ABA's Ankerwycke imprint publishes books that show the 'flesh and blood' side of the law
Photo Illustration by Monica Burciaga
A quick glance at any current best-seller list is all it takes to recognize that books with legal themes—both novels and nonfiction—are popular with the general reading public. But traditionally, the ABA was never part of that market. Instead, the ABA’s publishing efforts focused on the kinds of substantive topics only a lawyer could love, with occasional forays into areas such as business management and work-life balance.
Those kinds of works still are at the core of the ABA’s publishing efforts, but now the association has begun to venture into what is known in the industry as the trade market—in other words, the wider audience beyond the legal profession.
In December 2014, ABA Publishing put out its first book under the new Ankerwycke imprint, a legal thriller titled Supreme Ambitions. Written by David Lat, founder of the popular blog Above the Law, the novel tells the story of a young legal clerk working for a ruthless appellate court judge who desires an appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court. “Mr. Lat and the American Bar Association are betting that there are readers for a subgenre of highly realistic, legal procedural fiction that’s heavy on the legal material and somewhat light on the thrills,” said a book review in the New York Times.
But the ABA’s ambitions for Ankerwycke—named for the ancient Ankerwycke yew tree under which the Magna Carta was sealed in 1215—are much broader than the fiction subgenre described in the Times review. The 10 Ankerwycke titles published in 2015—with as many as 20 more in the works for 2016—reflect a broad variety of history, biography and business advice that targets a general audience as well as lawyers.
The Ankerwycke imprint still represents a small percentage of the ABA’s total publishing output. The association puts out some 150 books per year on substantive legal topics, including ethics, law practice management and technology. These are developed primarily by its sections, along with some 90 magazines, newsletters and other publications. In addition to its Ankerwycke titles, ABA Publishing produces its own Flagship line of books on legal topics that are developed by staff members rather than the sections. Nearly 70 titles are slated for publication in 2016 as either Ankerwycke or Flagship books.
A NEW MARKET
The creation of the Ankerwycke imprint stems from a desire to create a new market for books published by the ABA and a belief that the law plays an integral role in American society that fascinates the general public as well as the legal profession.
“Ankerwycke provides a new audience and marketplace that the ABA hasn’t gone into before,” says Jon Malysiak, director of the Ankerwycke imprint and Flagship line of books. “We have an opportunity to create a real niche of trade history, fiction and consumer titles.”
Ankerwycke books need to tell engaging stories that also help to put the law into a broad social context, says Bryan Kay, the director of ABA Publishing. “There is a journey that the law has made in American history, and we want to tell that story in a way that hasn’t been done before,” he says. “It’s the story of the law and how it impacts our culture, and shows that the law is flesh and blood—not just a set of rules.”
Photos Courtesy of Ankerwycke
The next step for Ankerwycke may be to turn some of its titles into film or television properties. In May, the ABA announced an agreement with the Gersh Agency to market film, television and dramatic rights for Ankerwycke books. “We are pleased that the Gersh Agency will help Ankerwycke grow creatively and commercially,” said then-ABA President William C. Hubbard when the agreement was announced. “In our few short months, we have seen how Ankerwycke provides a forum to publish works of fiction and nonfiction that explore the law in more detail than many commercial books. This takes us to a new level.” Hubbard is a partner at Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough in Columbia, South Carolina.
Currently, Gersh is working to sell the rights to two of Ankerwycke’s nonfiction titles. In Operation Greylord, Terrence Hake (with co-writer Wayne Klatt, a Chicago journalist) recounts how for more than three years in the early 1980s, the former assistant state’s attorney worked undercover in conjunction with a federal investigation into corruption in the Circuit Court of Cook County. And in The 116, James P. Muehlberger tells the story of a group of frontiersmen, led by Kansas lawyer Jim Lane, who protected Abraham Lincoln from a Confederate conspiracy to kidnap and assassinate the new president at the start of the Civil War. Muehlberger is a lawyer and author based in Kansas City, Missouri.
The Gersh Agency goes back some 65 years, and it has grown into one of the most successful and influential talent and literary agencies in the entertainment industry, with offices in Beverly Hills, California, and New York City.
