By Erin L. Cox, Publisher | @erinlcox
Earlier this month, Richard Charkin wrote about a perceived shift in power from publishers to agents as agents take on the bulk of author discovery, retain more rights, and authors take on more of their own marketing duties – all tasks previously done by the publisher. Whether one agrees with Charkin’s assertion, it is clear that there are changes in the industry that have opened up new opportunities for those with an entrepreneurial spirit and an eye for the pain points in the industry.One person who could be taking advantage of this changing industry is U.S. publishing executive Robert (Bob) Miller whose decades-long career includes founding Hyperion in 1990 with then Disney CEO Michael Eisner to publish books that capitalize on Disney talent; launching the short-lived HarperStudio which pioneered a new economic structure with lower author advances, higher royalties, and non-returnable books; and creating Flatiron Books, an imprint of Macmillan focused on publishing fewer books, better.
On January 26th, Miller announced that he was leaving his position as CEO of Phaidon Press to start a new venture, Bookswork Press, which the release described as “an independent book and creative development company serving authors and publishers” and noted some key projects already on the horizon with bestselling author Brad Meltzer and Eisner, to name a few.
Publishing Perspectives sat down with Miller to talk about his career and this new endeavor.
Publishing Perspectives: From Hyperion to Harper Studio to this new venture, you’re always reinventing yourself and looking for ways to change and improve the industry. What drives you to keep developing new projects?
Bob Miller: I think that this urge comes from a recurring frustration with how hard it is to help a book reach its full potential. Even when a book is succeeding in terms of profitability or positions on a bestsellers list, we always want more for a book we believe in. So I keep looking for ways to find that ‘more,’ whether it is by giving authors a bigger piece of the pie, or by publishing a smaller list, or by working holistically instead of moving books down an assembly line. It’s the Holy Grail of book publishing for me, the mystery I’m still obsessed with solving.
PP: What do you see as the biggest challenge for the industry today?
BM: I think the biggest challenge is lack of time. As overheads are reduced, and as pressures on fiscal year budgets increase, there is less time available to work on a book or to bring it to market. It adds up to less ability to really think deeply at every stage of a book’s life about what that book essentially is, and what decisions are truly in that book’s interest as a result. The danger is that the various departments might be functioning like the proverbial blind men touching the elephant, with one department thinking that the book is a business book and another department thinking that it’s a memoir, and so on. Books are often rushed to market before that deep thinking has had a chance to occur. The result can be like bread that didn’t have enough time to rise.
PP: Bookswork Press is described as ‘an independent book and creative development company serving authors and publishers.’ Can you tell me what exactly that means and what you’ll be doing to serve authors and publishers?
BM: I’m aiming to fill the gap that I described, by working with authors or publishers or both to do the deep thinking that will help a book go from idea to proposal to manuscript to publication—the deep thinking that the author or publisher may want to add to their process.
PP: Do you have any initial projects that you’re working on that you can talk about? Will you be working only with US authors and publishers or are you open to working with international publishers?
BM: I’m working with Brad Meltzer, whose nonfiction I published at HarperCollins, Workman and Flatiron Books, on a few books for Avid Reader Press/S&S. I’m also working on a project for my former boss at Disney, Michael Eisner, whose company had a hit television series several years ago that was based on a brilliant novel that has never been published, an allegory called The Booth at the End. It reminds me of Theo of Golden, which I just read, and also of Mitch Albom’s The Five People You Meet In Heaven, which I published at Hyperion.