THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

Friday, November 1, 1985 27

Former Detroiter
Esther Margolis begins
a new chapter in
her life by establishing
her own book
publishing company.

Going Buy the Book

BY HEIDI PRESS

Local News Editor

Esther Margolis never thought
she'd go into book publishing for a
living. Don't tell that to Bantam
Books, where she served in various
capacities for 17 years, rising to the
rank of senior vice president-
publishing projects.
And don't tell that to authors
who are contributing manuscripts to
her in the hopes of having her
Newmarket Press inprimatur appear
on the dust jackets and covers of
their works.
No one would believe it.
What is believable is that the
University of Michigan graduate and
former fifth grade teacher has em-
barked on what is becoming a suc-
cessful career as the head of a grow-
ing publishing house.
The house, Newmarket Publish-
ing and Communications, was
formed in 1981, with its area of con-
centration primarily child care and
parenting. HoweVer, Margolis seeks
to include general fiction and non-
fiction among the house's offerings.
Current selections include books
about puberty for boys and girls,
What's Happening to My Body?;
Female Stress Syndrome; Male

Stress Syndrome; Smart Cookies, a
nutritional cookie book; and books
on the performing arts, such as a
Harry Blackstone Jr., book on
magic. Russell Spurr's A Glorious
Way to Die, was the company's first
publication.
There are three divisions of the
New York-based firm: Newmarket
Press, Newmarket Book Properties
and Newmarket Productions. At this
writing, properties are distributed by
Scribner's, but in January 1986,
Harper and Row will take over.
Margolis, president of the firm,
calls her new job "exhilarating and
difficult at the same time."
"It was a huge change for me. It
was difficult to go to hardcover from
paperback publishing. I had to main-
tain the reputation and image from
where I came."
From where she came is a
career in itself. The former Detroiter
— known affectionately as Molly,
her middle name — Margolis was
graduated from U-M with a B.A. de-
gree in education and M.A. degree in
literary criticism. She left Detroit in
1961 to work as an office temporary
at Dell Publishing in New York, and

served as a promotion assistant on
the company's magazine, Ingenue.
She left the next year to go to Ban-
tam, where she again was a promo-
tion assistant.
It was there that Margolis chose
her career path. "I liked it and de-
cided to stay in (it)."

And stay she did. Beginning as
assistant promotions director, she
was later named Bantam's first pub-
licity director after pitching the plan
to the publisher for a full-scale pub-
licity department.
She was named a vice president
of the company in 1971 and she
created and supervised a new di-
vision, the Bantam Lecture Bureau.
Appointed in 1975 to vice president
for promotion, advertising, publicity
and public relations, Margolis was
responsible for a $3.5 million budget,
five departments and a staff of more
than 30. She became senior vice
president of the company in 1978
and one year later was named senior
vice president-publishing projects.
Margolis resigned in 1980 to

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