McSweeney's

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Cover of Issue 9 of Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, published in 2002.

McSweeney's is an American publishing house founded by editor Dave Eggers, author of the books You Shall Know Our Velocity, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, How We Are Hungry, What Is the What, Zeitoun, and the novelization of the film adaptation of Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are.

Apart from its book list, McSweeney's is responsible for four regular publications: the quarterly literary journal, Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, the daily-updated literature and humor site McSweeney's Internet Tendency, the monthly magazine The Believer, and the new quarterly DVD magazine, Wholphin. The publishing house also runs two additional imprints, Believer Books and the Collins Library.

On the name of the organization, Eggers says: "[My family] would always get letters from someone named Timothy McSweeney ... He claimed to be my mother's long-lost brother ...[Letters] would always include flight plans, like he was planning on coming to visit. I don't know if he's real or not. My relatives deny it, but who knows?"^[1]

McSweeney's has helped launch the careers of young writers, such as Philipp Meyer and Rebecca Curtis; it has also published the works of well-established authors such as Michael Chabon, Stephen King, David Foster Wallace, George Saunders, Michael Ian Black, and Joyce Carol Oates. The band One Ring Zero gained notoriety by becoming the house band for the New York McSweeney's store. As a result of this relationship,^{[citation needed]} they gained the trust of many prominent McSweeney writers and solicited their lyric-writing assistance in the ORZ album, "As Smart As We Are". McSweeney's was also the subject of the They Might Be Giants song "The Ballad of T. McSweeney."

Books published under McSweeney's Rectangular's imprint include:

• The People of Paper (by Salvador Plascencia)
• The Facts of Winter (by Paul LaFarge)
• The Middle Stories (by Sheila Heti)
• A Child Again (by Robert Coover)
• Samuel Johnson Is Indignant (by Lydia Davis)
• Here They Come (by Yannick Murphy)
• Icelander (by Dustin Long)
• The Children's Hospital (by Chris Adrian)

In December 2006 Advanced Marketing Services, since 2002 the parent company of McSweeney's distributor Publishers Group West (PGW), declared bankruptcy. At the time of the filing, PGW owed McSweeney's about $600,000. ^[2] McSweeney's eventually accepted an offer from Perseus Books Group to take over distribution; the deal reduced McSweeney's losses to $130,000.^[3] In June 2007, McSweeney's held a successful sale and eBay auction which helped make up the difference.^[4]

References

1. ^ Flak Magazine interview, March 2000
2. ^ A financial thriller in the publishing world from the San Francisco Chronicle
3. ^ Indie Publishers Act All Indie, from New York magazine
4. ^ McSweeney's Internet Tendency: Book Distribution, Bankruptcy, and McSweeney's

External links

• McSweeney's Internet Tendency, official site
• "Too Cool for Words", by Judith Shulevitz, a 2001 review of everything McSweeney's from The New York Times
• A.O Scott's New York Times piece on McSweeney's and n+1
• Stephen Amidon Sunday Times, "Their Master's Voice: The Rise and Rise of Brand McSweeney's", February 3, 2008 [1]