For many writers, the world of publishing is fraught with so much uncertainty and anxiety that it can be helpful to take a deep breath and remember that, at the end of the day, we are all working in the service of the same simple and enduring thing: dreams. The writer sits in a room with a piece of paper and tries to spin one that is, in John Gardner's phrase, vivid and continuous. The agent sorts through the many dreams that are submitted to her in search of the most captivating. The editor does the same thing and then, if he's any good, tries everything he can think of to bring that dream to the widest possible audience. 

Today there is probably no better expediter of literary dreams than Jonathan Karp, the publisher and editor in chief of Twelve, an imprint of the Hachette Book Group. In 2005, frustrated by his lack of freedom at Random House, where he spent sixteen years editing acclaimed best-sellers such as Laura Hillenbrand's Seabiscuit, Susan Orlean's The Orchid Thief, and Matthew Pearl's The Dante Club, Karp quit and founded Twelve with the objective of publishing no more than one book per month. He acquires and edits each book himself (for the most part) and then works with his publicity director, Cary Goldstein, to craft a monthlong promotional campaign that is unique to the book. While this publishing strategy, which values intense focus over the toss-the-books-against-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks approach of many publishers, is not unique to Twelve, one thing has become clear: The model works. In a business where the conventional wisdom dictates that nine out of ten books will never make money, it's difficult to fathom how fifteen of the first thirty books published by Twelve have been New York Times best-sellers. (They include Christopher Hitchens's God Is Not Great, Eric Weiner's The Geography of Bliss, Dave Cullen's Columbine, and Christopher Buckley's Boomsday, Supreme Courtship, and Losing Mum and Pup.) This fall Karp added his latest: True Compass, the memoirs of the late U.S. senator Ted Kennedy.

Although Karp's hit rate is impressive, it is by no means his most noteworthy accomplishment. The thing that makes Twelve truly remarkable is the way it has managed to unite the dreams of any publisher's disparate constituencies: writers (who want nothing so much as a publisher's attention and effort), literary agents (who encounter fewer and fewer editors who are experienced, credible, and essentially autonomous), booksellers (who complain, rightly, that too many books are published with too little care), the media (which can only cover so much and is happy to be steered toward the few books that are important), and readers (who are, by and large, blissfully unaware of the mad sausage making that goes on behind the scenes but know a good thing when they taste it). To those who wonder what the publishing industry of the future will look like: It may be right in front of you.

Why don't you start by telling me a little bit about your background.
I grew up in suburban New Jersey and I was always interested in writing. I was the editor of my junior high school newspaper, my high school newspaper, and my college newspaper. I was even the editor of the newspaper at my summer camp. We published an exposé on leeches in the lake. So I was pretty directed. 

Do you remember certain books that captivated you?
Absolutely. In around eighth grade, I read Goodbye, Columbus, and that spoke to me immediately. We had that second refrigerator in our basement just like they did in the Patimkin household. Roth was from Newark. So was my dad. So I really identified with that world and read Portnoy's Complaint shortly thereafter. I still remember that amazing love scene with the liver. I went through a phase where I was reading all of those Jewish American writers. The Assistant by Bernard Malamud was a particular favorite. Bellow's Humboldt's Gift. Then I discovered John Irving. The Cider House Rules and The World According to Garp really spoke to me. The Hotel New Hampshire.

Why were those books speaking to you?
Garp probably just because it sounded like my last name. My high school column was called "The World According to Karp." I think Irving said that his first three novels were ironic, and he realized after the third one that in any novel he would write in the future, he would admire his characters. I certainly admired Jenny Fields in Garp, and I admired Garp. I thought they were unconventional, romantic people. I remember being terribly sad, just like T. S. Garp, by the time I finished that book, and feeling as if I had lived a lifetime with those characters. When I read The Cider House Rules, it was a different feeling. I felt total identification with Homer Wells—wanting to be of use, just the way he did—and Irving's research into the lives of doctors performing abortions made me see that issue in a whole new way. I just thought the novels had dimensionality, and I was living in them in a way that seemed incredibly vivid and powerful—more powerful than the life I was living at the time.

My mom actually turned me on to a book that had a lot to do with where I wound up working. It was a book written in the 1970s by Sara Davidson called Loose Change, and it was about the experiences of three women coming of age at Berkeley in the 1960s. It was all true—it was a memoir—and I learned a lot about women from that book because it was about their personal lives: the men in their lives, the career choices they made, and the compromises they made. I was probably seventeen or eighteen years old at the time I read it, and it really influenced me. 

When I was applying for jobs, I saw Loose Change on the shelf of Kate Medina, with whom I was interviewing. I wanted to work for her because she had edited that book. It was probably a very strange reason for a twenty-five-year-old guy to take a job, but it's true. That was one of the reasons.

I also remember hearing you talk about The Best and the Brightest having a big impact on you as a young guy.
Oh, yes. That was when I was working as a reporter for the Miami Herald. I was twenty-three or twenty-four, and I read The Best and the Brightest and The Power Broker right around the same time. It was quite simply the best journalism I had ever read. I was in awe of both reporters and, being a reporter myself at the time, I knew the incredible amount of work those books must have taken in order to not just get the facts right but to put them into a larger context and to reconstruct the lives of the characters and to convey their points of view. I knew how hard that was. I was genuinely in awe of it. And it was also a wake-up call because I realized that I was never going to achieve that level of insight by writing for a daily newspaper. It just isn't possible. You can't go that deep. You can't take those liberties.

So I quit. I quit and I moved back to New York City to work in publishing because I thought that being closer to that level of insight would make me a better reader and make me more knowledgeable about the world.

Did you enjoy being a journalist?
I did. I loved writing for newspapers. But the problem with newspaper journalism, for me, was the uncertainty of it. I really didn't like getting up in the morning and not knowing what calamity was going to befall me that day. I wanted to learn one thing and learn it well, and I didn't feel like I could go deep as a newspaper reporter. I was at the Washington Post as a summer intern for two summers, and I had an opportunity to stay there as a reporter. The metro editor said, "You give me ten years and I can make you David Broder." But at the time—I think I was twenty-two—ten years seemed like a very long time. I thought, "I don't want to give you ten years. I'm not even sure I want to be David Broder." [Laughter.]

I've always wondered what would have happened if I had stayed there for ten years. One of the interns who was there with me was John Harris, who has now started the Politico and done really well. I wound up editing one of his books. Another intern who was there with me was Jeffrey Goldberg, who's written an outstanding book on Israel called Prisoners. So I worked with some really good interns and probably could have had that kind of a career path. But I really didn't like that daily confrontation with uncertainty. When I started at Random House, I remember this incredible feeling of relief that I was going to get to sit on my ass all day—that I wasn't going to have to run off and cover some fire or some murder or some scandal.

But I love journalism and I love journalists. I respect the work they do. I think it's incredibly important, and I think the sensibility I have as an editor is basically that of a journalist. It's probably one of the reasons why I've done so much nonfiction. I love fiction just as much, but when it's ingrained in you the way it was for me—the who, what, when, where, why, how—it becomes kind of a discipline and a way of thinking. 

How did you make your way to Random House?
I answered a classified ad in the New York Times. I interviewed at Harper & Row, Doubleday, and Random House. I could type over a hundred words per minute, so they were all very interested in me, but I went with Random House because I was so impressed with Kate Medina. She's a great editor and she was a great boss. She really taught me how to be an editor. I was her assistant for about three years. I did all the things that assistants do, but the most important thing was that I took dictation or, more precisely, I typed memos that she had dictated. They were her editorial memos, and they were extensive and brilliant. I saw the way she deconstructed a novel, or any manuscript, and saw it holistically: structurally, thematically, etcetera. She saw the big picture and the details at the same time. She was able to steer writers, in a positive way, toward a better, more vivid work. It was largely about improving the definition of the novels. And having typed dozens of those memos over the years, I began to learn the discipline of being an editor. How to see whether characters rang true. Whether the storytelling was paced well. How certain language either did or didn't have an impact.

There's something about hearing a person's voice in your head. I would put on these headphones and hear her administering her editorial medicine, and it definitely shaped me. But there are a multitude of reasons why Kate Medina is a great editor. I would overhear all of her phone conversations, and I vividly remember being struck by the fact that she never raised her voice and was always pleasant to everybody. I was kind of an angry twenty-five-year-old guy at that point, and I remember going into her office and saying, "Kate, you never yell." She said, "Well, I've always found that there's a nice way to deal with everything." That really changed me. I saw her professionalism, her very positive and constructive way of dealing with people. I also saw her vision. I typed a letter that she wrote to Tom Brokaw suggesting that he write a book. It was not the first letter—she'd been writing to him for years before I got there. I think about ten years after I typed that letter, The Greatest Generation came out. That was a case of an editor pursuing a writer she was interested in literally for years. It all starts with somebody like Kate Medina, frequently. I think the world of her.

