I
recently came across a 1982 edition of Books:
The Culture and Commerce of Publishing by Lewis A. Coger, Charles
Kadushin, and Walter W. Powell. It poses
a key question:
“In
an industry perilously poised between the world of culture and the demands of
commerce, who decides what America reads?
The
book crafted 35 years ago, was based on extensive field research in a variety
of houses and on hundreds of interviews with editors, publishers, authors,
agents, marketing and sales staffs, booksellers, and book reviewers. But it
still has relevance today, despite the changes since its publication, including
the launch of Amazon, the advent of ebooks, the decline of book chains,
self-publishing’s rise, and the expansion of global markets.
The
book’s jacket claims it is “required reading for everyone interested in the
book industry.” It presents the big
picture of the book world and analyzes the effects of publishing mergers of the
day. Of course, many more mergers have
come since then. Even in 1982, it was
concluded that the book industry was beginning too much of a business and not
the practice of an art. The flap copy
states: “Though a historical review
suggests that publishers have always cared about the bottom line, the
difference today is that editors no longer make all the key decisions.”
The
book examines:
·
The
commercialization of literature
·
A
paperback revolution
·
How
large companies exercise ownership
·
Profiles
on the people who make books
·
Women
in book publishing
·
Author-editor
relations
·
The
making of book-blockbusters
·
The
risk of literary agents
·
Chains
of distribution
·
What
book reviewers do
Back
in the early 1980’s some 40,000 new books were produced in America through
traditional publishers. Back then a handful of book publishers wielded immense
power as the gatekeepers and guardians of truth. This book set out to identify and analyze the
people and forces involved in the greenlighting, production, and sales of
books.
The
authors note that starting in the 1960’s, publishing moved from being a cottage
industry to one where small presses got swallowed by large corporations, some
of which are traded on the stock market.
It poses a powerful question:
“What impact does market concentration – that is, an industry in which a
handful of firms dominate its products and sales – have on culture?”
Bigger
companies tend to take fewer risks. They
also can exert power over their suppliers, in this case, authors. “Clearly, the authors fear, “concentration
could have a deleterious effect on the quality and the diversity of published
books.”
They
say book publishing was changing at the time, due to societal trends, including
a growth in real literacy as a result of an expanded education system and a big
increase in the number of college graduates.
The
authors note book publishing is a comparatively small industry. With sales of around $7 billion in 1980, the
entire industry would have ranked 46th on the Fortune 500 list if it
were a single company. It was also a
concentrated industry. In 1975, 45% of
all publishing houses in the U.S. resided in the New York metropolitan area,
publishing over 60% of the books released that year.
The
time of this book is interesting. Back
in 1982 there were 450,000 books in print.
Traditional publishers are close to putting that many out in a single
year. Amazon sells over 11 million
titles. Back then, B. Dalton with 526
stores in 1980 and Walden Books had 704 stores and together they had revenues
of more than half a billion dollars.
Where are they now?
Rather
than deride the publishers as gatekeepers that conspire to keep out certain
ideas or books, the authors suggested the floodgates were open and too many
books have saturated the market. They
suggested a reduction in the titles published would help the newly worthwhile
ones to sell.
“Publishing
houses,” write the authors, “are indispensable intermediary points in the
diffusion of ideas.” They lamented the
disconnect between what reviewers choose to review and of what consumers choose
to buy. They note: “Many trade books, even highly successful
best-sellers, may nowadays not be reviewed by the major review media.” They also concluded this:
“The
review media continue for the most part, to refuse to review original paperback
books. Thus, not only does a great deal
of trash never get reviewed, at all, but also hardcover publishing is
sustained, since a book with any serious pretensions must first appear in a
hardcover edition if it is to get review attention.”
The
book makes some excellent observations for publishing back then – as well as
historically. It even printed out that
book mergers have been present way back when.
From 1885 to 1890, a number of publishers merged. In fact, one firm, the American Book Company
became so big that it controlled 93% of the country’s entire textbook industry.
I
leave you with a few choice excerpts from this well-written and
well-intentioned look at book publishing:
1.
“The
myth is widespread that book publishing in the nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries was a gentlemanly trade in which an editor catered to an author’s
every whim, whereas commercialism and hucksterism have taken over in our day."
2.
“However,
book publishing in the past as in the present has operated under the pressures
of the marketplace, the countinghouse, and the literary and intellectual
currents of the day. The quest for
profit and the demands of excellence have all too often refused to go hand in
hand. One should not be surprised that
these same tensions, albeit in somewhat different form, are still here today."
3.
“The
tension between commerce and culture, one of the themes of this study, has been
shown to be a constant in American publishing, at least since the beginning of
the last century. Thus criticism of over
commercialization has been common at almost every phase of the book industry’s
history."
4. "Historically,
book publishing has been a competitive industry primarily because of the low capital
entry costs. These same low entry costs
have made publishing susceptible to mergers because of the many
undercapitalized small firms.
"Additionally, the easy availability of a host of intermediary and ancillary services that can be contracted for as needed makes it easier to establish new publishing houses compared with industries where economies of scale are more important. Thus, low capital entry costs and free-lance services, along with the availability of books of all types worthy of publication, have historically mitigated trends toward oligopoly.
"Additionally, the easy availability of a host of intermediary and ancillary services that can be contracted for as needed makes it easier to establish new publishing houses compared with industries where economies of scale are more important. Thus, low capital entry costs and free-lance services, along with the availability of books of all types worthy of publication, have historically mitigated trends toward oligopoly.
5. "Until
the rise of the mass market for books in the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries, book publishing was a simple cottage industry. An author would approach a
bookseller-printer-these two roles were not yet differentiated – and contract
for the printing and selling of his book.
Frequently the costs were borne, wholly or in part, by a patron of the
author, who thus ensured that the book would reach its intended audience among
the cultural and social elite of the day.
"Conditions changed drastically in the
latter apart of the eighteenth century and after. Rising literacy widened the reading public
and hence enlarged the market for books.
With the social ascent of the middle class came the emergence of a new
stratum of people with enough leisure and education to develop a taste for
reading books. Up until the eighteenth
century the middle classes, if they read at all, read mainly religious tracts
and political broadsheets. Only in the eighteenth
century did they broaden their concerns and evince wider interest in other
types of literature. Furthermore, while
in preceding centuries the audience for books was almost exclusively male, in
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries women became major consumers of
books. This change must, in turn, be
accounted for by a marked change in the role of middle-class women who, at that
time, gained leisure as they were relieved of the habitual drudgery of
household routines.
6. " With
all these horrors stories, one may wonder whether publishing houses are so rife
with incompetence that their future is doomed.
If authors must in any case promote their books themselves, perhaps they
should bypass publishers altogether and publish their own books? If the past is any guide to the future,
self-publication is likely to continue to be rare. The problems that writers have with
publishers date back at least to the eighteenth century, and are built into the
very nature of writing and book publishing, and will therefore continue. Writing is a solitary act, and authors are
not necessarily entrepreneurs or outgoing salespersons able to market their own
work. As solitary workers, authors also
may not possess the kind of organizational wisdom to enable them to understand
and work with the modern publishing house has become. On their side, publishers are in the business
of organizing and producing the works of many idiosyncratic, even recalcitrant
individuals. It is inevitable that the
mesh between author and publisher will be less than perfect, and that many
authors will get lost in the shuffle.
The ultimate inequality between authors and publishers is that the latter
face all these problems as part of their daily routine and are therefore fully
aware of them; publisher-author relations are, however, but a small part of an
author’s life.
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