Jason Epstein

Who is Jason Epstein?

Jason Epstein is an American editor and publisher.

Born into a Jewish-American family, Epstein was a 1949 graduate of Columbia College of Columbia University. He married Barbara Zimmerman in 1953 and their marriage lasted 37 years.

Jason Epstein was hired by Random House, where he was the editorial director for forty years. He was responsible for the Vintage paperbacks, which published such authors as Norman Mailer, Vladimir Nabokov, Gore Vidal, and Philip Roth. In 1952, while an editor at Doubleday, he created the Anchor Books imprint. This was the first of the trade paperback formats, a format which has consistently remained profitable and popular since that time.

During the New York City newspaper strike in 1963, Barbara and Jason Epstein co-founded The New York Review of Books, with Elizabeth Hardwick and Robert Lowell.

He wrote a book entitled Book Business: Publishing Past, Present, and Future. In 1979, he and his brother Zach Epstein were co-founders of the Library of America which was intended to market archival quality editions of American classic literature. The first volumes were published in 1982, and the company now prints about 250,000 volumes per year.