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Post by pulphack on Jun 23, 2012 21:21:31 GMT
Having found very little about him a few years back when looking, I re-googled after he cropped up here again: there's still very little but there are a couple of interesting obits.
Very much NOT a Bill Baker (a rogue even though I like him), Engel was a very fair man who came up with the ideas and worked with writers to develop them, being very involved in the marketing (sometimes pouring money into campaigns if the publishers were not doing enough in his view) and even selling publishers the cover art and blurb (and supplying reviews for local papers too tight to hie their own reviewers).
His father was in advertising and magazines, and Engel followed him into this, making a load of cash in magazines before moving into fiction. He does seem to have written a few books himself, but these are mostly (as far as I can see) non-fiction on sports or cars.
The big money makers weren't the stuff we like on here, but the historical and pioneering American stuff. He made John Jakes a millionaire on his royalties from his historical books, and was paying over a million per anum on royalties to other writers for any given titles in print (assuming the sources in the obits were correct).
By all accounts he was actually a decent man to work for in publishing, which is a bit of a rarity.
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