Store in Denver, Colorado; Camden Avery of The Booksmith in San Francisco; Sherri Gallentine of Vroman’s Bookstore and Book Soup in Pasadena, California; and Gillian Kohli of Wellesley Books in Wellesley, Massachusetts.
The publisher employed a “speed dating” format, which differed from the series of book pitches Macmillan’s editors presented to last year’s inaugural “Meet the Editor” group. Melissa Bullock-Campion, Macmillan’s senior manager of author events, counted down five-minute segments as booksellers rotated between 11 editors hailing from a number of imprints, including Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers, Picador, St. Martin’s Press, Metropolitan, and one of Macmillan’s newest imprints, Flatiron Books.
“The most interesting aspect of this has been learning about the editing process, and to see what editors do in their daily work. It’s a side we as booksellers are not really in tune with,” said Nosti, director of events and marketing at Books & Books.
While pitching their upcoming books, editors also asked booksellers about their customer bases, what sells in their stores, and the factors they consider when making their buys. Afterward, several booksellers expressed appreciation for the chance to meet with editors on their home turf.
Gallentine, head adult trade book buyer for Vroman’s, said two book pitches especially excited her: Flatiron Books editor Whitney Frick’s pitch for The Sound of Gravel, a memoir by escaped cult member Ruth Wariner, coming in January 2016, and a pitch from St. Martin’s executive editor Charlie Spicer on Hitler’s Art Thief: Hildebrand Gurlitt, the Nazis, and the Looting of Europe’s Treasures by historian Susan Ronald, publishing in September.
After Macmillan’s editors offered insights on their next season’s most exciting titles and promised to send along galleys, the event ended with a feedback session at which booksellers discussed ways they encourage sales of diverse books in their stores, what makes them more likely to go out of their way to order a paperback original title, and customer buying habits when it comes to YA literature.
“We don’t get to talk to retailers so this is a welcome opportunity to make connections, to talk about my books, and to advocate for them,” said Marco Palmieri, editor at Tor Books, Macmillan’s science fiction and fantasy imprint. “It’s important to keep the lines of communication open, and it is important for editors to take the pulse of the retail community at regular intervals so they don’t lose touch with that end of the business.”
At ABA’s Town Hall Meeting on Thursday, Matt Miller of Denver’s Tattered Cover Book Store summed up the sentiments of many of the booksellers who took part in “Meet the Editor” visits when he took the microphone and told the ABA Board and staff and other booksellers in attendance about his visit to the offices of HarperCollins. “My experience yesterday was really very positive,” he said. “It was just an incredible, incredible session with some very high caliber editors…. I would just encourage you, if you can, to continue [“Meet the Editor”] and expand it. I think it is an incredibly valuable experience.”
Look for further coverage of booksellers’ experiences at “Meet the Editor” in upcoming issues of Bookselling This Week. —Liz Button and Sydney Jarrard