COLUMN œ ELLIS AMBURN
Enjoying Act Three The Editor’s Life
B
y 1961 I’d been the first manuscript reader at a Madison Avenue publishing house for a year when the president of the company called me in and said he’d been buying the books I recommended, and they always made money and received good reviews. “How would you like to be managing editor of the company?” he asked. Of course I wanted the job, but since he was perhaps the most temperamental man in book publishing, known to be a ruthless screamer, I heard myself saying, “I’d love to work for you if you promise you will never yell at me.” He laughed and replied, “I promise you that, Ellis.” We became instant drinking buddies, and he kept his promise. I was given my own little office and a secretary. The managing editor’s job is to make sure every manuscript moves along at the proper pace through various departments responsible for copyediting and proofreading, dust jacket design, manufacturing, sales, warehousing and shipping, advertising, and publicity. Working closely with Putnam’s gruff but lovable and fiercely dedicated production chief, I gave him the specifications for each book after working them out with my boss — cloth or paper binding, printing size, retail price, and whether to go cheap on manufacturing or give the job to the best and priciest shop in the business, the Kingsport
Press of Tennessee. Printing and binding constitute the biggest expense in the book industry, far surpassing salaries and author’s advances. The wrangling involved in the production process took up the entire workday, so I took manuscripts home at night to read on my own time, hoping to discover a bestseller and rise in the publishing hierarchy. My boss assured me that anything publishable I found in the slush pile would be mine to edit. Fairly soon I discovered a gem about surfing written by California lifeguard Peter L. Dixon of Malibu. Though his awkward style needed a heavy overhaul, he commanded mastery of his subject and was a champion surfer himself. He would look and sound good on television plugging his book. In my memo to the boss I stated I knew how to fix the writing and assured him of the market, the hordes of surfers worldwide. He authorized a modest advance, I signed up my first author, and on publication had my first success. I got promoted; the boss gave the managing editor job to my secretary, and my first coup as an editor was reissuing one of our obscure backlist titles, “Lord of the Flies,” which had bombed on first publication. This time it took off, and it’s still selling to this day, over a half-century later.
Then I recommended a manuscript called “The Spy Who Came in From the Cold,” and when the boss bought it, I was assigned to edit it. The Spy became one of the great all-time bestsellers, and led to wonderful things for me at the company. The turning point in a young editor’s career is when he is given an expense account, which means he’s now in a position to wine and dine authors and agents and have a shot of getting the best manuscripts around. It also means international travel. During my first buying spree in London, I started a long and productive friendship with Raleigh Trevelyan, director of Michael Joseph Ltd., who told me about a novel concerning the Seventh Avenue fashion industry called “Divorce.” Despite hating the title, I bought American rights, persuaded the author to let me call the U.S. edition “Seventh Avenue,” and it sold like hotcakes. When paperback rights went to Dell for a small fortune, I invited the Dell staff to a lavish party in our corporate apartment on Park Avenue. That night, I went out of my way to romance Dell’s president and her editorial director. Later they began to watch my books closely, buying mass-market rights to many of them, and soon they offered me a top management job at Dell, running its hardcover division. After a dozen years at Putnam and Coward, a vice presidency, and membership on the board of directors, I was 37 and cutting back drastically on my workload to enjoy a rollicking mid-life crisis. The Dell job came with less work, a bigger title, and higher pay. It was time to move on. s Ellis Amburn is the author of biographies published by HarperCollins and is in the Hall of Excellence at TCU’s Schieffer School of Journalism. He lives at a retirement community in Gainesville. ellis.amburn@gmail.com.
February 2016
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