Kevin Lippert, Publisher, Princeton Architectural Press

How do you go about assessing the worthiness of a potential book proposal? How do you know when it is worth taking a risk on a book project?

Worth has to be measured against many yardsticks; there's editorial worth (that is, the quality of the work presented, the scholarship, and/or the writing); there's commercial worth (we're a commercial press, so we need to ask, “will this book sell?”); and there's the emotional factor (does a book just plain excite us)? These are the three main criteria we use, and while we seek a balance, on occasion any one can trump the other two. We try to involve as many people in our editorial decisions as possible: we have monthly Editorial Board meetings with all our editorial staff, sales, publicity, and marketing, in an effort to get as many assessments as we can. Still, any publisher would be lying if they told you they could accurately predict the “worthiness” or future success of a book. Behind our conference table is a Ouija board, there partly as a joke and partly as a design icon, but I'm not sure our success rate would be much different if we put the “Oracle” on the board and let it gravitate toward Yes or No with everyone's fingers (and interests) guiding it along.

And even when we think a project is truly worthy, we can still be wrong: there are many books we thought were surefire winners that didn't work, and others that we published in spite of the fact that the justifiable evidence was low and the risk high that ultimately surprised us with their success.

So the short answer to when is it worth taking a risk on a book project is, we don't know, and I'd be skeptical of any publisher who said they did. It's ultimately a business of intuition and guesswork, which is part of what makes it interesting.

Are publishers guiding or following the direction of architectural interests?

Definitely following more than guiding. While there are examples of books that changed the course of architecture—Learning from Las Vegas and SMLXL being the two most obvious examples, neither published by us, alas—in general the long lead time it takes to make a book (typically a year) puts us in a situation of reflecting or echoing trends rather than setting them. That said, we hope that some books, or even groups of books, can help influence or reinforce trends, even if they're already in the air. For example, could Rural Studio and Good Deeds, Good Design be partly responsible for promoting a greater awareness of the social responsibilities of architecture? Maybe not entirely, but I bet—indeed, hope—these books played a role, even if modest.

Do good architects necessarily make good authors? And vice versa?
On my most cynical days, I would say there's an inverse correlation: the things that make a good architect probably make for a bad author. And certainly a good author does not a good architect make, there are some well-known examples of that. One long-standing area of tension with architect-authors is graphic design: I went to architecture school, and it took me 10 years to acknowledge that graphic design is not small-scale architectural design: there's so much more to it than figure-ground, which is how most architects approach it (in the same way that designing furniture is not the same as designing very small houses). There are so many issues involving details of letterform, spacing, pacing, illustration, materiality, and so on, that separate truly excellent graphic design from the kind of image-centered-on-the-page design that a lot of architects practice. And since many architects these days produce work that uses graphic design as an integral component, it's hard, and sometimes impossible, to separate that out and improve it.

Publishers in many ways operate similarly to music labels by establishing a character based on the circles and subjects that they promote. This creates an almost ‘personality' of the publishing house. How would you describe Princeton Architectural Press personality?

Maybe not unlike the best indie record labels: individualistic, cutting-edge, sometimes quixotic, but committed to making beautiful books that are well written and well edited. There are many albums I buy just because they're on a certain label, labels I trust to find interesting artists, record them well, and produce high-quality CDs (or LPs) with nice graphics. While this smacks of Branding 101, I want people to think of Princeton Architectural Press in the same way: if it's one of our books, it's almost certainly interesting, handsome, well-edited, and well-made.

What role do publishers have in directing arguments and trends within academia and practice?

Directing as in dictating? In academia, none. In practice, I think we can suggest arguments and trends (indeed, we try to), but I see our role more as providing the raw materials for discussion rather than being book-group discussion leaders.

Do books change the profession as much, less, or more than buildings?

Less than buildings, and both less than the media—newspapers, magazines, and, increasingly, the web. Much has been written about the mediation of our direct experience with the built environment, but I do fear that we (as architects, and certainly the public) are losing our ability to “read” buildings. I'm always surprised, pleasantly so, when friends offer opinions about new buildings they've seen or visited (which I hear less frequently than, “I read that article about in .”

Several books in the later half of the 20th century figured prominently in representing the architecture of that time and in many ways served as manifestos for a generation. Books such as Aldo Rossi's Architecture of the City, Venturi's Learning from Las Vegas, and Koolhaas's Delirious New York have shaped a lot of architectural thought recently. Where have all the manifestos gone?

The manifestos are still here, I think they just don't announce themselves as such. Issues are more complicated and more regional—indeed, that's part of the message that both these books preached—so the one-size-fits-all pronouncements of, say, early modernism, just don't work as well as they used to. The lessons, maxims, and inspirations are all still there, you may have to read more books, or read more inbetween the lines. Or, they may not be coming from architecture books: could they be coming from other disciplines, fashion, advertising, media, etc.?

