Perseus Books Plans Unit for ‘Serious Writers’

At a time when most of the news has been of deaths or, at the least, mergers, the New York publishing world greeted the announcement of a birth Thursday. Perseus Books LLC, a venture company in Washington, D.C., has unveiled plans to move to New York and expand its publishing activities, aiming to concentrate on serious writers left behind by today’s bestseller mentality.

Not only will Perseus acquire Basic Books from HarperCollins, giving it a valuable backlist of quality nonfiction, but it also will establish Civitas Books to publish books on African American culture and race issues. Editorial director will be Henry Louis Gates Jr., chairman of the Department of Afro-American Studies at Harvard,

The announcements were made by Frank H. Pearl, chairman of Perseus Books, who also named Jack McKeown president and CEO of Perseus Books. Basic and Civitas will join Counterpoint and Public-Affairs to form an expanded and invigorated Perseus Group, he said.

“We have created a publishing group that will be in the first rank of serious American trade publishers. Jack McKeown is the ideal CEO for a venture of this nature.”

McKeown, 45, formerly president and publisher of the adult trade group of HarperCollins, has compiled a distinguished career in publishing, including several years at Simon & Schuster, and has worked with many of the outstanding authors of contemporary times.

In an interview Thursday, he described the new venture as a significant development in today’s publishing environment with its fixation on super-books. “Our model does not make us dependent on having the mega bestsellers. We will be looking for books that . . . can touch the culture, spark debates and endure beyond the limited shelf life of a bestseller list.

“We are not being self-indulgent,” he added. “We will have a sound business practice behind this publishing group.”

Taking advantage of the upheaval on the current publishing scene, he said, Perseus is combining both the old and the new to invigorate the enlarged group. “Henry Gates is one of the most vibrant people on the academic scene in African American issues. He will be a beacon for serious writers for Civitas, and we reached out to him with this new imprint.”

And by buying Basic Books from HarperCollins, he said, Perseus has acquired one of the most respected imprints in publishing. Founded in 1952, Basic is a leading publisher of serious nonfiction, specializing in such areas as psychology, political and social science and popular science. It publishes about 100 hardcover and trade paperback titles a year, and its list of distinguished authors ranges from Sigmund Freud to social scientist Daniel Bell.

HarperCollins created publishing industry headlines in May when it announced that, as part of extensive restructuring, it was consolidating its Basic list into its general trade list.

“Basic needed to have a free-standing identity and be able to acquire books aggressively,” McKeown said. “If Basic was to disappear, a major light would go out in American publishing.”

Thursday’s announcement consolidated a number of actions that had been in the works for some time, he said. “We are getting great response from the publishing world, and I am incredibly excited. I have been reflecting about the nature of the business for some time and the dislocation occurring as publishing houses scale back the number of books they publish.”