Paperback Dreams

Leave a comment

Although I’ve been focusing on my fiction writing lately, I still think about my poor, overlooked nonfiction books.  The other day I had an intriguing royalty statement from Bloomsbury.  (It’s not intriguing for the amount, which is negligible, but the implications.)    The name Bloomsbury is a story in itself.  Nightmares with the Bible was published by Fortress Academic and Lexington Books.  Lexington is (was?) an imprint of Rowman & Littlefield.  R&L was a fairly successful academic publishing brand, although not a university press.  A couple years back Bloomsbury, a British publisher, bought R&L.  Bloomsbury isn’t part of the “big five” publishers in English, but they did have the foresight, years ago, to sign up an unknown author by the name of J. K. Rowling.  Bloomsbury, cash in hand, began buying up smaller academic publishers.  That’s one way that publishers grow.

For me, that meant that Nightmares now had a new owner.  I have no idea which editor oversees it.  It’s a backlist title now, and I know from my own experience that when you inherit a backlist title, well, let’s just say there are more than enough frontlist and potential frontlist titles to keep you busy.  I was after my R&L editor for a paperback edition since Nightmares is my most expensive book, now that Gorgias Press has released a paperback of A Reassessment of Asherah.  This brings me back to my royalty statement.  On it there was a line for a paperback.  It even had an ISBN (9781978703209).  ISBNs cost money and many publisher don’t buy them unless they plan on using them.  Is there a paperback in the works?  I’m not getting my hopes up since ISBNs can be reassigned.

Earlier this summer I visited my local library to donate my books (if they would want them).  The head librarian kindly made time to discuss this and accepted Holy Horror and Sleepy Hollow As American Myth.  I left a little sad that I couldn’t offer Nightmares as well.  I only have two copies and I can’t afford to buy more, even with an author’s discount.  (Author discounts are usually between 40 and 60 percent; for a book that’s priced at over $100 that’s still not a bargain.)  I’m mature enough to know that a paperback wouldn’t fly off the shelves, but I consciously wrote Nightmares as a companion volume to Holy Horror—the two go together but were separated at birth.  You’ll pardon me for being excited at seeing a paperback ISBN, then.  I’ve been in publishing long enough now, however, not to read too much into it.

Going Once, Going Twice

Leave a comment

Do you ever get that feeling that you’ve been sold?  One thing I learned early on in academic publishing is that buyouts aren’t that unusual.  I recently wrote about Transaction being acquired by Taylor and Francis, for example.  Just a couple days ago I noticed in Publishers Weekly that Bloomsbury had bought out Rowman & Littlefield’s academic wing.  Then, at a company meeting the buyout was mentioned again.  Finally, I had an email from R & L letting me know.  You see, Nightmares with the Bible was published by Lexington Books/Fortress Academic.  This is an imprint of Rowman & Littlefield.  This means the rights to Nightmares have just been sold to Bloomsbury.  I do hope Bloomsbury has a more progressive idea about paperbacks!  In one of those strange synchronicities (all of this happened on the same day), I’d emailed one of the series editors of Horror and Scripture, asking if the series was still going.

I have no real concerns about being owned by Bloomsbury.  If you haven’t heard of them, it’s probably because they were a small operation until they took a chance on an unknown author by the name of J. K. Rowling.  Suddenly flush with cash, they started buying out smaller presses.  Big fish got to eat too!  Rowman & Littlefield had been buying out other publishers for years.  If you’re an academic you probably remember University Press of America.  Ever wonder where it went?  They bought Rowman & Littlefield in the late eighties and took over their name.  They bought other “assets”: Prometheus, Scarecrow Press, Hal Leonard.  They grew an enormous list of academic titles, now owned by Bloomsbury.

As someone who has knocked around academic publishing for some years now, it seems like this small world is getting even smaller.  Companies buy other companies and sometimes it works out for the benefit of authors.  Sometimes not.  Bloomsbury is only 37 years old.  Rowman & Littlefield was 75.  University Press of America (which first bought R & L, would’ve been 49.)  The younger buying out their elders.  Perhaps it’s because of my career malfunction, but I’ve discovered academic publishing to be a fascinating world in its own right.  Many academics pay little attention to the publisher, especially outside the big-name university presses.  But there are stories here.  I know that before I began working in the industry I’d never heard of Bloomsbury.  Then they bought out Continuum, which had bought out T & T Clark, from my beloved Edinburgh.  Now one of my books is under their umbrella.  And I have to wonder who will be sold next.