The Publishers' Representatives

publishers' reps left to right:  Zeb Burgess - ?, unknown, Ted Maass - Macmillan, Frank Scioscia - Harper & Row

     Don't trade book salesmen have great jobs?  The responsibilities are hardly onerous.  Each salesman has a territory filled with book stores.  The salesman visits each one regularly and chats with the book buyer who is often the owner.  The book buyer orders inventory from the publisher's new season list while they discuss readers and book buyers and authors.

     The salesman checks stock and culls returns for the bookstore.  Then he drives off to another bookstore for more fun.

     

Theron Palmer - publisher's rep

photo July 1976 - Frank Scioscia & Theron Palmer - in Stephens' backyard

In the 1970s Theron Palmer was a sales representative for Dial/Delacorte and also represented Harper & Row and Atheneum. It’s not supposed to be that way. Usually one person represents one publisher. Theron’s territory – Texas and Oklahoma - had a lot of open space between bookstores. Theron was able to work out a joint arrangement.

In 1975, when he drove those long open stretches, oil prices and import problems led congress to pass a national speed limit of 55 mph. Many people complained. Theron didn’t. He cut his speed 20% - down to 55. Theron was patriotic and law-abiding. He said if he could do it on his long drives, then anyone should be able to keep to 55.
Theron grew up in Oklahoma. He talked about the difficulty of farming poor soil during the depression. He remembered that he only had onions to eat as a child. Those onions sustained him well though. He became a tall, broad man with a wonderful singing voice. I met Theron Palmer in the early 1960s, not long after my father met him. This was before he returned to OK/TX. In the early 1960s he just represented Dial and his territory, like my father’s, included southern California. Many evenings Theron brought his guitar to our house. His strong voice sang out in our book-lined living room. My father could never get enough of Theron’s songs. Theron had a wide repertoire of country songs but most memorably he sang a powerful version of “The Tennessee Stud”.

The Tennessee stud was long and lean,

the color of sun and his eyes were green.

     Theron twanged it out loud and hearty. The song is basically about a cowboy hero who loves a beautiful girl with golden hair.

I had some trouble with my sweetheart's pa,

And one of her brothers was a bad outlaw.

    The cowboy had to ride away on his very fine horse, the Tennessee stud. He rides into all sorts of dire situations, but he always gets out safely because of this exceptional horse. Time passes and he misses the girl. As it turns out, the stud’s in love too. He misses the Tennessee mare. They return. The cowboy whips the girl’s brother and pa and rides away with the girl who – coincidentally I guess - owns the Tennessee mare. Not all of Theron’s songs had happy endings, but this one did.

Pretty little baby on the cabin floor

Little colt playing around the door

I love the girl with golden hair

And the Tennessee stud loves the Tennessee mare

Sometimes Theron brought his wife, Violet, to our house too. My parents, Frank and Mary Scioscia, became friends with Violet and Theron Palmer. Both men travelled, selling books to stores far and wide. It's a special kind of life.  They both loved books. All four of them did. Whenever Theron wasn't strumming his guitar and singing, the adults were talking about books.

clerihew contest

The Literature Club of Hastings on Hudson has announced a clerihew contest as part of its 100th year anniversary festivities. A clerihew is a 4-line bit of nonsense with an aabb rhyme scheme. The subject can be anything, but to be eligible for the contest your clerihew must have a literary subject. (There’s a link to more details at the bottom of this posting.)
There are marvelous prizes. riverrun is involved. But the fun of the contest is in thinking up an entry more than in winning. I’m joining the clerihew party myself for that fun. Here are my submissions:

1.) What is a Clerihew?

A ditty silly not sublime.
Four lines with a-a-b-b rhyme.
Named for Bentley, Edmund Clerihew
And now it’s time for us to air a few.

2.) King Lear

Lear rewarded daughters two,
Would not believe their words untrue.
But for the banished girl who would not lie
He suffered anguish to see her die.

3.) Cyrano and Roxanne

He wrote of love in phrases rarified.
Alas, the signature she had not verified.
This blind triangle ends in ways quite drastic.
Consigning poor Roxanne to a life monastic.

4.) Lolita

Part woman, and too part child
This drove HH completely wild.
He made a plan and he took action
That led to his dark satisfaction.


