Toni Burbank, former executive editor and VP of Bantam Books, died on January 9. She was 85.
During her tenure at the Random House imprint, which spanned more than four decades, Burbank championed mind-body-spirit titles and spearheaded the now-shuttered Bantam New Age line. Many of the titles she edited remain in print and have become authoritative in their areas of focus, including Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence, Susan Forward and Craig Buck's Toxic Parents, and Nathaniel Branden's The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem.
After she retired, Burbank continued editing, most recently working on Bessel van der Kolk’s 2014 megahit The Body Keeps the Score.
Burbank began her publishing career at Columbia University Press and joined Bantam (now consolidated under Ballantine Bantam Dell) in the early 1970s. Bantam was a forerunner of the mass-market paperback movement and found success publishing affordable reprints, but Burbank helped move it into hardcover originals.
Leslie Meredith, whom Burbank hired in 1987 to help grow the Bantam New Age imprint and now works as an agent at Dystel, Goderich & Bourret, said Burbank was producing "hit after hit" in the latter decades of the 20th century.
"Toni had an eye for finding the expert author with the kind of following that sold books, before there were social media, on difficult subjects to talk about—recovery, women’s health, family dysfunction, the fight for self-expression," Meredith said.
Around this time, Theresa Zoro—now president and publisher of Harmony/Rodale/Convergent—was working alongside Burbank as a publicist early in her career. Zoro described feeling "drawn to" Burbank's books, and recalled the "extraordinary rigor and curiosity" she brought to her work.
"She was probing yet open-minded, always asking thoughtful questions and carefully noting her insights on a yellow legal pad," Zoro added.
In a CSPAN Book TV broadcast in 2002, Burbank spoke on program entitled "An Evening with Legendary Editors" about the pedagogical attitude with which she approached editing. After dropping out of her graduate studies in English at Yale, Burbank said she took a job in publicity, but was "unhappy"; she described her experience of discovering what an editor did, and her realization that it was "everything I had thought I wanted about teaching but with a brilliant and responsive student."
Burbank's books often sold well, her son Jonathan Koltz, in a message to PW, spoke to her "focus on publishing books that were good rather than books that would earn out."
"She cared deeply for most of her authors and, although she pushed them hard, she pushed them with a goal not of producing something, but of producing something excellent," Koltz added.
Burbank was laid off from Bantam around 2010, according to Koltz, but Meredith said she continued "ghosting" projects post-retirement. Burbank felt that The Body Keeps the Score was "one that she had been working toward her entire lifetime, the culmination of publishing groundbreaking books in many interrelated fields," Meredith said.
One of the places Burbank's editorial legacy lives on is in Zoro's work. "She set a standard for editorial vision in categories that were still emerging, and her work influenced many of us who followed," Zoro said. "I continue to think of her as I publish books in these areas today—books that help readers live more meaningful and enriched lives."