Tell me about the atmosphere of Random House at the time.
Obviously you're overly nostalgic about any place you grow up, so I apologize if this is a little sepia-toned, but Random House really was an extraordinary editorial environment. I was very fortunate. I still remember the people who were on the hallway when I got there: Kate, Jason Epstein, Joe Fox, Bob Loomis, Sam Vaughan, Peter Osnos, Joni Evans, Susan Kamil, Becky Saletan, David Rosenthal. And then shortly thereafter, Harry Evans, Ann Godoff, Dan Menaker, and so many others. Julie Grau was there as an associate editor. These were really some of the best editors in the business. Just between Bob Loomis, Joe Fox, Jason Epstein, and Sam Vaughn—that's over 150 years of editorial experience right there. And they all talked to me. They were so generous with their time and their wisdom.

I was fortunate enough to be the young assistant who got to attend the editorial meeting and take the minutes. Only one assistant was allowed in, and somehow I got the gig. So I would listen to them talking about projects. I remember one week, one of them jokingly said, "So what's our view on Catholics?" Another one said, "We're in favor of them!" [Laughter.] It was a collegial place, even though I'm sure there was a lot of stuff going on above my radar. But they were seeing all of the best projects—this was when Random House was owned by the Newhouses—and I remember somebody saying, "They're like the Medicis. They just want to have the best."

Anyway, I was watching all of this. I rarely spoke up in meetings because I was so junior, but eventually some projects started to come my way. I had written to the best reporter I had worked with when I was a reporter at the Providence Journal, a guy named Wayne Miller. I encouraged him to send me any book ideas he had, and he sent me a proposal for a narrative nonfiction book about one of the great pediatric surgeons of our time. I showed the proposal to Becky Saletan, Joni Evans, and Kate. They all said nice things about it, and Joni let me offer twenty-five thousand dollars to buy world rights. This was at a time when people seemed to like medical stories. The Book-of-the-Month Club bought it. We actually did respectably with it. I think they let me do it because it was a good proposal and they wanted to give me a break. That was the first book I got to edit on my own.

And then I got a lot of really good opportunities along the way. Peter Osnos asked me to help him edit Tip O'Neill's second book, so Peter and I drove up to Massachusetts in Peter's convertible and spent a weekend with Tip, listening to his stories. It was just wonderful. Harry Evans asked me to help edit Colin Powell's autobiography, which was a great experience. I remember working on the captions for that book. There were some pictures of Powell with famous people, including the Pope. I had titled that section "Friends," and General Powell faxed me back, "Pope ain't my friend." [Laughter.] 

When you look back and think about those early years, what were some of the first acquisitions that you feel were really important to you?
I was following my passions. We had this magazine called At Random, which I was writing for. I got to write about Richard Ben Cramer's What It Takes. I read that book in manuscript and it blew me away. It was by far the most interesting book I had ever read about politicians. So I got to meet Richard and his literary agent Flip Brophy. One of the most interesting characters in the book was Gary Hart, and I had been a Hart supporter. I thought he was ahead of his time and somebody who was trying to do something important about energy and defense issues. I said to Flip, "I would really like to do a book with Gary Hart about why political reform doesn't happen. Every four years we have politicians running on a reform agenda, but we never get the reform they seek. Why is that?" So I wrote a letter to Hart and we did a deal. That book did fine. It wasn't a best-seller. It just sold respectably. But it was the first book I was able to do with a major political figure. A few years later, when Flip was representing another United States Senator, John McCain, she thought of me, and we preemptively acquired that book, thanks largely to Ann Godoff's celerity in dealing with it. Since then I've done four other books with John McCain and several other books with Flip Brophy. I think that was a case of naturally following my curiosity.

What other books?
My favorite story, and probably the best opportunity I had as an editor, was with Mario Puzo. This is all true. You're not going to believe it, but I swear that it's true. I was answering the phones, filling in for the receptionist at lunch, and the publisher at the time, Joni Evans, came back from lunch, walked out of the elevator, saw me standing right in front of her, and said, "I need a guy to read this novel I'm working on." And I was a guy. So she gave me the manuscript. It was a thriller set in Washington called The Fourth K—Puzo's only Washington novel. It was about a son in a great political family who is very unpopular as president. He's the second president in his family and, to strengthen his popularity, he allows an act of terrorism to occur in the United States, thereby seizing dictatorial power. This was in 1990. 

I loved The Fourth K. I still remember sitting at home on my couch all weekend reading it. I wrote a ten-page memo about it—what was good about it, what I thought needed to be improved, etcetera. Joni showed it to Puzo and we all agreed that the manuscript still needed work. This was during a time when publishers sometimes traveled to be with their authors. I still can't get over this, but Joni, Julie Grau, and I flew to Las Vegas, where we edited Mario Puzo in person because Mario felt that he did his best work in Vegas. He liked to gamble. So Mario's walking around Vegas in his sweatpants. During the day we worked around the table and edited, and then at night he took us gambling. I had never gambled in my life, and he decided that he wanted to introduce me to the game of baccarat. He gave me a hundred dollars and said, "Have some fun." I proceeded to lose the hundred dollars. I felt horrible about this. You know, I've come to work with him and I've lost his money. But he gave me another hundred dollars and something remarkable happened: I began to win. I think I won about five hands in a row. I paid back the two hundred dollars, which was good, but what was really good was that Mario had been gambling along with me while I won my five hands, and he'd made about seven thousand dollars on it. So he felt very good about it.

Anyway, we finished up the editing and the book came out and did fine. But then Joni and Julie Grau left the company. There were no other people at Random House who Mario knew well, and a lot of more senior editors wanted to work with him. But Mario told the CEO, Alberto Vitale, that he wanted to work with me, not because of my editorial work but because he thought I was good luck. He'd made seven thousand dollars gambling with me. And that is how I became Mario Puzo's editor.

We worked together on The Last Don, and it was a huge best-seller. It was his comeback novel. Then we reissued The Fortunate Pilgrim, and I wound up editing his last novel, Omerta. Working with Mario was just a magical experience. He was the kindest, sweetest man. It was always so striking to me how gentle he was, because he would write these violent scenes full of revenge and bitter irony. But in person he was one of the nicest people I've ever met. 

Did you become close personally with him?
I felt that way, yes. I was actually there when he died. I was at his home when he died and got to tell him that I loved his new book. I said goodbye to him and held his hand. It was amazing to me. He was really very good to me, and very generous to work with me.

Did he take editing?
Yes. He was a great storyteller. He'd grown up going to the public library and reading about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, and he always saw these mafia novels as myths. It was never a real thing to him. People didn't appreciate Mario's sense of humor in those novels as much as they should have. Even The Godfather is a very funny novel. Mario cared about his characters. He cared about the story being satisfying to the very end. I remember him telling me that his great disappointment with most novels was that they petered out at the end. Mario cared deeply about his endings. The Last Don had a great surprise ending.

The only editing he would not take was when I begged him to bring back Johnny Fontane, the Sinatra-esque singer from The Godfather. I was sure that there was more life in that guy, and he just wouldn't do it. But he said, and this is a quote, "When I croak, you can do whatever you want." [Laughter.] So after he died we decided to do a Godfather sequel, and I got Johnny Fontane in that way. And I know that Mario would have been just fine with it, because he really wanted his books to be read. He cared about that, and he was glad that we were keeping his work out there. He actually asked us to.

Tell me about Ann Godoff.
I think Ann Godoff is one of the great publishers of the last two decades. I learned so much from her and was so inspired by her. To this day, rarely does much time go by without me thinking of something I learned from her. I think that what distinguishes her from a lot of other publishers is her conviction about the work. There is nothing cynical about the way she publishes. She really taught me to look for the authentic voices and the people who are saying something relevant and fresh.

Give me an example of something you saw Ann do that taught you something about how to publish.
The first thing that comes to mind is the way Ann published Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, which was a midlist book that was not acquired for a lot of money. I remember Ann's presentation of it. People don't realize how important it is that an editor be able to articulate what is compelling and different about a book, and Ann did that time and time again. I remember when she published White Teeth. She said to a room full of people, "We will remember this as the year we published Zadie Smith." It was just the perfect way to get your attention. 