Now that it’s typed out, I can see that Lolita does not really lend itself to a nonsense rhyme.
You try one. Send it in.

Find out more on the Literature Club website: literatureclubofhastings.blogspot.com
Send your entries to: litclubofhastings@gmail.com
O'Gara & Wilson, a Chicago Bookstore, runs a fun blog that also mentioned this contest on April 1

Opening Day

photo taken by an accommodating stranger

     The new Yankee Stadium is open for its first regular-season game.  It's a beautiful day for it.  Clear sky.  Warm sun.  Spring's sweet promise has touched trees and highway medians in New York City.

     Christopher Stephens and his four children are baseball enthusiasts and Yankee fanatics.   Chris and his daughter, Isabel, are at the game now.  (Top of the fifth, 1-0 Cleveland, Posada just threw out a renowned base stealer.  I know this and pass it on only out of family loyalty. )

     No worries for riverrun while Chris is truant.  Martin Kelly, riverrun manager, is a Mets fan.  Martin is on the job, attending to riverrun business.   

Frank Scioscia at Old Oregon Bookstore

July 1979 - unknown photographer

Here Frank Scioscia is visiting his old friend, Mac McMann at Mac's bookstore, The Old Oregon, in Portland Oregon.

A Conversation With Dan Frank - Editor

Dan Frank is editor-in-chief at Pantheon Books. An author once told me that Dan Frank’s authors affectionately refer to the publishing house as Dantheon.

Dan came into riverrun on Sunday. He talked about publishing. He thinks changes are coming.
“The age of corporate publishing preeminence may be drawing to a close. Small, independent publishers are already springing up and filling niches too small for the giant corporate machinery. It’s exciting. The orientation of a small publisher is completely different. They’re passionate about what they publish. They aren’t as passionate about bottom line considerations.”
This is how Dan Frank sees the development of big corporate publishing in the first place.
“Book clubs were very successful. Book of the Month Club and other mail order book clubs. People all over the country subscribed. This made bookstore corporations develop nationwide aspirations. Book retailing chains opened up, dotting the map. Now publishers jumped in. There was that glint in the eyes of the executives. They figured the distribution was in place. They could mainstream cultural items, publish in greater quantities and make bundles of money.
“They didn’t understand though. The book market is a niche market. People want to read history or poetry or fiction or mystery. Only very rarely is there crossover interest where all the different markets converge on the same book for gigantic sales.
“It does happen occasionally. There are a few golden success stories, like a John Le Carre spy novel, but the few breakthrough blockbusters only reinforce the unrealistic dream. Dream: If we can sell 10,000 copies of a book, why can’t we sell many multiples of 10,000? This business model is based on ever-increasing expansion but publishing is not really that kind of industry.
“People in publishing have torn themselves away from the corporate trough before. Atheneum, for instance, was founded in 1959. Michael Bessie was disgusted with Harper’s. Pat Knopf hated the idea of working with his father. Hiram Hayden left his post as editor in chief at Random House. They started Atheneum and published quality books without regard for mega-sales.
“There are other small, distinguished publishers, and I think more are coming.”
This is an interesting prediction for publishing. Dan Frank sees parallels with the movie industry. “You have the major studios producing pictures, and at the same time you have all these independent film makers.”
The 40 or 50 years of corporate publisher dominance have changed the nature of not only publishing, but writing too.
“The corporate publishers have created a class of writers that didn’t exist before. The publisher’s advance is the difference. Years ago, advances were a minor part of the pay package. A publisher would take on a worthy book even where they anticipated sales of just 5000 copies. The offer to the author might be something like $4000 advance against royalties. No one can live on that kind of money. The author kept his day job.
“Nowadays publishers look for the huge seller. Bidding is competitive. The advance is big, really big. Now the advances are big enough for the author to live on. He can leave his day job and write fulltime.
“The fulltime author is a creation of corporate publishing and the big advances.”
As Dan Frank sees it, this new class of author changed the dynamics of publishing in many ways.
“Twenty years ago, the most important relationship was still between author and editor. Now it’s between author and agent.”
The editor’s job is to get the best book possible out of the author. The agent’s job is to get the most money possible for the author. I’d heard that Dan Frank has very loyal authors.
“Not all,” he said. “More left than stayed.” I was skeptical.
“And editors move now too,” Frank told me. “It used to be that an editor spent his entire career at one publisher. Take Cass Canfield. He wasn’t going to leave Harper’s. He was doing what he wanted to do, publishing the books he wanted to publish. It used to be the only reason an editor left a publisher was if he couldn’t sign the authors he wanted. Bob Giroux, for instance, left Harcourt for Farrar, Straus because he wasn’t allowed to sign Catcher in the Rye. I mean, that was the last straw.”
“Now the editor’s job is more tenuous. Editors move around just like authors move around.”
Dan Frank talked about authors.
“A part-time author who writes around his schedule is, in a way, more even-keeled with his publisher. He’s happy to be published. He’s happy to be paid for his writing. The new fulltime writer, created by corporate publishing, is not in the same easy position. For him, publishing is his livelihood. And it’s a remarkably fickle livelihood. No wonder the author moves. When that day comes that his publisher doesn’t want the next book, or wants to pay less, or demands more revision work, the agent says ‘Come on. We’ll find some other publisher with deep pockets.’
“I think the hardest thing is for an author to stay true to what they are.”

