PRESS
RELEASES: individual titles
HAVE
A NICE DAY, BY ORDER OF THE COURT
Mean Martin Manning Resists
Social Worker’s Forced Self-Improvement Program
in Scott Stein’s New Novel
Maverick
Boutique Fiction House ENC Press Acquires Drexel
Professor’s Novel To Further Its Sacred Cow-Tipping
Agenda
NEW YORK—Can a grumpy old man who hadn’t
left his apartment in 30 years and just wants to
be left alone with his cold-cut sandwiches, his
frog figurines, and his TV shows stand up to a relentlessly
well-meaning social worker and her enforcers? He
can. But to win this epic battle of wills, he’ll
need to call on a lifetime of stubbornness and downright
meanness, a patience rarely seen, and more than
a little luck.
The curmudgeonly protagonist of
Scott Stein’s new novel Mean Martin Manning
faces a militant do-gooder in the form of Caseworker
Alice Pitney. Pitney is starting a self-improvement
program in Martin’s building and won’t
take no for an answer. If it takes a trial of absurd
proportions and a ludicrous treatment program to
make Martin into the man he could be and should
have been, that’s just fine with her. And
if the satire and sarcasm fly fast and furious in
the process, that’s just fine with Scott Stein
and the sacred cow tippers at his publisher, ENC
Press.
Scott Stein is associate director
of the Certificate Program in Writing and Publishing
at Philadelphia’s Drexel University. The book
Drexel University Off the Record, the unauthorized
guide for prospective students, lists his Humor
& Comedy Writing class as one of the “Ten
Best Things About Drexel.” The Philadelphia
Inquirer called his first novel, Lost, “wonderfully
comic” and “a page-turner.” BookSense.com
selected it as a daily pick, calling it “hilarious
and winning.” Stein was the founding editor
of the online magazine When Falls the Coliseum:
a journal of American culture (or lack thereof),
which New York magazine called “hip, sardonic
... quirky.”
Scheduled for release next winter,
Mean Martin Manning has just been acquired
by the boutique New York fiction house ENC Press,
which has established itself as a specialist in
sophisticated social satire. Its self-chosen “boutique”
designation involves more than house size and the
high level of attention given to the editing, design,
and production of each release. It is a deliberately
chosen business model as well. With the exception
of a few independent bookstores, ENC Press bypasses
the usual retail book industry channels, whether
brick-and-mortar or online, in favor of selling
books exclusively through its Web site. Publisher
Olga Gardner Galvin says only her small run/direct
sales model makes it possible for her to focus on
the content of her books rather than fret about
the bottom line. It also allows her to keep all
her titles available indefinitely on the Web —
a practice recently adopted by industry giants Penguin
and Random House.
“I started out thinking we
were ‘alternative’ because our authors
saw and discussed more than one side of any question
and issue and did so with wit and humor, which is
‘alternative’ in today’s book
industry,” says Galvin. “But then we
realized that in pursuit of such novels we came
up with some intelligent alternatives to limited
editorial decisions, the hideous practice of printing
books only to remainder and pulp them, and serfdom
for writers in the form of miserly royalties. We
certainly provide an intelligent alternative to
the touchy-feely groupthink of the mainstream book
scene, simply by publishing guilt-free, topical
entertainment for independently thinking people.
Mean Martin Manning is one more ENC Press offering
for the steadily growing audience of readers who
hunger for more sophisticated, nuanced, and original
fiction than they can find in most bookstores.”
A capsule summary of Mean Martin
Manning is available here
— and so are a few of the other wickedest,
funniest, and most thought-provoking novels the
big publishing business doesn’t know how to
handle.