What do you remember her saying about Midnight?
What I remember about Midnight are the advance reader editions, which came a full year in advance of the book and which you were immediately compelled to pick up because the cover image was so arresting. Ann had a great eye for covers. The look of the Random House books of that period was distinctive and striking. And it wasn't too long before people around the house were saying, "Have you read Midnight?" So by the time we published it there was already a great deal of enthusiasm behind it. Harry Evans was the publisher at the time, and he did some very brash and ballsy things, too. They flew a whole group of reporters to Savannah to meet the people in the book. That got a lot of attention. The New York Times Book Review was very late to the party on Midnight. They didn't review it until it was already on the best-seller list. So it was publicity like that trip that launched the book. 

Everybody knows that books like that are rare, and you can't ever expect it to happen, but it was one of many midlist books that Random House launched at that time: The Hot Zone, The Alienist, Makes Me Wanna Holler, and later, when Ann was publisher, Seabiscuit and The Orchid Thief. These were all "make books" and really spoke to a tradition of publishing that Random House had always done, going back to people like Jane Jacobs and David Halberstam. Ann understood how to get people excited about books that weren't obvious. She often used to say in meetings, "We do it the hard way, and that's why it's fun." I just found that inspiring. There was nothing calculated about the way books were published by Ann Godoff. She was doing it for the right reasons, I thought. 

What was your working relationship like? How were you learning the things you were learning from her?
It's important to remember that she was not just publisher but also editor in chief. Usually every Monday morning I would bounce into the office having read ten proposals, and I would go into her office at eight-thirty—she was there every morning—and I would say, "I liked this, and I liked this, and I liked this." And she would say, "Well, that one sounds interesting, that one I don't see the reader for, that one...I don't know if that writer's really up to it." So she really was a true editor in chief. She guided me and helped me winnow the projects. By the end of our relationship at Random House, we had a wonderful sort of shorthand. I remember walking into her office and saying, "There's this guy I read about in the New Yorker named Kenneth Pollack. He's a Clinton guy who supports intervention in Iraq. I think that's interesting. I think we should do a book with him. What do you think?" And she said, "Oh yeah, I read that article. We should do that." I made an offer that day and we signed him up and it became one of the most influential books on the war in Iraq. That was just a simple conversation between an editor and a publisher with a trusting relationship and a shared sensibility. Every young editor should be so fortunate to have somebody that good guiding him. She really did help me see which books I ought to devote myself to. I mean, let's face it. Every editor has to acquire some clunkers in order to publish the ones that last. I think I was perhaps spared more of the clunkers because of Ann's discerning eye. She's a real editor.

It seems like you had a fairly blessed rise. But tell me what was hard for you in those early years.
It wasn't hard. I'm not going to make something up. It was fun. I think this is one of the great soft jobs in America. What is hard about reading books and telling people what you think of them? It's not hard. If anything it's too easy.

But you were an ambitious guy. Didn't that create any sorts of tensions?
Okay, you know what was frustrating? The seven associate publishers telling me what to do. [Laughter.] By the end, I didn't want any more people telling me what to do, and that's why I started Twelve. So that was frustrating. But with that said, the associate publishers themselves were all very smart and helpful. It wasn't that their ideas were wrong. It was just that I didn't want anybody telling me what to do.

There were also things I probably should have gotten the answers to faster. It took me a while to recognize all of the Kabuki. I spent a tremendous amount of time trying to win friends and influence people within the house, and in the end, while I think it's always good to be collegial, the book probably speaks for itself. I probably didn't need to spend so much time trying to curry favor. But maybe you don't realize that when you're a young editor. You think you're somehow negligent in your efforts if you don't make everybody read every page. I think that perhaps it was a necessary rite of passage. But knowing what I know now, I realize that if you have a good book, people are smart enough to discover it. And if they don't discover it, maybe you need to do more editing. And furthermore, even if they do discover it, its success is probably still up to things out of your control anyway.

Were you close with Bob Loomis?
I wouldn't want to say that I was close to any of the great editors who were there because that implies that I was significant to them, and I think I was a piker to most of them at the time. But I would go into Bob Loomis's office, and Sam Vaughan's office, and Joe Fox's office. I remember talking to Joe Fox about John Irving, and asking him if it would be possible to bring Irving back to Random House, and being elated when Joe gave me an early copy of Son of the Circus. I remember talking to Joe about his experiences editing Irving. That was an incredible opportunity. Joe gave me one of my first books to edit. He had acquired The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll and The Rolling Stone Record Guide, and, as a young guy, I was the perfect person to do all the scut work on those books. So he handed me the contract and said, "Congratulations! You're an editor." I'll never forget that.

Jason Epstein said things to me that I think about to this day. I talked to Jason a lot about Jane Jacobs, whose Death and Life of Great American Cities had influenced me a lot. Jason had also edited Paul Kennedy's The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, and I remember him talking to me about the decline of manufacturing in America. He had very astute ideas about that. This was in the early 1990s, and he felt that the diminishment of manufacturing was a sign of America's decline.

That's very poignant right now.
Yes, and he's been talking about it for twenty years. I remember having conversations with Bob Loomis and Sam Vaughan about a writer with whom I was obsessed at the time, Herman Wouk. Sam had been the editor in chief of Doubleday, so he'd worked with Wouk, and he told me some really good stories about working with him and about how Wouk was so influenced by the nineteenth-century novel. After that comment, I began to see fiction in that continuum and realized that a lot of things that I liked about fiction really derived from the storytelling techniques of Victorian novelists.

Bob Loomis's modesty as an editor made a big impression on me. He's so soft-spoken and so devoted to his writers. My favorite book that Bob edited was probably A Civil Action. We had many talks about Jonathan Harr and how he had edited that book. I believe I was in the editorial meeting when that book was acquired, although maybe that's my memory playing tricks on me. But it was a tough story—it was about children dying as a result of environmental abuses by New England companies. And Harr took years and years to write it. I think he put seven years of his life into that book and didn't turn it in until he was ready. The same thing happened with another book that Bob edited around the same time, Sam Tanenhaus's book on Whittaker Chambers, which I also read cover to cover and greatly admired. Both were case studies in writers taking as long as they needed to get it right. Bob never pushed a writer to turn in a manuscript. He was willing to wait ten years for Neil Sheehan, or however long it was, and he waited for Sam Tanenhaus and he waited for Jonathan Harr. The results were best-selling books that will be in print forever. Of the many lessons I learned from editors at Random House, that was one of the greatest. I still remember Jason Epstein joking, "Nobody remembers what day War and Peace was published." But I saw that changing in the industry as publishers came under increasing pressure to meet their fiscal year targets by rushing books out. I think that's antithetical to good publishing. The really important books are often worth waiting for, no matter how long you have to wait. I saw that again and again at Random House.

Wasn't A Civil Action published twice because it didn't work the first time?
Yes, it was published twice within a year. That was another example of really ballsy publishing by Harry Evans. Harry just refused to take no for an answer from the public. He wasn't happy with the original cover, so they redesigned it and brought out the book again. And they eventually got out about a hundred thousand copies. They had a quote from John Grisham, which helped, and then Vintage brought out the paperback and it exploded. I don't think all that would have happened if Random House hadn't published it so well in hardcover. 

Tell me about some of the literary agents who were important to you in the early part of your career.
Flip Brophy gave me a couple of breaks that I'll always be grateful for. Binky Urban sat next to me at a Random House lunch that Harry had set up, and we developed a very good relationship. She's submitted many writers to me with whom I've worked very happily, starting with the novelist Paul Watkins. Then we worked together on Jon Meacham, Sally Bedell Smith, Christopher Buckley, and many others. Binky sent me the first half of Thank You for Smoking, which was my first best-seller and is still one of my favorite novels. The idea of writing about the inner life of a tobacco lobbyist was inspired. Harry Evans was a friend of Chris Buckley's—I was a young editor at the time—and basically it was all set up for me. All I had to do was answer the phone, read the pages, and laugh, and we were going to do the book. Chris and I have worked together ever since. We've done eight books in fifteen years, and that's thanks to Binky Urban. She was instrumental in helping me get started.

Kathy Robbins is another one. I inherited Ron Rosenbaum and began working with Kathy on Explaining Hitler. Kathy is a tremendously attentive and inventive literary agent. She always has good publishing ideas in addition to good editorial ideas. I was so struck by her commitment to every draft of that book. She read everything along with me. We would talk about it and then talk to Ron. Again, I think he spent ten years of his life thinking about Hitler. And it's one of the best books I've ever edited. Working with both of them on that was a foundational experience. 

