Publishing Beyond the Hudson

Is there publishing life outside the conglomerates? The answer seems to be a resounding Yes!, for while the big publishing houses continue to gobble and be gobbled (Harper & Row was swallowed just this week by Rupert Murdoch), small presses seem more and more to be soaring into their own. Juris Jurjevics, for example, Dial Press editor-in-chief until a few years ago when Doubleday gobbled Dial (and its parent, Dell), has set himself up as publisher of Soho Press here, espousing the philosophy that his new venture will provide a home for “the books agents love but have not been able to place, and yet can’t bring themselves to give up on.”

Toward that end, Soho Press will use satellite editors in Dallas, San Francisco and London, thus further reinforcing the possibility that America’s kingdom of literary substance may not end on the right bank of the Hudson River. With an emphasis on new fiction and writers “who do writing and not typing, and who want to be published, and not launched,” Soho’s first list, for spring, includes novels, poetry, a guide to Manhattan preschools and a wacky look at California in the ‘80s. Soho Press is distributed by Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

KEEPING THE WHALE AWAKE: Two Soviet poets, a playwright, a critic and a novelist, all unknown and all in their 30s, are responsible for cracking the long state monopoly on publishing in the Soviet Union by establishing an independent publishing cooperative. The new venture is to be called “Vest,” or news, and it states as its goal a commitment to promoting unknown new writers. Prominent shareholders in the effort include singer-songwriter/novelist Bulat Okudzhana, prize-winning writer Fazil Iskander and Vasil Bykov, well-known for his war novels. Vest swiftly earned the support of the country’s Writers’ Union, with that group’s secretary, Vladimir Karpov, commenting, “Healthy competition is a useful thing--it keeps the whale awake.”

“YOUNG ADULT” AIDS: “Goodbye Tomorrow,” a novel by Gloria D. Miklowitz of La Canada, will focus on a teen-age boy who develops AIDS-Related Complex (ARC) as a result of blood transfusions. The book is due out in May from Delacorte Books.

ANNIVERSARY REMEMBRANCE: To commemorate the 40th anniversary of the publication of “Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl,” Pocket Books will reissue the paperback edition of the book in May. Since Pocket Books first published the title in paper in 1953, more than 4.3 million copies have been printed in 96 separate printings.

To mark Holocaust Awareness month in April, Prentice-Hall Books for Young Readers will issue Inge Auerbacher’s “I Am a Star: Child of the Holocaust.” Auerbacher was a child survivor of the Terezin concentration camp in Czechoslovakia, and has written this account of her experiences for young people 10 years of age and up. In early May, Simon & Schuster will publish “Anne Frank Remembered” by Miep Gies, who helped to hide the Frank family in Amsterdam. Gies has written her story with the assistance of Santa Monican Alison Leslie Gold.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BARD: In honor of Shakespeare’s 423rd birthday, “Serenissima,” Erica Jong’s new “novel of Venice,” will carry an April 23 publication date. Houghton Mifflin will commemorate both events--the birthday and the book--with a party at the Central Park boathouse here, featuring “Merchant of Venice”-garbed actors and rides on an authentic Venetian gondola.