Playboy Kicks Up Its Book Biz
by Rachel Deahl -- Publishers Weekly, 2/12/2007
Tucked away in his California mansion, Hugh Hefner has been thinking about books. So said Lee Froehlich, executive editor at Playboy, who is spearheading the magazine's renewed book initiatives. While Playboy Press officially relaunched in 2006 (after closing in 1984), Froehlich said Hefner's desire to get back into book publishing has allowed him to put together some 25 ambitious new projects.
While two titles will come out under the Playboy Press banner in 2007 (with Steerforth Press distributing), Froehlich is working on books with Chronicle, S&S and Taschen, among others. Noting that Playboy Press "quietly calcified" before it was officially shuttered, Froehlich said working with an array of houses has allowed the magazine to create a "virtual imprint" and to "approach each project in a financially realistic way."
The books will draw primarily from the magazine's archival content, but, said, Froehlich, more innovatively. Chronicle's April title The Bunny Book, for example, is geared to an unexpected demographic for Playboy: women. Froehlich thinks the book—its subhead reads, "How to Walk, Talk, and Please Like a Playboy Bunny"— can capitalize on the women tuning in to the E! Entertainment TV show The Girls Next Door. The show follows the misadventures of a trio of Playmates who live in the Playboy mansion; according to Froehlich, 56% of the show's viewers are women.
Two other major titles in the works are extravagantly packaged collector's items that focus on the history of the magazine. Playboy: The Complete Centerfoldswill gather every centerfold the magazine has ever run into one 27-pound, 720-page volume. The $400 book, coming from Chronicle in November, will include decade introductions from writers as varied as Jane Smiley and Jay McInerney.
Then there's the massive, very collectible and very pricey Hugh Hefner's Playboy. The Taschen title, also slated for this fall, is a six-volume set featuring photos of and writings by the famed publisher. Calling it Hefner's "visual autobiography," Froehlich said the 3,600-page collection—each volume is 600 pages—will be sold as a unit, and that no price has been set.
Summarizing the new thinking behind Playboy books, Froehlich emphasized that readers and fans can expect the unexpected. "We can go for a long time being successful doing beautiful books of beautiful women, but we're also intrigued with the idea of doing other things. If you start to look at the 54 years of Playboy, there's quite an array of material to work with."
