Interview with Dan Cafaro of Atticus Books
Because I’ve already promised my fans (my mother, my toddler upon occasion, etc.) that my next book will be an in-depth study of American writers and their lack of integrity, I felt it was not out of character (or desperation only) to conduct an interview with a gentleman I am most grateful to for bringing my first published novel to print. So in honor of in-house propaganda everywhere—fuck it; Dan is crazy enough to throw some dollars down on my novel, so why not?—I give you an interview with life-long book guy Dan Cafaro. This October, his new imprint Atticus Books will publish its debut title, Fight for Your Long Day, and follow with fiction by Joe Zeppetello and Randall Devallance. What I like most about Dan is his unabashed love of literature; it takes courage to profess open affection for anything in these cynical times, but Dan isn’t one to hide his passion. Despite the demanding schedule of an independent press, he found time to respond to each of my prompts. Yes, at times, in excess, but that’s only because I pay by the word. You’ll learn that Dan Cafaro is a former sports journalist and bookstore owner, well read, bald, and able to add self-deprecatory humor to the mix. Not necessarily in that order. Enjoy.
Alex: You’ve worked in the book trade in many different capacities—store owner, acquisitions editor, writer, and publisher. Could you describe what you’ve enjoyed the most and liked least about your various occupations within the book business?
Dan: I’ve enjoyed this independent publishing gig the best—and plan to stick with it for as long as I can survive on sleep deprivation, and convince my wife to keep working [Dan laughs]. Honestly, the publishing business is the most challenging, rewarding and fun. You get to be creative and autonomous while working with talented people and wearing a bunch of hats. I own a rather large hat collection, so I mean that both figuratively and literally. I visited with a cousin recently from Colorado—we hadn’t seen each other in probably 15 years and he told me that I look like a publisher. I’m not sure if that was meant as a compliment, but I’m figuring he said it because of the hat I was wearing, a brown fedora. It’s the hat that makes the man, I guess, the bald man, anyway [Dan laughs].
I most enjoy the acquisitions side of the book business—I feel like I was born to sign authors to publishing contracts. As a writer, I empathize with other writers and often develop an immediate rapport. It’s like we’re part of some club that has an incredibly high dues structure and few benefits except for self-gratification. The Internet has helped the writer’s plight, you know, the lonely writer seeking to find an audience, but it’s still extremely cold out there. With the growing number of blogs and sites dedicated to writing, you’d think that more authors would feel appreciated. But it seems the sad truth is it’s more competitive than ever to get someone’s attention. So if somehow I can help some of society’s distinct voices get heard in all this crazy clatter, then I feel like I’ve done my job. I’m not sure I’ll look back and say, “My work is done here,” but at least I might look back and say, “I saved a few writers from jumping off a ledge.”
On the flip side of this maddening equation is retail. Of course publishers need to sell books, too, to stay afloat, but I’d rather be choosing the content and fulfilling the author’s vision than merchandising the end product and waiting for customers to show up so you can hand sell it. When I had my bookshop in Doylestown [Pa.], I used to get a real rise out of finding books for people. It’s all about getting to know your customers – their wants, their quirky interests. But I used to get deflated about the store traffic or lack thereof. I recall some deathly quiet weekdays in the depths of winter. One of the hardest, least appreciated parts of this business is the quaint relic we call physical bookstores. Unless you’re independently wealthy or incredibly charmed, it’s damn near impossible to carry that much overhead without fear of financial ruin. I suppose fretting over bills and making that month’s rent is what I liked least about owning a bookstore.
Alex: What was it like to run an independent bookstore in 1995? Could you tell me what some of your most memorable experiences were?
Dan: Baptism by brush fire is one way of describing my experience as a bookstore owner and first-time entrepreneur. Because I committed the cardinal sin of never having even worked in a bookstore, nor retail at all, you may as well add some lighter fluid to that description.
I was a writer with a yearning to break into the book business any way I could, so I learned it the way a journalist might approach the subject. I attacked it from the bottom up. I read as many books as I could on the subject of acquiring and collecting antiquarian books—and introduced myself to those in the thick of it—the booksellers themselves. I then quizzed several of them on the bolts, nuts and nuances of the trade.
I remember my first book fair in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Growing up I had always loved books and enjoyed browsing through aisles of shelves like most readers. But I don’t recall ever having gone to a book fair until I attended one as a dealer. What a paradise! I couldn’t believe my eyes—miles and miles of books that I had never known existed, right there, available for purchase. And, as a bona fide bookseller with a tax id number, I got a discount, too!
