MAIN NEWS HEADLINES
June 15-30, 2004 Edition
Juno Internet Pair
Team With Dorchester
for New Pulp Imprint
NEW YORK, NY/06/01/04According to the New York Daily News, Internet pros Charles Ardai and Max Phillips have teamed up to launch a new publishing imprint called Hard Case Crime, to be published under the banner of Dorchester Leisure Books. The line revives the pulp mystery genre, portraying hard-boiled private eyes.
Ardai is the former CEO of Juno, the Internet service provider, and Phillips is the company’s ex-art director of Juno. They hope to the kind of paperback originals popular from World War II through the early 1970s, with provocative covers and action-packed stories. They plan to release six titles this year, beginning in the fallall of them reminiscent of authors such as Mickey Spillane, Erle Stanley Gardner and Raymond Chandler. Another six titles will be rolled out in 2005.
Mystery book sales increased in 2003 to $375 million, up from $360 million in 2002, according to the market research firm, Simba Information. The popularity of television’s CSI has helped spawn the increased interest in detective material.
Max Allan Collins, best known for writing “Road to Perdition,” will have his first two books republished as part of the Hard Case Crime line.
Ardai nor Phillips are still associated with D.E. Shaw, the investment and technology development firm with some $8 billion in capital, the company that incubated Juno
