Now that Steve Ross has left Crown Publishing, should I redo his portrait?
The news is plastered everywhere publishing folks read – it even made national headlines: Steve Ross, the publisher and vice president of Crown Publishing will be moving to HarperCollins to become the president and publisher of the Collins division. However, The Wordsmiths Project portrait I did of Steve specifically reflects his work at Crown. So, I’m in a quandary. Do I create a new portrait or let the one that I have of him stand?
The current portrait is definitely related to Steve’s impressive body of work at Crown. Specifically, he made considerable waves in the industry when he created Crown Forum, the first major publishing house’s imprint for politically conservative titles, such as those penned by Ann Coulter, John Podhoretz and others of that right-wing ilk. Steve told us that some of his friends expressed disapproval and even dismay over the idea. However, he said that it was a decision related to his abiding belief in and support of the First Amendment. After all, Crown’s other imprints also publish books by Barak Obama, Jimmy Carter and others of the left. And that’s why my portrait of him has him juggling various books, trying to keep the right, left and center all in the air at the same time.
While I am sure that Steve does firmly feel that every political position has a right to be heard, and that such unimpeded voices are key to our democracy, I also know that he is a highly skilled marketer. One of the stories he likes to tell about himself is that even as a child he watched with fascination as people took books off the shelves in bookstores. Starting at a very young age, he tried to understand and analyze why certain books attracted attention, while others remained untouched. Not that he didn’t also love to pick up the books to read them, voraciously. But he read beyond the covers, striving to figure out what made each volume have the impact it did, what were the turns of phrases or the perspectives that made it work, what kinds of readers would be drawn to it, and how could it have done a better job.
This passion for books and for understanding what sells and why was evident in Steve when Daniel and I first met him. As a young associate editor at John Wiley & Sons, he was our editor on “The Green Travel Sourcebook.” At the lunch where I first came up with the idea and title for the book, and Steve jumped on it, excited by the (then) very new concept, I remember looking across the table at him. That was the moment that I realized that he was destined to go far in publishing. Not just because he was obviously bright and talented, with a passion for books, but that he had a way of encouraging the best from his authors. And, as an author, I knew that if I gave him my all, he would do the same. Besides, he had an instinct for the marketplace, which his writers could depend upon – as long as they listened to him.
Getting back to the current Steve Ross Wordsmiths Project portrait. Not only does it do a good job of telling the story of what Steve has achieved at Crown – juggling the various points of view and political perspectives of both the right and left, while intuitively finding the books that the public will buy – it is also one that I spent a great deal of time and energy creating.
Quite honestly, when I do a photo shoot for The Wordsmiths Project, I’m never quite sure what I’ll end up creating as the final portrait. Sure, I have a few ideas – more like itches that make me shoot from particular angles or ask a subject to strike a certain pose. Being familiar with Steve’s sense of humor, I knew I wanted something different for his portrait, so I asked him to sit cross-legged on a conference room table, and I climbed up on the table with him. It was silly and fun, requiring that we contort our bodies in ways that they don’t always go anymore. (After all, a few years have passed under the bridge since our Wiley and Green Travel days.) But it produced some great photos. When we were finished, I went out into the hallway and photographed numerous Crown books, because I knew I wanted to use them in the final portrait – whatever it would end up being.
Then, when I got back to my studio, I went to work on my favorite photos from the shoot, spending several days, designing, editing and working on the minute details. For those of you who know Adobe Photoshop or similar imaging programs, you may be interested in seeing the Layers palette of the final picture (shown to the right). The image ended up being over 650 megabytes in file size, because of all the layers and adjustment layers that I pasted together to create the portrait. (For those of you who aren’t into the details of computerized art, suffice it to say it was a very precise process of creating and combining various elements into a single picture. Each of the lines in the palette to the right represents a separate piece of image or a particular edit added to or tweaked in the final picture.)
I’m pleased that Steve loves the portrait. So much so, that when he saw it at the Book Expo exhibit, he asked if he could purchase the original signed and framed exhibition print that I had personally printed. (Unsigned, unframed pictures, printed by Smugmug.com’s automated system can be purchased on this site. They are quite good, but not the level of excellence of the exhibition prints.) I told him, no, he couldn’t buy it. But if he gave a substantial donation (and I quoted an appropriate sum) to the Writers Emergency Assistance Fund, that I would give the print to him. He didn’t take me up on that offer for a few days – not until after the news about him leaving Crown was made public. Then, he asked some of his future associates at HarperCollins if they felt it would be appropriate for him to have a piece of art in his new office that depicted him juggling some of the books he published at Crown. The consensus was that it would be a nice addition to his office. So, he called me and arranged to make the donation and asked me ship the portrait to him.
Even though I have that very nice nod of approval from Steve and others at HarperCollins, I can’t help but wonder if having a “dated” portrait of Steve in The Wordsmiths Project might be inappropriate. What do you think? Should I create a new portrait, or do you feel that the current one which reflects his work at Crown should stand?
Please voice your opinion through an email (via the Contact page) or leave your comments here. Thank you.
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