CC’ing Michael Croy

Michael Croy, a sales manager for national accounts at Consortium, talks about his love for Jim Harrison, a memorable Prince concert at BEA, and the best dog ever.

Welcome to Consortium Corner, a Q&A series with staff and reps to celebrate Consortium’s 40 years of independent book distribution.

Tell us a little about yourself and what you do at Consortium.

This is my 12th year at Consortium as a Sales Manager, National Accounts selling, celebrating and merchandising our titles with Amazon and Barnes & Noble. My work involves troubleshooting data and detail page work for Amazon and setting up on-site merchandising. For Barnes & Noble I pitch the buying team monthly collections, keeping up with new category trends and evolving customer base is a key part of the role that I love. I really enjoy our seasonal group presentations highlighting new and emerging voices from our client publishers.

Outside of Consortium I enjoy the rich selection of live music, theatre and museums we have in Minneapolis. I often go to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in the summer and fall to portage, camp, hike and fish. I love to cook and am always on the lookout for a new recipe to try. When not doing those things I without fail will brag about my adult kids or be found walking the world’s best dog Cooper and reading. Always reading. [Editor’s note: Cooper is indeed the best dog ever.]

What are 5 Consortium titles you love and why?

All of Martin Suter’s books with New Vessel Press
Suter’s Allmen series of novels about a gentleman thief provides great plots, a hilarious Guatemalan butler and keenly observed social mores. Outside of the Allmen series his book The Last Weynfeldt is a smart and sophisticated art history mystery and one of my favorites of that genre. Obsessed with Suter I’ve ordered from the UK copies of Elefant, A Deal With the Devil, The Chef and Montecristo, and found each to be a gem.

The Bear by Andrew Krivak (Bellevue Literary Press)
Eco-fiction that is smart, philosophical and heartfelt. Amazing immersive reading experience.

Tell Me How It Ends by Valeria Luiselli (Coffee House Press)
A compassionate, clear-eyed and sobering essay covering child refugee immigration in-take form responses. Heartbreaking and important documentation that lays bare the many failures of American immigration policy.

Ashimpa: The Mysterious Word by Catarina Sobral, trans. Juliana Barbassa (Transit Children’s Editions)
Ashimpa is a word that takes on a life of its own when people in the town try to adapt Ashimpa into nouns, verbs, adverbs, everyone has an opinion! Absurd, funny and a sneaky way to get kids to learn grammar. A riot of colors and perfect swirl of words. Fun and funny.

Jim Harrison: The Essential Poems edited by Joseph Bednarik (Copper Canyon Press)
All of Harrison’s poetry really, but this Essential edition was quite a feat for Joseph Bednarik his long-time editor of poetry. How does one distill over 1,000 poems, from 14 – 15 different volumes published over a lifetime? No one would be equal to the task but Bednarik who managed to corral Harrison’s poems so intimately. Harrison’s poetry covers the outdoors, wild life, food, humor and women with lust, awe and appreciation.

Outside of Consortium titles, what books have you enjoyed recently?

I tell everyone willing to listen to read this book: When All is Said by Anne Griffin. Debut book. Classic Irish storytelling gem. An elderly man in a bar raises a toast to 5 different people who meant the most to him. Along the way you get the map of a man over a lifetime. Eloquent and elegiac.

Also Henning Mankell’s After The Fire, an exceptionally crafted mystery that’s character driven and a lesson in mortality. Beautifully written.

Can you share any special or formative experiences you’ve had with bookstores and libraries?

I attended BEA in Los Angeles (2008) when I was working at Simon & Schuster as a retail field sales director when I received an invitation to Prince’s house in the Hollywood Hills for a private (150 person) concert to celebrate 21 Nights, a photography book celebrating his London O2 concert residency. Prince went on stage at 2:30 a.m. I made it back to my hotel at 7:00 a.m. and had meetings on the BEA floor at 8:30.

In your time at Consortium, what memorable or meaningful moments stand out?

Working with Joseph Bednarik on Jim Harrison’s poetry collections. As a collector long before I started to work at Consortium being able to work with Copper Canyon directly advocating for formats, collection ideas and covers was a dream realized.

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