I looked in my database recently and I've gotten submissions from over five hundred literary agents. So there are a lot. Neil Olsen was great to work with on the Mario Puzo books. Always calm, always constructive. I must mention Peter Ginsberg. Peter submitted a first novel to me in 1993. I read it overnight and loved it. It was set in the financial world and it was basically a satirical novel about the absurdities of the information economy. It was a book called Bombardiers, and the writer's name was Po Bronson. Harry Evans let me preempt it for fifty thousand dollars, and we published Bombardiers very successfully. Harry did this thing where we actually sold futures in the book—we sold stock in the book—and had a party down on Wall Street. That got on CNN. The book was an international best-seller. Then Po wrote another novel, then a Silicon Valley book, and then he began to shift into nonfiction. Peter Ginsberg was with Po from the start. He was on top of everything. He was an incredibly tough negotiator. He got a better deal for Po each time—each time he made us up the ante. Each time I thought, "This is too much money. We're never going to make it back." And each time we made it back. I remember once, I was in the middle of a negotiation with Peter, and I said, "I can't deal with this now. I have to go to the dentist." He wrote back and said, "I bet you're looking forward to the dentist." And he was right. [Laughter.] But, you know, he was involved in all of the marketing of Po in a really constructive way. He's a great literary agent.

Similarly, there's Suzanne Gluck. Not only is she as savvy as they come, but, in terms of pure entertainment value per pound, I'd have to put her very high up there. We worked together on another first novel—probably the most successful first novel I've ever edited—The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl. That was one I read over the weekend. I came in on Monday and said to Ann Godoff, "This is great," and we preempted it before anyone else could. It was a huge international success. I haven't looked lately but I think it's sold well over half a million copies. And Suzanne was involved in every aspect the whole way through. I remember we had an author photo of Matthew and she called me and said, "Jon, we can't use this author photo. It's a thriller, and this looks like his Bar Mitzvah picture." [Laughter.]

Tell me about the acquisition of Seabiscuit.
Tina Bennett and I were at lunch at the Four Seasons—not the fancy Four Seasons, the Four Seasons Hotel—and she said, "Have you ever heard of Seabiscuit?" I said, "No." She said, "Well, Seabiscuit was a horse." I said, "I'm not interested." She said, "Well, there was actually more written about Seabiscuit in the 1930s than Hitler, Mussolini, and FDR combined." I said, "Really?" and she said, "Yeah." I said, "All right, send me the proposal."

[Laughter.] You know, if Tina hadn't pitched it to me that way, I never would have wanted to read it. She's a brilliant agent. And the proposal came in and it was great. We won the auction.

For a pretty modest amount of money, right? Five figures?
Five figures and we were the underbidder. Laura Hillenbrand wanted to be with Random House because Random House was the best publisher of that kind of nonfiction at the time, thanks to Ann Godoff. The proposal was really very strong. I remember showing it to a bunch of people. Bob Loomis read it, and, obviously, Ann read it. The thing that's interesting is that I often hear people say, "Well, Seabiscuit worked, so we should publish x, y, or z. Anything can work if Seabiscuit worked." But actually, what I think people might be overlooking is that structurally, Seabiscuit was a great story. It was almost a perfect story in the way the horse kept overcoming expectations and hurdles. You couldn't tell from the proposal that Laura would have been able to write it as deeply and richly and beautifully as she did. The proposal was only about twenty pages, and there wasn't very much characterization there because she hadn't begun to do that yet, so all we really knew at the time was that it was a really good story. We figured that it might just be a short book—we didn't know how much was going to be there. It was only when the manuscript came in that we realized what an extraordinary book we had.

When you look back on that book, is there anything that happened on the way to publication that you think of as the turning point?
People read it. It's as simple as that.

When you say "people," who do you mean?
First of all, I read it. I have the editorial memo I sent her after I read the full manuscript. I said, "This is the best manuscript that an author has ever delivered to me." After we were done editing, I began to give it to people at Random House, and their reactions were similarly off the charts. At sales conference, the sales rep from Maine raised his hand and said, "We're going to sell a million copies of this book." And it wasn't because it was such a commercial subject—everybody knew that horse racing was not a big category. It was about a feeling that the book gave people.

What I learned from editing that book was just how important it is for a book to actually leave you with a feeling. I had been a very analytical guy up to that point, in terms of my editing. For nonfiction, I had always assumed that if it made sense and was well written and had an important point to it, people would respect it and like it. But that isn't what it's about, ultimately. People have to be moved by it. And there was something going on between the lines in that book, from beginning to end. I could give you lots of reasons why I think it's moving. It's a terrific transformation story: The horse is transformed by these three men, and the three men are transformed by the horse. It's about winning. It's about overcoming adversity. And the writer's reasons for writing the book were pure and personal. It was infused with a kind of passion that you very rarely encounter in nonfiction—and that passion was augmented by a degree of focus and precision that you rarely find. So the book worked on every level. It worked on a prose level, it worked on a story level, and it worked on an emotional level. 

I've heard you talk about the three main reasons why people read, and how the best reading experiences combine all three. I think readers would find that interesting.
If I'm remembering it right there are three Es. People read for entertainment, education, or the expressiveness of the language. The best books combine all three, and Seabiscuit combined all three. It was an expressive book that was wondrously entertaining and educational in terms of bringing to life a period in American history. It was published as a work of history even though it was about a horse winning races. 

So you feel pretty strongly that it was nothing that happened along the way except for people reading it?
That book was on the best-seller list before there was any media or any advertising. It was an immediate best-seller. I mean, Talk magazine had done an excerpt, but when has an excerpt ever sold a book? I really believe that it was because we printed about five thousand galleys, people read it and loved it, and book-sellers were hand-selling it. It was publishing at a time when there wasn't a lot of competition. We were very good at publishing in that window—I think it was March. So that's why I think that book worked. It was just a great book to read. And it was different.

What do you mean by "different"?
There wasn't anything else like it. I was so amused that right after Seabiscuit, people began publishing all of these books about horse racing. They completely missed the point. The book didn't succeed because people were dying to read about horses. It succeeded because it was a beautifully written story that was emotionally satisfying and interesting from beginning to end. And let's give Random House some credit for publishing that book so well. Random House is a great publishing company. The sales force was wholeheartedly behind it. I remember that before sales conference, somebody had suggested that we change the title to "Dark Horse." At sales conference the reps kept coming up to me and saying, "Jon, please don't change the title to ‘Dark Horse.'" Before we presented the book, I said to Ann, "They really don't want to call this book ‘Dark Horse.'" And she said, "You know something? I don't either." And she started the presentation by saying, "I have some news. We are calling the book Seabiscuit." The room broke out in applause. Everybody had already read it. Even before the book had been presented, it was known as something that people were going to love. It's just one of those things. It's alchemy, and you can't reproduce it.

On the flip side, tell me about a novel from that era that still breaks your heart because it didn't achieve what you'd hoped it would commercially.
There are a number of them. I'm told by many people that fiction breaks your heart, so I should just accept it. But when I look at my bookshelf at home, I just wish more readers had been able to discover some of those books. There was a novel called Cheat and Charmer by Elizabeth Frank. She's a professor at Bard and she'd spent twenty-five years writing the book. It was a contemporary variation on Anna Karenina set in the McCarthy era. We got some great reviews, but we just didn't push it hard enough. I still regret that.

There was a novel called The Baker by a writer named Paul Hond, which was my attempt to publish a next-generation Malamud. It involved Jews and African Americans in a burnt-out city, post-riots, and it was about people seeking redemption and love. It was a retelling of The Tenants and had a little bit of The Assistant in it as well.

A novel called All the Money in the World by Robert Anthony Siegel. It was about the son of a greedy lawyer who winds up in prison. It eerily foretells the Bernie Madoff story. There are a lot of them.

What do those experiences teach you as an editor?
They taught me that you're going to fail more often than you succeed. They taught me that you have to pick your shots. It's one of the reasons why we've been very careful about the fiction we're publishing at Twelve. I really want to be able to tell people, "This is rare. This is special. This is significant." I think it's much harder to get people to read fiction. We're only publishing one novel in 2010. It's called Rich Boy and it's by a creative writing teacher at the University of Michigan named Sharon Pomerantz. She's won four Hopwood Prizes. Again, she's been working on this book for ten years, and it's one of these novels where characters reveal things that, in your own life, people never say out loud. I was completely caught up in it. It's got great verisimilitude and feeling, and I just love the way secrets are revealed. I think it was Ian McEwan who said that the key to successful fiction is the way in which you reveal the information. In Rich Boy the information is revealed quite artfully.