Remember, these were the days before Internet access became as common as broadcast radio. Most book enthusiasts and collectors still paid to have booksellers search for rare and out-of-print titles. Many dealers paid good money (or, in many cases, store credit) for book scouts to locate these hard-to-find titles. It was a different universe and it was rapidly departing.
Again, to reiterate for the younger folks who have a tough time fathoming life without an iPad, this was before selling books on craigslist and eBay somehow became fashionable. Tech-savvy (or just plain desperate) used book dealers figured out this ugly, cranky electronic device on dial-up wasn’t going away no matter how much they hated it, so they started cataloging their libraries online and joined member sites like Bibliofind and Advanced Book Exchange (ABE) to find and sell stock to a mostly uninformed audience of “old school” readers. Amazon had yet to come into its own as the place where no one knows your name but everyone buys and reviews books. At this time people still mistook having an e-mail address for a Web site.
Unlike my wife, an early adopter of software and gadgets no matter the cost, I was not drinking the dot-com Beatle juice … not at first anyway. But I did see an opportunity to be a sort of newborn (OK, a wannabe innovator) at the cutting edge of a dinosaur industry, so I tried to embrace it … though I did so grudgingly. You see, prior to opening the store’s doors, I told my wife that I didn’t want a computer because it would mess with the vibe and aesthetics I was going for. I was trying to create ambiance and old world charm, and besides, I wrote in longhand and typed free form poetry on my mom’s old Smith Corona electric. I wanted a dusty old bookshop with stacks of dog-eared literature used for side tables. I didn’t want to run the place like a sterile manufacturing warehouse. Mind you, I said this to my wife, a woman who works for a software firm and has an uncanny knack for detecting and embracing emerging technologies. In her world of retail information systems, it was heresy to have a husband as a Luddite! A short while thereafter, I bought a PC and the rest, as the techno geeks might say, is scalable.
Alex: What were the greatest obstacles associated with staying in business as a traditional brick-and-mortar store?
Dan: As for the obstacles of a traditional brick-and-mortar store, I believe the location I chose—off the main strip of the town center—was an issue. Being new to the mom-and-pop retail game, I chose lower rent (and risk) over location, location, location. Not a wise choice in retrospect, but little did I know, the nature of bookselling was changing forever. Instead of expanding my retail space, I soon would consolidate and concentrate on what I called the mail order side of the business. By 1996 I was selling books regularly to ABE, Bibliofind, Alibris (then known as Interloc) and the then profitless little entity with a big name, Amazon. Once I started selling directly to customers worldwide who found me on this barrier-breaking network they called the World Wide Web, it finally dawned on me that these faceless folks with credit cards would end up supporting Chapters Revisited more than the town residents. Even Al Gore, who I hear was the inventor of the Internet, hadn’t prepared me for that.
Alex: My understanding is that you were a sports reporter for The Bergen Record early in your working life. Do you have favorite novels or novelists whose work connects to the world of sport? By chance do you know of or have you read any novels (as opposed to biography or other non-fiction) written by an athlete or sports reporter?
Dan: As a developing writer, and sportswriter, in particular, I was eager to find and feast on as much good writing as I could get my hands on. Many early influences were sports journalists like Roger Kahn whose bestseller, The Boys of Summer, made me realize that it was possible (though still exceptionally difficult) to achieve the result of top-shelf literature through writing about something as seemingly pedestrian as sports, in this case, the game of baseball and the glory days of the 1950s Brooklyn Dodgers. I also reveled in Kahn’s book, Good Enough to Dream, the story of his year as owner and president of a very minor league baseball team. That remains one of my life goals: make enough money in publishing to own a Class A franchise (laughs). In my late teens and early 20s, I thought Roger Angell’s and Roger Kahn’s books were as well constructed and intelligent as any of the literary classics they were assigning in English Lit 101. I get a kick out of the fact that Ring Lardner, Jr. apparently shared my sentiment: that is, a smartly conceived baseball book could be as compelling as a serious novel about the human condition. His dad’s satirical novel, You Know Me Al: A Busher’s Letters, is not only a staple in baseball literature, but American literature. And Lardner’s short story, “Haircut,” is a clinic for how to be incisive, no matter what genre of writing. This was a guy who knew how to turn a simile. One of my favorites: “He looked at me as if I were a side dish he hadn’t ordered.”
It’s funny. I went through a Bernard Malamud stage that had nothing to do with his book, The Natural. I hadn’t even made the connection of Roy Hobbs as a character created by Malamud, yet I couldn’t get enough of his collections of short stories, The Magic Barrel being one of my favorites.
