This month, Skyhorse Publishing celebrates two decades of steady growth, both internally and through acquisitions. Its myriad imprints reflect that growth and cover categories that range from sports to literary fiction, children's to business, true crime to history and military history, science fiction and fantasy to cookbooks, crafts, and lifestyle, legal guides for creative professionals to travel guides and the long-running bestseller The World Almanac and Book of Facts, and politics of many stripes, with a right-wing emphasis. Skyhorse has over 12,000 titles in print and has had some 120 New York Times bestsellers. This year it is publishing 291 titles, though there's still room for a few more.
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| Tony Lyons | |
The company has an ethos of responding to trends and publishing out of the box that goes back to President and Publisher Tony Lyons's early days in publishing. He had gone to law school, intending to become a lawyer, when in 1993 he began working at Lyons Press, founded by his father, Nick Lyons. "I did about everything you can do, and liked the work I was doing," he says. When his father had health problems, he took over and in 1997 became publisher.
The company was publishing about 200 books a year, and Lyons recalls looking for book ideas in a variety of places. One example: a homeless bookseller in front of Zabar's sold Lyons a used copy of We Die Alone by David Howarth, about a team of Norwegian partisans in World War II who planned to raid Nazi military positions on the coast of Norway. Betrayed and then ambushed by Nazis, all but one die, and the survivor escapes across the mountains to Sweden, losing nine of his 10 toes after getting gangrene, making for a classic escape tale. "I went to a café and read it in one sitting," Lyons remembers. "It was an incredible story, exactly my kind of story."
Lyons tracked down the author's son, bought the rights to the book, and decided to approach Stephen Ambrose to write an introduction. "I got his personal number and called him out of the blue." He told Ambrose that he'd love the book. Ambrose promised to read it over the weekend. "If I like it, I'll fax you a foreword on Sunday, and you'll know I liked it," he told Lyons. If not, there would be no fax, and, he added, "Don't call me again."
On Sunday the foreword came in from Ambrose saying in essence, "There's a time in every reader's life that he comes across a book he can't put down. There are four for me. One is We Die Alone."
In 2001, Lyons Press was sold to Globe Pequot, where Lyons worked for three years. He then started to plan Skyhorse Publishing. Brando Skyhorse, who Lyons calls "a brilliant editor who has written wonderful books," was a key contributor to Skyhorse's early successes. (In 2011, Skyhorse won the PEN/Hemingway Award and Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction for The Madonnas of Echo Park.) Lyons kept searching for a name for his new publishing house, wanting "to convey something new and exciting" and thought of Pegasus, the winged horse of Greek mythology. The rest, as they say, is history.
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| Brando Skyhorse | |
"Brando came up with some of the best ideas in the early years," Lyons says. He recalls the "old school publishing" approach, "not just buying books people propose to you," but seeking out "every trend, fad, and theme we could follow." Skyhorse staff read newspapers and magazines, watched and listened to TV and radio shows, talked with people, and then pounced. "When the coloring book craze started, we published something like 150 coloring books," Lyons says happily.
Always, he continues, the company has been "open to ideas, doing things in ways others are not open to," such as tracking down a person who "doesn't know they have a story and talking them into writing it." And the company is open to books that "challenge the status quo whenever it needs changing."
True to form, Associate Publisher of Skyhorse and Editorial Director Abigail Gehring has been with the company for the entire 20 years. She's been a driving force in the company's growth, and has also somehow managed to write over 20 books--all published by Skyhorse imprints.
Over the years, Lyons has also been adaptive to technological change. When e-books became popular, "lots of publishers thought they would displace print books," he recalls. Skyhorse experimented, and found that many of its titles sold very well as e-books and that the customers were usually different from those who bought the print editions of the same titles, although in some cases, people who read and liked an e-book would buy a print copy "just for the joy of having a book they love on their bookshelf."
Likewise with AI, Skyhorse recognizes that "AI is here to stay," Lyons says. "So the question is what are the good, authentic ways to use it and get benefits from it while maintaining integrity?" The opportunities, he continues include using AI for marketing plans, sales, and jacket covers.
Reflecting on the past two decades, Lyons says, "Building Skyhorse has been the journey of a lifetime. Growth, controversy, the need to constantly seek out fresh ideas and approaches--all are part of the ride. We're delighted to take a minute to celebrate--and then keep moving forward."