* Now hear this: Gary Mitchem at the SABR convention

Enjoyed many an interesting conversation at the recent SABR get-together in Washington, DC. Spent a lot of down time in the vendors room where publishers hosted some of their authors.

The first interview is with Gary Mitchem, acquisitions editor for McFarland, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this year. Mitchem discovered the processes he goes through in selecting and working on the myriad baseball titles his company publishes. While the company is not exclusively baseball-oriented, it does account for about half of its annual titles. He suggested that as much as 70 percent of their manuscripts come from SABR members, not all of whom, he admits, are polished writers. But that’s one the the favorites parts of his job: Some of the books need a lot of development, he said, which he enjoys providing, although with so many new titles coming in each year, the time and energy devoted becomes more of an issue.

We discussed the bugaboo of factual and statistical errors popping up in McFarland books. Some titles from mainstream publishers hit the bookstores with major mistakes, such as attributing a quote at an event to a ballplayer that had been dead for more than a decade. With so many readers who are so invested in the national pastime, McFarland couldn’t get away with such goofs. Mitchem was sensitive to the need to turn out a product that is as accurate as possible but admitted that it’s hard to find copy editors who are well-versed in both baseball and language issues.

The McFarland tables were piled high with all sorts of baseball books, ranging from statsitical analyses to team- or event-driven titles. Mitchem was proud that McFarland has done some its best work in 19th-century and deadball era topics. “Most of the trade publishers won’t touch it,” he said. In addition to the books, they publishe Base Ball: A Journal of the Early Game, a semi-annual peer-reviewed journal, as well as Black Ball: A Negro Leagues Journal.

Economics have not caught up to McFarland, Mitchem said, since a good portion of the sales go to libraries, whose budgets were set last year. It may be that the Jefferson, NC-based company takes a bit of a hit in 2010.