In Memorandum – Paul C Williams, 1959 – 2010

The world of publishing lost a giant yesterday when Paul C Williams past away at the tender age of 51. As operating director of the small publishing house Bunim & Bannigan, Paul developed an artistic vision of publishing house that offered “books for general and academic readers that embody progressive ideas, including contemporary fiction, literature, classics, children’s books, politics, philosophy & religion, and personal wellness.”

Paul had a leader's vision and energy, and his commitment to producing and distributing quality literature never wavered. He had deep integrity about his business practices. As the Executive Director of the National Association of Independent Publishers Representatives (NAIPR), Paul was proactive in reforming and streamlining that organization so that it ran seamlessly. Independent reps across the country owe Paul a debt of gratitude as he shored up the finances of NAIPR and spearheaded an innovative electronic ordering system that saved countless hours for reps and booksellers alike. His legacy will live on as this system, Frontlist Plus Universal, will continue to serve the book selling community, saving time and money and being brilliant in its simplicity and execution.

Paul had an impressive background as a bookseller. He starting out with Encore Books in Philadelphia in the 1980s, he moved onto Doubleday Bookshops in New York. He was sales manager at the publishing company Rizzoli, and then for Routledge, and Thompson. He knew the old legendary commission sales reps like George Scheer, Oscar Schonenfeld, and Ned Melman, and he had a deep respect for them. He maintained a membership for a time at the venerable Players Club in Manhattan (http://www.theplayersnyc.org/members/). His apartment at Stuyvesant Town on East 14th Street was always open to friends and colleagues. He was a gourmet cook, a wicked sushi chef, and a true renaissance man.

Paul was not adverse to taking risks. In the 1990s he founded Herodias, an eclectic publishing company that was a precursor to the current Bunim & Bannigan. One of the great books that Paul was responsible for was Art, Music and Education As Strategy for Survival: Theresienstadt 1941-45 by Anne Dutlinger, published in cooperation with the Payne Gallery of Moravian College, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. This is an incredible book which is a testimony to the power of the arts to sustain life under the most brutal and inhuman conditions imaginable. It collected for the first time in one volume the children's art of Theresienstadt concentration camp in World War II, unpublished work of Friedl Dicker-Brandeis, and historical photographs, as well as numerous essays of interest to historians, art educators/therapists, and Holocaust scholars: – providing an important new interdisciplinary approach to exploring the power of art to teach, express, commemorate, and perhaps, most importantly, to heal.

I know that this book was one of Paul's personal favorites. The business of Herodias didn't work out, and Paul ultimately lost control of the inventory. But this setback didn't stop him from continuing to pursue his dreams of being a publisher. Paul made adjustments to his business and started B&B on a less grandiose scale. He learned important lessons running Herodias, and these served him well in developing the list for B&B, and for the business of NAIPR, where he made himself irreplaceable.

Highlights from the B&B list include Daniel Berrigan's, A Sunday in Hell: Fables & Poems, Eliot Asinof's dynamic novel Final Judgment, and a new translation of the classic 19th century novel Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov, translated from the Russian by Stephen Pearl, with an introduction by Galya Diment, and a foreword by Tatyana Tolstaya. These books and others were consistently of the highest quality and had Paul's trademark style of being a book for the ages to come.

What more can I say? I've lost a dear friend and a dynamic colleague. Paul was a smart and enthusiastic practitioner in publishing and in life. A dedicated family man, a world traveler, a marvelous cook and host, a true friend. Paul will be sorely missed.