A continent apart from the East Coast publishing establishment, San Francisco-based Chronicle Books has always done its own thing, expanding beyond traditional bookstore venues and taking design to the limit. From the best-selling "Griffin & Sabine" to a "Star Wars" rendition of the popular Little Big Books of yesteryear, Chronicle Books approaches publishing on its own terms.

When Chronicle Books' "Griffin & Sabine" by Nick Bantock was released in 1991, both the publishing world and book buyers took notice. A charming story about a correspondence between the fictional artist, Griffin, and his elusive muse, Sabine, the plot unfolds through postcards and loose-leaf letters stuffed in real envelopes. Interactive and engaging, "Griffin & Sabine" which quickly rose to the New York Times' bestseller list invites readers to become voyeurs to a friendship. Using handwritten notes and pull-out letters, the book's ambitious design adds credibility and interest to the story in a way that a conventional presentation would not have done.

A production challenge involving die-cuts, gluing and considerable manual labor, the book is one that perhaps only Chronicle Books would be bold enough to take on. But that's Chronicle Books. It often goes where few publishers dare to tread and, in so doing, it has introduced many much-imitated innovations.

This independent, risk-taking spirit grew largely out of necessity. Founded in 1966 as an offshoot of the San Francisco Chronicle, for many years it published only regional guidebooks and the collected writings of the Chronicle's newspaper columnists. Jack Jensen, Chronicle Books president and publisher, recalls that even in 1977 when he joined the company, it had "a staff of four and was doing eight books a year." Isolated and not taken seriously by the East Coast publishing establishment, Chronicle Books received few agent or author submissions. This forced it to come up with its own ideas and look in places and at subjects that other publishers ignored.

One such subject, "The Sushi Book" by Mia Dietrick (1981), helped the West Coast publisher to find its niche. "I'll never forget showing the book in New York," recalls Jensen, who was sales manager at the time. "It met with hysterical laughter from food editors. About a year later, it started to sell because the popularity of sushi was growing, and there was no other book on the subject." The square-format paperback had the look and feel of a quality art book, with beautifully styled color food photographs by Kathryn Kleinman printed on fine coated paper. Plus it was fun and informative and priced under $10. The success of "The Sushi Book" encouraged Chronicle Books to bring out a series of cookbooks in the same format and style.

Niche Markets
"Our books approach art on the level of pop culture and appeal to niche market audiences," says design director Michael Carabetta. Although the subjects are often esoteric and quirky, Chronicle books are so accessible in format, tone and price that they have mass market appeal.

In the early '80s, Chronicle Books began buying foreign rights to art-related books and repackaging them for the American market. A major appeal of these visual books was that color printing separations were usually completed, and the text translation was minimal. Where written content was light, the books compensated with high-quality design, imagery and printing and an affordable price. Like its cookbooks, all of the visual books were available only in paperback. "The group coming of age grew up on paperbacks," Jensen explains. "For them, paperbacks were more fashionable than expensive hard covers."

Paperbacks also appeared more approachable. "Back then, illustrated books were all high-end, scholarly art books," says Chronicle design director Michael Carabetta. "Chronicle came along with beautiful visual books that the average person could afford."

The popular culture topics and friendly format of Chronicle Books lent themselves to the gift market and specialty shops as well as bookstores venues that it began pursuing in earnest in the late '70s. "The first season I came on [1977], we went back East to make our fall presentation and one of the national book chains decided to pass on our entire line," Jensen recalls. "Right then, we said, forget it. We cannot be dependent on only one market. We have to seek other channels."

From then on, Chronicle Books has sought cross-merchandising tie-ins with non-bookstore retailers. "To us, it's logical that people shopping at a kitchenware store may want to buy a cookbook there," says Carabetta. In the same way, an Art Deco collectibles shop will carry its books on Art Deco objects. "A shopper who can't afford a $400 Art Deco martini shaker may decide that a $16.95 book that shows them well would make a nice gift," he says.

