Cantarabooks' shared items

(This is the sixth and last part in a multi-part series examining publisher imprint brands in an informal, opinionated manner. Part I, focusing on Macmillan, is here, and Part II, focusing on Simon & Schuster, is here,  Part III, focusing on Hachette, is here, Part IV, focusing on HarperCollins, is here, and Part V, focusing on Penguin, is here.)

Before I get to the biggest corporate behemoth of them all, a word on why I'm ignoring some of the other majors. Norton is a large independent that seems to know what it's doing with regard to mixing serious non-fiction, literary fiction and other smart titles that cross the academic/commercial line. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt just survived a rather brutal merger of its educational and trade offerings, but the sense I get is that the end result, on the trade side, might be a leaner, stronger, more focused publishing house. And everybody else in the game is smaller in terms of how much they publish and the money they have the potential to make.

So. Random House. The "run amok with weirdness" crack of the previous post? Has to do with what the recent departure of Ed Volini, longtime COO of the company, might mean. If he was just leaving it would be one thing. But his positions are being eliminated outright, and everybody who reported to Volini will now report to CEO Markus Dohle - who of course, took over that position from Peter Olson about three months or so ago.

The prevailing wisdom is that when there's someone new at the top, reorganization down the line is bound to happen. It wasn't quite the case with Olson (beyond the Random House/Ballantine merging and Ann Godoff's firing, but let's face it, it ended up working out pretty well for all parties concerned) but the probability of change and culling seems greater with Dohle.

In fact, I almost feel sorry for him, because even though from an imprint standpoint, Random House appears to be an overly redundant, disorganized mess that is way too big for its own good, there aren't that many options for what to do. Keeping the status quo doesn't seem like a very viable prospect. Sell some of the divisions off? Well, their parent company Bertelsmann already got rid of its Direct Publishing arm, so there's a selling mood in the air. But at a time when Reed is practically begging people to take its magazine arm from them - to the point where they are practically paying prospective new owners to do so - I don't see too many enthusiastic takers for one of RH's chicken legs or thighs. Merge unprofitable divisions with more profitable ones? That seems more likely, but perhaps not for some time.

But let's go through the (many, many, many) imprints, shall we?

Let's first look at the flagship division, Random House Publishing Group. Random House (or Little Random) is the generalist imprint, with literary-ish titles that become bestsellers (Charles Bock's BEAUTIFUL CHILDREN, Curtis Sittenfeld's AMERICAN WIFE most recently), serious non-fiction, and a number of authors who have been around forever because they are still being edited by Kate Medina (or, until he retired, Bob Loomis.) Both hardcover and trade paperback lines suggest prestige and earnestness, a strange mix of old school and new school. Ballantine is the commercial arm, one that is still trying to redefine itself because they had too many titles that weren't doing so well, but getting closer to a clearer goal. That would be a mix of romantic suspense (Alison Brennan) thrillers (Tess Gerritsen, now Barry Eisler) commercial fiction (Nancy Horan's LOVING FRANK, among others) and other titles that lend themselves toward mass market paperbacks. Del Rey is science fiction and fantasy and one of the best imprints for such. One World is for the African-American market. Villard is in an identity crisis, I think they make money but I really have no idea what their mandate is. And Modern Library is the classics arm.

Next up is Bantam Dell, the ne plus ultra of commercial fiction for the company. Lee Child, Dean Koontz, Danielle Steel, Thomas Harris, you know the drill. And yet, can anyone tell me why some books get published as a Delacorte hardcover and others as Bantam? Or why some books end up as a Bantam paperback and others as Dell? You can't? I thought so. Oh, it has to do with historical meaning? Yeah, and how many of those old imprints died out years ago? Would it be so difficult to pick a name and stick with it, since it will sell a lot of books anyway? And then there is Delta for trade paperbacks and Dial Press for hybrid commercial and literary stuff (Hannah Tinti, Allegra Goodman) and Bantam Discovery for paperbacks of a book club bent. There's some non-fiction the Bantam Dell mix, but that's not what I associate this division with at all. And Spectra is SF/F.

Next up is Knopf. You know what the flagship imprint stands for even if you are only dimly conscious of it. Uber-literary, super-serious non-fiction, but enough sense of what is going on that they still make a decent mint. Even when Knopf publishes midlist books they tend to be interesting, or imported, or generally really smart. When they publish commercial fiction, then it gets more dicey because sometimes they publish crime fiction like it's the second coming when really it's just another meh genre book. Also in this group on the hardcover side is Pantheon, and in my less charitable moments I think of them as Little Knopf. They have a clearer brand identity for graphic novels and I love what they do over there. Schocken is for Judaica and Everyman Library is for classics. As for paperbacks...Vintage is like Knopf, Anchor feels like a leftover imprint from a bygone era.