But I think literary fiction is the toughest to publish. The other thing I will say, which I don't think people talk about enough—not to complain—is just how hard it is to be a guy publishing fiction. Because there is a gender gap. I think more than 70 percent of fiction is bought by women. It ties you up in knots, in a way, because you want to publish the books that you can identify with and relate to. I'd like to believe that I can identify with and relate to the things that women care about, but I can never be sure. [Laughter.] And, at times, I'm trepidatious, because I think, "Well, if this is a man writing about a woman, then we've got two strikes against us." If it's a woman writing about a man, which is actually the case with Rich Boy, I'm all set to go. I read it and thought, "She's writing about a lot of guys I know. I know that it's real because I feel like I know these people. And the fact that a woman can do it makes me think that other women will agree and appreciate it." But I do think it's tricky because obviously there are so many more women in publishing, and so many more really good fiction editors who are women, that you're almost immediately at a disadvantage if you're a guy who wants to publish fiction. It all comes back, I think, to my very first experience editing fiction, with Joni Evans coming through the elevator and basically picking me because I was the only guy she could find. I think about that a lot.

I also think there are a lot of complexities to fiction. The kinds of novels that many discerning editors want to publish are not easy to sell. They're not sure things. I mean, a lot of my favorite recent novels—The Corrections, Middlesex, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, The Emperor's Children—are not books that are immediate or natural best-sellers. So you really have to get very lucky, and you can't count on review attention to the extent that you used to. Even if you get the review attention, you can't expect the same kind of consensus that I think you get with nonfiction reviews, because, for some reason, it just seems easier to be objective about nonfiction.

Ideally I'd like to publish big social realism that is relevant to the moment but has enduring value. I wish that I could find a Garp or a contemporary analogy to something like The Jungle, a book that influenced the political debate and had lasting cultural influence. I think that Christopher Buckley, in his own way, is doing that with books like Thank You for Smoking and Boomsday. I wish I could find more writers in that vein. But I also think there's only so much the culture can absorb. I started out by telling you how much of an influence Philip Roth was on me. I loved the Zuckerman trilogy. I loved American Pastoral. But here is a confession: I can't keep up with Philip Roth. This is a guy who was a seminal influence on me, and I can't keep up with everything he's written. I've got three Roth novels on my shelf that I just haven't gotten to. So I can't help thinking that if I'm having trouble keeping up with all the really good fiction out there, a lot of other readers are, too.

I have a prediction. I predict that the new Lorrie Moore novel is going to be huge. And here's why: pent-up demand. This is a woman who has held her tongue, and I am dying to buy that Lorrie Moore book. I will buy that book the first week it comes out. I will pay the full retail price in cold American cash. And I predict big best-sellerdom. I don't know Lorrie Moore and I'm not involved with the book. It's just an opinion.

You've also edited a lot of celebrities. Any good stories?
I don't know if you would rank him as a celebrity, but when I was growing up, one of my heroes was Rupert Holmes, who is best known as the creator and singer of "The Piña Colada Song." But he's also won practically every award known to man: the Academy Award, the Grammy, the Emmy, Tonys. He wrote the book, music, lyrics, and orchestration for The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

My very first day at Random House—I was twenty-five years old—I wrote a letter to Rupert Holmes that said, "I will publish anything you want to do." Several years later, he called me up and said he'd like to write a book. So we met, and Ann Godoff and Harry Evans let me sign up Rupert Holmes without a single word on paper. He had come up with an idea for a novel about a serial killer, I think. I didn't know what it was. I didn't care. I just wanted to publish Rupert Holmes.

Seven years went by before he turned it in. But when he finally did, it was wonderful. It's really, to this day, one of my favorite novels of all time. It's called Where the Truth Lies, and it posits a theory that the real reason why a comedy team like Martin and Lewis broke up is because there was a dead girl at a casino in Vegas where they were playing. And it goes off from there. It's just this elaborately devious, rococo tour through 1970s celebrity culture, with an utterly suspenseful mystery plot that keeps you wondering who the killer is until the very end. And it got great reviews. It became an Atom Egoyan movie. And I wish more people would read it. It did respectably, but I think people would love this book. 

Rupert has said so many funny things over the course of his career. Whenever he describes a person he doesn't think much of, he says, "She has unexplored shallows." He describes life as "a rat race heading for a mousetrap." He's my favorite celebrity, and I'm still working with him.

On a new book?
On a new novel. Which I expect him to deliver some time in the next seven years.

You left Random House briefly to go work for the film producer Scott Rudin. Why did you leave, and what happened there?
I worked in the movie business for seven weeks. I left because I was bored. I'd been at Random House for twelve years, and I wanted a new challenge. I was under the impression that movies had more cultural influence than books, and since I saw myself as basically somebody who was editing storytellers, it didn't seem to matter what medium I was editing the stories in. I had worked in journalism, which was a kind of storytelling. I'd worked in publishing. I just thought, "I'd like to learn how stories are told cinematically."

Scott Rudin was the best producer in New York. I'd liked a lot of his movies. So when I heard there was an opening, I went after the job and he said, "Just come here and do what you did at Random House." When I got there I was very surprised to discover that, actually, in terms of writing, books are more culturally central. Maybe that shouldn't have come as such a surprise to me, but I learned pretty quickly that film is a director's medium and that, as an editor working with writers, I wouldn't be able to do what I did at Random House. I wouldn't be able to sign up people as easily and develop their work and really have it wind up on the page and ultimately with the public. Once I realized that, I decided to get out of there and go right back to Random House, where I still had my authors.

But I knew I would be back at Random House. At my going-away party I said, "I'll be back." I didn't expect to be back in seven weeks. [Laughter.] I thought I would be back in five years, or ten years, after doing movies. But I fully intended to come back. I was embarrassed that it didn't work out, and I was also a little bit surprised by the result of my leaving and coming back. I was worried that people would take me less seriously as an editor because I'd done this frivolous Hollywood sojourn, but, in fact, I got even better submissions once I got back. I think maybe it reminded people I was alive. Maybe they respected the fact that I'd taken a chance. But the bottom line is that it actually turned out to be a great thing for my time at Random House. And I never looked back after that. I never thought seriously about movies or Hollywood again.

The other thing about it is that I thought—because there's such public fascination with movies and Hollywood, because more people see movies than buy books, because it's easier to absorb a two-hour story visually than it is to read something for ten or fifteen hours—I thought I could have more impact. I also thought that writers would gravitate to film and that I'd be able to learn more because so many people are attracted to it. What I was surprised to learn was that it's not a curiosity driven art form, for the most part—documentaries are the exception—and because the storytelling has to appeal to a mass audience, you can't necessarily go as deep or explore your curiosity as much as you'd like to. And again, maybe that sounds naïve. But I was surprised by it.

The other thing I realized is that the creative decisions on the business end were being made with a very young demographic in mind—largely teenage boys or men in their twenties. I was in my early thirties at that point, so I was already edging out of that demographic, and I realized that the need to serve a demographic that you didn't necessarily identify with might be one of the reasons why Hollywood can seem like such an irrational, capricious place. Because people are fundamentally insecure about serving an audience that they are not a part of. When I thought about why I loved Random House so much, it was because I was publishing books for people who shared my sensibility. And I think that's what will always remain great about publishing as an endeavor. Although certain books can achieve great mass influence, most books are published by people for people with whom they identify. That's a big thing. That's what gives you the confidence and the passion to do what you do. And I have to say, the publishers who are not publishing from that interior place, I'm not sure what motivates them.

Was working for Rudin a traumatic experience?
No. Well, negotiating my exit was traumatic because I had a contract and he didn't want me to leave, and then he didn't want me to leave until a specific date. And I wanted to get back to Random House. There was one very long week where I was sitting in an empty office watching MTV. I remember thinking, "This is very strange." But in Scott Rudin's defense, I let him down, and I quit on him. But it just wasn't the right place for me.

Did you have help negotiating your exit?
Yes, I had a lawyer. It was very expensive. I remember that bill, too. That bill was traumatic. [Laughter.] 

