The Acquirer of “Down-market” Books

Publishing has always depended on having smart people willing to do its down-market work; what’s changed is how those people go about it. Historically, even editors of tasteless books still played a taste-making role, relying on their guts to decide what self-help manual or true-crime thriller would be a hit, not unlike the way their colleagues specializing in debut literary fiction placed their bets. Today, the public has already indicated what interests it, via the Internet, and the editor just has to be savvy enough and shameless enough to give the rabble what it wants. Ruby-Strauss is very good at this new approach to making bad books, and that affords him “a different kind of respect” than his tweedy peers, as he told me by phone one day. “You can’t hold it against people if they got into this business because of their love of literature,” he said, though he has other aims. “The people that bring in the most money have a huge amount of power.”

Noreen Malone profiled Jeremie Ruby-Strauss, an editor at Simon & Schuster, who is best known for getting Tucker Max’s I Hope They Server Beer in Hell on bookshelves. Ruby-Strauss has made a name for himself selling “down-market” books — books by celebrities like Jersey Shore’s Snooki, and various Real Housewives cast members — which often sell quite well and helps a publisher’s bottom line. It’s all about getting a book to make money, but there are lines that some editors won’t cross says Jennifer Bergstrom, Ruby-Strauss’s boss:

Not long ago, Ruby-Strauss wanted to buy a self-published title with a strong fan base. His colleagues at Gallery balked: It featured abusive, nonconsensual sex. “The protagonist ends up marrying her rapist,” says Bergstrom. “We felt the book crossed a line.”

Good call.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

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