The Doubleday Publishing Group is a new name, with a new logo (albeit one cribbing from Ballantine's, which is kind of odd) and the shiny newness is reflected in their imprint websites, increased attention to internet marketing, and the like. But that doesn't mean there aren't some branding issues. Doubleday, being the flagship, gets the brunt of the potential bestsellers (Linda Fairstein just moved over there, Andrew Davidson's THE GARGOYLE, Jane Mayer's THE DARK SIDE for non-fiction, etc.) and some literary fiction that can cross over more commercially (Jonathan Lethem, Colson Whitehead) They are hit and miss on midlist and I suspect they will publish fewer and fewer such titles from here on in. Broadway is weird. I can't understand their focus at all, because it should be of a celebrity bent (Judith Regan would know what to do with them) but then they publish random midlist fiction titles? Wha? That their name was taken out of the corporate division title is telling. Spiegel & Grau is still new but it's basically Riverhead 2.0, with the same literary-ish sensibility (Sara Gruen, Adam Langer and Janelle Brown number among their authors.) The problem is that means there's too much intra-competition with Doubleday editors for the same sorts of books. And Nan Talese is the stuffy literary imprint, even when some of its offerings are unstuffy.On the paperback side, S&G get their own, Doubleday sometimes farms things out to Anchor and sometimes keeps it in-house, but there's room to develop a really strong mass market and trade paperback division (or just steal Anchor outright.)

The Crown Publishing Group is in transition. They lost Steve Ross to Collins. They lost Sally Kim to Harper so she could start her own imprint. They cannot do midlist and genre to save their life. So what do they do? Well, the imprints with clear focus - Crown Business, Crown Forum, Clarkson Potter - cover business, practical non-fiction and how-to, respectively. Three Rivers mixes historical fiction, hardcover reprints, humor (WHY DO MEN HAVE NIPPLES?) and random genre stuff on the trade paperback side. Shaye Areheart had a great upmarket sensibility for fiction, especially by women (Tawni O'Dell, Lee Martin, Lisa Unger, Amy McKinnon, to name a few) but we'll see how new senior editor Sarah Knight puts her stamp on what titles she'll bring in. Harmony is the non-fiction version of Shaye Areheart, with a similar sensibility. So that leaves the flagship, Crown. And I really don't know what it does anymore. A little of everything, which means a lot of nothing. Maybe it'll be different in 12 months.

There's lots and lots else going on at Random House - a big children's division, a fledgling film department, information (most of which I suspect will have to migrate online, and fast) - but I've already spilled enough e-ink. So having gone through division by division, imprint by imprint, I think there's going to be some serious pain in the company for the next little while, maybe even approaching SURVIVOR tactics, but it'll be interesting to see what sort of mark Mr. Dohle makes as CEO. Many people will be watching.

(This is the fifth in a multi-part series examining publisher imprint brands in an informal, opinionated manner. Part I, focusing on Macmillan, is here, and Part II, focusing on Simon & Schuster, is here,  Part III, focusing on Hachette, is here, and Part IV, focusing on HarperCollins, is here. Others will follow over the course of the month.)

I've been saving the biggest behemoths for last because they take longer to discuss and because, frankly, they drive me a little crazy. So many imprints! So much redundancy! So much confusion! But of the two corporate bigwigs, I'd say Pearson has the edge of Bertelsmann and that's only because the former isn't about to run amok with weirdness like the latter will. In other words, we're talking about Penguin Group today.

Penguin is the only American company where their flagship imprint is a paperback one, but of course that makes sense - Penguin means paperbacks, ever since Allen Lane got the idea to create the imprint more than 70 years ago. So that imprint has always had a good sense of what it is meant to be: quality, whether for literary fiction, occasional ventures into commercial fiction (like its mass market partnership with Grove/Atlantic to reprint mysteries and thrillers by Mo Hayder and Donna Leon) and non-fiction. Trade originals in translation or set in exotic climes. Call it accessibly high-falutin', but when you see a Penguin paperback, you know what you're going to get.

Plume, the other major trade paperback imprint, is a little more spotty. By rights it should be solely commercial, leaving anything vaguely prestigious to Penguin. So why is Hari Kunzru a Plume author? Why is David Benioff's CITY OF THIEVES going to Plume (well, his last books did, and it is probably going to be a huge seller, but still)? And the book on the cover of the Winter 2009 catalog, Alex Wichtel's THE SPARE WIFE...was originally published in hardcover by Knopf. Interesting. But a side point. Point being, Plume should be wholly commercial, but it's as if it doesn't want to admit that it is.

