Ecco Press records

1963-2014

The acquisition of the Ecco Press by HarperCollins in 1999 marked the end of independence for one of the most important small trade publishers of the previous three decades. Under the direction of Daniel Halpern, through its books and acclaimed journal Antaeus, Ecco published the best new work of an internationally renowned cast of poets and fiction writers, while remaining committed to reintroducing neglected modern literary classics to the American reading public. Authors that have been published by Ecco include John Ashbery, Paul Bowles, Gerald Early, Louise Glück, Jorie Graham, Robert Hass, Zbigniew Herbert, Sandra McPherson, Czeslaw Milosz, Robert Pinsky, Stanley Plumly, Mark Strand, James Tate, and Tobias Wolff.

Daniel Halpern began his career as an editor when he started Antaeus in 1970 in Tangier, at the suggestion and with the help of Paul Bowles. During its 24 years of operation (1970-1994) Antaeus -- published quarterly until 1983 when it became a biannual -- earned notable acclaim and influence in the literary community. Other than occasional special issues of fiction, nature writing, humor, poetry, and travel writing, its issues consisted of an eclectic and international mix of fiction, poetry, and literary documents -- letters, journals, autobiographical fragments. Some of its contributors were well established, while others made their reputations through the journal. Most notable writers who emerged during the 1970s and 1980s published their work in Antaeus. (For a complete list of contributors see Index to Antaeus, Issue 1-75.)

While Bowles contributed to the magazine regularly, acted as consulting editor, and continued to read galleys of each issue for the first seven or eight years of its publication, Halpern was Antaeus's sole editor from the first issue. To solicit contributions he wrote to prominent figures in literature, many of who were Bowles's friends, and was happily surprised at their generous responses. However, despite a well received first number, which included the work of Tennessee Williams, Lawrence Durrell, W. S. Merwin, John Berryman, Jerzy Kosinski, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Gore Vidal, Halpern had no money to print a second issue. (Bowles had personally financed Antaeus I.) In 1971, having come to New York to study poetry at Columbia, Halpern found a backer for Antaeus II, Michael Palmer, a banker whom Halpern had met through friends. While Palmer's support was timely, keeping the magazine alive temporarily, it had paid for the production of only one issue, and the survival of the journal remained in serious doubt.

Fortunately for Halpern and Antaeus, a copy of the premier issue had ended up in the hands of Drue Heinz who wrote to Halpern to subscribe. Halpern replied that lack of funds prohibited his acceptance of subscriptions for future issues and suggested that perhaps Heinz might be interested in financing the journal. Heinz arranged to meet with Halpern the next time she was in New York. Heinz had been looking for an editor to start a magazine and had hoped to establish a publishing house for which she had already chosen the name Ecco Press. At their meeting, she proposed to fund Antaeus on the condition that Halpern run this literary press for her. He agreed and Ecco was founded with Heinz as the publisher and Halpern the editor-in-chief. For the twenty years before her retirement in 1991, Heinz kept in constant touch with Halpern, consulting on editorial as well as business decisions.

When Ecco was founded, Halpern had no experience in publishing other than his editing of the first two issue of Antaeus. He describes his first few years as editor-in-chief of Ecco as educating himself publicly. For the most part, Halpern learned the publishing business on the job, although he depended on the patience and experience of several mentors. Halpern credits John Sankey at Villiers Publications in London, which printed the first fifteen issues of Antaeus; with teaching him everything about the world of printing. When Heinz managed to secure Viking Press as Ecco's distributor, Halpern gained access to the guidance and advice of the larger publisher's editorial, production, and sales staff.

Besides publishing Antaeus, Ecco began its list by reissuing Paul Bowles's The Delicate Prey, inaugurating its series Neglected Books of the Twentieth Century. Under this rubric, Ecco published out-of-print titles by such authors as Italo Calvino, Paul Bowles, Elizabeth Hardwick, Ford Madox Ford, Josef Škvorecký, and Cormac McCarthy, before they were (re) discovered and brought back into print by larger American houses. The American Poetry Series, Ecco's second venture, included collections by John Ashbery, Louise Bogan, Louise Glück, Robert Hass, Robert Pinsky, Stanley Plumly, and James Tate. These two series firmly established Ecco's reputation as a literary publisher and its prominent place in the world of poetry. Other Ecco series include Writers on Art; The Dark Tower Series, edited by Gerald Early, comprising classic fiction and non-fiction by African-American writers; Modern European Poets, through which Ecco has published the work of Zbigniew Herbert and the Nobel Prize winner Czeslaw Milosz; the Essential Poets Series; Ecco Travels; Ecco Companion, a series of anthologies on a variety of subjects; and Cooking with Ecco.

