History
In 1980, Beaufort Books entered the publishing world as the US branch of a well-known Canadian publishing company. The company’s earliest list focused on fiction and children’s books.
Coincidentally, after leaving his position at Simon & Schuster, Eric Kampmann affiliated with Delilah Communications in 1981 with the understanding that Eric would become a partner. However, after working with Delilah for approximately 4 months, Eric decided to start his own sales and distribution company, Kampmann & Company. He set out in the fall of 1981 to find publishing prospects for distribution. Soon, Eric met with the founders of Beaufort Books at their New York City office, and a few hours later, he left the office, located at 9 E 40th St, as Beaufort’s newest sales consultant.
With Eric’s consulting help, Beaufort’s list of titles began to grow significantly. In 1983, following this early success, Beaufort Books moved from Scribner Publishing Company to Kampmann & Company, becoming Kampmann’s largest distribution client. By 1984, the Canadian owners of Beaufort approached Eric with a proposal to buy the company, a proposition to which he agreed to.
Throughout the next several years, under Eric’s direction, Beaufort published numerous bestsellers, including Michael Jackson: Body and Soul, an illustrated biography of the late artist’s unforgettable career; Home Before Morning, a Book of the Month pick that became known as the first memoir written by a military nurse who served in Vietnam; and I Shall Live, Henry Orenstein’s harrowing and poignant account of surviving and escaping a concentration camp in Hitler’s Germany. It was this book that would define and inspire Beaufort’s current objective of publishing well-written, moving stories that encapsulate the human experience.
Like many companies, however, Beaufort’s history had its ups and downs, and in 1988, Beaufort discontinued its active frontlist publishing program. In 1996, Kampmann & Co. became known as Midpoint Book Sales and Distribution, and Eric soon realized the company needed a publishing arm to help self-published authors reach more readers. This led to the reopening of Beaufort Books and the subsequent publication of numerous fiction and non-fiction titles.
Most notable of Beaufort’s direction was the publication of If I Did It by the Goldman family, a book that seemingly changed the modern-day face of Beaufort Books. In 2007, more than a decade after the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, O.J. Simpson signed a million-dollar book deal with a large publishing house to publish a faux autobiography about the murders, called If I Did It. After widespread public outrage over the book, the publication was canceled, the contract was returned to Simpson, and the original publisher was left with more than 400,000 copies of the book sitting in its warehouse.
Spotting an opportunity to bring justice to the entire Goldman family, a bankruptcy court awarded the rights to the book to the Goldman family and they began their search for the right publisher to help tell the family’s story. One evening, after a long day at Book Expo, an agent and friend of the Goldman family approached Eric with one of the biggest opportunities of his career: to publish the infamous memoir If I Did It, with new material from the Goldman family included to bring some level of justice to the father and sister of Ron Goldman. Two months later, a contract was agreed to and the new hardcover book was published in early September 2007. Not only did the book reach #2 on the New York Times nonfiction hardcover bestseller lists, but the cover became known as one of the most iconic covers in book publishing history. To date, the book has sold more than 350,000 copies and continues to be one of Beaufort’s top-selling titles year after year.
Since its founding more than 40 years ago, Beaufort has transitioned from a new independent publisher to one whose high-quality staff, first-class packaging, professional distribution, and close working relationship with authors allow it to stay competitive in a market dominated by conglomerates. Today, Beaufort publishes approximately 15-20 new titles each year and continues its mission of publishing well-written stories.