On the mass market side, for commercial fiction I know there is Berkley and there is Jove and I still cannot figure out why one book is published with one imprint and a second book with the other. Of course, it turns out things aren't so simple, as Berkley is really a group holder for several imprints: Berkley Prime Crime for category mysteries, Heat (or is it Sensation?) for erotica, Daw and Ace for science fiction and fantasy (though there's enough redundancy with those imprints, too) JAM for crossover YA, and the flagship for anything that will make money in decent quantities. In other words, holy hell Berkley, what the hell are you guys doing? This is a mess! No really, my head is going to explode. And if I'm confused I can only imagine how everyone else feels.

There's also New American Library, or NAL. They aren't quite the mess that Berkley is, but they overlap so much and have so many little imprints of their own that it's kind of like alphabet soup after a while. Look at the mass market side: there's Obsidian, for mysteries (okay) but there's Signet and Onyx for commerical titles, paranormal, romance, on and on...and I don't know why something goes to Signet and why something goes to Onyx. And there is another SF/F imprint, Roc! NAL Accent for commercial women's fiction in trade paper, Caliber for um, military non-fiction? Westerns? You tell me. Eclipse for paranormal trade paperbacks, and the flagship name for reprints that the hardcover imprints didn't designate in Plume or even Penguin. More overlap! So confusing. Oh and NAL does hardcovers, too, because sometimes they want to make all the money on a book instead of sharing it with other imprints run by other people. Did I mention the confusing part?

Now to hardcovers. Penguin Press is by and large upmarket, with literary fiction, serious non-fiction, some genre that crosses over (like R.N. Morris's Porfiry Petrovitch mysteries, Jedidiah Berry's upcoming genre-bender THE MANUAL OF DETECTION) and general quality that will almost always end up as a Penguin paperback. Viking is the most literary of the bunch on both fiction and non-fiction (when they try to do genre they suck at it and should stop), and after a bit of a slump their catalogs are, at least on paper, turning out to be more and more awesome of late. Putnam is (or at least, ought to be) 100% commercial, though the brand is aging and not always well. Consider that they publish Nora Roberts & J.D. Robb, Patricia Cornwell, Sue Grafton Robert B. Parker, Randy Wayne White, John Sandford, W.E.B. Griffin, Clive Cussler, Dick Francis and Stuart Woods, among others. A lot of people who still sell very well but whose heydays are long (sometimes looooooong) past. They are trying to inject some new commercial blood with Ariana Franklin, Alex Berenson, Ace Atkins, and (by import) Robert Crais, because those aging bestsellers aren't always going to be around. Moving in one layer is where it gets a bit more fun, because Marian Wood has her own imprint (publishing Grafton and Philip Kerr) and now, so does Amy Einhorn, late of Warner/Grand Central, who wants to hit "the sweet spot between literary and commercial", whatever that means. One aging editorial imprint and one brand new. I shouldn't compare, but it's too easy. Advantage, for now, Einhorn, as she doesn't have a track record yet.

Let's cover a few of the little imprints. Sentinel does books for the conservative market; Portfolio does business. Tarcher is a hodgepodge of non-fiction that should really figure out what it wants to do. Hudson Street calls itself a practical non-fic imprint, but so does Perigee, kind of. Uh oh. Alpha is computer books. Celebra, not to be confused with the discontinued anti-inflammatory Celebrex, is a celebrity book imprint that I had never heard of until yesterday. And Avery is health and wellness.

And back to the bigger ones. Dutton and Gotham complement each other, which means Dutton should be fiction and Gotham non-fiction...but sometimes Dutton does non-fiction (Daniel Levitin, for example) because maybe it looks better? Anyway, Dutton is trying to be more blockbuster-driven (Harlan Coben, Raymond Khoury) and 2.0 trendy (Daniel Suarez, some CSI guy) and occasionally puts out fiction that might be thought of as literary-ish (Hari Kunzru) but I still feel like it hasn't fully found its footing yet. Maybe in a year once all of editor Ben Sevier's acquisitions play themselves out.

For an imprint abandoned by its creators, Riverhead is doing pretty well with its mix of bestselling commercial fiction (Khaled Hosseini) award winning literary fiction (Junot Diaz) and non-fiction that's part memoir, part spiritual. They don't publish too much and by and large publish books well, but their missteps tend to be when they tread into genre waters - which makes Walter Mosley's new PI series a bit of a gamble, but one that could pay off well.

I am almost certain I forgot a few imprints (and am deliberately leaving out the children's side and anything distributed by Penguin but not owned by them) which kind of illustrates the point. A lot of names. Some of them well-defined, some of them a lot less so. Some of them with great online savvy, some of them barely in touch with the Internet. A lot of hands that probably never talk to each other. A lot of chaff needing to be separated from the wheat. Bottom line: Fun times at Penguin - literal or sarcastic, depending on where you work or who you are published with...

