Benay Client, Steerforth Press, has a Newly Reviewed Book in the "New York Times"

Benay is always excited to see our clients getting the positive press they deserve. This time the praise is for Steerforth Press, whose new book The Spinning Heart by Donal Ryan, was favorably reviewed by The New York Times.

The Spinning Heart encompasses 21 chapters, each chapter narrated by a different character from a run-down Irish town. Each character has been negatively affected by the economic downturn, in which the local town developer has left town, leaving the laborers stuck. As Daphne Kalotay writes, “Each speaker has been wounded — by the economy as well as by grim parents, cruel lovers, violence, mental illness and the grief of accidental loss.”

“While the material often feels familiar (we even meet the kindhearted town floozy, now aging and abandoned), Ryan writes with compassion, honesty and an appealing deadpan humor.” Kalotay notes her hesitation at reading a chapter narrated by a completely different chapter, but says that Ryan seamlessly connected them so that she “rarely had to check back to keep everyone straight.”

Benay would like to extend their congratulations to the Steerforth Press team and author Donal Ryan and wish them continued success. You can purchase a copy of The Spinning Heart here.

Hanover Publisher Services: A Helping Hand for Indie Publishers

There has been some new and exciting developments for Benay client, Steerforth Press. They have officially debuted their small press distribution unit, Hanover Publisher Services.

Hanover Publisher Services has been around since early 2010, although they were never formally introduced to the public. Publisher’s Weekly states, “HPS evolved from an informal relationship with its distributor, Random House Publisher Services that allowed the indie house to offer select small presses—with the approval of RHPS—distribution via RHPS, which generally will only work with publishers with more than $500,000 in sales.”

Chip Fleischer, President of HPS and Publisher of Steerforth Press, explains how RHPS president Jeff Abraham expanded Random House’s distribution services. However, RHPS was reluctant to take on small clients. This is where Hanover Publisher Services stepped in. According to Fleischer, HPS “’enables Steerforth to leverage its good working relationship with RHPS and its good understanding of RHPS's complex operating systems.’”

In other words, HPS works for the little man. They get the independent publishers to the mainstream distributor. The whole process is streamlined because, Fleischer noted, ‘it's the same as having a single publisher client with multiple imprints.’” A win-win for everybody.

HPS currently has five clients including For Beginners, Campfire Graphic Novels, New Europe Books, Steerforth and their newest addition, Brooklyn-based Archipelago Books. Fleischer “said that HPS is taking a ‘go slow’ approach to adding new clients, but he also said he will consider adding more publishers if they are ‘the right fit.’”

Read the two articles on this exciting new development here and here.

Learn more about Steerforth Press here.

- Marcie Gainer

Equity Insurance: The Way out of the Housing Crisis?

For the last few years, people have been searching for ways to fix the U.S.’s major economic problems. In a recent article in the Wilmington News Journal, Delaware’s former chief deputy attorney general Charles Brandt proposes a new plan to reinvigorate the struggling housing market.

The housing crisis began when large numbers of buyers defaulted on their loans, which led to banks foreclosing and the market filling with cheap houses. The prices kept falling, so no one wanted to risk buying a house if the price might immediately drop again.  Lack of consumer confidence became a major issue. Brandt’s idea for a solution is the creation of Government Equity Insurance to encourage qualified buyers to purchase new homes. This program would need to be run by the government, either implemented by Congress or any state legislature, since these days private equity insurance doesn’t inspire as much consumer confidence after recent failures like AIG. Brandt likens GEI to the FDIC, which allows bank depositors to feel confident that their money is safe.

Under this plan, houses would still be appraised for fair market value at the time of purchase, and the buyer would pay that amount and own the house for five years. Then for the next twenty years, the buyer would receive a tax credit or refund to cover the difference in price if he sells the house for a lower fair market value than what he originally paid for it, minus the estimated cost of any necessary repairs. The program would be a temporary measure, probably lasting for no more than two years, though it could easily be extended or even repealed after a year if for some reason it doesn’t work out.

As Brandt sees it, GEI is a win-win program. Eventually, home prices will go up as demand matches supply, employment will rise, and the states that provide GEI will benefit if homebuyers from nearby states decide to take advantage of the insurance and move there. And as Brandt says, the most important factor is that “no GEI policy will ever have to pay out one thin dime in claims, because GEI's existence will put wind in the sails of the housing market.”

Charles Brandt is the author of I Heard You Paint Houses (Steerforth Press), which is set to be made into a Martin Scorsese movie starring Robert DeNiro.

Whitey Bulger Arrested: What this Means for the Publishing World

After last week’s arrest of elusive mobster James “Whitey” Bulger, authors and publishers are responding to the renewed demand for more information on the FBI Top Ten Most Wanted Fugitive.

The interest in books on the subject has already gone up significantly in the past few days. In 2004, Steerforth Press published Street Soldier: My Life as an Enforcer for Whitey Bulger and the Boston Irish Mob, the memoir of Edward J. MacKenzie. Steerforth publisher Chip Fleisher noted in Publishers Weekly that Street Soldier has been "steadily reprinted every nine to fifteen months in modest quantities," most recently in March, but now a new reprint has been ordered to meet the higher demand.