Earlier this year the Association of American Publishers awarded Alexander Skutt, president of McBooks Press, the Miriam Bass Award for Creativity in Independent Publishing. In this interview, Mr. Skutt discusses receiving the award as well as explains how booksellers can earn the most from their historical series-fiction titles.

How did McBooks get started?
I started with a bookstore in Ithaca, New York, and we began to publish some books as a side business. We recognized that we had an opportunity to publish books that did not exist in the marketplace. One of our popular books was Vegetarian Baby. That one went though about 12 printings. It was really the first book on the subject, so those were the origins publishing. Then I had a side business of video stores. But I sold those in 1994 and started a full-time book publishing operation in earnest with McBooks Press. Now we have over 100 titles in print with a schedule that allows us to produce about two new titles a month.

How did you get into series historical fiction?
I personally was a big fan of Patrick O'Brian. After I charged through his work I wanted to see what else was out there. I began reading C.S. Forester and then turned to Alexander Kent. Kent's books were published in England but were not available in the United States. Readers had to seek them out overseas. So we made some inquiries and to our surprise and delight we were able to get the U.S. right to Kent's books. Now, you know, Alexander Kent is a pen name for Douglas Reeman, who is probably the foremost living writer of nautical fiction now that O'Brian and Forester have passed away. We feel very fortunate publishing his books, which continue in the vein of O'Brian and Forester. It also might interest you to know that we publish nautical fiction that helped inspire O'Brian and Forrester. We publish a series by Captain Frederick Merriot. Commercially speaking he was the bestselling writer in England in the period preceeding Charles Dickens. Marryat's work received praise from Joseph Conrad and, strangely enough, from Virginia Woolf. Herman Melville said that it was Marryat's books that made him want to go to sea. So we brought Marryat's books back into print and, despite their having some pretty complicated language, they are selling well.

You must be a huge fan of the genre and made it a strategy to acquire the books that would appeal to readers like you?
That's exactly right. Another part of our strategy was based in the belief that series fiction really works. People grow to have great affection for the protagonists in these series novels and want to know what happens to them next. I still feel that fact is a little under-appreciated in the book business.

What is it you look for in pre-published book that you acquire versus the original fiction that you bring into print for the first time?
It's interesting that you ask that because there are different things that we look for. When we look to acquire rights we're really looking for good adventure stories that we think people would enjoy reading recreationally. We get a little bit more adventuresome in the nautical fiction that we published ourselves. For example Jan Needle has just completed his third book due out this May called The Spithead Nymph. Jan has a darker view of the Royal Navy and of British society of that day. He gives you a look into life below decks with the ordinary seamen. You get the perspective of those people who were poor and pressed into service. Jan also creates very interesting women characters, which is unusual for the genre. Anyway, Jan's books are not so much about adventure and excitement but more about the people and their times. Jan deals graphically with slavery, for example, such that I could not recommend the book for young readers.

You have won the AAP's Miriam Bass Award for Creativity in Independent Publishing Tell me about that.
Well, in April of 2002 our distributor filed for bankruptcy. It was bad timing because we had been selling books at a faster rate than ever before. The way it works for publishers who sell books through a distributor is that there's kind of a delayed payment built into it. So our distributor owed us a lot of money when they declared bankruptcy. We got everything we could but, as is typical in these situations, there was not that much money to spread around. Because the distributor had our books scattered around there were even concerns about us ever even reclaiming our stock. But we did get good legal help and quite quickly got control of our inventory. We were also able to quickly set up with another distributor, National Book Network. They were tremendously helpful to us. That helped us keep our publishing program afloat.

What exactly is the award given for?
It's for creativity in independent publishing. But the panel cited me not for my creativity in editing or book design but rather my creativity in survival skills. [Laughs] It was very nice for me because I didn't even know I was nominated until I got the award. It was my staff at McBooks Press that nominated me. They did it in secret. So I was pretty touched.

Since this is going out to booksellers, what would you like them to know about marketing series fiction?
I would tell them that it makes sense to stock one of each volume of a series so that when a customer gets hooked he'll come back to that bookstore. They know the will not have to search around for the next book in the series.