For those authors and would-be authors wanting to learn about the publishing industry from the inside, and for anyone remotely connected with the book trade or contemplating a business in it, this book provides a look at the success of a small publisher who never had a best-seller in its twenty-five-year existence as an independent house.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
In 1949 Steinberg, producing translations of Chinese classics, invested $8000 to found Twayne Publishers. His eventual success, however, was to stem from the Twayne Authors Series, proposed in 1958 by Indiana University professor Sylvia Bowman and which by 1991 included nearly 2000 critical studies of individual authors and literary movements. Despite sometimes ponderous excerpts from correspondences, this memoir yields many insights into decisions and people behind a firm whose slogan was "BOOKS not bucks." Amid the usual cash shortages and other problems, Steinberg and his editors (most notably poet John Ciardi) shaped a list ranging from poetry to science fiction to Judaica, including early work by Donald Hall, Norman Rosten and Edward Gorey. Prepaid library sales, Steinberg claims, helped make the Authors Series "the largest single project" in the history of publishing. Twayne has been part of Macmillan's reference division since 1991.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
Bookish story of Twayne Publishers, Inc., and how the scholarly house stayed alive largely through sales to libraries and academics. Steinberg, Twayne's founder, sticks to business here: We get precious little of the living man but much about his publishing philosophy and the nobler tricks of the trade. The author shunned big names, trembled at the idea of a bestseller that might turn into a very expensive dinosaur laying stone-dead books being returned to him by booksellers. Highlights include the births of dozens of series tailored to narrow markets: series about American and British authors and those of other ethnic groups and nationalities; series in criticism; series in Judaica (over 100 titles)--you name it and Twayne had a series. Small print-runs with guaranteed markets kept the house (founded in the mid-50's) afloat, and Steinberg had a special talent for handling remainders. In fact, when Twayne was sold at last to G.K. Hall & Co., a subsidiary of ITT, Steinberg was kept on, only to become the ``remainder maven'' for disposing of overstock for a number of ITT publishing companies. ``I think I got rid of more than a million books,'' he says. His liveliest moments come on trips to Moscow for the Moscow Book Fair--where he set up a display of outlawed Judaica that brought tears to the eyes of visiting Jews--and to China, a special interest of his because Twayne was founded specifically to publish the Chinese classic Dream of the Red Chamber (which the house then failed to bring out during its first ten years). Colorless--and certain not to be a bestseller. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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