Dan Frank offered more insights and anecdotes. It was a great conversation.

More Conversation With Dan Frank

As a student, Dan Frank was interested in philosophy and poetry but he wasn’t convinced that the life of a poet or of a philosopher was for him. Luckily he ventured further afield because, as Dan says, “I love publishing.” And publishing loves him.
Dan Frank had a couple of small jobs before he became an editor at Viking.
“I was really lucky. I got there just about the time Penguin purchased Viking. There were great editors at Viking – like Cork Smith. He was a real Pynchon enthusiast and he had such a good editorial eye. And Alan Williams. Quality history.
“With the Penguin/Viking combination, they were pushing some of these fine editors out, but I got to see their work”
Dan talked about the editorial eye. “It’s completely grounded in the individual’s interests as well as his curiosity and urge to push on for more. You’re thinking ‘I want to know more about this,’ but it’s really your familiarity with the subject that allows you to recognize something you haven’t seen expressed that way before. You’re reading, and you say, ‘Oh my god! I’ve never read a book like this.’ And that’s what you want to publish.
“For example, here’s someone who is looking at Einstein as a man who is thinking as dreaming.”
Is that real, I interrupt Dan. “Yes. Einstein’s Dreams, Alan Lightman.
“An important aspect of the editorial eye is that it’s shaped by your early encounters with reading – your earliest sense that what you’re reading is entirely different from what you’ve read or thought before.”
So what is Dan Frank’s eye exactly? What does he want to publish?
“I want to find books that are still going to be read 40 years from now. I’m not as interested in the first 6 weeks of a books life as I am in the next few decades. I want books that offer writing and concept that isn’t dated. There is this thing that rarely gets talked about in publishing – the truly great authors that may or may not have been a success in their time.”
Dan Frank’s editorial eye has far reaching vision. He wants to publish books whose greatest success may come beyond our time.
“Of course your employer wants you to find books that will sell – will make money now. That has to be one criterion in the selection. But consideration of the book market today need not be the dominant criterion. At Pantheon, we’re allowed to be quite idiosyncratic. We make money on Alexander McCall Smith and on the high quality back list. We’ve been publishing books for the future all along.”
I wonder about some of the authors that Dan Frank most likes. He spins out a few of his favorites.
“David Abram. The Spell of the Sensuous. It’s a book of natural philosophy, about how language comes out of human experience with the earth. Abram has a lot to say and he says it his way. Sometimes he takes my suggestions but other times he doesn’t want to make my changes. This book speaks to many. He has become hugely influential in the environmental movement.”
“Richard Holmes is a big biographer of romantic poets. He’s written a wonderful book, Footsteps: Adventures of a Romantic Biographer. He writes about what a biographer does – about how he excavates his subject. Holmes, the writer, is taking you on a tour of his own workshop in a way. He shows you how it’s done, what interests him, how the research works.”
“Joseph Mitchell. Great writer. He wrote in the 30s, 40s and 50s. McSorley’s Wonderful Saloon. The Bottom of the Harbor. Up in the Old Hotel. I convinced him to let me reprint his essays. He wanted it done a particular way. He wanted everything in one volume.”

Dan Frank has lots more favorites. He sparkles with enthusiasm for authors, for books, for publishing, for reading. His enthusiasm is quite contagious.