In the last three years, Park has published some 20 books and recently landed Amazon a major literary prize
When Amazon hired the novelist Ed Park as a senior editor in its New York publishing office in 2011, it seemed an unlikely match. Park – a member of New York’s literary elite who had worked for the Poetry Foundation, co-founded a literary magazine and edited The Village Voice’s literary supplement – seemed ill suited to Amazon’s algorithm-driven business.
The incongruity was precisely the point.
By hiring Park and later giving him his own imprint, called Little A, Amazon signalled that it was willing to take risks on works with more aesthetic than commercial value. Park brought a patina of prestige to the company’s fledgling publishing programme, and he leaned on his literary credentials to attract authors to the new imprint. In the last three years, Park has published some 20 books and recently landed Amazon a major literary prize.
But now, in the latest setback for Amazon’s publishing aspirations, Park is leaving the imprint to join Penguin Press as an executive editor. His departure reflects the challenges that Amazon faces in a publishing ecosystem that largely views the online retailer as a rapacious competitor. Most bookstores – having been undercut by the giant retailer – refuse to carry books published by Amazon, a major hurdle as the company courts authors and agents.
And his defection comes as Amazon is struggling to maintain its standing with writers and agents as hostile pricing negotiations drag on with the publisher Hachette, and a growing group of prominent authors are lobbying the Justice Department to investigate Amazon for antitrust violations.
In an interview, Park said that the battle between Amazon and publishers was not the main reason for his departure, but he allowed that it was one of several factors that made the job difficult and ultimately led to his decision to leave.
And Park said that his pursuit of more literary fare sometimes felt out of kilter with the company’s largely commercial ambitions.
“There were times when I felt like what I was doing was a bit of an outlier,” Park said. “To Amazon Publishing’s credit, any book I felt strongly about, they let me pursue, and that kind of autonomy was rare in that climate.”
At the same time, he said, it will be a relief to pursue books he loves without having to persuade authors and agents to work with a company that they regard with suspicion. “I will not miss those obstacles,” he said.
Scott Moyers, publisher of Penguin Press, said that Penguin was looking for an editor to acquire more fiction for the imprint, which is weighted toward nonfiction. He said Park was an appealing candidate because of his offbeat and original sensibility, which could help attract new talent to their pool of authors.
“Ed’s very inventive,” he said. “You don’t see any trace of me-tooism or derivative thinking.”
Park, who lives on the Upper West Side with his wife and two sons, has been a fixture of New York’s literary scene for 20 years.
After graduating from Yale with a degree in English, he earned his master of fine arts degree in fiction from Columbia University, then took a job as a copy editor at The Village Voice. His parents, who emigrated from South Korea in the 1960s and settled in Buffalo, were always puzzled by his literary ambitions, but have been supportive. He worked at The Voice for 11 years, editing its literary supplement and helping to establish writers like Sloane Crosley and Rachel Aviv.
He wrote fiction on the side, and in 2008, Random House published Mr. Park’s first novel, “Personal Days,” about restless New York office drones.
Some literary agents say Amazon’s publishing operation seems to be retreating. Several other prominent editors have left. Jane Dystel, an agent who has done more than two dozen publishing deals with Amazon, said offers from the company – once generous, including even some six-figure deals – have largely fallen to the $10,000 to $20,000 range, and sometimes lower. Some of the writers she represents have returned to self-publishing. “It’s discouraging to those clients,” she said.
Other agents who have done deals with Amazon said their authors’ sales were hurt by bookstores’ ban on Amazon titles.
Mr. Park said he was motivated to join Amazon by the promise of building his own stable of authors and shaping a new imprint to reflect his taste, a rare privilege for a first-time book editor. And he had a deep well of connections to draw on as he pursued authors.
He published Dan Kennedy’s quirky debut novel “American Spirit,” which got a starred review in Publishers Weekly. In what was seen as a coup for the imprint, he acquired the actor James Franco’s debut novel, “Actors Anonymous,” which came to him because Mr. Franco was one of his writing students at Columbia. Mr. Park said he wrestled Mr. Franco’s book from an unwieldy 700 pages down to a publishable 304 pages.
In another victory, one of Mr. Park’s acquisitions, a short-story collection by Shawn Vestal, recently won the prestigious Pen/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction.
But his bids often fell flat. Some agents would agree to meet with him, then never send him anything, he said. Benjamin Anastas, who published his memoir “Too Good to Be True,” with Little A, said that while his memoir sold better than his previous books, he wonders how it might have been received if a traditional publisher had released it.
“There was no possibility of setting up a reading tour that involved bookstores,” he said.
Several writers who published books with Mr. Park said they were glad they did so, despite the drawbacks.
“A lot of my author friends are on the anti-Amazon side of this, and I can’t really disagree with where they’re coming from,” said Mr. Vestal, whose award-winning short-story collection, “Godforsaken Idaho,” came out last spring. “That’s a fraught, mixed-feelings kind of place to be in, but Ed published my book when nobody else would.”
It remains unclear how Mr. Park’s departure will affect Amazon’s sole literary fiction imprint, which was shaped by his taste and connections. Mr. Park said that a number of titles he acquired were scheduled for release next year.
An Amazon spokeswoman, Katie Finch, said that Little A would be run by its newly hired editorial director, Tara Parsons, and that Carmen Johnson, the editor of Amazon’s literary journal, Day One, will take over his position.
“I’m really grateful to these authors for taking a chance with me,” Mr. Park said. “It was not always easy, but I always felt like I was still a part of this literary community.”
What if the greatest characters in literary history all carried around smartphones and typed out messages to each other? That’s the conceit of the new book Texts from Jane Eyre. Author Mallory Ortberg knows it sounds gimmicky, but she loved imagining how Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester might have texted.
– www.business.standard.com