That said, we received today a long-awaited manuscript from Reiser+Umemoto which is—tada—a manifesto in the classic Vers Une Architecture sense of the word, 59 dicta for the making of architecture. So manifesto-missers, stand by, help is on the way.

Has the monograph evolved since the growing dominance of office websites? And how has the internet changed the dissemination, format, and expectations of print media?

As much as I love the web, the image quality is too low (along, often, with the often unedited text) to really let me experience and understand an architect's work in the way a well-printed book can. The web whets my appetite, but I still turn to books as “the real thing.” Too, the premium on (literally) Flash has created an entire generation of roll-over slideshow web “monographs” that are almost useless in telling us anything about an architect's work.

The real innovation has been in the physical distribution of books, specifically amazon, who is by far our largest customer. For better or worse, this suggests that our books are sought out by a small, dedicated audience, rather than scooped up by clamoring masses at the big chains; amazon makes it possible to find our books anywhere and everywhere.

Finally while a small number of our books are posted on ebrary.com, integrated full-text searching of books, coming soon to your desktop, represents another possible revolution (like GooglePrint, of which we are an early adopter).

Which book(s) in your catalog do think are future classics and why? Or is the idea of a ‘classic' dying, because of the vast quantity of books published each year, and the merging of book and magazine formats?

What do you mean by a classic? A manifesto? A best-seller? Books that end up on everybody's shelf for reasons as slim as everybody else has it on his/her shelf? Rural Studio , which I hope represents a turning point in people's consideration of the social component of architecture. Thinking With Type , a just-published primer on graphic design by Ellen Lupton, a kind of everyman's Tufte. You Are Here , a book of imaginary maps has been a bestseller and seems to resonate with lots of people in lots of different disciplines. Soak Wash Rinse Spin , by Steve Tolleson, already is a classic in the design world, I think it's fair to say. There are books I love which haven't done particularly well which I hope will some day be discovered and turn into classics: Tilting Newfoundland , a completely charming architectural, photographic survey, and oral history of a remote Canadian fishing village, and Shallow Water Dictionary , an etymological journey through the marshlands of New England, are two that come quickly to mind.



What have been your best-selling books to architects? How many copies?

First you should treat any sales numbers from publishers with a huge grain of salt; we live in a world of denial and rounding up, so I usually divide anything another publisher tells me by a factor of between 2 and 10. Also, there are gross sales numbers and net sales numbers: publishing is the last remaining retail business where sellers can return unused merchandise for full credit. Return rates of 20-30% are typical, so I may have shipped 30,000 to bookstores, but had 10,000 returned—the bragging number of 30,000 is technically correct, but the real number sold is only 20,000. Finally, we don't know the total number of books sold if there are foreign-language editions (translations) because the accounting for these sales is sloppy or nonexistent. For example, we sold several foreign-language editions (at least Spanish, French, and Italian) of The Palladio Guide decades ago, but have never received a sales report from any of those publishers. They may have sold 10,000 each, or 500, but I can't offer you an accurate sales number on that title as a result. Finally, there are “in print” numbers which simply reflect the number of copies printed, not necessarily sold (now, 100,000 copies in print!).

With these caveats, here are some net (i.e., after returns) sales figures for several of our best-selling architecture titles. These are lifetime numbers, too, a more interesting data chart would include the publication date so you can see if the book is a flash-in-the-pan, or a long-term classic seller.

Andrea Oppenheimer Dean, Rural Studio (35,000 copies)
David Gissen, Big & Green (17,500 copies)
Arnold Berke, Mary Colter (15,000 copies)
Steven Holl, Parallax (12,500 copies)
Rick Joy, Rick Joy: Desert Works (10,000 copies)

We also have best sellers that aren't architecture books, like Soak Wash Rinse Spin , on graphic designer Steven Tolleson (40,000 copies).

What is 'on the boards' or has recently come out at PAPress that you think has potential? And why? What should we expect on the horizon from PAPress?

As far as what's new and interesting, we have a couple of non-book projects; one is a materials subscription service that will get you a goodie box of new and interesting materials every month in your mailbox. It was just in Dwell magazine this month, and we've received over 2500 requests for more information, which is astonishing to me, so I'm optimistic about this. More at materialsmonthly . We're also doing an enormous "yellow pages" directory to all things architectural, engineering, and construction (called Felder's Comprehensive ), which will have an on-line component at some point—not as glamorous as some of our books, but it could signal a new direction for us into the professional and technical world. And, finally, for sheer loveliness, you can't beat our new book Letters Lost, part of our informal series on collections, this one of letters and photographs of couples collected at flea markets over the past 10 years. It's a winning book. And our new Martin Venezky book, It is Beautiful ”¦ Then Gone , is a home run, as far as graphic design titles go. So lots of exciting things in the air here. Plus my 10 minutes of fame on Archinect, what else could I hope for the holidays?