Vino Italiano: Wine book club #1
Bill LeBlond, head of food and wine books at Chronicle Books, spoke at the wine writers’ shindig I attended last week in Napa. In a panel about book publishing, he explained that publishers only have two catalogs a year, spring and fall, and that a book only gets one shot at a full page in the front of the catalog, in the season it is released. Thereafter, it is relegated to the back of the catalog, or the “backlist” with a small cover image sometimes called a “tombstone” (ouch!). Some trendy books have a pop and then head to an early grave. But the best titles sell well from the backlist and represent the publisher’s (and author’s) gold mine. The long tail, if we can apply an internet term to the publishing medium that preceded it.
Publisher Clarkson Potter must be thrilled about the success of Vino Italiano by Joseph Bastianich and David Lynch. I’ve got a hardback edition from 2002 and it is still going strong in paperback and has a new buying guide to boot (the boot of Italy?). It’s easy to understand why: divided into regions, each section starts with a brief, scene-setting overview that includes history and topography, has a map, and then moves on to a discussion of the grapes and wine styles, a list of some leading producers, some travel references, and then food pairings by chef Lidia Bastianich.
This comprehensive and readable reference has sold so well and it’s easy to understand why: if you want to learn more about Italian wine, this book is a great place to start. I met David Lynch recently and he told me that he has a book coming out this fall written with David Kamp (United States of Arugula): the Wine Snob’s Dictionary–sounds fun and full of zazz.
Head on over to McDuff’s Food and Wine Trail since he selected this book for us to review. From there we can see the roundup of what other bloggers had to say about this book in the inaugural edition of the Wine Book Club. Or post your thoughts about this book here or your favorite guide for learning about Italian wine!
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On February 26th, 2008 at 10:41 pm ,David McDuff wrote:
Thanks for participating, Tyler, and for sharing a little insight into the publishing business.