Eventually you left Random House for good. Why?
I'd been there for sixteen years. That's like going to the same college four times, and I was ready to graduate. I had this idea for Twelve—I wanted to edit the books and publish the books—and that just wasn't going to be possible within that corporate structure. And with the benefit of distance, I think it was the right reason to leave. I'm also incredibly grateful for the sixteen years I had there. I carry the editorial values of Random House with me every day, and I'm close to many of my former colleagues. I think that Random House is the great American publishing company. Well, the great German-American publishing company. [Laughter.]

How did you come up with the idea for Twelve?
There were a number of ideas behind it. Let's start with the real impetus, which is that I want to publish the best books. And I really believe that writers want to be read. Maybe this is not that profound, but I think that sometimes we lose sight of the fact that, all things being equal, an author is going to want to be with the person who he or she thinks can sell the most books. So the goal was to attract the best talent.

I can give you several moments along the way to the idea becoming clear. When I was at Random House, an agent named Larry Weissman sent us a nonfiction proposal that we all loved. It was the book that eventually became The Billionaire's Vinegar, which is a great historical story involving wine. We thought that it was a classic Random House book. We put on the full-court press—I was the editor in chief at the time—and brought the author and Larry in for a meeting. There were eight of us in the room. We enthused. We said all the right things. We showed up at the auction and made an offer, and it was the same as Crown's. And they chose Crown. I was mystified. I called up Larry and said, "Why did you choose Crown?" He said, "They promised to make us the lead title." And I thought, "You know something? That was the right decision." And then I thought, "What if every book I published were the lead title?" And then I thought, "How many lead titles can you have?" And then I thought, "Well, the fact of the matter is, if you're thinking about how much the media can absorb, being able to say, ‘This is the one book you should read this month' has some credibility to it."

A second moment was when I was at Random House and two books I'd worked on for several years were both scheduled for release in the same month. They were books I really liked—one was called The Lady and the Panda and the other was called The Genius Factory. I believed in both of them equally and wanted to proselytize for both of them equally. I was suddenly tied up in knots—I was flummoxed—because I didn't know which book to talk about, and I didn't control the schedule. That was another example.

So I was thinking, "Okay, I want everything to be the lead title. I want to have at least a month to put it across. And I want to have the best talent. What's the best way to do that?" It's to make a promise to the author and to make the promise so explicit that it's on the spine of the book: Twelve. That's it. One a month. You get your launch and, although we can't guarantee that the book's going to be a best-seller, we can at least guarantee that you will have our full attention, focus, and commitment for a sustained period. We will talk about your book until people will not listen to us anymore.

One of the things you said in the run-up to Twelve's launch was that you wanted to bring authors and agents more into the process of publishing the books. What are you trying to do differently in that regard?
Let's start by taking a step back. I assume that a lot of writers are reading this, and I sincerely believe that literary agents are essential to the process and that authors should gladly pay the 15 percent. Here's why: Every direct interaction that an author has with his publisher is so fraught with the power dynamic—and with the fact that the author's economic livelihood is involved—that I just don't think an author can always process all the information that's coming from the publisher. So I think it's really important and helpful to triangulate with an agent. That's something I've learned over years of working really closely with authors and agents on everything from the title of the book to the editorial shape of the book to the cover of the book to the marketing and advertising of the book. I just can't imagine doing it in any other way.

When I said that I wanted to involve them more I think I just meant that, before we set a marketing plan, I say, "What would you like us to do?" For all I know, publishers are doing that already. But I really do ask them very early in the process, before any budget numbers are set, and I try my very best to make them true partners in the endeavor. But it's even things that are as simple as giving them as many galleys as they need—I'm not sure that publishers even do that all the time. 

Your Web site has twelve bullet points about the imprint, one of which is that you will publish books that matter. That's a very subjective phrase. What does it mean to you?
It means books that are relevant to the national conversation. Books that advance our understanding in some way, whether it's our understanding of events or the human condition. Books that have redeeming cultural value.

Books that are not "ooks," as Bob Giroux used to say.
Yeah. But at the same time, I don't want to be holier-than-thou about it. Look, I believe in escapism. I just think that even when you're escaping, there can be a point to it. It doesn't have to be revelatory—it just has to have, I hope, some larger truth or purpose to it. Purpose is a great word. I don't think it's a coincidence that [Rick Warren's] The Purpose Driven Life sold all those copies. I think that people gravitate to purpose. I think we seek it, and I want each book to serve a purpose. I can't understand why you would do it any other way. I really can't. Even if the purpose is to make a lot of money, that's still a purpose. [Laughter.]

What else are you trying to do differently?
I would say acquisitions. In fact, I don't think that's given enough emphasis when people talk about publishing. When I first started out in the business, Jacob Weisberg, a writer I greatly respect, wrote a very influential piece about how editors don't edit anymore—all they do is the deal. I think that implicit in that assessment is an underestimation of just how important the deal is—how important the decision to publish the book is. I think that a majority of the projects that are acquired by major houses never have a chance of breaking through. They are flawed in their conception. What I learned from Ann Godoff was to be a discerning acquisitions specialist. The most important decision that anyone makes in a publishing house is the decision to buy the book in the first place, and I'm amazed by how often that decision is made with very little sustained consideration.

How do you make those acquisition decisions? What are you looking at and thinking about and turning over in your mind?
Well, first of all, "Is it different? Is it distinctive? Is it singular?" I would've loved to have called this imprint Singular Books, but it sounded too much like a wireless phone company. Because I want the books to be like nothing else. I think exclusivity matters—if the journalist has contacts that nobody else has or if the author has stories that only he or she can tell. Something I haven't heard before. Every Sunday, Chris Matthews says on his talk show, "Tell me something I don't know." That ought to be where every editor or publisher starts. "What didn't I already know here?"

I really am amazed by how often publishers decide to do something because a similar book succeeded. That is flawed reasoning. Books catch on for any number of reasons, and it's not a mathematical formula that can be reproduced. Even more insidious is the idea that sometimes creeps into acquisition decisions in a really cynical and negative way, where people say, "Well, that nondescript work caught on, so this nondescript work could too." I just don't understand why you would want to go down that road. It makes no sense to me. I would think that you would feel as if you were going through your life just imitating other people, doing something you didn't really believe in. I'm genuinely mystified by that.

Then I look for an originality of expression. If I see a cliché, it's out. Any writer who uses clichés is telling me, "I am not original." So that's easy, and I think most editors would tell you that. But I'm surprised by how many editors seem to be willing to acquire books with clichés in them. I've never understood why. It seems to me it's the first sign of a pedestrian work.

I think a lot of the things I think about come from my journalistic background. Would you want to talk about this? Would you want to spend time with this person? There are certain things that will always get my attention: somebody who, like Jonathan Harr or Robert Caro or David Halberstam, has spent years on a work, really trying to figure it out. In an age in which nobody's held accountable for anything, and information comes and goes so fast, there is great power in the idea of a person who has concentrated and rigorously worked to make sense of things. I don't think you can place enough emphasis on that. It is the single thing publishers can provide better than anybody else: authority. So if you show me an author who has taken the time to really wrestle with a subject, in fiction or nonfiction, and figure it out and unearth the truth, and if that subject has some kind of a constituency, and I can envision enough people caring about that subject to gravitate to the book, I'm going to be very interested. I think those books are hard to come by. It's hard to expect a writer to spend years on a subject.

Once you find those things and sign up the book, what are you thinking about with regard to marketing? What are you and Cary trying to do differently than other publishers?
It's the same thing. We're trying to make each marketing campaign specific to the book. We're really trying to do each book differently. But I stand by what I was saying before: that the things publishers do, in terms of marketing, are marginal when compared to the primal aspects of the book. Those aspects are simply, "Do you care about this?"

Let me give you my negative example, which I wrote about in a piece and got into a disagreement over. I went to my local Barnes & Noble and I looked at what was out. There was a book on the shelf called The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession with Virginity Is Hurting Young Women. I was agog that somebody would think that that book would sell and that it even needed to be a book. Now, I haven't read the book. For all I know it is the most brilliant argument ever made about the pernicious aspects of virginity. But it just seems to me that, on the surface of things, virgins aren't going to want to read a book telling them that they shouldn't hold onto their virginity, and I can't imagine why anybody who's lost their virginity would care. So I see no audience for the book at all. It's a polemic, so it could probably be five thousand words—there's no narrative there. It makes no sense.

I look at the Publishers Lunch deal memo every day, and almost every day there's some book that I can't conceive of more than a handful of people ever being interested in. I just don't understand why publishers go for this stuff. Now, I think the major publishers are a little more discerning, and I understand that there is a wonderful diversity of readers and that the whole point of certain kinds of books is that they appeal to niche audiences. But there's a niche audience and then there's, you know, fractal niche.

