Imprint Editors Enjoy Freedom to Search for a ‘Few Good Books’

Somewhat tongue-in-cheek, Richard Todd uses a crisp military metaphor to explain his mission as an independent imprint editor for Houghton Mifflin, the book publisher.

“What I’m supposed to do is like the Marines: ‘Give us a few good men,’ ” Todd says with a laugh in an interview in his office at New England Monthly magazine, where he is editor. “I’m supposed to find them a few good books.”

There were, indeed, a few good Houghton Mifflin books that carried the Richard Todd imprint in 1989: Tracy Kidder’s best-selling “Among Schoolchildren,” Ward Just’s “Jack Gance” and “I Raise My Eyes to Say Yes,” the moving autobiography of quadriplegic Ruth Sienkiewicz-Mercer, co-authored by lawyer Steven B. Kaplan.

Imprint editors have much in common with the distinguished college president who steps down to resume his first love, teaching. They have, as one imprint editor puts it, paid their dues. They are talented, high-powered editors--many of whom have held executive positions or even run their own publishing companies--who want to return to the most creative part of the book business: acquiring and editing books.

The rewards for the imprint editors, in addition to a large degree of independence to decide what to publish, is freedom from many of the demands made of staff editors and the latitude to pursue other interests.

“The independent editor is separated from a lot of the day-to-day stuff,” says Todd, a self-described “extreme example” who recently has taken on the job of running New England Monthly, based in Haydenville, Mass.

Since the founding of his imprint five years ago, Todd has acquired and edited about five books a year for Houghton Mifflin but says he will have to scale back somewhat because of his magazine position.

In the ‘80s, imprints became increasingly common. Houghton Mifflin has three other imprints like Todd’s: Seymour Lawrence, Peter Davison and Marc Jaffe. Harper & Row has two: Cornelia and Michael Bessie and Edward L. Burlingame. One of the oldest imprints, Helen and Kurt Wolff at Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, published Umberto Eco’s best-seller, “Foucault’s Pendulum.”

Henry Holt and Co. announced recently that its editor-in-chief would leave his position to start his own imprint, John Macrae Books.

(Many imprints are essentially one- or two-person operations. But some publishing houses call their various divisions--often smaller publishers purchased by the larger house--imprints. These imprints may have as many as 30 employees and share only the sales force with the larger house. The Free Press at Macmillan is an example.)

For a publishing company, imprints provide benefits, the most oft-cited the imprint editor’s ability to bring with him an established “list,” or a stable of writers the publisher might otherwise be unable to attract.

“Dick Todd came to Houghton Mifflin in essence with Tracy Kidder, and of course Tracy is a tremendously talented writer,” says John Sterling, Houghton Mifflin’s editor-in-chief.

Kidder, who followed Todd from Atlantic Monthly Press to Houghton Mifflin, supports Sterling’s point. “If (Todd) goes to Simon & Schuster, I’d go,” Kidder says. “What matters to me is my editor. I don’t think there are very many good editors. Editors seem to think of themselves as acquisitions people. Dick’s a wonderful editor. He taught me how to write.”

Michael Bessie of the Harper & Row imprint Cornelia and Michael Bessie Books, which has published such international titles as “Perestroika” by Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, says imprints provide a small-scale, personal approach to publishing.

“As publishing houses grow in size and numbers of people, they have become more organized, more committee-dominated,” says Michael Bessie, who has been in publishing more than 40 years and co-founded Atheneum Publishers in 1959. “There are some writers who like dealing with one person who is their editor and publisher.”

Unlike Todd, who travels to Houghton Mifflin’s Boston offices only occasionally, Bessie and his wife, Cornelia, work out of Harper & Row’s New York offices on most days.

Some editors have more latitude to decide what their imprint will publish than others.

“We decide what we are to publish. We report to nobody except insofar as we are financially responsible for the books we publish. If we are getting something very expensive, then obviously we must get the permission of the head of the house,” Bessie says.

Todd has a less-independent acquisitions arrangement with Houghton Mifflin. “The acquisitions process is governed ultimately by the publishing house. The publishing house is the one putting up the money, so it’s not as if I can just buy whatever I want to buy,” Todd says.

But when Todd wants Houghton Mifflin to publish a book, Sterling says, “we take his enthusiasm very seriously.”

After a book is acquired and edited by the imprint, the publishing house’s support services--such as manufacturing and marketing--take over. (Unlike an anonymous staff editor in a publishing house, imprint editors get visible credit for their books. Todd’s books carry this imprint on the title page: A Richard Todd Book-Houghton Mifflin.)

Both Bessie and Todd like the business arrangements they have with their publishing houses.

“It’s as if I run my own business,” Todd says, “with the great difference that the operating capital is coming from Houghton Mifflin.”

Peter Davison, who also has an imprint with Houghton Mifflin, is a poet and former director of the Atlantic Monthly Press. Under his imprint, Houghton Mifflin published in 1989, among other titles, Robert Coles’ “The Call of Stories” and Anne Stevenson’s biography of Sylvia Plath, “Bitter Fame.”

Davison, who spends 2 1/2 to 3 days a week in the office and travels and lectures often, has the highest praise for the imprint arrangement.

“It’s marvelous. You don’t have to deal with corporate matters; you don’t have to go to management meetings; I don’t have to concern myself with overhead charges. I am able to practice my craft as an editor without getting involved in the rigid structure of corporate America. In the literal and figurative sense, I have a free hand.”