(This is the fourth in a multi-part series examining publisher imprint brands in an informal, opinionated manner. Part I, focusing on Macmillan, is here, and Part Ii, focusing on Simon & Schuster, is here, and part III, focusing on Hachette, is here. Others will follow over the course of the month.)

Like Hachette, HarperCollins has spent the last while reorganizing itself. Its reasons, of course, are different, because the company hadn't been bought out by another company, nor had it bought anyone else lately, but some of the mechanisms are similar. More imprint streamlining; CEOs leaving and being replaced from within; greater attention to the Internet and its marketing potential; and the greatest focus on the bottom line. Some of the reorganization is finished - HarperMorrow on one end, Collins on another - and some hasn't really begun yet. All of which means that HarperCollins is in the midst of interesting times, imprint-wise....

First, let's look at all the imprints comprising the nomenclature beast that is HarperMorrow. It's a catch-all corporate title derived from the flagship hardcover imprints, William Morrow and Harper, and you'll never (I hope) see it on the spine of a book. But in a way, it also encapsulates the overlap problems affecting both those imprints and whether the names are just being kept for the name's sake. Because both William Morrow and Harper publish big commercial fiction titles, historical fiction, mysteries and thrillers, and narrative non-fiction (though Harper does more on the non-fiction side.) So what's the difference between the two?

There are small differences: Morrow really covers historical fiction and romance more than Harper does, and does more "category" mysteries, in that they publish long-running series that hit bestseller lists. But I'd  say the difference is that Harper takes bigger monetary risks that either pay off (Garth Stein's THE ART OF RACING IN THE RAIN, hanging onto the extended bestseller lists all summer) or fall flat on its face (Vikram Chandra's SACRED GAMES. It sold copies, but nowhere near enough.) Next March that pendulum swing moves towards literary translation as Jonathan Littell's THE KINDLY ONES hits shores. Harper hopes for a Roberto Bolano-like success; we'll see what happens, but are they really going to be satisfied if this 900-page doorstopper only attracts a cult audience, however slavish?

Morrow doesn't have to fluctuate so wildly with its choices; they seem better capable at building up from the backlist (Laura Lippman's slow-growth success is a good example of this) or hitting on bestsellers without needing to spend a lot of money (the advance on MARLEY AND ME was fairly modest, especially in light of what it has since spawned). So at least on the hardcover side, Morrow seems to have a more consistent mandate for its imprint than Harper does (and something tells me that Jonathan Burnham, Harper's publisher, will be watched very, very closely in 2009 if the money's not where NewsCorp wants it to be) but flagship hardcover imprints only tell part of the story.

Morrow also includes many other imprints with more specific goals. Eos is science fiction/fantasy, and if there's an author who sells really well (Neal Stephenson) with a new book out, they get published by Morrow in hardcover. The same thing happens with Avon, which has always been and always will be about romance on the mass market side (and so its major romance authors, like Stephanie Laurens and Susan Elizabeth Phillips, then "graduate" to hardcover with Morrow). Avon on the trade paperback side, however, is a little different and a bit more experimental. There's Avon A, a recent imprint for contemporary women's fiction (Meg Cabot's work for adults as best example) and non-fiction of a self-help/how-to/breezy narrative bent that caters to women, and Avon Red, it's erotica line. Both are still young imprints but even their logos make clear what they are trying to do and often accomplish.

Some hardcover imprints within Harper have their own little fiefdom. Take Ecco, which still thinks it's an independent literary press that's a repository for Charles Bukowski or Joyce Carol Oates and wants to be perceived as an even snootier cousin to FSG, but then they have a hit with EDGAR SAWTELLE and it confuses everything all over again. Every time I think Ecco's on the road to nowhere they spread their little Phoenix wings and stay alive once more. Amistad is African-American fiction and benefits from the astounding the deserved success of Edward P. Jones. I'd say Rayo is Latino, but I'm not 100% sure that imprint really exists properly anymore or got merged into Harper. HarperOne was most recently HarperSanFrancisco, and though the imprint is still based out west the new name is better because it's less about geography and more about spirituality and wellness. I mean, the slogan now is "books you can believe in", which should say it all. And as for HarperStudio, Bob Miller's much-discussed new imprint, their first announced buy was the next 10 books by Emeril Lagasse, which is a) absolutely perfect for the low advance/profit sharing model they are working with b) a harbinger of things to come.

Then we get to the paperback side, where all the hardcover imprints feed into. HarperPerennial, as a brand, implies permanency for a younger readership. That means putting what they consider modern classics (real or future) into trade paperback or publishing original works that might otherwise be difficult to classify except as "edgy". So Chad Kultgen's THE AVERAGE AMERICAN MALE works really well in Perennial but might not elsewhere; when David Wroblewski's THE STORY OF EDGAR SAWTELLE eventually hits paperback, chances are good it'll be in Perennial. Most of the "prestige" publishing Harper does in hardcover ends up here, and they especially kick ass with smart choices from other countries (Sarah Hall, Heather O'Neill, Ross Raisin, Emily Maguire, and Daniel Clay.) They also blog, podcast, and generally make a concerted effort on the Internet marketing side to further their brand.

