The Culture Business

Prosper's Books

Though anyone would have jumped to publish Radziwill's book (there are 50,000 copies in stores), the five large New York publishing houses have begun to let go of less-glamorous illustrated books. "Corporate publishers are very passive," says an editor of photo-heavy books. "They aren't going to go directly to the independents and the museum stores -- and they aren't going to go back to resell those accounts." Which is what it takes to make a profit in picture books.

The design work is just too labor-intensive, and the returns too small, for a trade house with only a few of these lavish titles. International audience or no, Assouline can afford to put these books together because he runs another design-intensive business that pays for the computers and designers.

Sitting in the Garden of Bottino, the fashion-and-art commissary on Tenth Avenue, with the collar of his custom-made-in-Milan suit turned up against a chill, Assouline orders lunch for all three of us -- himself, his wife, and me. In his confident but not yet imperious way, he says: "There is only one good thing on the menu here." Then he doles out wine as if we were seated in his home.

Martine, African-born and Swiss- and South American-raised, has been compared by her friends to Catherine Deneuve, but the reference is more to her poise than to her beauty. As a couple, the Assoulines are memorably warm and appealing people. Prosper brims; Martine ballasts. Together, they seem anything but cold European fashion folk.

At the moment, though it feeds their other business, neither finds fashion very interesting. "It is all the same," he says. "In the magazines, you have to look at the caption to know who the designer is. You should be able to tell from the clothes!"

"We are not marketing people," Martine says of their future. "But we are enlarging our idea of the market."

Though they have been approached by two different publishers, they are determined to stay independent. "To be small is to be strong," says Martine, who runs the book operation from an office just around the corner from the Place Vendôme, "but it is very tiring."

"You're on the bicycle all the time," Prosper agrees as he pounds his hand-made Berluti shoes up and down on the floor, miming an exhausting pace. "But if I only want to make money, I'm going to sell pizzas or jeans."

Suddenly, a woman across the restaurant catches his eye. "I want to publish her book," he declares. "What a story she has!"

I look up to see Bette Midler -- dining the day before her sitcom is canceled -- and ask, "Bette Midler? Really?"

"No," he exclaims, his incredulousness amplified by his accent. "Her! "

Sure enough, Ileana Sonnabend, the octogenarian art dealer, is seated with a group at the next table. Prosper falls into a narration of her career high points.

I ask the Assoulines what their ambitions are. Prosper hesitates a beat, more for translation than reflection, before declaring in fractured Franglais, "To be a publisher considered very chic."