Another Life_ A Memoir of Other People - Michael Korda [229]
* More than sixty years after the Depression, unsold books are still returnable by bookstores to the publishers for full credit, an emergency measure that was intended to save booksellers from bankruptcy as the economy collapsed and remains in effect even though the big bookstore chains have long since become profitable giants, dwarfing all but the largest publishers, and have driven out of business just those small, independent bookstores that the returns policy was meant to protect.
CHAPTER 27
The mid-seventies brought about changes in my life that had nothing to do with publishing, as well as some that did. In 1974, Dick Snyder brought Joni Evans over from Morrow to run the S&S rights department. Joni had been a star at Morrow—she was sharp, bright, aggressive, and smart, in addition to which she was tireless, fiercely ambitious, and boiling over with enthusiasm. It came as no surprise to learn that she had been a cheerleader at Mamaroneck High, along with her sister, Joyce. The two sisters had between them enough energy to keep a whole football team going, and no sooner had Joni arrived at S&S than her enthusiasm was quickly noticed.
This was hardly surprising—the mid-seventies was the period in which the rights directors of the major publishing houses suddenly became stars. What had hitherto been a fairly low-profile job suddenly became glamorous as the prices paid for mass-market paperback rights escalated into the millions. In buying a book, it became essential to know what the paperback rights might go for. Rights directors were also in constant touch with their “customers”—any rights director worth his or her salt was on the phone all the time—and provided, among other things, a kind of industrywide hot line of news and gossip. If the book clubs thought a big novel needed a better title or if the major paperback editors said they might buy a book if certain changes were made, such opinions could no longer be ignored. Rights directors, if they were any good, began to play a role in the editorial process. They even became involved in publicity, advertising, and promotion, since the paperback publishers, having paid a lot of money for the rights to a book, were not unnaturally determined to have some say in how it was promoted or at least to make sure that the hardcover publisher didn’t simply take their money and run. As foreign rights came under the control of rights directors, they soon learned more about what was going on among foreign publishers than any editor could and became just as familiar with the publishing gossip in Bologna, Paris, or Stockholm as with that of New York. They knew what was happening at the movie companies and among the magazines that competed for serial rights—they were, in fact, fountains of knowledge in an industry where knowledge is power. Finally, a company’s income from rights very often made the difference between profit or loss at the end of the year, so rights directors usually had the ear of the publisher, to the consternation of older and more conservative editors.
Most of the rights directors were women, as were many of the editors at the book clubs and most of the major mass-market paperback editors and nearly all of the movie “scouts.” Women such as Mildred Marmur, the rights director of Random House (who had been a secretary at S&S when I first came there and worked her way up to become rights director), or Joni Evans played major roles in opening up major executive jobs to women throughout the book industry, but, just as important, they also played a part in making editors and authors more conscious of the need to think about the markets for a book.
AFTER MY experience in Texas at the self-help convention, I had sworn to give up writing books that advised people to do anything. I had already signed a substantial contract for a book that was to be called “How to Be a Winner 100 Percent of the Time,” and contemplated with resignation having to pay the money