Atria Publisher Judith Curr: Publishers Need to Experiment With Digital Content

Atria Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, has been among the leaders when it comes to full-service publishing houses acquiring content by self-published authors. In August 2012, the house scored back-to-back deals with self-published authors Colleen Hoover and Tina Reber, for instance. Atria also now publishes among others Katja Millay and Jamie McGuire, also both originally self-publishing authors.

It’s a new way of doing business for the 10-year-old imprint and that’s just fine for its publisher and founder, Judith Curr, who has an unconventional background for a New York-based publishing executive and seems unafraid of the rapid pace of change in today’s book industry.

Curr was raised on a sheep farm in Australia. As a teenager, she started her career in an internship in retail. She moved to a cosmetics company where she was in sales. Later, she became a manger of publicity and promotions for Christian Dior cosmetics. It wasn’t until after her time at Dior that she went into publishing. She was one of the first three employees of Transworld, now a division of Random House Australia. Although Curr always loved books, that wasn’t her reason for entering the industry (read more below).

Some 17 years later, she left Transworld as the publisher and director of the company. In 1999 she joined Simon & Schuster and in 2002 founded Atria, an imprint she could make her own.

We talked with Curr about acquiring the work of self-published authors, the new role of the editor, and why it’s important to take risks and try new things in digital book publishing — for both publishers and their employees.

Read more:http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2013/atria-publisher-judith-curr-publishers-need-to-experiment-with-digital-content/