Live From BEA:
Fund Takes Risks for Small Press Books
By Michael Scharf -- Publishers Weekly, 6/1/2007 6:30:00 AM
The Literary Ventures Fund presented its version of venture philanthropy for literary publishing at an early BEA session on Wednesday titled "Mid-career or Midlist: New Publishing Strategies for Literary Publishers." The LVF, a nonprofit foundation, aims to eliminate publishing practices that executive director Jeffrey Lependorf said "get between books and their potential readers."
The LVF does not make grants. Rather, the nonprofit group "assumes risk" on particular titles of its choice--and expects returns. One of the LVF's tactics, the "JumpStart," offers independent bookstores a significant discount on a title in exchange for taking 25 nonreturnable copies of that title at once, encouraging retailers to take a chance on a lesser-known author. "We've found that if you have two copies of a title on the shelf, you might sell one. If you have 25, you'll sell all of them but two," said Chairman and founder James L. Bildner. Lependorf went on to detail for the 35 session attendees how the LVF chooses a title. In about a quarter of the cases, the LVF gets approached by an independent publisher with a title that they have bought but not yet published, and that they think could reach a larger readership than usual for house or author. The LVF has also taken on titles after being approached by authors after contracts have been signed. In still other cases, the LVF is approached by an author who has not sold a book, and the LVF then acts as a agent for the title "and when we make a deal, we bring our marketing along with us," said Lependorf. Occassionally, the LVF will offer direct monetary support to an author who is trying to complete a manuscript. Such support is treated not as a grant, but as an investment in the title to come. The foundation, which is funded by Bildner, has self-sufficiency as its goal, with publishers giving back a percentage earnings to the LVF. That requires close contractual work, which Bildner said was exactly the point: "The hope is that five years from now, a clause in contracts that permits distribution by an affiliated partner like us," becomes standard in certain deals, allowing for greater flexibility in how titles reach stores. "We created that clause," says Bildner. The group has worked on similar strategies with backlist titles: the "BackList Boost" tries to keep a title in play even after a house has moved on to the next catalogue season. "We have a passionate belief in the longterm," Bildner noted. As for how titles are chosen by the foundation, editorial director Ande Zellman said "We have to love the book. Publishers acquire a book because of its specialness, but can't always devote the resources to it that will make that specialness manifest. We need to be able to get that across to people, and you can't do that if you don't believe in the book." The LVF has eight titles that it is currently backing, with "five or six more in the hopper." American Genius, A Comedy by Lynne Tillman (Soft Skull)Gates of the Sun by Elias Khory (Archipelago; reprinted by Picador)
Monique and the Mango Rains by Kris Holloway (Waveland)
Firmin by Sam Savage (Coffee House)
The First Hurt by Rachel Sherman (Open City)
Because a Fire Was in My Head by Lynn Stegner (Univ. of Nebraska)
The Fires by Alan Cheuse (Sante Fe Writers Project)
Poetry in Translation [anthology] (Copper Canyon Press)