During its first decade, Ecco had a small staff, usually supplemented by part time and free lance workers, interns, and Viking staff. Antaeus and the Ecco Press were run out of the same office in Manhattan, which was also the base of operations for Halpern's many other literary activities and projects, such as cooperatives of small press publishers and the National Poetry Series, begun in 1978. (See below for a short history of the N. P. S.)

In an interview in 1982, Halpern described Heinz's "primary concerns" as publisher: "first, that we remain small; second, that we do books of quality without regard for their commercial value". (1: Blooston, George. "A firm where fine taste in literature transcends all else". Publishers Weekly 30 July 1982: 45-46.) In the 1980s, however, after flirting with dissolution, Ecco began to grow out of its small press status; or, rather, it began to redefine the parameters and scope of a small press and its output.

In 1980 Viking and Ecco had decided to end their 10 year old relationship. It was not easy for Halpern to find a new publisher to distribute the press's books. In fact, he had nearly resigned himself to closing the press when W. W. Norton agreed to take over distribution from Viking in 1981. This new relationship gave the press an immediate lift. In its first year with Norton, Ecco sales doubled to almost $200,000 net.

While in the preceding few years the number of books Ecco published had settled at sixteen to eighteen books a year, in 1982, the scope and size of Ecco's list increased. It began to issue out-of-print, classic cookbooks as a culinary complement to its Neglected Books series. The decision to publish these books was not purely commercial: Halpern, a gourmand who had himself written a cookbook, a guide to restaurants in Italy, as well as several magazine pieces on food and wine, believed that making these texts available was as important as keeping classics of literature in print. Nevertheless, the books did add to Ecco's list books that traditionally sold better than poetry and literary fiction. As time passed, cookbooks, new ones as well as reprints, became an important part of Ecco's output.

By 1987 the Ecco's list had grown to twenty-five to thirty titles per year, and it's full time staff increased to three; poetry titles were selling at an average of 1500 cloth copies and 2000 paper copies; Ecco had just enjoyed a great success with Tobias Wolff's collection of stories In the Garden of the North American Martyrs; and the press was moving to larger quarters on West 17th Street. As Halpern put it at the time, "We're now smaller than a trade house but bigger than a small press". (2: Barbato, Joseph. "Ecco ‚Äî Selling beyond the 'core' audience". Publishers Weekly 18 December 1987: 39.) Halpern continued to expand the breadth of Ecco's list, doing more popular books such as Will Curtis's The Nature of Things in order to, as he explained, "balance the obscure Eastern European poetry". (3: Ibid) It was also in 1987 that Ecco began its classic travel book series, Ecco Travels, which included books by Henry James, Charles Dickens, and André Gide, and its Essential Poets Series, which featured contemporary poets, such as Stanley Kunitz and Philip Levine, selecting and introducing the works of the giants of poesy, such as Blake and Keats.

After 20 years as publisher of Ecco Press, in July 1991 Drue Heinz retired, transferring ownership and control of Ecco to Halpern. In October of 1991 the press moved from its New York offices to Princeton, New Jersey. The press later moved to Hopewell, New Jersey where it remained until it was bought in 1999.

After Halpern became the publisher the pace of Ecco's growth increased. Halpern explained: "We weren't big enough. We either had to stay really small or move up". (4: Reid, Calvin. "Poetry & prose: Ecco Press grows". Publishers Weekly 4 August 1997: 27.) By 1997 the press was publishing sixty titles a year and its revenues had increased from $500,000 to more than $2. 5 million. Despite Ecco's increasing production and revenues, not to mention the critical acclaim and prizes enjoyed by its publications, by the mid-nineties Ecco was facing extinction. In 1994, Halpern decided to cease publication of Antaeus, which had always lost money for the press. In 1995 Halpern found two hands-on investors: Stephen Graham, who became the publisher, and Lea Simonds. Halpern's wife, Jeanne Wilmot Carter, who had been a practicing attorney, took on the role of president and associate publisher, essentially running the business side of Ecco. These changes effected some positive change at the press: by 1999 its annual revenues were close to $4 million. Still, Ecco continued to run at an almost constant deficit.