For some reason I’ve never immersed myself in to Bang the Drum Slowly by Mark Harris or Richard Ford’s The Sportswriter, but I’m a great fan of their lesser known works, particularly their own stellar collections of short stories. As you can tell, I have a gluttonous appetite for short fiction. Much to my wife’s dismay, I have stacks of anthologies and Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses books sitting precipitously on the night stand (and on the floor beside and under the night stand) next to our bed.
One incredible passage that has always stuck with me is Don DeLillo’s prologue to his postmodern masterpiece, Underworld. How he is able in one fell swoop to capture an era (early ’50s) and setting (playoff-atmosphere baseball at the old Polo Grounds in New York), and then breathlessly characterize and interweave a group of regular neighborhood kids sneaking into the stadium with a group of larger-than-life celebrities that includes Jackie Gleason, Frank Sinatra and J. Edgar Hoover together in attendance and unknowingly watching what is to become famously known as the Bobby Thomson “Shot Heard ‘Round the World” game, is simply amazing.
As far as baseball literature goes, it doesn’t get much better than Baseball: A Literary Anthology (edited by Nicholas Dawidoff). Damon Runyon, who first made his mark as a sportswriter, Jimmy Cannon, Red Smith, Murray Kempton. Can you tell I’m partial to baseball and newspaper columnists?
For those seeking a general crossover of sports and literature, there’s a delightful three-volume set called Great Stories from the World of Sport. It was published in the late Fifties and contains an extensive list of heavyweights in the field of fiction. I’ve owned it since my days as a bookseller, and don’t plan on giving it up anytime soon.
Alex: If Oprah Winfrey put you in charge of her Book Club what direction would you steer it in and why?
Dan: Oprah Winfrey has a book club? [Dan laughs.] I know, I know, my lack of knowledge on this subject is blasphemous, an unforgivable sin, especially for a former bookseller, and I’m far from a snob about her club, but honestly (and probably to my detriment as a publisher), it’s not something I pay much attention to. From what I’ve picked up on from news bites, she seems to have a wide and varied selection of titles. I recall that she chose Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections and Wally Lamb’s She’s Come Undone, so it doesn’t seem like she needs my help in making better choices although her book club does have an image problem for some reason. I guess Franzen was concerned that he would be removed from the “serious writers” country club, all because Oprah—how dare she—added a couple of million titles sold to his coffers? I remember, too, the hubbub surrounding James Frey’s fictionalized memoir, A Million Little Pieces. I’m not sure it really mattered to me as a reader whether he made up parts of his life. My loyalty to fiction, it seems, colors me liberal on this subject. As a publisher, you’d think I’d be much more sensitive to that sort of thing. But good writing—compelling writing, that is—stands on its own merits. I don’t really care if James Frey was where he said he was and/or whether he snorted coke or heroin or got arrested for being a public nuisance. His voice spoke to me; it was a harrowing account of a pained existence.
Now, where the other shoe does drop for me is when you’re trying to keep your job (or get promoted) as an investigative reporter for The New York Times and you knowingly fabricate quotes from so-called sources to help “sell” your piece to the assignment editor and further spark reader interest, that’s altogether different—that makes you a fraud; you’ve traded journalism for entertainment, and now you can sell your own story to Geraldo or Jerry Springer or whoever’s doing those kind of pieces today. You’ve lost the public trust and whatever integrity you may have carried as a news correspondent has been flushed down the toilet.
But to get back to your original question, if Oprah put me in charge of her book club, I’d probably request a larger marketing budget to keep the club vibrant and create a reality show that emphasizes the personalities and work habits of authors and has more entertainment value than C-SPAN’s Booknotes. I love the traditional Charlie Rose mahogany roundtable interview format, but you have to jazz it up, tweak the dynamic for the general TV audience so the show has a shot at getting some buzz on the streets and an American Idol-like following. Authors as colorful and crazy as rock stars: don’t you like the sound of that? [Note: Alex does not own an electric guitar or even a decent CD player.] It’s trickle-down education for the “juvenile product of the working class whose best friend floats in the bottom of a glass.” What’s good for the publishing industry would be good for society, and small presses would benefit, too.
Alex: Are you the kind of reader who can provide five favorite novels? If so, please do.
Dan: As much as I’d like to punt on this question, as my taste in literature—and what I consider “my favorites”—changes on nearly a daily basis, it’s way too much fun to not at least attempt to answer. The authors I tend to return to time and time again—Raymond Carver, Edward Albee, Kurt Vonnegut, George Orwell, E.B. White, Charles Bukowski, Dostoevsky, Nick Hornby, Anne Lamott, Annie Dillard—are not necessarily going to be represented on my list of “desert island novels,” but let’s just say for the record, I’d find it a helluva lot less desirable to live without having access to their collection of works.
