Our State/April/Feature/1,698 words

From romance novels to definitive references on such obscure topics as Greek filmography, North Carolina's publishing industry runs the gamut.

By Ralph Grizzle

Consider the following book titles:

• The Volcano Registry, the authoritative reference on more than 1,500 volcanoes worldwide
• Persons, Animals, Ships and Cannon in the Aubrey-Maturin Sea Novels of Patrick O'Brian, a catalog of Patrick O'Brian's 19-volume series on the maritime adventures of Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin
• Presidential Also-Rans and Running Mates, which itself runs 848 pages and costs $99.50
• Japanese Baseball, A Statistical Handbook
• The Greek Filmography, 1914 through 1996, a colossal 783 pages, $135
• The Condom Industry in the United States

These, along with 1,500 other titles, were published during the past two decades by Jefferson, North Carolina's McFarland & Company. Operating from a refurbished ranch house, the Ashe County publishing firm claims to be the largest publisher in the Southeast–in terms of titles, that is. This year, McFarland will produce 180 titles, according to Robert McFarland Franklin, the company's president.

The largest publisher in the Southeast right here in North Carolina? Who would have thought? (McFarland also claims to be the largest publisher, in the English-speaking world at least, on serious books about the performing arts, baseball and chess.)

And who would have predicted Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill's blazing success with Robert Morgan's Gap Creek? Sure, thanks goes out to Oprah Winfrey (more on that later), but Morgan isn't the first North Carolinian to top the best-seller list in recent years. Remember Charles Frazier? But what is markedly different about Morgan's success is that his book was published here in the Old North State.

While North Carolina is not about to eclipse New York as publishing's mecca, our state is becoming an increasingly formidable force in the world of book publishing. One need only look to Algonquin or McFarland or any other of the fine publishers in North Carolina for evidence. Or cast your eye on the migration of Northern editorial transplants to our state.

In 1994, Stephen Roxburgh abandoned his post at the prestigious New York publishing firm Farrar, Straus & Giroux to set up shop in a small office in Asheville. Today, Front Street Books' staff of four is snatching industry awards for its books for young readers.

McFarland & Company's Franklin moved here from New Jersey, where he held the top editorial position at Scarecrow Press, a reference-book publishing company. What's becoming increasing clear is that the old way of doing business is fading fast.

"Publishers have kind of fled the old-fashioned New York scene," Franklin says. "It really does not work that well anymore. In the last decade, there have been a number of small to medium-size companies that have gone out of business and a number of buy-outs and amalgamations among the larger companies."

On the flip side, though, "like daisies in the field," he adds, lots of little publishing firms are popping up. Statistically, there are more publishers in America today than ever before. "Of course," Franklin points out, "some of them are only publishing two or three titles."

Wilmington-based Coastal Carolina Press, an upstart that publishes material about the region east of I-95, a narrow market to be sure, is starting out with only a handful of titles but hopes to grow rapidly. "We want to reach out to every segment of the coastal population," says the company's director, Andrew M. Scott. Among Carolina Coastal's new titles: Sink or Swim: African American Lifesavers on the Outer Banks; Gardening in the Coastal Plain; and The Environmental Traveler: A Guide to North Carolina's Coast.

"What's happening in North Carolina is pretty much a reflection of the industry as a whole," says Carolyn Sakowski, president of the Publishers Association of the South. "The industry is in a constant state of flux, with the chains becoming more of a force and the independents becoming less of one" Small publishers, even self-publishers, are no longer "dependent on a middle man to get their books to consumers," adds Sakowksi, who also wears the cap of president of John F. Blair Publishers in Winston-Salem. "Now anybody who hears about a book can log onto the internet and place an order."

With the Internet as a new distribution channel, the old established barriers that prevented small publishers from distributing their books are beginning to tumble. Moreover, technology, particularly the advances in desktop publishing and print on demand services, have emboldened many otherwise reluctant individuals to start up their own presses, spawning a new generation of do-it-yourselfers.

Among the newcomers is Julie Tetel Andressen, who cranked up her Durham-based company after publishing 15 novels with commercial presses. "What I was in was a money-driven industry and a wasteful one," she says.