In February 1999 the large trade publisher HarperCollins announced an agreement to acquire Ecco for an undisclosed price. The deal was expected to close on July 1, 1999, at which time Ecco would become an imprint of HarperCollins. While the acquisition by HarperCollins meant that Ecco lost its independent status, Halpern believed it was the only way Ecco could continue its publishing program. At the time of the acquisition's announcement Halpern commented, "It's nearly impossible to be an independent publisher, especially if you want to do the types of books we publish". (5: Milliot, Jim. "Harper Collins to acquire the Ecco Press". Publishers Weekly 22 February 1999: 10.) Halpern estimated that the company had been in the black two or three times between 1991 and 1999. He pointed to the rising costs of purchasing rights to foreign titles, printing, and placing books in the large book store chains as major factors behind Ecco's financial woes. "When we looked down the road, we didn't see a road; we saw a wall". (6: Ibid.) At HarperCollins, Halpern became vice-president and editorial director of Ecco and served as executive editor of HarperCollins's adult trade division.

As editor, poet, teacher, anthologist, and director and founder of the National Poetry Series (see below for details), Halpern has played an important and active role in the American literary community since 1970. In addition to his work as editor-in-chief at Ecco Press, editor of Antaeus, and director of the graduate writing program at Columbia University, as of 1999, Halpern was the author of eight collections of his own poetry. His work appeared regularly in such magazines as The New Yorker., The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, New York Review of Books, and New Republic; he had co-authored a cookbook and a guide to restaurants in Italy, and edited several literary anthologies. Halpern's career has been characterized by his efforts in support of the idea that the best literature, especially poetry, should find a publisher and an audience.

Daniel Halpern was born in Syracuse, New York but grew up in Los Angeles, California. He attended San Francisco State University, and then, after taking time off from school to travel around Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, received his B. A. from California State at Northridge. He was a conscientious objector during the Vietnam war, working in a hospital in California.

During his senior year at California State, Halpern met Paul Bowles, whom Halpern eventually visited in Tangier. Halpern stayed in Tangier for two years, living in Jane Bowles's apartment while she was hospitalized in Spain and supporting himself by teaching at the American School. It was during his second year in Morocco, 1969, that Halpern and Bowles started work on Antaeus.

Halpern moved to New York City in 1971. In New York he continued to edit Antaeus and later that year co-founded, with Drue Heinz, the Ecco Press, of which he became editor-in-chief. Concurrently, he was attending graduate school at Columbia where he studied with Mark Strand and Stanley Kunitz, receiving an M. F. A. in 1972.

In 1973 Halpern began his career as a teacher when he held poetry workshops at the New School; later he taught at Princeton. In 1976 he became an assistant professor of writing at Columbia where in 1981 he was appointed chairman of the Writing Division.

In 1991 Drue Heinz retired and Halpern became the owner and publisher of Ecco Press. In 1999, Halpern sold Ecco to HarperCollins, where he became vice-president and editorial director of Ecco, now an imprint of the larger house, and executive editor of HarperCollins's adult trade division.

The National Poetry Series (N. P. S.) was established in 1978 to support the publishing of five books of poetry each year by five different publishers. In 1975, speaking at the Library of Congress conference on the publication of poetry and fiction, Halpern proposed his plan for a national poetry series which would each year subsidize the publishing of books of poetry that might otherwise go unpublished. In 1977 James Michener read Halpern's remarks in the conference's published proceedings. Michener contacted Halpern and promised to endow the N. P. S. for as long as Halpern would run it. Over the years Michener's support has been supplemented by grants from the Ford Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, the Witter Bynner Foundation, and the Copernicus Society.

The series was originally intended to encourage larger trade houses to publish more poetry. However, as the nature and business of publishing changed, the N. P. S. roster of houses diversified and the series has ended up supporting the publication of poetry at all types of publishers: trade, university, and small press.

The N. P. S. has been responsible for the publishing of over 100 books of poetry by such poets as Denis Johnson, Alice Fulton, Sterling Brown, Marie Howe, and Thylias Moss. In 1993, the N. P. S. expanded its activities, giving awards to poetry editors and bookstores that demonstrated a commitment to selling and promoting contemporary poetry. It also initiated a program of free book distribution in schools and prisons, and began organizing annual reading tours by series winners.