A Rule Breaker On Capitalizing Book Titles

In February, the fund announced its first round of investments. Sums of $10,000 or so (LVF did not release specific amounts) went to support small-press books such as Elias Khoury's much lauded Palestinian novel "Gates of the Sun," published in translation by Archipelago Books; Sam Savage's "Firmin, Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife," from Coffee House Press; and Lynne Tillman's fifth novel, "American Genius: A Comedy," which Soft Skull Press will publish in October.

How the money will be applied gets decided jointly on a case-by-case basis.

Tillman is "a perfect person for us," Zellman says. She's a writer highly regarded by her peers ("Lynne Tillman has always been a hero of mine," novelist Jonathan Safran Foer writes) who remains little known to the reading public and in whom major publishers appear to have lost interest.

She isn't complaining, Tillman herself says. Everything she's ever written has been published somewhere, and she has no illusions about turning into the kind of writer millions of Dan Brown readers might adopt. Still, she wishes more readers who would like her knew she existed.

And she's grateful to LVF for trying to make that connection on her behalf.

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But wait. There's something funny going on here. What the Literary Ventures Fund seems to be all about is selecting worthwhile books, then trying to make a profit by calling them to readers' attention.

Isn't that what publishers are supposed to be doing?

"That's exactly what we do," says Soft Skull publisher Richard Nash -- except that tiny presses like his, which care about the Lynne Tillmans of the world, often lack the resources to publish them right. "It's not always about the marketing budget, but money being money, it can do certain things," Nash says.

What about the big boys, the ones who do have resources? Short answer: They're after bestsellers, and they can't be bothered. (Alternate short answer: They're too busy suing Google for copyright infringement.)

Most major publishers are now owned by multimedia companies, Urban explains, which bought them on the assumption that "synergy between the publishing arm and everything else" would lead to double-digit profit margins. Much unhappiness resulted when these companies discovered that "single digits is pretty much what publishing does." Every year brings more pressure on the publishing subsidiaries to increase profitability.

Placing bets on modest, risky literary projects is not usually the way they respond.