A few weeks ago, the New York Times ran a story announcing that Richard Ford, long-hanging ornament of the house of Knopf, was jumping ship to Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins. As far as these things go, this was pretty big news. Ford, after all, had been with Knopf for seventeen years, and with his editor there, Gary Fisketjon, for years before that. During his time there, he had published four books, including Independence Day, the first novel to win the PEN award and the Pulitzer in the same year.

Ecco, by contrast, hasn’t exactly been an imprint famous for its big literary names. While they did recently put out a very beautiful series of Tobias Wolff reissues, and have a small but respectable poetry wing, they’ve also published Mario Batali’s Mario Tailgates NASCAR Style, Aromas of Aleppo: The Legendary Cuisine of Syrian Jews by the fabulously Dickensian Poopa Dweck, and John Leguizamo’s woefully forgotten autobiography Pimps, Hos, Playa Hatas, and All the Rest of My Hollywood Friends. (more…)