Today is publication day for longtime publisher Stephen Rubin’s memoir, Words and Music: Confessions of an Optimist. As promised, the book is a deliciously candid (sometimes impolitic) account of his illustrious career, covering both his hits and his missteps, and sharing stories about some of the industry’s best-known personalities. The following excerpt, from the chapter “More Corporate Claptrap” — Rubin notes a few times, “I have always said that corporations do dumb things” — is just a taste, recounting his final days at Random House. Why didn’t it work for me as Random House’s Publisher at Large? Why was the […]