SFScope friend Andrew Porter writes:
“Publisher-agent who championed Stephen King dies”
Elaine Koster, a publisher and literary agent with a knack for new talent who gave a second chance to an obscure horror writer named Stephen King, died August 10th at age 69 at St. Luke’s Hospital in New York. The cause of death was not immediately available.
As publisher at NAL in the 1970s, Koster paid a then-enormous $400,000 for the paperback rights to King’s Carrie, which had sold poorly in hardcover (King was working as a part-time teacher at the time). She was also overseer on the NAL SF list, which was run by a variety of editors. There are a number of stories about her, not all of them good, so I won’t reprise any.
Born Elaine Landis in 1940, she grew up in Manhattan and graduated from Barnard College in 1962. Besides working at New American Library, she was president and publisher Dutton and worked with literary and commercial authors, including Joyce Carol Oates, Toni Morrison, and Peter Straub.
“Her ability to recognize well-written commercial fiction… as well as important literary fiction, was unparalleled,” King said in a statement. “She may have been the key figure in the ascendance of the paperback in the marketplace during the 1970s and 1980s.”
In 1998, she started the Elaine Koster Literary Agency. She is survived by her husband, Bill Koster, and daughter Elizabeth.