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Recently. I had the chance to sit down with one of the men responsible for the resurgence in mass-market horror's popularity. Don D'Auria. As the editor of Leisure Books' horror line, he is in demand with genre writers like no other in the field. He routinely gets mobbed at conventions, and puts in long hours every day, reading through a proverbial mountain of manuscripts. A few years ago, Leisure launched what was then the only dedicated mass-market horror line in America. They had new paperbacks in stores every month, and brought writers like Hugh B. Cave, Richard Laymon, Graham Masterton, and J. N. Williamson back to the bookstores. Then Leisure kicked off its equally popular horror book club. More recently, they've launched a hardcover horror line as well. The debut titles included Douglas Clegg's The Infinite and Dennis Etchison's Museum of Horrors anthology. Many analysts give D'Auria the credit for the rising interest in horror fiction's perceived comeback.
So what comes next? With all eyes upon them, D'Auria and Leisure have plans to build upon these successes. D'Auria says that the company is very excited about the move into hardcovers. It's something that they'd been researching and planning for a long time. As with their other expansions, they wanted to make sure that the marketplace was ready for the move. Current plans call for only a few hardcover horror titles per year. He stated the goal is "to make each hardcover an event and to make sure bookstores and accounts see them that way too". The next planned horror hardcover is Four Dark Nights, a collection of four novellas by Bentley Little, Clegg, Christopher Golden, and Tom Piccirilli.
Regarding the number of other publishers who are now re-launching or expanding their horror titles, D'Auria says he is somewhat concerned that "the other houses will try to force too many books into the market too quickly. This is what happened during the last horror boom, and that's what led to the boom ending. We've been very careful with our expansion, but I worry that other houses may not be."
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