|
|
Twenty Years of Thomas Dunne Books
|
 |
| A
n editor with St. Martin’s Press since 1971, Thomas Dunne started his imprint within the Press in 1986 and celebrates its 20th anniversary in 2006. A perennial blend of commercial success and quality, the Thomas Dunne Books list publishes broadly, with a reputation for publishing both established and emerging writers.
|
 |
What's with the Dog?
We're often asked about the origin of our dachshund colophon. When it was decided to establish the Thomas Dunne imprint within St. Martin's Press, the SMP art director asked what sort of designed type or logo Tom had in mind. He was thinking about this one night, and idly studying his bookshelf, when he noticed that a significant number of his books had critters of some sort on the spine. There were flocks of penguins among the paperbacks, but among hardcovers, a veritable dog track of Russian wolfhounds predominated. At the time, Tom's dachshund, Sparky, was on his lap and the solution was suddenly obvious. The breed is lovable, humorous, brave and feisty. They are cleaner than penguins, and—let's face it—if one were to curl up with a good book and a good dog, which would be more congenial, lap-wise: a hundred-ten pound wolf-hound or a nine pound dachshund? The answer was obvious, and though we've never actually counted, at least ten million "Sparkies" have gone out into the world since 1986.
|
|
"From a high-rise office at the very tip of the Flatiron building,
Mr. Dunne remains firmly in charge. His imprint is the leading
publisher of mysteries, but also sells histories, niche titles,
British literary imports, and unauthorized biographies. An imprint
that scorns snobbery, prizes the quirky and commercial, and
flourishes...his imprint is one of the company's most profitable."
—The New York Times
"An estimable senior editor."
—
Library Journal
"High overhead has forced big publishers to take fewer
chances on new writers, trim their lists of talented but
modest-selling authors, and cut back on line-by-line editing
of the works they publish. Another loss in the age of
mega-publishing is a sense of the personality of each publishing
line. Today a few imprints, such as Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press,
reflect the taste of a powerful editor. Otherwise, it is difficult
to predict the type of reading you will get from books issued by a
particular publishing house."
—The Boston Herald
|
 |
|
| |
|
|