So what does that mean for its other paperback arm, Harper? Good question. It isn't quite the bastard stepsibling of Perennial, but also doesn't quite skew so commercial as does Avon A (in other words, Jennifer McMahon's work.) But all those other paperbacks have to go somewhere! At least on the mass market front Harper can be as commercial as it needs to be. But I'd like to see a more concerted effort to make HarperPaperbacks a more focused paperback imprint, especially on the trade side...not just be the landing pod for leftover softcover.

Now let's move across the corporate callosum to the Collins Publishing Group, as they are newly christened with the Winter 2009 catalog. Four imprints, four mandates. Three of them - Collins Business, Collins Design, Collins Living - self-explanatory. As for Collins' flagship imprint? They want narrative non-fiction and lots of it, and hired a number of editors and acquired a bunch of titles to make their wishes come true. We'll see what successes result, but more interesting is what it means from an intra-competition standpoint. Because, as I mentioned earlier, Harper's known for narrative non-fic, with Tim Duggan editing most of those titles. Does that mean extra pressure for Harper, or just another kick in the rear to make that imprint more focused? Again, we shall see.

Bottom line: well, it's all about money in the end, but it's also about where the American side of the company will be in a year's time. The rebranding they've done has been for the better, but the jury is definitely out on Collins and HarperStudio, with some work to be done on Harper, hardcover and paperback.

(This is the third in a multi-part series examining publisher imprint brands in an informal, opinionated manner. Part I, focusing on Macmillan, is here, and Part Ii, focusing on Simon & Schuster, is here. others will follow over the course of the month.)

Unlike the other major corporate publishers, which are in various stages of brand identity reorganization, Hachette Book Group has just thrown off the shackles of its previous name and owner, Time Warner (as well as that horribly dated Warner logo), and embraced its new European corporate overlords. If I expanded this series to look at publishers' UK arms, the landscape would be quite different (since Hachette owns Orion, Hodder Headline and Little Brown UK, leading to some imprint overlap, confusion, problems with Amazon, etc.) But on the US side, Hachette as publisher looks a lot more streamlined than Time Warner ever was. But there's still a ways to go.

Little, Brown goes first. I like Little, Brown because most of what they publish, they clearly want to make money and do. James Patterson makes lots of money. Michael Connelly makes lots of money. Stephenie Meyer makes lots of money. Alice Sebold still makes lots of money even if THE ALMOST MOON disappointed, but blame the book, not the push. Malcolm Gladwell not only makes money, he's a mid-size business, and OUTLIERS will only extend that business. That means there's room to gamble on first time authors with gargantuan advances (Elizabeth Kostova, check. Josh Bazell's BEAT THE REAPER, ask me early next year) or an author who looks midlist but turns out not to be (Dan Simmons, Kate Atkinson) or award winners who also earn out and then some (Joshua Ferris, Daniel Woodrell, George Pelecanos, though he's a trickier case.)

Bottom line for Little, Brown: their brand is smart, whether in their commercial choices - say what you will about James Patterson, and much ink is spilled on quality vs. sausage factory and the like, but it is one of the greatest author-publisher relationships going at the moment and both sides know it - or their less commercial ones. There are very, very few titles they published that make me shake my head in bewilderment. With the exception of Gladwell, though, they aren't as strong on non-fiction. (Which explains why James Patterson is putting his name to a non-fic title this fall, which should sell accordingly.) Should they be? Maybe a bit more, if only to add a bit more muscle, but once they are already being selected about what they acquire overall, maybe not.

Where Little, Brown can grow, however, is on the paperback side. Back Bay works pretty well as a trade imprint, though when they attempt originals, the lack of enthusiasm really shows. Mass market? Warner did it really well and Grand Central is trying to, but sometimes I see the L,B logo on a mass market title and it just doesn't make sense (on a trade, though I don't notice them all that much, it looks like it's a bit more service-oriented, which is fine enough.) Smart commercial = trade. Mass market commercial = GC. The distinctions work better this way for me.

So yes, Grand Central. Their choice of fiction lead titles the past two seasons kind of say it all: CHILD 44 good, Martina Cole's US debut...not so much. But maybe now they have learned what other houses knew a decade and a half ago: Essex doesn't sell in America, otherwise Jordan and Kerry Katona would be riding high on the bestseller lists here as well. But back on point: Grand Central is commercial, whether with fiction (thrillers, blockbuster fiction for women, romantic suspense) or non-fiction (Michael Moore, the book about Dewey the cat that is destined to sell in massive quantities this fall). Midlist go home, which is why Mysterious Press shut down and they aren't so great at category or even straight single title romance, even with the dedicated imprint of Forever. Literary fiction won't work unless there's a clear commercial hook, so they can do reasonably well with Joshilyn Jackson and pin high hopes on Tiffany Baker's THE LITTLE GIANT OF ABERDEEN COUNTY. 5 Spot lost its focus when chicklit imploded, and publish fewer and fewer titles each season, so if it isn't on a deathwatch, it should be.