I still want to try to get a better sense of how you guys are approaching marketing. Everybody's trying to figure out what to do to sell books anymore.
Well, this probably isn't very interesting for readers, but we have a great director of publicity in Cary Goldstein. This guy is extraordinary. The best decision I made was hiring Cary. I mean, here's an example of why Hachette is a good company. They hired me and they gave me a full year to ramp it up. No pressure. You don't have to publish a book in five months. Take a full year, do a real launch, and hire the right person to do your publicity. So I had a full year to hire the best person. I did research. I called up the people at the New Yorker and asked them, "Who do you respect? Who do you listen to?" And Cary Goldstein's name kept coming back to me.

If you're speaking with a credible voice, and you have the right books, why shouldn't people listen to you? I mean, yes, I think we've done some good ads. The advertising department of Hachette is first-rate. I think we've done some clever online promotions. But I think that, for the most part, it has largely been publishing books on subjects that appeal to people and that people are able to find out about. And they find out about them because the publicity department is really good.

Now let me say something else. I go to my local bookstore and see books that I've never heard of. I haven't heard a thing about them. I think, about ten years ago, the idea crept into the conventional wisdom that if you simply paid for display, people would find the book. This is false. People have to know about a book in order to buy the book. Just reading the flap copy and looking at the same generic blurbs is not going to sell the book. You need endorsements from reviewers, you need people talking about the book on the radio, you need the online component. And we're just trying to do it extensively and intensively for every book. A very, very good publisher, Ivan Held, has said that there are only six things you can ever do for any book. You can name the six things: You can advertise, you can do co-op, you can do galleys, etcetera. There are a finite number of things. Our goal is to do one special, original, out-of-the-box thing for each book. But beyond that, it's simply about execution.

Tell me about a clever online thing that you think has worked.
We're doing a ton of smart online outreach for NurtureShock by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, thanks largely to Po and Ashley. They have given us extensive lists of bloggers who have written about parenting or science or the science of parenting. We've approached people to have them speak at parenting conferences and we've got something like thirty dates lined up. We're doing a kind of open source book club where people will be able to comment on chapters publicly. We're doing very targeted online advertising on parenting blogs. So it's a multipronged marketing approach that really speaks directly to the people who we think are going to be the first buyers of the book: highly engaged parents.

Another example involves a book we've got coming out right now called The Liar in Your Life. Rather than putting blurbs on the back cover, we solicited the lies that people tell most frequently and used those in place of blurbs. Then we hired a polling firm to poll the lies to determine which ones are the most common. We're going to release that information online and we think it might generate some attention. So that's our one out-of-the-box idea.

The Hitchens example really is the best. But again, that's about a really creative director of publicity. Cary Goldstein had this idea that Christopher Hitchens should debate Al Sharpton at the New York Public Library. And I have to tell you, when Cary told me he wanted to do this, I thought he was nuts. I mean, Al Sharpton? Who would take him seriously? Well, they had the debate, and Al Sharpton stepped right into a big morass when he brought up Mitt Romney's Mormon beliefs. That event got picked up on cable news and was all over TV for two full days. That's all because of a really good publicity director.

One way of looking at what you're trying to do with Twelve is that you're trying to get away from disposable books, which you've written about and called a syndrome in the Washington Post. You acknowledged that there's nothing new about the syndrome and that it's driven by the need for growth in a business that is essentially flat. But what is at the heart of the syndrome, in your opinion? What is the fundamental reason for it?
First of all, there are many ways to publish good books, and I don't believe that our way is the only way. I've thought about this a lot and I've said this in every interview, but it hasn't gotten picked up. I think that you can have a backlist model or a frontlist model. The major publishing companies have a legitimate reason for publishing as much as they're publishing. If you're trying to accumulate the biggest and best backlist, it makes sense to put more out there, and you can even make an argument that letting the market decide what sticks is viable and actually makes more sense in the end. There are publishers who are activists—who want to make their work known—but there are also publishers who want to publish a broad range of books, let the public decide what they want, and then give the public more of that. I think that's a legitimate business decision, and it can work. It can give you the capital to do things on a big scale and to market books, when you want to, very aggressively.

My criticism of the publishing industry and the major publishers is not specific to companies. I've seen what a great publishing company can do for worthy books. I mean, Random House put Seabiscuit and Shadow Divers and The Orchid Thief on the map, and it wouldn't have been able to do that if it didn't have real leverage in the marketplace—if it didn't have the marketing prowess and marketing resources to do that. So I think it's completely legitimate that certain publishers would seek hegemony through volume. I really believe that.

That sounds like a hedge to me. In your heart of hearts don't you have to believe that the way you're doing it is the best way?
Look, it's not for me, at this point in my career.

Why?
Because I think that there are enough really good authors who want focus and attention and who want it promised and guaranteed. And that's harder to do at a big company.

You honestly don't believe that what you're doing is the best way?
I think it's the best way for me in the year 2009. I've really thought about this a lot. And I've written this before: I don't think that people who live in glass publishing houses should throw stones. I don't think it's right for me to get up on my soapbox and say that my way is the best way. What I do think is that the Twelve model makes a great deal of sense for unknown authors or authors who want to break out. I think that's true. I think that this is the best way to publish a midlist author or an author who's on the way up.

Let me put it another way: I think it would behoove the major publishing houses to publish fewer books with more focus. I think that everybody would benefit from that. What I don't know is whether the companies can meet their targets doing it. I'd have to be a CFO to know that, and it would be arrogant of me to say that a major publisher can get by without disposable books. I don't know the answer to that. What I know is that I'm working for a company that publishes a lot less than the other major publishers with a more concentrated marketing approach and seems to be making a lot of money doing it. One of the reasons I came to this company was because it was in the DNA of the company to do fewer books with more marketing force. That was what the Time Warner Book Group had always been about, that's what Hachette is about, and that's what Twelve is about. I wanted to be here for that reason. 

When I was at Random House, I felt like I was missing out on something because I thought that Larry Kirshbaum and Jamie Raab and Maureen Egan and Michael Pietsch were publishing books in a really smart, aggressive way. I saw what they did for writers like David Sedaris and Malcolm Gladwell and David Baldacci and Nicholas Sparks, and I really respected that. I thought, "They've got cojones. They're putting their full force behind these books. I want to be a part of that." 

I saw this remarkable statistic on your website that you've published twenty-five books so far and thirteen have been New York Times best-sellers. People in the industry know that having a book hit the list isn't necessarily an indicator of profitability. Of the books you've published, how many have made money?
To be honest, I haven't actually counted them one by one. I can't give you that off the top of my head.

But what's your sense?
I know that the imprint is profitable.

You're in the black?
Yeah, I know that. And off the top of my head I would say that roughly half of the books have been profitable.

That's incredible to me.
But it is minimal compared to what other people within Hachette are doing. You know, it's very flattering that you're talking to me, but you should talk to Megan Tingley, who discovered Twilight. That is carrying the company. Talk to Little, Brown about the way they've built up Malcolm Gladwell over the years. That's been an extraordinary job of publishing. Jamie Raab has arguably the best track record of anyone in the industry: Nicholas Sparks, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Michael Moore, a number of Oprah picks. It's an incredible track record. So this is a company that has a lot of acuity, specifically with regard to acquisition and marketing. 

I have a highly original question for you. In the first few years with Twelve, what has surprised you the most, what has enchanted you the most, what has humbled you the most, and what has troubled you the most?
Wow, that's a long one.

It's the question Jeff Zeleny asked Obama after his first hundred days, and Obama took it seriously because he was on TV and didn't have any choice. But you can dodge it if you want.
No, I'll answer it, although I'm worried that I may lack Obama's introspectiveness. I guess I was surprised that it took me as long as it did to get books into the pipeline. When I started the imprint, the idea was to do four discoveries, four midlist books that could take off, and four books that were so obvious that a monkey could publish them. I had no trouble with the discoveries or the midlist books. Surprisingly, there were a lot of other people who wanted to publish the monkey books.

Big surprise to you? [Laughter.]
I was surprised. I thought there would be enough of those obvious books that I would acquire them very easily. But it turns out that this simian mentality is pervasive. So I was surprised by that.