Andressen learned long ago that the bloated overheads of those large established firms would preclude her from ever getting her share of the pie. Plus, she felt she could produce a better quality book at a better price without them–and reach the audience she was aiming for.

That audience is one of discerning readers who are looking for fresh stories from new voices and stories that take "greater innovative risks than the ones now appearing from the commercial publishers," says Andressen, an associate professor at Duke University's Department of English and Linguistics.

So far, so good. She recently added Generation Books, her company's nonfiction imprint, to Madeira Books, her fiction imprint. Generation Books' first work, Real Birth: Women Share Their Stories, a collection of 36 edited interviews with women who speak candidly about their birthing experiences, has received rave reviews. "After having my first baby, I realized that women share their birthing stories the way men share their war stories," says the book's Fayetteville author, Robin Greene. "I began looking for books where I could find the 'war stories' of other women. When I couldn't find such a book, I was inspired to create it myself." Of course, lucky for Greene, Generation Books was there to put it in print.

Making use of new printing technologies and the Internet to give her company the presence of larger publishers, Andressen has placed her catalogs, as well as sample chapters, online at www.madeirabooks.com and www.generationbooks.com. She is a small upstart, but look for her to be a powerful force in a the cottage industry that she has dubbed "studio publishing."

Like Andressen, Robert Franklin values good quality books. The son of two Tennessee librarians, he founded McFarland & Company in 1978 on the belief that there is a market for "for people who love books that are well-crafted."

To some that might seem to be a narrow market, but Franklin operates on the assumption that the English-speaking market is so huge that a company like his can easily make do with narrow slices. "We can afford to be contrarians," he says. "God help us if this were Denmark, and we were publishing Danish-language books. The slightest shift in the market could throw things askew."

Delivering primarily reference books and scholarly works, McFarland's largest market is the library trade. As noted earlier, McFarland also dominates the market for books on baseball, chess and the performing arts.

Press runs are typically low, sometimes only a few hundred copies, and the company uses direct marketing to sell its books, forcing the cost of the books upward. The 783-page book on Greek Filmography, for example, sells for $135. "You don't have to be a publishing expert to know that we're not going to sell 10,000 of these," Franklin says. "We hope to move 500."

Understandably, many of the books that McFarland publishes, larger publishers would not touch, Franklin says. "Even if you added a zero to expected sales, it still would not come within reach of what they feel they would need," he quips.

And for that reason his company is filling a void. The book on Greek filmography is the definitive reference of one nation's movie output. And most of McFarland's library customers recognize the company as the type of publisher that would be likely to produce such a book. "Even though the Greek film industry is not that large, there was enough interest for us to cover it," Franklin says. "It's a pretty good example of how we work."

In January, Oprah Winfrey selected North Carolina-native Robert Morgan's Gap Creek, a tale set in early 20^th-century Appalachia, for her book club. The announcement set Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill into motion to print some 600,000 copies of the book–within one week.

"The day before Oprah called we had sold through our first printing of Gap Creek and were grappling with whether to go back to press for more," says Shannon Ravenel, Algonquin's book editor. "The next day we were grappling with how to get together 600,000 copies. It took two presses running around the clock."

Founded by Louis D. Rubin and Shannon Ravenel in 1982, Algonquin Books gives the impression of being a small North Carolina press, and in some ways, it still is. From the converted rooms in a small wood-framed house in Carrboro, Algonquin publishes 20 to 25 books each year, ranging from literary fiction and nonfiction to cookbooks and lifestyle books.

In 1989, however, Algonquin was acquired by New York-based Workman Publishing, an independent company then in business close to 20 years. Workman provided financial support and shared its marketing strength with Algonquin. The New York company's sales force helped take Algonquin national. So though Algonquin appears to be small, the company has a lot more marketing muscle pushing its books than do other North Carolina publishers.

Nonetheless, Algonquin still calls North Carolina home and continues its commitment to discovering new writers and publishing first books. Clyde Edgerton, Dori Sanders and Larry Brown are among the many writers who came to Algonquin without an agent. And you can rest assured that Algonquin is glad it became acquainted with North Carolina's Robert Morgan.

Bio: Ralph Grizzle, who lives in Asheville, launched his own small publishing company last year to produce his new book, Remembering Charles Kuralt.