Odds are against any new business these days, but longshots don’t come any longer than independent publishing ventures. But whether the odds are fifty-to-one or far greater, Hard Case Crime beat them. How? I asked Ardai.
“The single biggest challenge is that people don’t read for pleasure the way they used to. There’re too many demands on everyone’s time and too many other forms of entertainment, and the mass public has by and large fallen out of the reading habit. Oh, there are always runaway bestsellers, books that “everyone has to read”—“Harry Potter,” “The Da Vinci Code.” But you can’t build a steady business, month in and month out, on the gamble that one day one of your books will catch fire the way those hits did. When you’re putting out a new book every month,especially if you’re selling it at a low cover price the way we are, it can be a real challenge to get each book into enough paying customers’ hands to keep the line in the black. This ultimately boils down to a distribution challenge—how can we get all the booksellers in the country to carry our books, and to keep carrying them, and to order enough copies of each to make it possible for us to keep going? We’re very fortunate to have Dorchester Publishing overseeing that side of the business—they’re magnificent at it. But it’s a challenge for them, too. It’s a challenge for everyone in the publishing business.”
What would you say is the state of crime fiction publishing today?
“I don’t think crime fiction has ever been stronger, especially in the hard-boiled or noir or dark side of the field. There have been high points in the past, of course—can’t complain about the days when Chandler and Hammett were at the top of their game—but if you look at the authors who are working today, both the old pros and the young up-and-comers, you realize there has been a flowering of talent like never before. Crime novels receive a level of serious attention today that they never did in the old days, both from critics and from readers. Major literary authors are trying their hands at the genre and in some cases doing an excellent job. Overall, I think it’s a fantastic time to be a reader of crime fiction.”
How many of your titles are original? How many are reprints? Do you see that increasing in the future?
“We originally set out to make the line half reprints and half originals, but it’s come out to be something more like two-third reprints, one-third originals, for the simple reason that I can always find an outstanding reprint to do (I just have to look on my shelves) while for the originals I’m at the mercy of how often someone writes an outstanding book and chooses to submit it to us. I’ll always do another great reprint rather than buy a mediocre original.”
How do you go about publishing the classic pulps? How do they most often come to your attention? How do you track down the rights? Anybody from the “golden age” that you really want to reprint, but haven’t been able to yet? Are there any manuscripts floating around from back then that were never published that might be now?
“As I say, I start by going to my shelves, which contain thousands of old books. I also get recommendations from friends, and from strangers, and hunt down copies of obscure books when I hear about them. Having found a book I want to reprint, I start calling around and Googling and generally carrying on like a detective, trying to find any sign of where the author might be or, if the author is deceased (as many of ours are), where his or her heirs might be. In some cases, the search is easy: The author is alive, has a web site with a contact address, and that’s that. In other cases, it’s hard—I spent several years trying to track down Day Keene’s estate for instance, and Steve Fisher’s, and the estate of the Robert B. Parker who died in 1955. It can be frustrating sometimes, but it’s also great fun and makes for some great cocktail party stories.
“We do hear about unpublished manuscripts floating around from time to time. Two years ago, for instance, we published “The Last Match” by David Dodge, which had never been published before. And in 2009, we’ll be bringing out, for the first time, lost novels by science-fiction great Roger Zelazny (“The Dead Man’s Brother”) and “Doc Savage” creator Lester Dent (“Honey in His Mouth”). Just the other day I started reading Richard Prather’s final, unpublished Shell Scott novel. It’s days like this when I think I have the best job in the world.”
To celebrate and commemorate Hard Cases’ fifth year and fiftieth book, Ardai penned “Fifty-to-One,” a comic crime novel with each chapter title named after the first forty-nine Hard Case Crime books. Fun, fast-paced, and highly entertaining, “Fifty-To-One” is a fitting tribute to as fine an independent crime publishing house as you’ll find. I asked Ardai to share with me how “Fifty-To-One” came about, what the experience of writing it was like, and if it turned out to be more or less difficult than he imagined?
“It was a lark. My last two books (written as “Richard Aleas”) were grim and bleak, really tragic, so I set out to do something light and frothy this time. That’s not necessarily easier to write or even more fun (it feels good to write a really dark book), but it was a new sort of pleasure and the writing itself went very quickly. (As it had to, since I was under a very tight deadline.) The challenge of writing the story to fit our 50 book titles in sequence was a bear -- but, you know, what’s life without challenges? I grumbled a lot while I was in the middle of it, but looking back on it, I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything. Someone described the book to me as having the quality of a bedtime story, the sort a parent might make up for his child based on elements the child demands the parent include—“Can there be a bear in it, daddy? I want a bear!”—and I think that’s about right. When I hit chapter 24, which had to be called “The Guns of Heaven,” I knew there had to be guns in it; when I got to the next chapter, named after “The Last Match,” I knew there had to be a match in it, of some sort. The sort you use to light cigarettes? The sort you get when two people who were meant for each other meet? A boxing match...? That was up to me. But by god, there had to be a match of some sort, or I wasn’t doing my job. I think, fortunately, that I was able to pull it off. You can’t take the book too seriously—it’s a confection, like a souffle—but if you like souffles, you’ll have a big smile on your face when you finish this one.”
Rush out and pick up a copy of “Fifty-To-One” or any other of the first forty-nine Hard Case Crime titles(or all of them as I have)—and not just for the entertaining story inside, but the amazing art on the outside. Odds are good you’ll have a very good time. And at just seven dollars, you’ll get more kiss kiss, bang bang for your disposable buck than you could anywhere else.
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