I was enchanted by the success of God Is Not Great, because it came from such a sincere place. I was having lunch with Steve Wasserman. He was a new literary agent and I was a new book publisher. He told me that he was working with Christopher Hitchens. I said, "I've been a fan of his for years." In fact, I'd gotten his email address from Christopher Buckley and was going to propose that he write a book about Congress. Steve said, "Well, no, he doesn't want to do that. I think he's going to write a book about the case against religion." My eyes lit up. Because ever since 9/11, I've been one of these people who was pointing the finger of responsibility at religion—all religion—for inculcating violence in the culture and, at least in politics, a false sense of piety. After lunch I came back and talked to Jamie Raab about it and we decided to just put money on the table, right then and there. He didn't talk to any other publishers. He didn't do a proposal. We just bought that book based on a lunch conversation. I don't think I even talked to Christopher about it. The manuscript came in and it was one of those books that you read and want to go out and tell everybody about. You want to proselytize. "You've got to read this book! It'll change your view of this!" And it immediately took off. So that was an enchanting experience. Any time you have a number one best-seller, it had better be enchanting. [Laughter.] 

I was humbled when we published a book called The Film Club, because we did everything right. The sales force loved it, independent booksellers loved it, the media loved it. We got rapturous review attention, we got the author on network TV, we had him all over the radio, we toured him. And it still didn't break out. It sold well—we made our money back and I think it's going to have a long life in paperback—but The Film Club was one of these books that I thought could have sold a million copies. I felt like it had everything. It was a really well written, engaging, and moving story about a relationship that I thought almost anybody could relate to, and yet it was also unconventional. I mean, the idea of a father agreeing to let his son drop out of school if he would just watch movies with him? It was a story that stuck to me, and I was sure I could get it to stick to other people. And it humbled me because it reminded me, once again, just how hard it is. At that point we'd had a few best-sellers in a row. Everything was working. I was sure that this one was going to catch on, and it just didn't make the best-seller list. I wish it had. 

I was troubled, like everybody else, by the layoffs in the industry. I was troubled by the number of really good, hard-working editors who were let go for no reason other than a bad economy. I was deeply troubled by that, and there but for the grace of God go all of us. But then again I'm an atheist so I guess I should put it another way. There but for the grace of Hitchens go all of us.

Can we talk briefly about the piece you wrote for Publishers Weekly that offered twelve steps for better book publishing? One of your suggestions was "imprints for everyone."
Yes, I believe that. I think that the editor is the best publisher of the book.

So why don't more publishing houses do it?
Some of them do. Penguin has that model, to some degree. Reagan Arthur has an imprint. Megan Tingley has one. I think that it may become more prevalent. But why don't more companies do it? I suppose that you need to have entrepreneurial editors. And when I say that the editor is the best publisher, I should expand that to say that I think the editorially driven publishers are the best ones. I think you can be a marketing person with a great editorial sensibility. But I think it has to begin with what's on the page.

I think that some editors may not want the responsibility. And some editors may not be ready to assume that role because they're more interested in the text than in the world into which the text is launched. It requires a certain kind of sensibility. But I also think that the principal reason there aren't more imprints is probably because a lot of publishers are reluctant to let go of their power and trust it to other people. That's a difficult thing to do for some people. When I was a senior editor at Random House, working for Ann Godoff, I felt like I was the publisher of those books as much as she was—because she had the confidence and the generosity of spirit to share in that endeavor. 

Another idea you talked about in the piece is that if a book that is bought on proposal doesn't deliver on its promise, we should give the author the chance to take it elsewhere. If that isn't possible, we should publish it as an e-book or print on demand with no marketing. Did you hear from agents about that idea?
I didn't hear any criticism from agents but that's because—with all due respect to agents—to their eyes I am a human ATM machine. They need to push the right buttons for the money to come out, and telling me that I am moronic might not serve their best interests. However, I would like to say to all those agents that I'm happy to be called a moron. I welcome criticism, and I actually respect people even more when they tell me the truth. The only criticism I got from an agent was from someone I deeply respect, Heather Schroder at ICM, who called me up and said that she didn't agree that there should only be one bidder at each company. And I respected her for having the candor to say that to me. 

Another thing you wrote somewhere is that all good stories are about transformation. What else would you add to that in terms of your ideas about storytelling in the big picture?
The thing I drill into writers all the time is this idea of deep immersion into your subject, and real command of it, and authority. That's the quality that any discerning editor immediately cottons to. Beyond that, I don't think writers often enough appreciate just how important it is to be conceptually distinct. If you're talking about fiction, it's always struck me as elemental that a novel should be novel. So I've never understood why somebody would write a novel knowing that the story has been done millions of times before. If your work is not novel on the conceptual level, I'm not sure why you should expect somebody to stop what he's doing and pay attention, given the vast opportunities for distraction in society.

I was struck by something I read years ago in an interview with Norman Mailer, who said that if he'd gotten started later in life, he probably would have been a movie director so he would have had more influence. He also said that he thought novelists would eventually have the cultural influence of landscape painters. I'm not saying that I agree with that. I just think it's interesting that a writer of Norman Mailer's stature would recognize how difficult it is for fiction to maintain its cultural centrality or impact.

So if you're setting out to write a novel, or literary nonfiction, for that matter, I think you have to have very high standards. Now, I say that—and I mean it—but I also understand that not every reader is coming to a book with the very high expectations that I seem to have for just about everything I read. I suppose if you're just looking for something to escape with on an airplane, you can set the bar a little lower. But I would still ask the same question: Why your airplane novel rather than the five thousand others that are published every year?

This is the magazine's MFA issue. Do you have an opinion about MFA programs?
I think they're great, and here's why: Writers need a support system for developing their work. I also think, to be realistic, writers need economic support. These MFA programs provide it for both graduate students and teachers. I don't know very many novelists who support themselves solely through their fiction. Even the most successful novelists I've worked with usually have other jobs, either in academia or in the media. I think that's very useful. It provides balance and keeps you from losing touch with a certain aspect of life. It also probably makes you happier. It's funny, I read an interview with Tom Clancy in which he described his life as a miserable existence of time in solitude confronting the limits of his imagination. Now maybe he was just in a bad mood the day he gave that interview. But all the research on happiness indicates that social interaction is to our benefit, and, therefore, it might behoove writers to get out into the world a little bit more. I think it results in better fiction.

You have a unique perspective on editors. Put yourself in the shoes of a beginning writer who is lucky enough to have multiple offers and has to decide which editor to go with. What advice would you give her about navigating that situation?
I think you should reduce it to the simple question of "Who can you best imagine yourself conversing with on a regular basis over a sustained period of time?" If you're intimidated or bored or uninspired by the editor, those are easy reasons to eliminate people. Obviously it always helps if the editor says something that is meaningful or significant about your work. That is usually a good indication of a shared sensibility. You also might want to think about what happens if that editor leaves, because that happens to a lot of writers and I think it's good to deal with it up front—to know that there's at least one other person at the company who's a real advocate for the work. A lot of authors get orphaned and think it's the reason their book hasn't succeeded. It usually isn't the reason, but that's what they think. It's important to know that somebody else at the company will stand behind you if your editor leaves.

Tell writers something you know about agents that they might not know.
I would say to listen to them. I'm surprised at how often authors, even published authors, fail to hear the nuance in what their agents are telling them and are too quick to follow their own needs rather than what their agents are telling them to do. I have very rarely seen agents give authors bad advice. The longer I've been doing the job, the more I realize that usually the agent knows that the book doesn't work or the proposal doesn't work but they've had to submit it because they didn't feel they could put the writer through another draft—because either the writer was balking or they didn't think the writer could handle it. 

Writers probably think that agents have all the power and they have to do what their agents say. But the reality is that a lot of agents are very sensitive to either alienating the writer or causing a crisis of confidence. So the agents begin to walk on eggshells. I think that writers should be very aggressive in seeking the truth from their agents. I'm always struck by what authors tell me about their work. They'll say, "My friends tell me they love it!" I feel like saying, "Did you really, really drill down and ask your friends what they really thought? Did you force them to tell you one thing about it that they didn't like? Can you handle the truth?" Frequently, the writer hasn't done that. It's hard to tell the writer when something isn't working, and some agents don't always articulate it quite as clearly and forcefully as they should, largely because they know they're dealing with a delicate ego. So my advice to writers would be to aggressively seek the truth—forget about your ego—and do one more draft than your agent asks you to. The writers who I have noticed being successful are the ones who are making their agents wait for that next draft. It's the authors who don't pursue that next project until they're sure it's the right one for them. It's the ones who turn down the easy overture from the publisher for the quickie book and wait to do the book that they can really commit to.