Centro Looks to Make Old New

by Staff -- Publishers Weekly, 1/30/2006

Centro Books, a recently launched independent house that does trade paperback reissues of foreign and out-of-print titles, has announced its first two books. Set to hit stores in May are an out-of-print title from 1972, Miss Thistlebottoms Hobgoblins, a look at English usage by Theodore M. Bernstein; and Vroom with a View, an irreverent travel memoir by Australian author Peter Moore never published in the U.S.

Founded by Laurie Zarahn, a one-time buyer for Barnes & Noble who also worked in sales at a number of major houses, Centro plans to release four titles this year, with hopes of doing six books annually. Centro's titles are distributed by NBS. According to Zarahn, the goal of the company is to aggressively market books that, for whatever reason, never took hold in this country. "We're looking for titles where you could say 'this is a viable book' and bring it back into print and repackage it and market it." Housed in offices in New York, the six-person operation will also publish a small number of original works.