There are a number of criticisms that can be launched at modern culture: it's too fast, it's too materialistic, it's artless, it's obese, it's juvenile. I don't disagree with these things, but for me, the problem with modern existence is that it's too damn much.
I'm one of those people who, when faced with a myriad of choices, is struck dumb. If there are more than three items on the menu, I'm dumbfounded. Struck mute with indecision, I trawl helplessly through all of the choices, trying to determine which minute details will make THIS burger better than THAT one. Frankly, that's the only reason that I like In-N-Out burger - it's not that they're fresh or delicious, it's just that I have a total of four choices I can make.
"Too many choices" is not an uncommon complaint lodged at (largely) America - we have so much to choose from that we don't know where to begin, and we tend to accumulate things that we really don't need. To say that bigger is better doesn't quite cover it - in modern America, MORE is better.
That's why companies like Twelve Books are such a revelation. In the same way that artisinal bread and cheese are a mind-blogging, tongue-awakening jolt to someone who was raised on Wonder Bread and Velveeta, a publishing house that publishes only 12 books per year seems like a little gift from heaven. It's so very rare that a company can focus its concentration so wholly on one product, but to only provide 12 versions of that product per year is truly an outrageous idea.
Jonathon Karp, the ridiculously young-looking editor-in-chief of Twelve Books, explained to NPR a few days ago that his experience in the publishing industry (he used to work for Random House), "You have to start with the impulsive, ecstatic reaction you have to a book, and if you're not excited at the outset by the prospect of publishing a book, you should not publish a book."
Every year, 291,000 (33 books per hour per day for 365 days per year) are published. Twelve Books, in the other hand, is an imprint that devotes itself to one book per month.
"I think that it's possible to love 12 books a year, without being promiscuous. I think you can be serially monogamous to 12 books a year, and what I have experienced in my career (I was at Random House for about 16 years), and I worked with about 200 authors in that time, and I think that all 200 authors thought that they had written a best-seller that was worthy of many readers, and unfortunately, we weren't always able to put those books across. So what I really wanted to do with this imprint was to make a promise to every writer that we published that we would do everything in our power to make his or her book a best-seller."
Mind you, Twelve Books is not a teeny, independent company - they are part of a pager publishing group, the Hachette Book Group. But I just love their twelve things to remember:
- Each book will enliven the national conversation.
- Each book will be singular in voice, authority, or subject matter.
- Each book will be carefully edited, designed, and produced.
- Each book will have a month-long launch in which it is the imprint’s sole focus.
- Each book will be nationally advertised.
- Each book will have a national publicity campaign.
- Each book will be published by Jonathan Karp, the editor who discovered Book Sense Book of the Year winners Seabiscuit and Shadow Divers, plus such bestsellers as The Orchid Thief, Franklin and Winston, Thank You For Smoking, What Should I Do With My Life?, The Dante Club, The Last Don, The Godfather Returns, and A Conspiracy of Paper.
- Each book will be publicized by Director of Publicity Cary
Goldstein, who for seven years was the architect of FSG's publicity
campaigns for such acclaimed books as The Assassin's Gate, Sweet and Low, Natasha, and Trance, nominee for the National Book Award.
- Each book will have the potential to sell at least 50,000 copies in its lifetime.
- Each book will be marketed and distributed by the Hachette Book
Group, the company with the best hit ratio in the American publishing
business.
- Each book will be promoted well into its paperback life.
- Each book will matter.
Special care, special craftsmanship, special attention - these seem to be simple concepts that are more or less lost in today's fast-paced world. It's nice to see an imprint, however small, doing it's part to dedicate itself to success, without losing site of the passion that sparked the business to begin with.
Also, I love the word "imprint". How beautiful is that?
*Photo by austinevan.