More Community Light Shining - Timothy Schaffert
Saturday, April 16, 2011 at 12:40AM In the same spirit that we offer the Indie Bookseller posts, wherein an indie bookseller ;)
writes up a book or two, or an author, that they think very highly of (with all links nudging our readers toward possibly purchasing books from their stores), we'll also post about things we like about how other publishers are doing things.
Earlier this week, Janet Maslin of The New York Times reviewed Timothy Schaffert's new novel, The Coffins of Little Hope (Unbridled Books). The review started off:
As of Wednesday morning, it cost a total of 3 cents to buy used copies of all three of Timothy Schaffert’s previous novels from Amazon.com: “The Phantom Limbs of the Rollow Sisters” (2002), “The Singing and Dancing Daughters of God” (2005) and “Devils in the Sugar Shop” (2007). Yet each of these books is a quirky little gem, particularly the first one. Life is not fair.
;)
The review goes on to say many positive things about the novel, but that beginning reminded me of something that I've always admired about Fred Ramey and Greg Michalson, the two gentlemen behind Unbridled Books (and who were also behind MacMurray & Beck, and then BlueHen Books)--they develop long-term relationships with their authors. They don't decide that the second book an author writes isn't going to be published by them because the first one didn't sell 10,000 copies (I don't know, insert your own number here as the threshold that larger publishers might use).
I have NO idea how many copies Mr. Schaffert's earlier trio sold for these fine folks but when you can find books for $0.01 apiece online, it leads me to believe that a lot of copies found their way into remainder bins or something similar. However, Fred and Greg love his writing, believe in his writing and seem bound and determined to continue publishing Timothy Schaffert until he finds the readership they believe he deserves. They've done the same thing with Rick Collignon and his wonderful four novels set in Guadelupe, New Mexico, and done so over the span of all three of their publishing homes. We here at Dzanc Books find that exemplary. A peek at our list will show readers multiple books from Roy Kesey, Hesh Kestin, Robert Lopez and very soon, Peter Markus.
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