Publisher Profile: Poisoned Pen Press
Robert Rosenwald, Publisher & President
How did you first become interested in the mystery genre?
In 1988 my wife to be, Barbara Peters, decided she wanted to open a bookstore. She, like her mother, consumes books at a staggering rate—I have actually watched her read sixty books in a week—and had been a lifelong mystery reader and decided on a mystery bookstore, and in Oct. 1989 The Poisoned Pen, A Mystery Bookstore... And More was launched. Seven years later we felt that big publishing had become dysfunctional in its pursuit of bigger and bigger books and elimination of solid midlist authors so we decided to open Poisoned Pen Press to pickup the slack.
How many titles a year does Poisoned Pen Press publish?
Poisoned Pen Press publishes thirty six new mysteries a year.
How is promoting a series different than promoting a single title?
I'm probably not the best person to answer this, but I'm not sure it is significantly different. The advantage of a series is that many of the readers will have a base knowledge of the characters, setting, and, more important, the writer's voice. The advantage of a single title—and by this I mean a new author who has no backlist, not a standalone book which is something we rarely find our authors submitting to us—is the excitement of a new voice and meeting new characters in a new setting.
What is your Mystery of the Month Club?
We specialize in debut novels and usually lesser known authors, and are known for the quality of the mysteries we publish. We created the Mystery of the Month Club to provide a book or author that many people would find it difficult to choose on their own. We select a recently published mystery and send it off with a satisfaction guarantee. If the recipient doesn't like it we'll refund their money or send a different book—their choice. I think over the last three years we've had three books returned.
What are some of your personal favorite Poisoned Pen Press titles?
You're asking me to choose among my children? But if I had to I'd probably take Drive by James Sallis, Relative Danger by Charles Benoit, Deadline Man by Jon Talton, A Famine of Horses by P.F. Chisholm, Impulse by Frederick Ramsay, and Matricide at St. Martha's by Ruth Dudley Edwards.
What made you decide to partner with ReadHowYouWant to release your titles in accessible editions?
We started publishing Large Type editions of our books about seven years ago for several reasons, but the main one was that I felt the libraries wanted them. But we only did 16 point type books and I thought that was somewhat limiting. I liked what I saw of ReadHowYouWant and felt that they could deliver our books to a larger audience and in more formats than we were able to. They also seemed like good people.