Roxburgh Launches New Venture
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By Lynn Andriani -- Publishers Weekly, 1/22/2009 5:30:00 PM
Stephen Roxburgh, founder and former president and publisher of Front Street, Inc., and former publisher of Farrar, Straus and Giroux Books for Young Readers, has launched namelos, a consortium of publishing professionals who will offer an array of publishing services. Namelos will develop children’s books independently with authors and artists and place them with agents, editors and publishers. The firm will also work with publishers on projects that need outside development.
Roxburgh said namelos isn’t a “book doctor,” packager or publisher. “I’m thinking of it as an independent editorial imprint,” he said. Roxburgh explained his motivation: “Publishing is in transition and in crisis. Economics demand that publishers reduce their overhead and focus their resources on the sales and marketing part of the process. In-house editors need to attend to the market and are rewarded for acquisitions, not development, which, by its nature, is time-consuming and inefficient. Editorial development is shifting outside publishing houses.” For a $200 non-refundable fee, namelos will read and evaluate up to 40 pages (10,000 words) of a single project, and provide clients with a written evaluation, including an assessment of the viability of the project and a recommendation for how to proceed. The firm can then provide services such as editing, design and marketing. Namelos’s staff of freelancers includes seven professionals, including Helen Robinson, former art director of Front Street; and Nancy Hogan, former director of institutional marketing and the director of subsidiary rights at Boyds Mills Press (which bought Front Street in 2004).
“There are no services we cannot provide,” said Roxburgh, although he stressed that namelos is not setting up a warehouse and will need to work with partners (i.e. publishers) who have distribution channels in place. But namelos can manufacture, sell and market books. Roxburgh will not be an agent, either, but acknowledged he will work in conjunction with agents. “We’re going to build and make books, and bring them to the industry and say, ‘Here they are,’ ” Roxburgh said.
Namelos comes from a medieval German epic poem. It means “nameless.” Roxburgh said, “I strongly believe the only names on a book should be the author’s, artist’s and publisher’s. The rest of us should be invisible: heard but not seen.”
