Literary Connections Across Publishing Fields | An Interview with Doug Jones

An interview with Doug Jones, publisher at HarperCollins

Q: Can you tell me a bit about your job at HarperCollins?

A: I’m Deputy Publisher for the Harper Group and Publisher of Harper Perennial, which is our paperback division. So what that means is I help run the group in terms of acquiring the books that we publish with editors. I also have publicity and marketing—those teams report to me—so it’s kind of a number of different things. It’s trying to manage and strategize on what we acquire, what kinds of books we acquire, when we publish them, and then also “taking the books to market”—which is then packaging the books, going to our sales team [and] presenting the books, and thinking about how we’re going to publicize and market the books when they're on sale. And there's a lot of things that lead up to that, so for example, two weeks ago we had our fall 2024 launch meeting, which is when each editor kind of came in with a group of salespeople, marketers, publicists, the art team, subrights… and they present every book on the list. So that’s kind of the first step of [a] many, many months long process of getting those books ready to publish a year from now. Our fall list is technically September 1st through December 31st, so it’s a four month span. We have three spans—there’s fall, winter (January through April), and then summer (which is May through August). I’m sort of bouncing all around here, but [it’s] just to kind of give you a sense that there’s many many things that go into publishing a book. But the launch is the first part of it, so I just manage the process. 

Q: Are there any literary magazines that you read on a regular basis? 

(And yes, The New Yorker counts.)

A: New Yorker, Atlantic, and Harper’s Magazine are the three that I would say.

Q: Do you feel that there is any connection between your role in publishing and others that aren’t in the commercial book business (for example, editorial teams at literary magazines or publishing programs at universities)?

A: It’s a little bit invisible to me, but I think in literary magazines, what happens is agents who send us the submissions, they're the ones who are probably looking much closer at smaller literary publications trying to find a diamond in the rough. And then [they’ll say] “that’s a great story, let me talk to this unknown writer and maybe they have a novel or a book of stories.” And I think that’s where the connection to me is, is the agents or scouts or whoever are finding and looking at literary magazines, and there’s hundreds of them. We wouldn't have the time for that, so that’s kind of what the agents do for us, is they’re able to look at that and find somebody. And then they help those writers put, if not an entire novel, a book of stories together, and package it as a proposal for editors. Then our editors get those and they read them, and some get excited about it, some don’t, maybe nobody does, and there's always that chance. We deal with dozens and dozens of literary agents and that’s probably where the connection is to those magazines. 

Q: Do you feel that publishing programs at universities are a valuable endeavor? Is it something that should be expanded upon for the development of future publishing professionals? Or is the concentration unnecessary?

A: I don’t know, it’s hard for me to say. I think certainly having the background, having the learning that you’re doing [as a publishing student] is certainly going to give you a leg up when it comes time to applying for a job. Because, I would think, eight out of ten people we hire are English majors or some kind of liberal arts that go into book publishing. But to have the concentration in book publishing, I would think, would give you a leg up. But should there be more of them? I don’t know. It is sort of specialized as an industry so I don’t know that every university needs to have a publishing curriculum necessarily. But it’s great that they’re there, like NYU has a course, Columbia has a course that a lot of us have taught over the years. I think it’s terrific. You know, you’re (hopefully) learning so much more and you'll be so much more ready to start, rather than having to start from scratch. Which most of us did, at some point. But I do think it's super valuable for you to be learning a lot of the ins and outs of the business before you even get a job, so I think it would be very advantageous for you, ultimately. 

Q: What do you feel is the importance of literary magazines today? 

A: I would say it’s kind of the same answer that I gave a couple of minutes ago in terms of… well, it’s good for the culture, it’s good that people are writing, it’s good that people are reading literary magazines in general—not enough people read in this country at all. And so… it’s promoting literature. And I think that it’s great for the American culture. I mean, there’s a long history of literary magazines, influential ones, like Paris Review, that have meant a lot. A lot of eventual famous writers, not that fame is necessarily important, but… a lot of people got their start in literary magazines. So I think that there’s a long history and hopefully that is continuing. 