Ankerwycke books are distributed by National Book Network, a subsidiary of the Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, one of the largest academic publishers in North America.
A SPARK OF SERENDIPITY
The notion of producing books for the general trade market already was percolating before a bit of serendipity brought the idea into sharp focus, leading to its launch in late 2014. Staff at ABA Publishing and members involved in directing the association’s publishing operations “were looking for ways to be entrepreneurial,” says Kathleen J. Hopkins, a member of the Real Property Law Group in Seattle whose three-year term as chair of the Standing Committee on Publishing Oversight ended in August. (Hopkins is a member of the ABA Journal Board of Editors.) The ABA had begun to dabble in publishing efforts with some potential to reach audiences beyond the legal profession, including its Little Book series on how the law affects everyday topics such as golf, music, fashion and even coffee. A key to the early planning discussions was to develop an imprint that would play down its ABA roots so general readers would not assume the new series of books was strictly for lawyers.
But the real spark occurred when Lat contacted Malysiak and told him he was writing a novel. They had talked previously, and Malysiak at one point had asked whether Lat would be interested in writing a nonfiction book. Instead, Lat told Malysiak he was writing a legal thriller.
“Writing a novel was something I always wanted to do,” says Lat, who was an English major in college. “I wanted to try something a little more long-form. It was always on my bucket list. You’re supposed to write about what you know, and the book explores a lot of themes I’ve been interested in for years.”
The relationship had benefits for both parties. In reading Lat’s draft, Malysiak says he “immediately thought the story was really good, and revealed the inner workings of a court.” He worked with Lat for about nine months to polish the draft and then took it to Kay.
“I saw a great new direction that we could go into,” Kay says. “And David is personable, well-spoken and well-known—really first-rate all the way. That’s the kind of person you want to take a risk with.”
As for Lat, “I knew it would be great to work with the ABA imprint to reach a legal niche audience,” he says. “The ABA has a good distribution infrastructure and credibility, and I clicked with Jon.”
Other authors echo Lat’s positive review of the relationship with Ankerwycke. Lindsay Cameron, whose BigLaw: A Novel is based partly on her own experiences working at large corporate firms, says her agent put her in touch with Malysiak. “After talking to Jon, I was convinced that he and the folks at Ankerwycke understood the legal audience and wouldn’t require me to take out some of the legal nuances that make BigLaw authentic just to make it appeal to a wider audience,” Cameron says.
“My relationship with Ankerwycke has been very hands-on, which wouldn’t be the case with a larger press,” says Cameron, whose book has been optioned by Paramount for possible film or television development. “During the revision process, it felt very much like a team approach with Jon. He gave valuable input without pushing it away from my vision for the book.”
In a publishing coup for the ABA, Ankerwycke has begun reprinting some of the Perry Mason novels of Erle Stanley Gardner. Even though some of the stories are a bit dated and contain stereotypes that wouldn’t fly today, the books that introduced Mason, his secretary, Della Street, and detective Paul Drake to the world are iconic works of legal mystery writing. “I think getting the Erle Stanley Gardner books was a real win,” says Hopkins, and the Publishing Oversight Committee endorsed the plan to publish them as written.
The idea to seek the publishing rights for the Perry Mason novels originated with Kay, who had started watching episodes of the television show starring Raymond Burr as the unbeatable defense attorney on an oldies station in Chicago, then came across one of the novels in a used bookshop. Kay says that “Perry Mason represents what people think of lawyers in the best light: a lawyer who is with you and representing you—and a person of good repute to boot.”
A key step in Ankerwycke’s continuing growth will be the appointment of a board of advisers later this year to provide feedback and market assessment to the staff. “The volunteer oversight board will be critical,” Hopkins says.
It’s still too early to get a good measure of Ankerwycke’s financial success, but the future looks promising. “I’m excited for the ABA to take this step,” Hopkins adds. “It’s important to develop nondues revenue, and this is a way to do that.”
This article originally appeared in the January 2016 issue of the ABA Journal with this headline: “A New Niche: The ABA’s Ankerwycke imprint publishes books that show the ‘flesh and blood’ side of the law.”
