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As publisher of Avon Books, Lou Aronica launched the Eos imprint, now celebrating its tenth anniversary. Also at Avon, he built publishing programs for Dennis Lehane, Susan Elizabeth Phillips, J.A. Jance, Stephanie Laurens, Lisa Kleypas, Bruce Feiler, and Peter Robinson. Neil Gaiman, whose work Lou acquired, reached #1 on the New York Times Best Sellers list.
Of course, Lou is known for many other accomplishments. He launched the Bantam Crime Line and Bantam Spectra imprints, has been honored with a World Fantasy Award, and has published more than a dozen award winning-novels. At one point he had acquired five consecutive winners of the Nebula Award.
Authors he´s developed over his career continue to reign over bestseller lists and include Elizabeth George, Diane Mott Davidson, Amanda Quick, Tami Hoag, Iris Johansen and William Gibson. And is there any reader who can´t imagine the thrill of working alongside Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov?
Commercially, his biggest accomplishment is the acquisition and design of the Star Wars book publishing program, which "jump-started" the Star Wars book franchise and was initiated at a time when others had very little interest in the series.
You can visit his new publishing house at www.thestoryplant.com.
We welcome the opportunity to interview Lou to find out more about his exciting new venture, The Story Plant.
Hi, Lou, nice to have you here!
Thanks. I appreciate your inviting me.
Can you tell us how long have you been in the publishing biz? Where did you get your humble beginnings?
I´ve been in the business for nearly thirty years. I started extremely humbly at Bantam as the guy in Managing Editorial who took things from one executive´s office to another´s for approval. I managed to do that for several months without losing my mind and then spent some time in marketing and the Publisher´s Office before I got a chance to launch my first imprint, the science fiction and fantasy program Bantam Spectra. All told, I spent fourteen years at Bantam, becoming Mass Market Publisher and then Deputy Publisher of the entire program. After that, I spent a year-and-a-half at Berkley as Publisher and then five years as Publisher of Avon. In 2000, I started an editorial development company, The Fiction Studio, and started writing my own books. I´ve since published two novels and eight works of nonfiction. This spring, literary manager Peter Miller and I announced the founding of The Story Plant and our first two books have just gone on sale.
In all the years you have been a publisher for very well known publishing houses, was there ever a point where you felt the publishing industry was on a downward spiral?
We hear about the decline of the business every few years, but these predictions have always been grossly overstated. If I look back at the mass market paperback numbers we sold in 1979 when I started and what the average paperback sells now, this would mark a precipitous decline. At the same time, trade paperbacks sell at a significantly higher level now and breakout hardcovers sell at numbers that we wouldn´t have conceived back then. That said, the market has been flat for a while and that´s never a good sign. I think it´s essential for publishers to re-think how they publish and who they publish to. In our small way, we´re trying to address that with The Story Plant. Our feeling is that big publishers have put unrealistic expectations on developing novelists and that this has led to them prematurely tossing many fine writers aside. Our goal is to make a longer and more patient investment in our writers.
I can certainly see how writers – especially novelists – might perceive the industry as a disaster area, though.
And because of this, a lot of authors have taken to self-publishing or paying to be published. Tell me, if an author had self-published a book and then decided to look for a traditional publisher, would you turn him down?
I certainly wouldn´t turn him down for that reason. The problem with self-publishing is that it is so difficult to get attention for the books. Bookstores tend not to carry them and the media tends not to cover them. There have been a few very notable exceptions, but most self-published books sell no more than a few hundred copies. Since that´s the case, the author hasn´t made a dent in the market, so if the book were good enough, there would be no barrier to republication.
The big issue with self-published books is that they usually lack professional-quality editing. A good publisher will see past that if the author is willing to revise. Essentially, you need to look at self-published books the same way one would look at a manuscript.
Do you feel that, because there are just so many writers wanting to be published, that the odds are against them to find a traditional publishing house?
I don´t know that there are any more people who want to be writers now than there were twenty years ago. I think the difference is that, with POD, we see more of these books than we once did. I think what has changed is the skittishness publishers feel toward publishing fiction. Early in my career, I did a writers seminar that I opened by announcing my belief that any very good novel – one with real professional standards – would find a publisher. This was during a time when major paperback publishers were publishing 500 books a year each. I genuinely believed that. But paperback publishers have cut their lists so dramatically that this can´t possibly be true any longer. I can identify several very good novel that have gone unpublished and every agent in town can give you their own list.
How many books come across your desk as an average?
People are still learning about us, so the submission list is still relatively small. Maybe a dozen or so a week.
Out of all the books that do come across your desk, what´s a fair percentage of those that you actually do accept for publication?
Even at that pace, the percentage is ridiculously small because we´re only planning to publish a dozen novels a year and we´re making multi-book commitments to writers.
What kind of book would just "do it" for you?
I love novels with compelling human stories. I need great characters in my fiction and I need those characters to have complex and interesting relationships. I´m not tied to any one genre, though I have to admit that I find fiction with love stories overwhelmingly more interesting than those without. More than half of the books we have scheduled for publication have love stories at the center of them, though one wouldn´t categorize any of them strictly as romance.
Lastly, what words of advice can you give someone reading this interview who has been trying to get a traditional publisher interested in their work?
Make sure that your work has a true signature. The market is so competitive now that publishers want writers who can distinguish themselves in some way. Make your work as uniquely yours as you can. At the same time, don´t pay any attention to trends. If your signature work fits well into a hot trend, great, but don´t try to make yourself someone you´re not because a certain kind of book is selling heavily right now. The chances are good that you´ll produce something that feels artificial and that no one will want it.
