QUILLBLOG

Turow switches publishers

An article published earlier this week in The New York Times looks at author Scott Turow’s decision to switch publishers for his impending Presumed Innocent sequel. It’s not exactly a publisher switch, though – as the article clarifies, Turow has simply decided to grant hardcover rights to his usual mass-market publisher, Grand Central Publishing. His usual hardcover publisher, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, has been left out in the cold. What’s noteworthy about this is how it reflects the growing sea-change in attitudes toward old publishing models.

Mr. Turow said in an interview that it no longer made sense to have one house publishing his books in hardcover and another releasing them in paperback. Such arrangements were common when he first sold the rights to Presumed Innocent in 1986 but are much rarer now, especially for a bestselling author. Terms of the new deal were not disclosed.

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Gail Hochman, Mr. Turow’s agent, said splitting editions between two houses made it more difficult for an author to achieve the best possible financial arrangement. “We’re not unhappy with anything we’ve gotten, but it stretches the boundaries of the business,” she said. “Any publisher will acknowledge that if they are going to pay a significant advance for a significant author, they can make their money back and work harder on the book if they have two editions.”