Chronicle Books celebrates 50 years
Publishing house maintains spirit of independence, defiance
While the Summer of Love was in full flourish in 1967 among the denizens of the Haight and Golden Gate Park, across town at the Chronicle Building at Fifth and Mission streets, the family-owned media company that ran the newspaper started Chronicle Books, challenging the mainstream in its own way.
Begun as a vehicle for publishing collections by Chronicle columnists and books celebrating San Francisco art and culture, it would expand to become a thriving independent publisher known for its spunk, innovative spirit and willingness to break rules and make up ones of its own. Defying the New York-dominated industry, it has enjoyed 35 New York Times best-sellers in the 50-year
history it is celebrating this month.
The big questions is: How did they do it?
“I think part of it has to do with being independent and being on the West Coast,” says Chronicle Books owner and Chief Executive Officer Nion McEvoy, who left his law career and joined as an editor in 1986.
“I think San Francisco is a place that has always attracted people who think differently about things,” he reflects in his sleek but simple office in the renovated brick headquarters on Second Street that housed a maritime machine shop in the 1920s.
McEvoy is the only child of Nan McEvoy, granddaughter of M.H. de Young, who founded the paper with his brother Charles in 1865. When the family broke up its media empire in 1999 and put the newspaper and Chronicle Books up for sale, Hearst Communications purchased the paper, and Nion McEvoy bought the publishing house, which is no longer related to the newspaper. At the time, some wondered if McEvoy did it out of altruism, but the next year he outbid three major New York houses for “The Beatles Anthology,” and the encyclopedic $60 book sold 1 million copies.
“He didn’t look all that altruistic after that success,” says Jack Jensen, Chronicle Books’ former president, who last year became president of the McEvoy Group, the holding company that owns Chronicle Books and three smaller publishers.
When Jensen joined Chronicle Books as a sales rep in 1977, he was one of five employees, and they put out 12 books a year. Now there are more than 300 on staff, and the company averages 325 titles a year among four divisions: children’s, art, food and lifestyle, and entertainment.
“See Things Differently” is the company motto, illustrated by its familiar logo, a pair of spectacles. But it’s more than a slogan, says Chronicle Books Publisher Christine Carswell, who began her publishing career in London and joined Chronicle Books in 1994 as executive editor in the adult trade division. “It’s inherent to who we are,” she says in her clipped Scots accent. “It’s key to how we acquire things, it’s key to how we create them and collaborate on them.”
An example is Nick Bantock’s “Griffin & Sabine,” the 1991 epistolary novel told in a series of pull-out letters and postcards between the two main characters. It stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for 100 weeks, and the last book in the series came out in 2016.
Berkeley author Annie Barrows, who was the editor of that book when she worked for the company, says, “Chronicle Books believed in talent more than hierarchy, which made them different than the New York publishers. The prevailing philosophy was ‘Why not?’ instead of ‘Why?’ Maybe this sometimes led to really weird and useless books, but it also led to ‘Griffin & Sabine’ and the entire gift line (started in 1993) and some amazingly innovative publishing. It was about seeing something and thinking, ‘Wow, that would be a fantastic book’ — and then making it happen. It was about being open to ideas, rather than fixated on who brought them in.”
Years later, Chronicle Books took a chance on Barrows’ chapter book for kids, “Ivy + Bean,” even though at that point she’d only written nonfiction for adults. “Ivy + Bean” (2006) turned into a 10-book series that captured the hearts of 6- to 10-year-olds around the world.
The Children’s Division, started in 1987, has had eight books on the New York Times Children’s best-seller list in the past six years and two Caldecott Honor books in the past four. “We’ve always been punching above our weight class,” notes one staffer.
The 2011 picture book “Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site,” by Sherri Duskey Rinker, clung to the bestsellers list for more than three years. Not bad for a first-time author’s work picked out of the “slush pile” of unsolicited manuscripts. Chronicle Books paired the text with veteran illustrator Tom Lichtenheld, and the golden partnership has continued for two subsequent best-sellers.
“One thing that sets us apart is how much attention we pay to design and production of a book,” says Children’s Publishing Director Ginee Seo. “Our mission is making beautiful books. And our hope is to start children off when they’re tiny and make them readers for life.”
Seeing differently is also key to where the company sells its books.
“We were the first publisher to really think beyond the bookstore as a place where people could enjoy the gift of reading,” publisher Carswell says. Since the ’90s its books have been sold in boutiques and national specialty shops such as Williams Sonoma, Sur La Table, Crate and Barrel, and more recently Urban Outfitters and Anthropologie. “We realized there were people who would enjoy books who wouldn’t necessarily think to go into a bookstore.”
Norman Laurila, the book manager of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, says Chronicle Books is one of its top five vendors. “They understand the museum aesthetic,” he says, “in their art books and especially their children’s books. We’ve sold thousands of ‘When Pigcasso Met Mootise’ (Nina Laden’s 1998 picture book). And we sell ‘The Gentleman’s Guide to Cocktails’ next to a set of highball glasses.”
Quirky, humorous impulse titles also have been a Chronicle Books mainstay. “The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook” (1999) sold more than 10 million copies worldwide and spawned numerous different-themed variations plus games, calendars, etc.
Innovation has been a factor, as well. Chronicle Books was the first to publish paperback cookbooks with full-page food photography throughout (starting with “Sushi” in 1983) and the first-ever single-subject cookbook (James McNair’s “Cold Pasta” in 1985). Its licensing deals with Lucasfilm and Pixar brought a new level of quality to movie tie-ins like “The Art and Making of Star Wars.” Its gift formats, including stationery, journals and calendars, represent a third of their titles and often capitalize on Internet and pop culture phenoms like Grumpy Cat. It was also the first to publish fine art books in paperback, making them affordable to more people.
McEvoy says that spirit of democracy, “of wanting to invite as many people to the party as possible,” is at Chronicle Books’ core. “It’s the sense that excellence is in the details — and it’s as important in a cat book or a little book of humor as in a serious novel or biography.”
Chronicle Books will open its first New York office in July, bringing with it a passion for the printed word that dates back to McEvoy’s family’s roots in San Francisco.
“I tend to think of it as sourdough starter or a balsamic vinegar, that’s been going on for decades, says McEvoy. “We still have a little bit of that DNA of the de Young brothers, when they had their printing press and started that newspaper. And I like keeping that little flame alive, to continue to mix my metaphors. I take some pleasure in that.”