F&W's Funny New Imprint
by Claire Kirch, PW Daily -- Publishers Weekly, 9/6/2006
F&W, the Cincinnati-based publisher of popular reference books, is launching a new imprint this fall that marks a departure from the kinds of practical, "how to" books for which the press is best known for. F&W will release two to three humor titles each year under the Tow Books imprint, beginning with Encyclopedia Brown and the Mysterious Presidency of George W. Bush by humor writer John Warner, also the new imprint's editor. The title is being released this week with a first print run of 12,000 copies. The second Tow Books title, scheduled for release in early 2007, will be Kevin Federline's Guide to Sudoku.
Besides being editor of the new imprint, Warner already is the editor of the Internet publication, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, and the author of Fondling Your Muse: Infallible Advice from a Published Author to a Writerly Aspirant, published last fall by F&W's Writer's Digest Books imprint.
According to Jane Friedman, editorial director for the F&W imprints Writer's Digest Books, How Books and now Tow Books, while Tow Books is F&W's first humor imprint, this is not F&W's first foray into publishing funny books. F&W released Toothpaste for Dinner, a compilation of cartoons, under the How Books imprint last fall. Milk, Eggs, and Vodka and Monsters Spotting Guide to North America both will be released under the How Books imprint, in 2007. But the new imprint, Friedman said "pushes us in a more quirky, eccentric directions. Humor books are really a very small percentage of the books we publish. But it gives us an added energy and visibility in a way we haven't had before."
F&W, the Cincinnati-based publisher of popular reference books, is launching a new imprint this fall that marks a departure from the kinds of practical, "how to" books for which the press is best known for.|
|
