Basic Books' Last Words

HarperCollins Discontinues Its Political Imprint

By David Streitfeld
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 14 1997; Page C01
The Washington Post

In yet another sign of the troubles besetting serious publishing, HarperCollins announced yesterday that its Basic Books imprint, one of the leading sources for books about major political and social issues, will be merged into the parent company.

While HarperCollins insisted this was merely an "administrative reorganization," publishing insiders heard a death knell.

"I'm sad but not at all surprised," said Arthur Rosenthal, who founded Basic in 1952 and sold it in 1969. "It's a dreadful company, HarperCollins." For proof, he said, just look at one of the conglomerate's catalogues. "There are very few books which will stir your heart, or last long."

Basic has been publishing about 100 books a year. Many of the books it issued over the years have been influential contributions to public discourse -- Sigmund Freud, Claude Levi-Strauss and Jean Piaget in the early years, for example. More recently, Basic published Juliet Schor ("The Overworked American"), Stephen Carter ("Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby"), Thomas Sowell ("Race and Culture: A World View"), Derrick Bell ("Faces at the Bottom of a Well: The Permanence of Racism"), Mickey Kaus ("The End of Equality"), Charles Murray ("Losing Ground") and Amitai Etzioni ("The New Golden Rule").

"One of the mantras of business today, and I think this is true in publishing, is the desire to have a brand name," said Washington agent Rafe Sagalyn. "Basic Books is one of the great brand names in the history of publishing. That's what I don't understand."

"If they thought there was any future in maintaining a classy intellectual imprint, it wouldn't cost so much to invest in it and promote it," said Adam Bellow, who runs the Free Press, the other leading public policy imprint. "Clearly they just don't see the nickel in it. It was a totally unemotional decision."

In a statement, HarperCollins President Anthea Disney called the merger "a natural evolution," noting that Basic no longer did its own production, marketing, publicity or finance.

"We began to see little benefit to managing the editorial function separately," said Disney, who declined to be interviewed. A spokeswoman said the Basic name would continue to be used, although it was unclear just how many books would be done. The Harper Reference imprint is also being folded into the parent company.

HarperCollins is owned by News Corp., the multinational entertainment conglomerate controlled by Rupert Murdoch. News Corp. just announced a 38 percent increase in after-tax profits for the first quarter, but pointedly noted that HarperCollins "continues to show weak operating results." Disney was brought in last year from TV Guide, another News Corp. entity, to turn the publisher around.

The news about Basic, coupled with severe cutbacks at another nonfiction publisher, Addison-Wesley, is "symptomatic of the difficulties of publishing serious books directed toward the general reader," said Ash Green, a longtime editor at Alfred Knopf.

"Books about ideas have a hard time now -- which may be because of the lack of ideas," Green added. "No one has written about the first hundred days of the second Clinton administration."

Arthur Rosenthal started Basic when he was 27. "I had just come back from Israel, where I was working as a special assistant to the first U.S. ambassador," he recalled yesterday. "I bumped into a lawyer, who said how would you like to promote a tiny book club?"

The 500-member club was located behind a bar, in a room with a sheet down the middle. (On the other side of the sheet was the Orgone Institute Press.) Rosenthal decided not only to promote Basic but to buy it. Within two years he started publishing original material, and within eight the club had 45,000 members. In 1969, he sold it to Harper, and went on to run Harvard University Press.

The problem with Basic, Rosenthal said, is not that no one is interested in ideas. "Look at the university presses. Most of them are quite healthy. It's really a question of how much money you have to make. If you have to do 18 percent before taxes" -- the type of return a conglomerate wants -- "that's tough."