It’s a beautiful day to publish a book in softcover!
Today, April 30th, The Orphanmaster hits the bricks as a paperback. Less than a year ago people were introduced to my book for the first time.
It’s interesting. I’m sitting in the Ossining library researching Revolutionary New York City for a new novel. At the same, I heard today that the copyedit for my next book, Savage Girl, to be published by Viking in early 2014, is wending its way toward me. Savage Girl‘s story is set in Gilded Age Manhattan. I’m not flummoxed, though, by all these cultures, all these stories, all these versions of New York crashing against each other.
Like a fat, comfortable burgher in the 1664 Manhattan of The Orphanmaster, I’m taking it in stride.
Jean Zimmerman 
I hope they enjoy it.
Thank you, Hack!
Indeed, congratulations! This is wonderful news! Now it will be easier for my book club friends to buy the book!
The first paperbacks (in English, anyway) were published in the mid-1800s, were marketed to railway travelers, and were called “yellowbacks” for their distinctive covers. Penguin founder Allan Lane actually started the modern paperback revolution in the Thirties, so to have a paperback edition with Penguin connects The Orphanmaster to a hunk of publishing history. Congrats!