A few years ago, Jim Bildner was among sixty-five "hopeful,
starry-eyed" writers who attended a panel discussion on publishing at
Lesley College, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he was a student in
the MFA program. The editors on the panel, he recalls, "did nothing but
depress us all about the cruel reality of the publishing business."
Bildner
tried to think of a way to change that. He briefly considered starting
a new press, but decided that was "the last thing the world needs."
Convinced that "there had to be a better way to help support, promote,
and sustain literature," in May 2005 he created the Literary Ventures
Fund (LVF), a foundation whose mission is to provide financial support
for individual books, regardless of who is publishing them. In the two
and a half years since the LVF was founded, each of the twelve titles
it's adopted, including Sam Savage's Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife (Coffee House Press, 2006) and Lynne Tillman's American Genius: A Comedy (Soft Skull Press, 2007), has made a profit.
The
LVF is rooted in what Bildner calls "venture philanthropy." Like a
venture capital firm, it is a "partner-in-risk" with its clients—in
this case, publishers and authors—and acts as both investor and
consultant. As investor, the LVF puts capital into a commodity (books
of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction) that it hopes will produce
good returns. The money may be used by a publisher to print additional
copies of a specific title, or by an author to help defray the costs of
spending more time writing. As consultant, the LVF offers assistance
with public relations and marketing to help authors, publishers, and
booksellers get more books in front of as many readers as possible.
"We
invest a sum of money—seventy-five hundred to fifty thousand dollars—in
a work," Bildner explains. "Our return for that is on a per book basis
over a threshold. If a publisher thought a work would sell two thousand
copies, on the first sales to that threshold, we get nothing.
Everything after that we see a return." The LVF's rate of return, he
says, approximates a standard royalty rate (between 10 and 15 percent
of the net price of each copy of the book sold). "It's important to
remember that if a book is not successful, our return is zero," Bildner
adds.
The LVF staff consists of executive
director Jeffrey Lependorf, who is also the director of the nonprofit
Council of Literary Magazines and Presses, which merged with the LVF in
2005; editorial director Ande Zellman, who has held senior positions at
the Boston Globe and Newsweek; and strategic
marketing director Kate Travers, once a senior editor at HarperCollins.
Its board of directors includes Harold Augenbraum (executive director
of the National Book Foundation), Nicole Dewey (director of publicity
at Doubleday), Jonathan Karp (publisher of Hachette Book Group imprint
Twelve), James Miller (editor of Daedalus), and Sara Nelson (editor in chief of Publishers Weekly).
The
LVF welcomes proposals from authors, agents, and publishers; books are
considered based on literary merit and marketing potential, as well as
for what Lependorf calls long-term sustainability. "Even with the best
book, once it's published, the publisher moves on to the next book," he
says. "We will never be done; we will keep that book on the shelf."
One
of the projects the LVF has created to ensure this sustainability is
JumpStart, which offers independent booksellers a 60 percent discount
if they buy twenty-five nonreturnable copies of a book. "It really does
jump-start a book's popularity and sales," Lependorf says. "Booksellers
get behind the book because they need to sell those copies."
Monique and the Mango Rains,
Kris Holloway's memoir about her experience as a Peace Corps volunteer
in Africa, which was published by Waveland Press in Long Grove,
Illinois, is one of the LVF's more impressive success stories. After
attending a presentation Hellman gave in 2006, Holloway, who lives in
Northampton, Massachusetts, submitted a proposal. The LVF adopted the
book, which was published in December of that year, and helped market
it by contacting a number of independent booksellers in New England,
setting up a regional tour for the author, and developing a media kit
and reading group guide that can be downloaded from the foundation's
Web site. As of this writing, the book has sold more than fifteen
thousand copies.
Interested individuals are
encouraged to first send a query to the LVF, whereupon they will be
advised as to whether they should submit a formal application. "I'm not
worried about getting a thousand people contacting us," Bildner says.
"Hit the Web site, send an e-mail. We really want to be as inclusive as
possible."
For more information, visit the foundation's Web site at www.literaryventuresfund.org.
Anne Trubek is an associate professor at Oberlin College.
“Like a venture capital firm, the LVF is a 'partner-in-risk' with its clients—in this case, publishers and authors—and acts as both investor and consultant.”