Thank you for this interview, Lou. I appreciate your time and honesty and, hopefully, we´ve given some new aspiring authors new hope in reaching their dreams and becoming a published author. Good luck to you!
Of course, Lou is known for many other accomplishments. He launched the Bantam Crime Line and Bantam Spectra imprints, has been honored with a World Fantasy Award, and has published more than a dozen award winning-novels. At one point he had acquired five consecutive winners of the Nebula Award.
Authors he´s developed over his career continue to reign over bestseller lists and include Elizabeth George, Diane Mott Davidson, Amanda Quick, Tami Hoag, Iris Johansen and William Gibson. And is there any reader who can´t imagine the thrill of working alongside Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov?
Commercially, his biggest accomplishment is the acquisition and design of the Star Wars book publishing program, which "jump-started" the Star Wars book franchise and was initiated at a time when others had very little interest in the series.
You can visit his new publishing house at www.thestoryplant.com.
We welcome the opportunity to interview Lou to find out more about his exciting new venture, The Story Plant.
Hi, Lou, nice to have you here!
Thanks. I appreciate your inviting me.
Can you tell us how long have you been in the publishing biz? Where did you get your humble beginnings?
I´ve been in the business for nearly thirty years. I started extremely humbly at Bantam as the guy in Managing Editorial who took things from one executive´s office to another´s for approval. I managed to do that for several months without losing my mind and then spent some time in marketing and the Publisher´s Office before I got a chance to launch my first imprint, the science fiction and fantasy program Bantam Spectra. All told, I spent fourteen years at Bantam, becoming Mass Market Publisher and then Deputy Publisher of the entire program. After that, I spent a year-and-a-half at Berkley as Publisher and then five years as Publisher of Avon. In 2000, I started an editorial development company, The Fiction Studio, and started writing my own books. I´ve since published two novels and eight works of nonfiction. This spring, literary manager Peter Miller and I announced the founding of The Story Plant and our first two books have just gone on sale.
In all the years you have been a publisher for very well known publishing houses, was there ever a point where you felt the publishing industry was on a downward spiral?
We hear about the decline of the business every few years, but these predictions have always been grossly overstated. If I look back at the mass market paperback numbers we sold in 1979 when I started and what the average paperback sells now, this would mark a precipitous decline. At the same time, trade paperbacks sell at a significantly higher level now and breakout hardcovers sell at numbers that we wouldn´t have conceived back then. That said, the market has been flat for a while and that´s never a good sign. I think it´s essential for publishers to re-think how they publish and who they publish to. In our small way, we´re trying to address that with The Story Plant. Our feeling is that big publishers have put unrealistic expectations on developing novelists and that this has led to them prematurely tossing many fine writers aside. Our goal is to make a longer and more patient investment in our writers.
I can certainly see how writers – especially novelists – might perceive the industry as a disaster area, though.
And because of this, a lot of authors have taken to self-publishing or paying to be published. Tell me, if an author had self-published a book and then decided to look for a traditional publisher, would you turn him down?
I certainly wouldn´t turn him down for that reason. The problem with self-publishing is that it is so difficult to get attention for the books. Bookstores tend not to carry them and the media tends not to cover them. There have been a few very notable exceptions, but most self-published books sell no more than a few hundred copies. Since that´s the case, the author hasn´t made a dent in the market, so if the book were good enough, there would be no barrier to republication.
The big issue with self-published books is that they usually lack professional-quality editing. A good publisher will see past that if the author is willing to revise. Essentially, you need to look at self-published books the same way one would look at a manuscript.
Do you feel that, because there are just so many writers wanting to be published, that the odds are against them to find a traditional publishing house?
I don´t know that there are any more people who want to be writers now than there were twenty years ago. I think the difference is that, with POD, we see more of these books than we once did. I think what has changed is the skittishness publishers feel toward publishing fiction. Early in my career, I did a writers seminar that I opened by announcing my belief that any very good novel – one with real professional standards – would find a publisher. This was during a time when major paperback publishers were publishing 500 books a year each. I genuinely believed that. But paperback publishers have cut their lists so dramatically that this can´t possibly be true any longer. I can identify several very good novel that have gone unpublished and every agent in town can give you their own list.
How many books come across your desk as an average?
People are still learning about us, so the submission list is still relatively small. Maybe a dozen or so a week.
Out of all the books that do come across your desk, what´s a fair percentage of those that you actually do accept for publication?
Even at that pace, the percentage is ridiculously small because we´re only planning to publish a dozen novels a year and we´re making multi-book commitments to writers.
What kind of book would just "do it" for you?
I love novels with compelling human stories. I need great characters in my fiction and I need those characters to have complex and interesting relationships. I´m not tied to any one genre, though I have to admit that I find fiction with love stories overwhelmingly more interesting than those without. More than half of the books we have scheduled for publication have love stories at the center of them, though one wouldn´t categorize any of them strictly as romance.
Lastly, what words of advice can you give someone reading this interview who has been trying to get a traditional publisher interested in their work?
Make sure that your work has a true signature. The market is so competitive now that publishers want writers who can distinguish themselves in some way. Make your work as uniquely yours as you can. At the same time, don´t pay any attention to trends. If your signature work fits well into a hot trend, great, but don´t try to make yourself someone you´re not because a certain kind of book is selling heavily right now. The chances are good that you´ll produce something that feels artificial and that no one will want it.
Thank you for this interview, Lou. I appreciate your time and honesty and, hopefully, we´ve given some new aspiring authors new hope in reaching their dreams and becoming a published author. Good luck to you!
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