Q: Would you say that literary magazines have any impact on trends within the book market? 

A: I really don’t know, my inclination is no. I think it’s really more about individual writers as opposed to sort of, say, genres or styles of writing. I feel like it’s been a while since that has been the case. Since like, this is way before your time, but you know Raymond Carver? Great short story writer, that sort of realistic writing that he was known for, and there were some other ones around that time, and there was one particular magazine (whose name I cannot remember) at that time. A lot of those people—I think Richard Ford may have been in that group—were published in that magazine. And I think that then there was a moment for that kind of literary novel or short story for a few years. But, you know, that was thirty five years ago or something like that, it feels like the ‘80s when that was happening. And now, at least from my vantage point, it’s hard to know what the trends are. Because, you know, we’re also a commercial business, and so what the trends are is driven more by TikTok than literary magazines. I mean that’s just fact, and good or bad, most [people know] Colleen Hoover, right? And that is something that, you know, she’s kind of a phenomenon that came from TikTok, and there are plenty of other books too, not just hers. The whole “romantasy” thing, that’s another genre that’s a year old or something like that [which] probably came from TikTok, too. Self-published writers get their start and enough people read it and promote them for free—they're just promoting books they like—and then it becomes something. So from the macro point of view that I'm seeing in terms of the marketplace, that seems to be what drives book sales now. I know that that’s a different thing from somebody else you’ll talk to who’s like, “But that’s not what wins national book awards.” And that’s true, and that’s as it should be… but back to the question, I’m not sure how literary magazines actually affect literature as it is right now. 

Q: There are many differing opinions and perspectives (both positive and negative) on what the publishing industry is going to look like in the coming years. Can you give some insight into your own personal outlook on the future of publishing?

A: Well, we've been hearing since the Kindle came out in, what, 2007 I think, that that was going to be the end of traditional publishing, or the “gatekeepers,” as we’re referred to by people. But if anything, we’ve grown since then, and I think the value that we provide authors is apparent. The professional people who work in a book publisher provide things that a self publisher simply cannot. In terms of, certainly, distribution—getting books into the marketplace—but all the other things that I talked about in terms of the marketing, the publicity, having the relationships with book sellers, relationships with media—all of those things that as a professional in each of our departments, that’s what they do on a daily basis. [We] take a book and then package it into something and then try to do everything we can to set it up for success. And as I was talking about a few minutes ago about the process, there’s so many things that are involved in that, anyway. So I think that the future is bright for book publishing long term, because there are professionals working in the industry, and as long as there continue to be readers for books there will be a market, and book publishers will be here to provide and discover books and help great books get discovered by readers. I’m very optimistic about it, so I’m not “doom and gloom.” I know there are some “doom and gloom” people [in publishing], but… I mean look, they say that nobody goes into book publishing to get rich, which is somewhat true, but there’s a certain passion to it and love—even though we all know it’s a business and that’s the way we treat it, that’s the way you have to treat it. But you do have to sometimes step back and go, you know what? It’s a pretty cool fucking job. I’m not selling toothpaste every day, you know? So I feel somewhat lucky and I think a lot of us do. Yeah, I mean, are we sometimes overworked, underpaid? Sure—but I think you could say that about a lot of jobs, too. 

Q: What is a book which you’ve worked on that you’re proud of?

A: I guess the first one that comes to mind, there’s a few, but there was a book called The Nest by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney, which I think we published eight or nine years ago. Terrific novel, and it was a book that I read and I loved it so much that I kind of rallied everyone within sales to get behind this book, and choose it in a way as sort of like, “this is the sales department’s book of the season that every rep is gonna read and recommend.” And long story short, it became a really big bestseller. It wasn’t completely my doing, but I had this thing where I was like, this book is so deserving that I really wanna do everything I can in helping to rally people around it. And then of course it selling, becoming a big bestseller, that’s the fun part, you know? So that’s the first one that comes to mind. There’s been many, but that’s one that I’m particularly proud of. And… it was a debut novelist, [so we] sort of helped her career, and she’s since published another book with us, which was a “Jenna pick" that also sold very well. So it sort of helped launch not just the book, but also a career.