A month ago, I met with a former colleague from my early days as an editor at Bantam Books, Roger Cooper, now Publisher of Vanguard Press and a senior executive at Perseus, headed by another former colleague (and boss!), David Steinberger.  Perseus, the largest independent publisher in the US, has built an impressive distribution business geared to small presses. Now, Cooper explained, they were extending some of that capability to literary agencies, offering “a cutting-edge digital service” to our clients through Argo Navis Author Services, which they describe as “a digital distribution and marketing service designed to enable professional authors with reverted or not-in-print works too get their titles to the marketplace”.  Agents, Perseus reasons, are already curating content; a natural next step is to have them acting as an interface between authors and Argo Navis.  Now, our authors can revitalize works that are no longer readily available or bring to market works for which they hold the electronic text rights.

I’m delighted to share with you the news that we’ve just signed with Perseus Books to participate in this exciting program.  We can’t wait to discuss the possibilities with our clients. ArgoNavis offers many levels of service, including a print-on-demand component and even an option to do small print runs.  I have confidence in this relationship because Perseus has already, in effect, road-tested this system with their small press clients.  Now we, in concert with our clients, can in effect, become small presses.

–Joelle Delbourgo

Coming June 2012!

We were so excited when Executive Editor Françoise Bui gave us our first glimpse of Delacorte’s beautiful jacket for Anne Greenwood Brown’s YA debut Lies Beneath (about a family of murderous mermaids in Lake Superior coming in June 2012) that we just had to share!

Calder White lives in the cold, clear waters of Lake Superior, the only brother in a family of murderous mermaids.  They plan to kill Jason Hancock, the man they blame for their mother’s death.  To draw Hancock out, Calder is assigned the job of seducing his daughter, seventeen year-old Lily. Except that Calder screws everything up by falling in love.  He is forced to choose between loving Lily and plotting her father’s death, between loyalty to his sisters or to his new love.

- Jacqueline Flynn

Former Wall Street Journal reporter Schultz reveals how private companies have intentionally plundered retiree benefits for the vast majority of American workers in order to boost profits and executive compensation.  This important and timely book has been featured on The Daily Show and reviewed widely.  (Portfolio/Penguin)

Great interview with Wall Street Journal’s intrepid investigative reporter, Ellen E. Schultz, regarding her new book, RETIREMENT HEIST (Portfolio/Penguin, September 2011 pub).  Schultz reveals how private companies have knowingly and in some cases, legally, plundered retirement benefits for millions of workers in order to boost profits and executive compensation.  Your blood will boil!

http://www.thedailyshow.com/

Publishing has never been more like the Wild West.  Anything and everything is possible. Lines are blurring–between publisher and distributor, vendor and publisher, agency and publisher, with many more variants.  It’s confusing at times, but it is also incredibly exciting.  The walls are coming down, not only in terms of publishing roles and functions, but between publishers, authors, vendors, distributors and most important–readers, our ultimate consumer.

For years, when I was an editor at Random House and HarperCollins, the protocol was that editors did not speak to booksellers.  And only booksellers had access to the consumer. Now, in just the last couple of months, I have had fascinating meetings with Amazon, Barnes & Noble’s digital media group and Perseus, whose Constellation encompasses distribution functions for many small publishers, and now agencies. Very soon, my agency will be working with all three of these “partners” we hope in selecting, publishing, marketing and distributing e-books, some with a print-on-demand component. As a former publisher, this is music to my ears. I’ve often said that my current incarnation as an agent was just a disguise for a publisher-in-drag. In sum, you can’t take the editor and the publisher out of the agent I’ve become.

It’s also terrifying. This is going to be so much work!  How will be do it? Will authors put their confidence in us? Will we still have time and energy to be terrific agents for our authors?  And how will authors and agents get paid?  All of this is a work in progress, but there are many incentives to try new formulas. Like the government, which is thought at times to be “broken,” so, too, publishing desperately needs to reinvent itself.

In the months ahead, I’m hoping this will all become clearer in terms of how we work with authors and publishers.  But I’ve always felt that partnership is the key to any successful business. So I am looking forward to adding new dimensions to who might be partners in the future and how we might work together to do what we all hope and dream: to bring great writing and important information, “curated” to readers everywhere: whoever they might be, in whatever form they might want, and at any time that they might want it.

I’ll let you know how it all develops and would welcome your input. Write to me at joelle@delbourgo.com with your thoughts and questions.

–Joelle Delbourgo

Now in paperback, this book heralds the hidden strengths of differently wired brains, including those of people who are ADHD, have Asperger’s and autism.