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$EVERANCE
PAYS
Top Rock Jock Promoted For
Trying To Tank His Job
In Insider’s Fictional Exposé Of Corporate-Owned
Media World
Award-Winning
Chicago Radio Producer Bites The Hand That Fed Him—
His Novel’s Publisher Could Only Be ENC Press
NEW YORK—Chicago rock jock Richard Kaempfer
moved into radio production, producing the award-winning
John Records Landecker and Steve Dahl
& Garry Meier shows before having to suffer
the trials and tribulations of his fictional counterpart
Tom Zagorski. The hand Kaempfer dealt Zagorski in
his novel $everance was obsolescence in
the new corporate-owned media world after nearly
twenty years as one of the most popular morning-radio
personalities in Chicago — that, and a boss
who uses public and private humiliation to make
Zagorski quit so he doesn’t have to deliver
a healthy severance package. Kaempfer has Zagorski
push back by passive-aggressively needling his boss
into firing him, without ever crossing the line
into a firing for cause.
When neither side budges after
six months of battle, an exasperated Zagorski sends
a sarcastic e-mail to the CEO of the corporation,
suggesting a massive firing of anyone who doesn’t
actually bring in money. Instead of firing Zagorski
in a rage, the CEO takes the e-mail seriously. He
eliminates thousands of jobs, the stock price soars,
and the “genius” Zagorski gets rewarded
with a promotion. His new position as COO —
and darling of Wall Street — makes getting
fired a monumental task.
Can Zagorski, in cahoots with his
on-air partner Richard Lawrence, mismanage the conglomerate
so the stock price tanks, or irritate his mercurial
boss to the firing point? Zagorski and Lawrence
gleefully tackle both assignments, plunging headlong
into the world of media finance, politics, and personalities.
The result is a scathing satire of the current state
of the consolidated mainstream broadcast media,
insight into the way the political parties have
managed to convert broadcasting into a partisan
screech-fest, and a spotlight on who and what really
runs the media.
Richard Kaempfer was a Chicago
media fixture for twenty years, first as a host
at Chicago’s top rock station, WLUP AM/FM,
in the late 80s and early 90s. Industry insiders
know him better as one of the top radio producers
in the country and the coauthor, with John Swanson,
of The Radio Producer’s Handbook.
In addition to his radio honors (including Best
Morning Show in Chicago and Best Oldies Show in
America), Kaempfer has won numerous awards for his
magazine and advertising writing, including a National
Writing Award in 1999 for his essay “Living
Life to Its Fullest,” and other awards for
his work for radio advertising specialists A.M.I.S.H.
Chicago Advertising, which he cofounded in 2000.
He is also a contributing editor for Shore Magazine.
Naturally, Kaempfer’s first
foray into fiction got snapped up by boutique New
York fiction house ENC Press, whose very existence
is a wickedly grinning critique of mainstream publishing,
and is scheduled for publication in 2007.
ENC Press’s self-chosen “boutique”
designation involves more than house size and the
high level of attention given to the editing, design,
and production of each release. It is a deliberately
chosen business model as well. With the exception
of a few independent bookstores, ENC Press bypasses
the usual retail book-industry channels, whether
brick-and-mortar or online, in favor of selling
books exclusively through its Web site. Publisher
Olga Gardner Galvin says only her small run/direct
sales model makes it possible for her to focus on
the content of her books rather than fret about
the bottom line. It also allows her to keep all
her titles available indefinitely on the Web —
a practice recently adopted by industry giants Penguin
and Random House.
“I started out thinking we
were ‘alternative’ because our authors
saw and discussed more than one side of any question
and issue and did so with wit and humor, which is
‘alternative’ in today’s book
industry,” says Galvin. “But then we
realized that in pursuit of such novels we came
up with some intelligent alternatives to limited
editorial decisions, the hideous practice of printing
books only to remainder and pulp them, and serfdom
for writers in the form of miserly royalties. We
certainly provide an intelligent alternative to
the touchy-feely groupthink of the mainstream book
scene, simply by publishing guilt-free, topical
entertainment for independently thinking people.
$everance is one more ENC Press offering for the
steadily growing audience of readers who hunger
for more sophisticated, nuanced, and original fiction
than they can find in most bookstores.”
A capsule summary of $everance
is available here —
and so are a few of the other wickedest, funniest,
and most thought-provoking novels the big publishing
business doesn’t know how to handle.
back to
top |
