"Now Make A Wish"

I have a confession to make.

When Carol Fitzgerald, Murray Bruce, and I started TBR, I was the writer of the group --- and in the publishing community, it was inevitable that people would think that this was my baby and that my partners were along for the ride because somebody had to do the dull business stuff.

I remember when AOL told us that it would invest a six-figure sum in our unborn enterprise. On the train back from Washington, we asked ourselves, for the first time, "Great, but how will we make money?" Our best idea: take all the books that the publishers would be sending us, set up a table in front of Zabar's and sell them on the cheap. We laughed and laughed over that image --- and no one laughed longer and louder than yours truly.

This was, of course, the laughter of the truly nervous. The fact is, I don't balance my checkbook. I never took a single course in finance. And until that fateful summer of 1996, when we launched TBR, I'd never gone to an office --- and I was then 50 years old!

Murray tackled design issues. I did what I knew how to do: the editorial. And Carol did...everything else.

Flash forward to the spring of 1997, when AOL made me an offer I couldn't refuse. Carol and I hired a new editor, the gifted Sara Nelson, but the game had shifted. "The business" was becoming more and more important, for the very simple reason that businesses eat up money and it was Carol's task to make sure that everybody got paid.

Just before I left TBR, we had added an AOL site that recommended kids' books to parents. Five years later, TBR has become such a vibrant enterprise that it has been renamed The Book Report Network and Carol has been launching new sites and services at a ferocious pace. All the sites are available on the web, as well as AOL. And the company has started a web development business building websites for authors and publishers. This fall TBRN will launch AuthorYellowPages, a searchable directory of author websites.  

Here's my confession: None of this would have happened if TBR's bookish co-founder had stuck around. We would have limped on as the best interactive book site ever --- but because that's really not enough, we would have folded long ago.

It's Carol who saw the need to get in business with writers, publishers, and agents.

It's Carol who stayed up nights to write the most important prose of all --- the business plan.

It's Carol who then spent early mornings and weekends devouring books --- because, in addition to running the business, she was now the editor as well.

I remember --- and these are the most cherished memories of my working life --- every single person who cast his or her lot with us. And I remember the endless good times --- because, in an enterprise as blessed as TBR, even the bad times are good. But when I think of TBR at the astonishing age of 5, I've got to think most about Carol Fitzgerald, who is both the keeper of the flame and the architect of the future.

It's said that the smooth functioning of the world depends on the efforts of about a dozen people, all unseen and unknown.

Well, not here.

TBR has a new generation of talented people manning the computers, but in the end, it exists and grows largely because of Carol.

When it comes time to blow out the candles, she's the one who should step forward.

--- Jesse Kornbluth, co-founder of The Book Report Network and Former Editor (August 1996-May 1997)

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