With Yankees Win, Triumph Books Goes to Press

By Claire Kirch -- Publishers Weekly, 11/5/2009 10:24:00 AM

The New York Yankees celebrated their 7-3 win Wednesday night against the Philadelphia Phillies in game six of the World Series at Yankee Stadium, and by Thursday morning, Triumph Books, the Chicago-based imprint of Random House renowned for churning out full-color sports books on short notice, already had gone to press with two books about the team and its victory.

The Best, a 128-page, four-color pictorial commemorative book celebrating the Yankees’ victory, was produced Thursday in a 63,000-copy first print run. After the covers dry, copies will be hand-delivered by multiple messenger services on Saturday morning to stores in the New York City area that placed their orders last week. The books will be shipped out to the rest of the country on Monday. Mitch Rogatz, Triumph Books publisher, explained that the press had put together two books – one done completely in-house on the Phillies, and the other done in collaboration with the New York Post on the Yankees. A printer also was lined up to go to work as soon as the last game ended.

“It all had to come together,” Rogatz said, explaining that the book on the Phillies has been shelved – for now. “We wanted the books on the shelves by the weekend, during the pinnacle of excitement.” Although, Rogatz admitted, the cost of hand-delivering boxes of books by special messenger services will cost the press a significant amount of money, the press will “do whatever it takes to get books that sell into the hands of our customers.”

Triumph’s second book on the Yankees, Summers in the Bronx, is being shipped next week. Summers is a 252-page trade paperback featuring select columns about the Yankees and its most famous team members written by Ira Berkow during his 40-year career as the Pulitzer Prize winning sports reporter and columnist for the New York Times, who retired in 2007. The book’s initial print run is 24,000 copies.