“Sandra’s new book works on several levels, including my own,” he emailed. “There’s something very satisfying about reading an account of someone who has a lot of initial anxiety about putting her kid in a public school, but who ends up becoming an advocate and activist for public education… I’ll be interested to find out from her at the reading now much of the hysteria about getting your child into a good school is genuine concern for the child’s education and welfare, and how much is status anxiety.” Of course, he still appreciates the funny bits: “I love the part where Sandra puts all her Jonathon Kozol books into a wicker basket as if getting ready to drown them. That’s good stuff.”

Alford strengthened his connection with Tsing Loh’s family when he met her father as part of the research for How to Live, which the subtitle describes as “a search for wisdom from old people (while they are still on this earth).” In the book, he writes about how he was nervous about encroaching on Tsing Loh’s “territory,” as she’s been incorporating stories about her father’s scavenger lifestyle into her performances and writing for years, but, in the days before the Housing Works event, he remembered being “thrilled” when Dr. Loh agreed to be interviewed. “I’d always thought Sandra was exaggerating when she said he uses a Frosted Flakes box as his briefcase,” he confided. “She is not.” (For more on that story, though, you’ll have to wait until early 2009, when Twelve publishes Alford’s book.)

(photos: Tsing Loh/Alexander Techworks; Alford/Vanity Fair)

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That…suggests that Random is indeed shifting focus, but not necessarily in fiction. At worst, the piling on of new jobs to longtime staffers with already full plates is a form of downsizing; at best, it might be that Random, like most publishers, will soon move its emphasis from the acquiring/editing side of the business to the less sexy but increasingly important distribution and marketing side. Editors and authors will always matter-somebody, after all, has to create all that “content” that will be disseminated in forms perhaps not yet invented—but the focus these days is more on selling direct, on digital “product” and on POD.

Nelson’s larger point is a good one, but I suspect that emphasis already began quite a number of years ago, and not just at Random House. Most of those at the executive level – and by that I mean Publisher, CEO or something in between – tend to come up from the marketing, distribution and publicity sides, and yet if a new imprint is formed, it’s usually named after its founding editor (most recent examples: Spiegel & Grau at Doubleday/Broadway; Amy Einhorn Books at Putnam. At least Twelve, Jonathan Karp‘s imprint at Grand Central Publishing, was never going to be named after him.) Eponymous editorial imprints seem to follow a common trajectory: a big announcement spurring a flurry of news, commentary and speculation; an 18 month or so gestation marked by sprees of acquiring not out of place at 5th Avenue department stores; and after a few years – best personified by the fate of Rob Weisbach‘s imprint at William Morrow in the late 1990s – a near-permanent place in the loss-leading category for the publisher. Never mind the irony that the most successful eponymous imprint, ReganBooks, is no more, shuttered in favor of the more anonymous (and temporary) “HC” logo.

So if, as Nelson concludes, publishing houses’ energies are moving even more strongly towards the “less sexy” side of publishing, perhaps it may make sense to question the wisdom of imprints named after editors – especially when in the end – with the exception of one Ms. Judith Regan – they are just as anonymous to readers as are the marketing & distribution people. In other words (and keeping the elemental theme going) maybe it’s not a question of air or water but earth and fire.

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