Daughter of DAW: An Interview with Publisher Betsy Wollheim, Part II
This interview was transcribed from a Zoom meeting of the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society on June 14, 2024, conducted by Darrell Schweitzer and hosted by Miriam Seidel.
Read Part I here.
Darrell Schweitzer: The other factor that must go into accepting a book for publication is that the editor has to see how the company can make money off the book. I have heard of books being turned down with a response, “This is perfectly charming, but I don’t see how we can publish it profitably.”
Betsy Wollheim: Usually a publisher has a few really big authors, so they can afford to publish a book that is brilliant, but may not be commercial. That was really my father’s attitude toward the Gor books. Ironically, John Norman enabled him to publish Suzette Haden Elgin, a feminist author. Patrick Rothfuss sells a lot of books — he’s an outstanding writer and his sales enable us to publish books that might not sell that well, which is lovely.