"I would argue that Chronicle Books has the best distribution in non-traditional markets," says Julie Chanter, marketing director. "We took them seriously from day one. Our books are often better displayed and more apparent in gift shops than bookstores. Producing books for both markets is our goal."

In pursuing the gift market, Chronicle Books was aware that its paperbacks needed to feel like keepsakes. It introduced flap-folded cover jackets to give the books a more substantial feel and it used quality design as a market differentiator. "As gift items, it is absolutely essential that we have a nice object that feels good and is aesthetically pleasant to look at," Jensen says. Beyond that, Jensen believes that "as a culture, we love books as objects. There is a reverence for books, not first and foremost from the content level, but for the object itself."

Based on this belief, Chronicle Books has focused on the design and production value of its books. "We may cut corners elsewhere, but never on design," says Chanter. One way Chronicle cuts corners is by doing virtually no advertising. "Our books are hard to communicate in a black-and-white ad. We spend the money on our full-color catalogs and put it into the book itself. My marketing budget is significantly less than other publishing houses. Our marketing plan is to price the book at a dollar or two less."

As gift items sold in non-bookstore venues, the books often feature popular culture subjects of a highly visual, eye-catching nature. To do that well, Chronicle Books has engaged many of the top designers, photographers and illustrators today to do its books. "We like to think of the world as our studio," says Carabetta. With only five book designers in-house, the majority of the 200 books it publishes annually are designed by outside talent.

"Because our books are image-driven, rather than text-driven, they sell well in Europe and Asia," Jensen says. Then again, the initial emphasis on foreign markets began when Chronicle Books realized that it needed to print a lot of copies to be able to produce high-quality illustrated books at an affordable unit price, he admits. That meant becoming a large player in export books and licensing them overseas.

The Chronicle Gift program, featuring calendars, address books, notecards, blank journals and the like, was launched in late 1994 for the same reason. "The gift idea started out of necessity," Jensen says. "Making illustrated books is labor intensive and expensive. We realized that instead of licensing off materials for which we owned the copyright, we could extend our publishing opportunities."

Associate publisher Caroline Herter, who is in charge of Chronicle Gift, adds that two other reasons convinced them to launch the program. "First, we have always had strong distribution in non-traditional outlets such as art supply stores and gift stores, and we wanted to put more concentrated effort on projects that would work well in these markets. The other reason is that we have so much fantastic visual materials in the books themselves and so many connections with great designers, illustrators and photographers. We wanted to be a full service resource for this talent."

The program has been a runaway success, so much so that it has expanded far beyond materials from published books. Today Chronicle Gift is originating about 80 projects a year. This fall it is releasing its most ambitious project yet with "Aerobleu," based on an original story about a jazz club in Paris in the '40s. Developed in collaboration with an entertainment-based group called Less Than Seven, the Aerobleu project will be combined with an Aerobleu CD, set for release next spring by Blue Note Records, and eventually a full-length feature film, martini jazz bar, and clothing and luggage line. "Aerobleu has taken on a life of its own," says Herter. "It began as a vision of telling a story in an unconventional way, built through products."

Unusual to say the least, it fits right into Chronicle Books' style, which everyone there, including Jensen, admits is "quirky and eclectic." In some ways, this sensibility harkens back to the days when Chronicle Books found itself ignored by the East Coast publishing industry, and set out on its own. "Being here [on the West Coast], we developed a history that is not afraid of responsible risk-taking in order to succeed," Jensen says. "Since we weren't going to play by the rules, we had to come up with our own. That is clearly the reason that we are perceived to be different." Citing its successful '50s nostalgia book called "Patio Daddy-O Recipe Journal," as an example, he says, "I'm not sure your standard New York publishing house would be inclined to produce a journal with a table cloth included. Somebody there would have said, nope."

These entertaining and quirky offerings are what make Chronicle Books so unique. Jensen says that Chronicle Books will remain receptive and open to interesting ideas. "If we don't continue to challenge ourselves, it is no fun. And if we continue to do the same thing, we'll find ourselves in a crowded field of people doing it too. Any degree of success will be mimicked. It is imperative that we continue to evolve."