"Night Shade Books: What went wrong?"

[james_davis_nicoll]

Last August I got an email from Jason Williams, publisher and majority owner of Night Shade Books. He said he’d been paying attention to Staffer’s Book Review and he wanted to pick my brain about the direction Night Shade was heading. My thoughts ranged from:

Wow — someone in publishing cares what I think (to. . .)
Why the hell does anyone in publishing care what I think?

Little did I know that the mere existence of this email was a sign that Night Shade Books was seriously dysfunctional. Williams and I went on to have a lengthy email exchange and several phone calls over the following week. These talks resulted in me doing a very slight amount of consulting for him. I’m not going to reveal too many details from these exchanges, but a few might dribble out here and there as some of them aid in the telling of a good story.