$EVERANCE PAYS

NEW YORK—Chicago rock jock Richard Kaempfer moved into radio production, producing the award-winning John Records Landecker and Steve Dahl & Garry Meier shows before having to suffer the trials and tribulations of his fictional counterpart Tom Zagorski. The hand Kaempfer dealt Zagorski in his novel $everance was obsolescence in the new corporate-owned media world after nearly twenty years as one of the most popular morning-radio personalities in Chicago — that, and a boss who uses public and private humiliation to make Zagorski quit so he doesn’t have to deliver a healthy severance package. Kaempfer has Zagorski push back by passive-aggressively needling his boss into firing him, without ever crossing the line into a firing for cause.

When neither side budges after six months of battle, an exasperated Zagorski sends a sarcastic e-mail to the CEO of the corporation, suggesting a massive firing of anyone who doesn’t actually bring in money. Instead of firing Zagorski in a rage, the CEO takes the e-mail seriously. He eliminates thousands of jobs, the stock price soars, and the “genius” Zagorski gets rewarded with a promotion. His new position as COO — and darling of Wall Street — makes getting fired a monumental task.

Can Zagorski, in cahoots with his on-air partner Richard Lawrence, mismanage the conglomerate so the stock price tanks, or irritate his mercurial boss to the firing point? Zagorski and Lawrence gleefully tackle both assignments, plunging headlong into the world of media finance, politics, and personalities. The result is a scathing satire of the current state of the consolidated mainstream broadcast media, insight into the way the political parties have managed to convert broadcasting into a partisan screech-fest, and a spotlight on who and what really runs the media.

Richard Kaempfer was a Chicago media fixture for twenty years, first as a host at Chicago’s top rock station, WLUP AM/FM, in the late 80s and early 90s. Industry insiders know him better as one of the top radio producers in the country and the coauthor, with John Swanson, of “The Radio Producer’s Handbook.” In addition to his radio honors (including Best Morning Show in Chicago and Best Oldies Show in America), Kaempfer has won numerous awards for his magazine and advertising writing, including a National Writing Award in 1999 for his essay “Living Life to Its Fullest,” and other awards for his work for radio advertising specialists A.M.I.S.H. Chicago Advertising, which he cofounded in 2000. He is also a contributing editor for Shore Magazine.

Naturally, Kaempfer’s first foray into fiction got snapped up by boutique New York fiction house ENC PRESS, whose very existence is a wickedly grinning critique of mainstream publishing, and is scheduled for publication in 2007.

ENC Press’s self-chosen “boutique” designation involves more than house size and the high level of attention given to the editing, design, and production of each release. It is a deliberately chosen business model as well. With the exception of a few independent bookstores, ENC Press bypasses the usual retail book-industry channels, whether brick-and-mortar or online, in favor of selling books exclusively through its Web site. Publisher Olga Gardner Galvin says only her small run/direct sales model makes it possible for her to focus on the content of her books rather than fret about the bottom line. It also allows her to keep all her titles available indefinitely on the Web — a practice recently adopted by industry giants Penguin and Random House.

“I started out thinking we were ‘alternative’ because our authors saw and discussed more than one side of any question and issue and did so with wit and humor, which is ‘alternative’ in today’s book industry,” says Galvin. “But then we realized that in pursuit of such novels we came up with some intelligent alternatives to limited editorial decisions, the hideous practice of printing books only to remainder and pulp them, and serfdom for writers in the form of miserly royalties. We certainly provide an intelligent alternative to the touchy-feely groupthink of the mainstream book scene, simply by publishing guilt-free, topical entertainment for independently thinking people. $everance is one more ENC Press offering for the steadily growing audience of readers who hunger for more sophisticated, nuanced, and original fiction than they can find in most bookstores.”

A capsule summary of $everance is available at www.encpress.com/SEV.html — and so are a few of the other wickedest, funniest, and most thought-provoking novels the big publishing business doesn’t know how to handle.