Picador USA in New Link with FSG
-- 8/3/98
Picador USA, which has been an imprint at St. Martin's Press since 1995, is to become an independent publishing house, which will serve as the paperback publisher for many Farrar, Straus &Giroux titles, in addition to doing its own titles and some SMP reprints.Picador's current editorial director, George Witte, will be the publisher, reporting to a board consisting of John Sargent, president of Holtzbrinck operations in the U.S.; SMP president Sally Richardson; and Jonathan Galassi, executive v-p and editor-in-chief of FSG. Sargent told PW that while Picador has been very successful since its debut, "if it's going to get to the next level, Picador needs bigger authors and more authors." Picador currently publishes between 50 and 55 titles and will likely up that count to between 75 and 100 books annually. Picador also expects to add some new staff. The new plan calls for Picador and FSG to buy new books in tandem, and some of FSG's cherished backlist titles will be republished and repackaged as Picador paperbacks. New authors for the imprint will include such award winners as Pat Barker, Howard Norman, Jim Crace and Michael Cunningham.Picador, begun in 1972, was already a noted paperback imprint in the U.K. when it was bought by Macmillan in 1987, and has recently developed a strong hardcover literary list. Sargent said the goal now "is to make Picador become known as a worldwide publisher of quality literature." Back To News---> |
