"Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Lyman, Polish tobacco farmers near Windsor Locks, Connecticut" (Jack Delano, 1940)

The article came out a week or two ago, but I forgot to mention it here. Over at Publishers Weekly is an interesting article on my esteemed publisher, called “Minotaur Moves Beyond Genre,” and it features Yours Truly.

But the article is interesting beyond my presence, as it shows the attempts by a major mystery imprint to redefine itself in the book world:

[Minotaur publisher Andrew] Martin’s goal is to drive home the message that Minotaur, while it is about genre fiction, is also about big fiction.

It’s an interesting distinction, because the writer in me wonders, “What is big fiction?” Does it refer to big sales figures, physical heft, or big “concept”? I think the former.

Noting that his outlook on publishing was changed by the years he spent working at Sterling, owned by Barnes & Noble, Martin has devised a schedule in which Minotaur publishes one big book a month that is backed by a major marketing push and a 75,000-copy to 200,000-copy first printing.

Happily, I’m now part of that “big book” schedule.

During my earlier sequence, however, I’d sometimes wonder why I couldn’t pull a major coup with one of the Cold War books. After all, I tried to craft each one differently, and particularly with Liberation Movements (aka Istanbul Variations), I though I’d hit the sweet spot of market viability (while maintaining my indelible artistic credibility!). But reading this article, I’m able to see what was going on behind the scenes at that point:

The other route involves cherry-picking writers from Minotaur’s backlist (aka the farm team)—many of them accomplished genre authors the imprint has steadily done 5,000-copy print runs for. Olen Steinhauer is one such writer. Steinhauer’s The Tourist, published in March, is his sixth book, but the first in a new trilogy, which Martin said was key to giving the Edgar-winning author a higher profile. “[Steinhauer] had great literary chops,” Martin elaborated, “but I can’t make him great on book four or five of a five-book series.” (The Tourist, which has sold 51,000 copies to date, was also acquired for film by George Clooney.)

“I can’t make him great on book four or five of a five-book series” stands out in that paragraph. It’s a good point, which I hadn’t considered before. It might be possible to make a hit out of book 4, but it’s certainly going to be more of an uphill battle.

Of course, the fact that I’m now an Edgar winner stands out too (take that David Liss!).

It’s an interesting article. Check it out.

Posted Friday, June 19th, 2009 at 11:03 am under Ourselves, Publishing Business. Follow responses via the RSS 2.0 feed. Trackback. Both comments and pings are currently closed.