How Much Loyalty Do You Owe Your Publisher?
A great British editor had a surprising response
It wasn’t quite the publishing equivalent of Bruce Springsteen’s leaving his first wife for bandmate Patti Scialfa.
But literary insiders did a doubletake when Scott Turow jilted Farrar, Straus & Giroux, the publisher of Presumed Innocent. He took its sequel to Grand Central, a Hachette imprint, when FSG was more prestigious, had invested heavily in his blockbuster, and helped to launch his career as a writer.
Given all that, Turow had to be leaving for the dough, right? And wasn’t that disloyal to a firm that had treated him well?
Turow said, plausibly, he hadn’t left for the money, although there’s room for doubt, given that he made his move on the heels of the 2008 financial crisis. Grand Central was his paperback publisher, he said, and it made sense to have his hard- and soft-cover books at the same firm
As for the loyalty issue: Turow didn’t say so, but authors such as Philip Roth had changed houses more often. And some industry veterans say that authors in general are becoming less loyal to publishers now that self-publishing has made it easier to ditch them.
That raises the question: Is loyalty to your publisher a virtue?
