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| Jason Epstein | |
Jason Epstein, the innovative publisher and entrepreneur, died on February 4. He was 93.
Epstein's long career included a lengthy stint as editorial director at Random House, where he edited many of the greatest writers of his time. Epstein also founded or co-founded the New York Review of Books (in 1963); Anchor Books, the first trade paperback imprint in the U.S., while he worked at Doubleday; the Library of America; the Reader's Catalog, a print precursor on online retailing; and On Demand Books, whose Espresso Book Machine was adopted by many bookstores and libraries. He was also an author: his books included The Great Conspiracy Trial (1970), a defense of the Chicago Seven; East Hampton: A History and Guide (1975), written with Elizabeth Barlow; Book Business: Publishing Past, Present, and Future (2001); and Eating: A Memoir (2009).
The New York Times commented: "He could be described as a man of letters with a feel for commerce or as a man of business with a taste for fine literature, and both would be correct."
Penguin Random House stated, "We mourn the passing of our extraordinary, pathfinding former colleague Jason Epstein, editor, publisher and publishing entrepreneur, and visionary. With his founding of our Anchor Books, which was the creation of the trade-paperback format, and his decades of distinguished editorial and publishing leadership and vision, he helped shape Doubleday, Anchor, Random House, Vintage Books, and the larger literary community and culture like no other."
The Times also quoted a 2000 interview with Epstein on PBS's The Open Mind, when he expounded on the cultural importance of publishing, calling it "more comparable to what priests and teachers and some doctors do than to what people who become lawyers or businessmen or Wall Street brokers--what they do. It is a vocation, you feel you're doing something extremely important, and it's worth sacrificing for, because without books we wouldn't know who we were."