A Twist on the Bookseller/Author Partnership

The Winter Institute session “Exploring New Partnerships Between Indie Booksellers and Authors” tackled how indie booksellers can use their curatorial skills to help publish authors (especially debut authors) and create new business models that improve a bookstore’s bottom line. ABA CEO Oren Teicher moderated the panel featuring Mitchell Kaplan, owner of Books & Books in South Florida and Grand Cayman, and Susan Novotny, whose businesses include Staff Picks Press, The Troy Book Makers, The Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza in Albany, and Market Block Books in Troy, New York.

All indies can benefit from “thinking outside of the box,” said Teicher. And Kaplan and Novotny are “doing just that.”

Staff Picks Press is a new, small independent publishing company that has the goal of bringing “excellent reading to great readers,” said Novotny. And along the way, she hopes to “make a little money while having fun.”

Novotny had long been considering the idea of creating a publishing company. When she was brought a standout manuscript for Change: A Story for All Ages by local authors Judith Barnes and Erick James, with illustrations by Jeff Grader, and shortly afterward another excellent manuscript for Comeback Love by Peter Golden, she decided it was time for her own press.  

With Golden’s novel, she “read it in two gulps and didn’t want it to end.”  Novotny brought Change to the attention of indie booksellers in an ABA White Box mailing. Ten booksellers placed orders, and it made the December 2010 Indie Next List. The title also received a Gold Award for Book Design from the Creativity International 40th Print Competition. Both Change and Comeback Love were taken on for distribution by Ingram and Bookazine.  

Talking with BTW, Novotny said, “This is a great opportunity for all independent booksellers to be publishers of excellent literature.”

The idea of Staff Picks is literal. Manuscripts need to be unanimously approved by Novotny and two other Book House staff members before they’re published. Novotny said that booksellers are “the ones that know our readers and are the ones who know our authors,” so she knew that she could fill a gap that commercial publishers don’t. Manuscripts submitted for publication are expected to be polished, and Staff Picks works closely with authors throughout the entire process, which means “no author will end up hating the cover,” Novotny said.

Novotny is asking booksellers to participate in the reviewing of manuscripts. She also invited booksellers to contact Staff Picks Press if they are handed an extraordinary manuscript. The press will primarily publish fiction and narrative nonfiction. The company’s website (staffpickspress.com) will be live February 10.

Mitch Kaplan outlined several of his creative projects, not so much to provide a blueprint, but to encourage others to take the occasional leap of faith. “I’m sure there are a lot of things that cross your path that you might think are impossible to do with everything else you have going on, but you can do it.” He focused on more recent ventures, rather than the 26-year-old Miami Book Fair, which he founded.

Considering the challenges of bookselling, Kaplan looks to create value in what he has already built and leverage his relationships. When he was approached by a Miami detective with a riveting true crime story about solving the Adam Walsh murder, he assumed he would have no trouble finding a publisher. “I thought I’d send it out. There would be a huge auction the next day. And I’d bring glory to the author,” Kaplan said. When he got “virtually no response,” he considered publishing it himself. Instead Kaplan connected the detective, Joe Matthews, to writer Les Standiford, the director of Florida International University’s MFA in Creative Writing program. Standiford co-authored the book, Bringing Adam Home, with Matthews, and the title was picked up by Ecco for a 100,000-copy first printing and is an Indie Next list pick for March.

When a customer asked Kaplan to consider carrying her self-published book on South Beach, Kaplan recognized a good thing. “There was no souvenir book on South Beach,” he said. “I knew I could sell thousands.”  Kaplan partnered with the author and former Assouline publisher Ausbert de Arce to publish South Beach: Stories of a Renaissance, a coffee-table book, for wider distribution. Books & Books has since sold 5,000 copies.

Kaplan has facilitated the publication of several other books that have caught his interest, including the fall title Blue Christmas, an anthology that is “non-sentimental, dark, and interesting.” Kaplan, who is publishing this on his own, is offering it on consignment to other booksellers.

To further encourage other booksellers to take a chance on their “why not” moments, Kaplan recapped another one of his own: the launch of the Mazur/Kaplan Company with writer-producer Paula Mazur and the optioning of the movie rights for The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (in development now, and with Kate Winslet signed to play Juliet Ashton). Mazur/Kaplan has since optioned several other titles, including Major Pettigrew's Last Stand and Les Standiford’s Bringing Adam Home. Kaplan cautioned that money can only be made on optioned books if the movie sells. But, he said, his days of investing a lot of time in a project for “karma credit” were over.

Kaplan encouraged booksellers to see some of their “millions of ideas” into fruition. “I’m willing to help in any way.” He also reminded the audience that “what we do on the front lines is very valuable.”

In response, Bob Spear, book packager and owner of the Book Barn in Leavenworth, Kansas, commented that he has published several regional titles on Kansas history, which sell well. 

The panel inspired Libby Manthey of Riverwalk Books in Chelan, Washington. “I need to keep my brain open wider,” she said. “Sometimes you start to lose that zeal, that spirit of entrepreneurship. This helped stoke that fire.”