BESTSELLERS & BEST FRIENDS
My book publishing blog, with murder mysteries woven through it.
If this is your first visit, be sure to start with “1. Let’s do it!”
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I bought train tickets today. Round trip up to Boston on Friday, to spread Randy’s ashes on Boston Common. I’ll take the 8 a.m. Acela from Penn Station. That gets me into Boston’s Back Bay station at 11:35 a.m. Then I’ll grab the 2:06 train from Back Bay and head home to New York.
That’ll give me plenty of time to walk the couple of blocks over to Boston Common and respectfully do as Randy wished.
It’ll be emotional for me.
Boston Common
For me, to think of Boston Common, is to remember many moments.
But especially one, in the summer of 1982 when I was at Little Brown as the Marketing Director for the house’s trade division.
Sally and I were newly married with a proper Beacon Hill apartment, a short walk from my work.
Little Brown, 34 Beacon Street, overlooking Boston Common
Our paperback editor, Barry Lippman, slipped into my office.
“Maybe you want to look at this. Something called ‘Bloom County.’ I don’t read comic strips.”
Holy shit! I was a huge fan of Berke Breathed’s Bloom County.
The strip ran in the Boston Globe. At the time, Esther Newburg served as literary agent for the Washington Post syndicate which included Bloom County.
Esther submitted the Bloom County book proposal to just two houses: Little Brown and Houghton Mifflin. Which made complete sense. At the time, any other decent book publisher was in New York City. And people in NYC do NOT read comics. They read the New York Times which has no comics.
If any publisher was going to get this, it would be one of the two big Boston houses, where the staffs started their days reading the Boston Globe’s comics pages, including Bloom County.
Esther wanted a $6,000 advance. Which was not much. This could be had. Greatest comic strip of the day. Brilliant creator. The P&L would surely work.
But Barry didn’t “get” it. He had just moved up from NYC. He didn’t read the daily comics. My boss, John MacLaurin, a Scot who most enjoyed publishing art and photography books, didn’t “get” it.
Holy shit. Houghton Mifflin’s going to end up with Bloom County. And make a killing. Argh!
I begged John to acquire it. Nobody else on the publishing team had faith in it. They kept putting too few unit sales into the P&L. So it didn’t look pretty. Finally, I told John that I’d personally pay the $6,000 advance. Seriously. They could take it out of my pay over the next two years. I was probably making $35,000. I suspect the spirit of my offer did it. Little Brown acquired it. Without any contribution from my paycheck.
The book, Loose Tails, took off. Huge bestseller. And launched a series of Bloom County bestsellers that would go on for decades.
Prior to publication of his next book, Berke visited Little Brown.
He knew I was his initial, solitary supporter. In our conference room, he whispered to me, “can we get out of here?”
We walked through Boston Common.
The memory is clear. He was nervous about his growing success. Was he making the right decisions, professionally and personally? I told him he was brilliant, to trust himself, he was going to be OK. We paused to sit on a bench. I still remember which bench. After an hour we returned to the office.
That’s the last I saw him until 20 years later at a book industry event in Brooklyn. He was with Esther. At a break in the ceremonies, I ran over, anticipating how cool that we would meet up again. We could reminisce and laugh about that first book, those initial concerns, the therapeutic walk through Boston Common, and the great thrill I enjoyed in first publishing him.
He had no memory of me.
It was all very awkward and embarrassing.
Opus would understand.
Tomorrow: The police