Science fiction goes directly to Orbit (which is still too young to assess fully, but they are more fantastical and space opera-ish than the harder SF edge of, say, Tor).  business books have their own imprint, as does Wellness, as does Inspiration/faith with the recently rebranded Faithwords. Springboard I still can't quite figure out as it feels like they have leftovers of the late Bulfinch Press but also some other stuff that screams coffee table. Center Street is even more of a mystery, or maybe it's because I'm not their target audience. And Twelve, of course, is a brand into of itself, though because it's Karp's baby, it reflects his taste almost 100%. Which means non-fiction gets on the bestseller lists and fiction kind of tanks unless it's Christopher Buckley, who's writing for a non-fiction audience anyway.

Bottom line: from a branding aspect, Hachette generally knows what its imprints do or what they ought to be doing. Even before they were Hachette they got into online marketing before everyone else. All the main fiction imprints with attached (and short!) mission statements are on Twitter. They want to make money but have enough room to absorb the occasional flop. But in the unlikely event James Patterson decides to jump ship, things might be very, very, very different for the company....

(This is the second in a multi-part series examining publisher imprint brands in an informal, opinionated manner. Part I, focusing on Macmillan, is here; others will follow.)

It's been about a year since longtime CEO Jack Romanos announced his retirement and that longtime #2, Carolyn Reidy, would take his place at the top. The company had done rather well thanks to the now-quaint phenomenal success of THE SECRET (really, the thing dated about as quickly as the movie TITANIC, unwatchable as soon as it was released on video) but that's old news. So is the company at a crossroads or still climbing? The answer, I think, is somewhere in between...

First let's consider the flagship imprint, Simon & Schuster (or in jargon terms, Little Simon, which is different from Little Simon, the company's flagship children's book imprint.) Their strengths have long been history and narrative non-fiction, and most recently the success and controversy of Nicholson Baker's HUMAN SMOKE certainly bolsters this. But Alice Mayhew isn't getting younger and the majors are certainly encroaching on this well-worn territory. As for fiction, I like what they are trying to do with works in translation, but is S&S really the right place for it? Their literary fiction choices are odd, but usually in a good way. Commercial fiction, however, seems to be on the downswing; James Lee Burke, Jeffery Deaver and Mary Higgins Clark's careers are aging and sales are sloping downward (Deaver writing two books a year is worrisome and it's showing in the execution) and Robert Crais, despite selling really well, has switched to Putnam. Can they lure younger writers? Lisa Lutz, Megan Abbott and possibly Daniel Deep seem to be their choices, but it does seem like Little Simon could narrow their focus a little.

On the other hand, at least they have some recognizable brand identity. Scribner's is completely shot to hell. They publish Stephen King! But they have snooty literary fiction! They love Chuck Klosterman! And they are doing the Suzy Welch book?! Please, stop being so schizophrenic, it gives me a damn headache.

Free Press is also kind of weird of late. I think of them for serious non-fiction, military history even, but then they want to get in on literary fiction (Joseph O'Connor, Elisa Albert) and pre-empted Emily Gould's book, which is decidedly not serious. Sticking to what the imprint used to do when it was an independent publishing company seems to me a better bet (because as I've said before and will say again, small presses can be branded.)

Atria also suffers from brand schizophrenia. There are three streams: commercial fiction (Jennifer Weiner, Jodi Picoult, John Connolly, Jude Devereaux, Zane) self-help/how-to, and works in translation, especialy Spanish-language, now that they've made it official with Atria International. But when they get outside what they do best, especially venturing into midlist, they get in trouble. I'm still not sure why they bother with outright literary fiction, and if they do narrative non-fiction it's almost negligible. And on the paperback side it's a bigger mess, using the same name for mass-market (okay) and farming out some of their trade paperbacks to Washington Square Press, an old imprint that's lost all brand recognition, especially as Little Simon's trade paperback side gets stronger.

Simon Spotlight should be the most tightly focused imprint: entertainment all the way. So why do they publish books like Ivo Stourton's THE NIGHT CLIMBERS or any works of fiction not written by a celebrity? Beats me; they don't do it well, they should stop. At least Howard stays on message with inspiration/Christian titles.