For as much as I admire the ambitious and gargantuan accomplishment of the novel-length book form, I also tend to read a lot of writing outside that noble discipline. In addition to short stories (I’m currently enthralled with Andrew Porter’s debut collection), I love reading essays (Augusten Burroughs and David Sedaris, in particular), interviews, stage plays, and random snippets. This is partly due to my undying appreciation for incisive dialogue and writers who’ve mastered the economy of language. It’s also a reflection, perhaps, of what has been a “work hard, play hard 24/7 lifestyle,” but I’m doing all I can of late to return to a quiet enough place to get and remain lost in the woods of a great novel. There are worse things to be than a banner child for the ADD generation of readers, but I’d like to remain a throwback.
For what it’s worth, Jerzy Kosinski’s short novel, Being There, is among my top favorite novels, as is the epistolary work, The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. I’d be remiss not to include Orwell’s Keep the Aspidistra Flying, which first inspired me to become a destitute bookseller and laissez-faire poet, and Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions, or Goodbye Blue Monday, which singlehandedly taught me the benevolent craft of satirical writing. To keep it to five titles is torturous, but I’ll comply with your barbaric wishes and close with John Irving’s The Cider House Rules, though tomorrow I easily could replace that with Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany or one of the many delightful novels of Tom Robbins or Richard Russo or Dennis Lehane or Russell Banks or J.D. Salinger … OK, I’ll behave now …
Alex: Throughout American history there has been a tension between the individual entrepreneur (“little guy”) and the large companies (“corporations,” “monopolies,” Wal-Mart, etc.). At times the tension builds to antagonism and there are other periods of cooperation or at least when it seems like there is enough American pie for everyone to share in. Going forward, how do you see big v. small playing out in the book business?
Dan: On the whole, we, the small, independent presses, are a comatose breed, with outdated life support in a jury-rigged system getting less ethical and more cutthroat by the day. That’s my tongue-(only half)-in-cheek, glass half-empty response. If you prefer a clear-eyed, glass half-full perspective, I’ll take a single malt scotch, neat, with a water back, and side order of your most state-of-the-art technology supported by a full-time IT staff.
The only way for the little publishing guy to remain standing in a ring of Amazonian conglomerates is to embrace a future of iPads, Kindles, Nooks, and handheld readers, and accept that printed books have already passed on to an afterlife of e-books and are no longer meant to be static letters on a screen, but are now expected to be a dynamic online consumer experience complete with audio, video, alternate endings, author interactions, user commentary, ongoing content creation and re-creation that forms various versions of fact and fiction, cut and authorized, and uncut and unauthorized by the author and publisher. This fast-approaching industry reality will help engage the modern spectator of even literary fiction to enter this world of uber-reading before they feed the cat, load the dishwasher and TiVo the next episode of “The Real Housewives of New Jersey.” That is the only way any entity which calls itself a book publisher (a yesteryear term), jaded and independent or public and promiscuous, will endure this era of digital entertainment.
Alex: In addition to sports journalism, a quick peek at the Atticus Books website shows that you have also written many poems and short stories. Do you see yourself writing a novel one day or do you already have sections or a full draft of one? If not, do you have a sense of what the topic would be of your future first novel?
Dan: Ah, I mainly publish those pieces to attract foot traffic to the site and encourage writers to do the same. When you’re in start-up literary press mode, it’s a herculean task to generate a wide enough interest and understanding of your publishing mission and goals, so my own prose and poetry efforts are just examples of the types of work that we’re seeking to publish online. We’re quite a bit more selective in what we put to print, and I’ll be the first to admit that my posts are sometimes rough. Besides, I’m busy enough managing the day-to-day operations, signing book authors, and creating a marketing platform and buzz for our novelists, so in all likelihood, I won’t be completing a novel any time soon. (Writers who have no balls love good excuses, you know.) If I do eventually hook up with a dazzling muse who whispers sweet nothings to help me produce a book, I’ve already chosen the title: Jed’s Shaved Ice & Other Stories. The content remains a mystery.
Alex: Thanks so much for the detailed responses, Dan. I’m thinking anyone still reading is destined to buy my novel.
For more on Dan Cafaro or to buy Fight for Your Long Day (please!), check out Atticus Books or see the great preorder discounts available for all of Dan’s titles at http://bn.com.
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