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March 29th, 2010
Article on Tyrant Books in Publishers Weekly:
Claire Kirch -- Publishers Weekly, 3/29/2010 4:26:51 PM
A new literary press is slowly heating up in Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen neighborhood that's bending the rules when it comes to book publishing. Giancarlo DiTrapano, the publisher of New York Tyrant, a tri-quarterly literary magazine known for showcasing edgy short fiction by emerging writers, recently added a book publishing arm, Tyrant Books, to the enterprise the former Farrar, Straus & Giroux intern has been running out of his Far West Side studio apartment since 2007.
"I always wanted to start a press," DiTrapano, 36, explained, "But I started with the magazine to get the name out there." To date, all of the authors acquired by Tyrant Books have previously had their work published inNew York Tyrant, which, on average, sells 1,500 copies each issue. Rather than paying advances, DiTrapano is sealing the deal with authors by offering them vacations at a family-owned 17th-century villa south of Rome. The press will pay authors royalties of 7% on the first 5,000 copies sold, 8% of second 5,000 copies, and 9% of the rest.
As with New York Tyrant, the mission of Tyrant Books is to publish fiction that DiTrapano explains "does something, that's a little different" from the works typically published by more conventional literary presses. Describing the short stories published in New York Tyrant as often grim and dark, though always well-written, DiTrapano added, "We're not too experimental, but we're very language-based. We want authors who do things with language."
Tyrant Books started out small this past fall, launching with the publication of a novella, Brian Evenson's Baby Leg, a work that DiTrapano describes as a "little horror book, graphic but also poetic," with a controversial ending that he claims other publishers would have demanded the author revise before they would consider publishing it.
The print run for the $35 limited edition hardcover release was 400 copies, all of which were signed, numbered, and handled by Evenson after he dipped his fingers in a sticky red substance to leave bloody fingerprints on the jacket. So far, DiTrapano said 300 copies have sold, with half of them pre-ordered online.
DiTrapano hopes that Tyrant Books's sole spring 2010 release, Firework by Eugene Marten, will break out both the author of Waste (Ellipsis, 2008) and the fledgling press. DiTrapano is pinning such high hopes onFirework, in fact, that when he considered the font in 200 galley copies of Firework to be too small, he discarded them and ordered another 200 galleys printed up in a larger font.
"Now we have perfect galleys," he said, declining to disclose how much this decision cost him. Firework will be published in June in trade paper original, with a 2,000-copy initial print run. "We will be defined byFirework," DiTrapano insisted, disclosing that he is currently in negotiations to sell the foreign rights, "Marten is the best writer to come out of any small press in years. [Firework] is going to make a lot of writers take a good, hard look at their own writing, as well as make readers take a good look at what they've been reading."
Although Tyrant Books are distributed by Small Press Distribution, DiTrapano is hoping to sign on with a larger distributor so that he will be able to expand beyond publishing one or two titles each season. Thus far, he has scheduled for fall publication How Much of Us There Was by Michael Kimball, which was originally released in 2005 by HarperCollins UK; and for spring 2011, Read the Child This Book or He Will Suffer by Blake Butler. Lincoln Dahl by Sam Michel will be published in either spring or fall 2011.
While admitting that he initially "wasn't so thrilled" at the prospect of releasing in digital formats the kinds of books he envisions publishing, DiTrapano since has come to embrace the idea, saying the iPad "could make things a lot more interesting" than the Kindle and other e-readers.
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