Touchstone has been changing their imprint identity the last few years, adding more historical fiction (good) and thrillers (mixed) but the problem is that there's so much overlap with Atria and Little Simon on commercial fiction that it all kind of bleeds together. J.A. Jance could be Little Simon; Lyndsay Faye, whose Sherlock Holmes/Jack the Ripper debut comes out in April, seems to belong in Touchstone but will be published by the flagship (odd, because her acquiring editor works for Touchstone - or is this part of the overlap problem?) And by and large Fireside handles the non-fiction side - self-help, how-to, cooking, humor - but then Touchstone does a few. Shouldn't there be more separation going on here?

Finally, there's Pocket. Mass market paperbacks, commercial through and through. Sometimes they do hardcovers and sometimes they really, really sell, but mostly they stick to their imprint strengths, and if they could do with some pruning and greater attention to core authors, that's fine too.

Bottom line: Carolyn Reidy represents more of the same. And while some of that works, they also need a lot that is different.

It is not news that the publishing industry is in flux and in dire need of some new directions and definitions. It is not news that there will be more changes, more angst, more doom, more gloom, and so on and so forth. What might be news is that the teeth-gnashing starts and stops, gives way to cosmetic changes that seem to accomplish something or other, and then a year later when it doesn't, people forget or move on.

Which brings me to publishers as brands. Right now, common wisdom is that authors are brands and publishers are not - no matter how hard ex-HarperCollins CEO Jane Friedman banged that proverbial gong. Common wisdom is nowhere near so black and white, otherwise why would certain small press outfits like Soft Skull, Akashic, Hard Case Crime and Tachyon have clear publishing goals recognized by those who read their books (Soft Skull: offbeat, underground. Akashic: crime anthologies, literary punk. Hard Case Crime: retro-pulp fiction reissues and originals. Tachyon: smart SF/F that's not always easy to classify.) Conglomerates could, and should, learn from their less financially mighty cousins, as they should from the larger splintering of mass media, that their imprints should mean something to the reader. Sometimes that means staying with the status quo; other times it means doing away with the imprint altogether.

So what follows, probably in four or five parts, is a highly subjective, data-free look at what publisher imprints mean to me and what they should mean to everyone else. First up, after the jump, are all the imprints under the corporate umbrella of Macmillan.

What's interesting about Macmillan US is that its name change is recent and yet old school - and far more accessible a name than was VHPS (for its German corporate overlords, Von Holtzbrinck Publishing Services.) But a name change and new snazzy website can't hide that underneath the shiny surface, their imprint management is a confusing mess. So let's go through it one by one:

Henry Holt has been in the news of late because they finally appointed a new editor-in-chief, former HarperCollins executive editor Marjorie Braman. Now, Braman's credentials are fine, but does she have the mandate and the balls to do what one publishing source recently told me, to "rip things up and start all over again"? Because they have to or else they should let the name go off and join Rinehart and Winston in the imprint graveyard. The easy thing would be to blame the fortunes of Jed Rubenfeld's THE INTERPRETATION OF MURDER, famously acquired at auction for $800,000 and a big money-loser, but I suspect the problems started before then.  I think of Holt and...I think of scattered ashes. They are woefully understaffed on the editorial side, especially with Sarah Knight's recent defection to Shaye Areheart Books to take over Sally Kim's job, which had to be a major blow because she was acquiring books that might have turned the imprint around. Jennifer Barth's earlier defection to Harper meant she took some of her authors (like Alafair Burke) with her. Paul Auster is a name, and his new book MAN IN THE DARK is getting a great deal of critical attention, but he and his wife Siri Hustvedt (also published by Holt) work with Frances Coady - publisher of Macmillan's paperback arm Picador (and more on them later). They have a couple of extra imprints they acquired from other houses, Metropolitan and Times Books, which add to the brand confusion because the former does some random fiction titles (why? Beyond editorial taste?) along with occasional blockbusters by Naomi Klein and the latter does...well they don't live up to their name and work exclusively with the New York Times anymore.

But back to Holt and my biggest beef with them: their recent expansion into paperbacks. I've asked people at the company and no one can explain why with any conviction, so I'll say it again: why bother? Sure, it's nice to publish Catherine O'Flynn's staggeringly good novel WHAT WAS LOST as an original, but Picador could have done that - and probably more effectively. Mary Swan's THE BOYS IN THE TREES was a good book, but again, Picador could have handled it fine. And after some fanfare when Knight acquired Paul Tremblay's THE LITTLE SLEEP, the winter catalog has it coming out from Holt as a PBO. Well, okay....but that doesn't signify confidence to me. It signifies confusion because the book's biggest advocate jumped ship. Picador has a fledgling crime line; Tremblay, too, would have been better off with them. 

Bottom line: Braman has an enormous task ahead in redefining Holt's purpose. I wish her well, but it doesn't look good at all.

