Rubin's behind the scenes publishing memoir goes to Applause Books

Stephen Rubin, a consulting publisher at Simon & Schuster US, has written a behind the scenes memoir, Words and Music: Confessions of an Optimist, to be published by Applause Books in the US in January 2023. 

Clare Alexander of Aitken Alexander sold North American rights to Applause Books editor John Cerullo. The book is not yet out on submission in the UK.

The book will take readers behind the scenes of his publishing career at Bantam and at the helm of Doubleday and Henry Holt, including frank observations of how the industry changed in the more than 30 years in which he was involved, as well as accounts of publishing such bestselling authors as Dan Brown, Tina Brown, John Grisham, Ian McEwan, Hilary Mantel, Bill O’Reilly, and Michael Wolff.  

Rubin resigned from his post as executive vice-president and publisher-at-large of Random House Inc in 2009. He was previously president and publisher of Doubleday and is now a consulting publisher at Simon & Schuster US.

Before he became a publisher, Rubin had been a reporter. Applause Books said: “His reporter’s eye is evident in his account of his long engagement in the book industry, as it is when he writes of his other great passion: music, and his close engagement with some of the greatest opera singers of our times, including, among others, Leontyne Price, Luciano Pavarotti and Beverly Sills. Late in his career, he discovered philanthropy and returned to his musical roots, establishing the Stephen and Cynthia Rubin Institute for the Study of Classical Music Criticism and becoming an active board member at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.” 

The blurb reads: “Words and Music has all the charm and delight of an encounter with the man himself – one of the best-known and best-loved figures in the publishing industry, a man who had no masterplan behind his stellar career – just a belief that things would work out. And they almost always did – brilliantly.”