So now, Picador. They've got it: quality paperbacks, literary fiction, memoir and narrative non-fiction, and their crime titles fit in with their literary sensibility, which is erudite but not totally stuffy. I think they could keep stumping for further brand authority, and would really love to see them make their mark with crime fiction, but the odds look pretty good on all fronts.

Then we move to Farrar, Straus & Giroux, always interesting because they are a little fiefdom off on their own (literally - their offices are on 18th Street, not in the Flatiron Building with every other Macmillan imprint) and the most literary house of the bunch. But they have some brand problems now that might be exacerbated with Mitzi Angel's recent appointment as editor-in-chief of Faber & Faber US. Before, Faber's American arm struggled until it finally figured itself out and concentrated on non-fiction, especially music and history titles. But now Angel wants to turn it into the equivalent of her last job, the UK imprint 4th Estate. So how does that affect competition with Sarah Crichton and her eponymous imprint for more commercial fiction and non-fiction titles, or FSG's Lorin Stein and Eric Chinski on the literary side? It's too soon to tell, but I foresee some interesting editorial meetings.

I do wish FSG would have clearer goals with their paperback arm. Are they strictly for classics or do they want to have their reprint and original cake and eat it too? I guess there are some titles they could do better than Picador, but that seems pretty rare.

Next up, the double-headed beast that is Tor/Forge. Tor, well, you know Tor: It's Science Fiction and Fantasy. They just redesigned their website. They are trying new things. They seem to be on the right track at face value (though toning down the garish retro-80s buzzkill covers would be nice.) Forge, on the other hand...oy. I think of them, I think of midlist authors in a career coma. Even the rare bestselling exceptions stir little excitement. I honestly do not know why this imprint exists anymore when you have St. Martin's Minotaur pretty much covering all the crime and thriller bases. Because they have always been there? Because they will publish thriller writers whose careers have stalled out? (well, so will Vanguard, and I'd argue authors have a better shot at making money with them than with Forge, even with the minimum-to-nil advances.) Even more than Holt, this is the Macmillan brand in dire need of a brand ultimatum: shape up or die.

Which brings us to St. Martin's Press, the company guided by a generalist principle from almost day one. Fortunately, they finally figured out that Minotaur was in desperate need of a brand rehaul, and I think the fruits of Andy Martin's labor are starting to pay off for them (Cain, Chelsea.) Minotaur's on the upswing but I think they need a really strong 2009, where some of their other big pushes pay off (Olen Steinhauer's THE TOURIST, certainly deserves to sell in huge quantities)  and some tasteful pruning of the lower end of the midlist that isn't making money, to make Minotaur's retooling real.

Something else that might help would be to take Thomas Dunne's name off of any minotaur titles they acquire, because I'm sorry, which imprint is it? Or is it St. Martin's? Way too much confusion, please pick one (which would be Minotaur, of course.) As for Thomas Dunne Books, um, well....I think of small titles that make money on the library market? To be fair, Dunne's been around publishing for something like 40 years and the "something for everybody" attitude worked in a world of single-digit television channels. Now, not so much. Will the name survive when Dunne retires? Somehow I doubt it.

The flagship imprint also has the generalist vibe - how could it not? - but at least there's a more commercial feel to it. Street lit, paranormal romance, big-ticket thrillers (Evanovich, Finder, Lisa Scottoline as of next year) self-help and business. Less non-fiction. So maybe that's the answer: put all the smart narrative non-fiction on the Thomas Dunne side, every other kind of non-fiction with the flagship, and even if it's happening already, delineate this far more clearly.

As for paperbacks, I wish St. Martin's had a separate name for the mass market line (so they could brand and break books out even more) and tightened Griffin's focus on the trade side. Street lit and edgy crime fiction, good. Tom Perrotta? He's too fluff for Picador, but where else can he go right now? And there are some Minotaur authors who seem better suited with Picador as their paperback publisher. Why not repackage Olen Steinhauer's first five books to coincide with the publication of THE TOURIST next year (or the year after, when its paperback edition hits?) If Brent Ghelfi can be a Picador author, so too can Steinhauer...

Last, but not least, is Bloomsbury (well, there's Palgrave, but that's reference and non-fiction and science. Low-key, but okay.) While only distributed by Macmillan and not owned by the company, its offices are housed in the Flatiron Building which is why I've lumped it in. This brand should work - smart literary - but because it can't make money, they are bleeding people, and they have this bizarre side step into humor books that aren't actually funny, it's not. Bloomsbury Press was a good idea as a serious non-fiction imprint, but no one seems to be paying much attention, so they need to work harder. And Walker had a hit with Kate Summerscale's THE SUSPICIONS OF DR. WHICHER, which should (I hope) translate to more sales when it is published in paperback.

Bottom line for Macmillan: some room for growth, some darlings to kill, lots of tightening.