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Those
who follow publishing news are a sad, angry, pathetic lot.
I know! I'm one of them! We splatter our computer screens
with spat-out coffee upon reading of multimillion dollar advances
for celebrity memoirs; we seethe when we see our backstabbing
former co-workers slowly climbing up the greased pole; we
mourn when literary houses lay off staff, even if we secretly
hated and envied those same people previously.
Lately,
the news has been more of the latter; just about every major
house has had layoffs, and literary publishing has been hit
particularly hard. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt—publisher
of Jonathan Safran Foer, Phillip Roth, and others—has
called a freeze on purchasing new books. Random House Publishing
Group has folded the Doubleday and Bantam Dell imprints, moving
authors like Chuck Palahniuk and Jonathan Lethem to other
imprints; they also dismissed Pantheon publisher Janice Goldklang
after 25 years with the company. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux
(publisher of authors such as Roberto Bolaño and Donald
Barthelme) has slashed staff, with some duties being taken
over by their coworkers in educational publishing.
 At
this rate, all that will be left are political memoirs, books
about pets, books by James Patterson, and political memoirs
of James Patterson's pets. What's a fan of good books to do?
Why, I must save publishing!
Maybe
I should buy more books. But how to find out about the new
difficult literary fiction that I adore? I could actively
seek out the sorts of books I like. It's not enough just to
go to the bookstore anymore. The independent bookstores I
frequent mostly stock the books they think they can sell,
which means either books well-reviewed by Michiko Kakutani
(any female immigrant's story that centers on small family
drama and has some vaguely Eastern gold pattern on the cover)
or the books that publishers put big money behind. And the
only books the publishers put big money behind are the books
with the big advances. Who gets the big advances? Celebrities,
usually, who really don't need the money. It's like one of
those things, you know, that goes around and around in a cruel
and spiteful manner.
I could
obsessively check publishers' websites and read book descriptions,
follow every publisher's Twitter feed, and then go to my indie
store and ask them to order me a copy so that they can get
the benefit of the $4 they make on a book sale while they
derisively snicker. But of course, I'm not going to do this.
Even someone who is in the loop can't find all the good books,
and why would I spend the bus fare to order a book when I
could get it online cheaper? I could just then send the money
I saved as a donation to the snickerers, which they would
then immediately spend on an espresso and a fancy cookie from
the coffee truck.
I certainly
can't blame my friends at the indie book stores for these
things. Well, maybe I can blame them for their bad attitude,
but without that, those stores would be charmless. But it
does confuse me that publishers have not yet figured out a
way to get interesting books (which they do occasionally publish!
We review a lot of them here!) in front of the proper audience.
Publishing
today tends to buy big and push books that will appeal to
the masses. And that has worked in the past ten or so years,
when the masses had expendable income. As the economy continues
to deteriorate, people will spend less on books about library
cats. Priorities will shift. People who loved to read will
continue to read, but they may get their books from libraries
(the ones with cats, I hope). People who love to read books
by celebrities will probably content themselves with watching
TMZ.
But I'm
kinda thinking that major publishing, the way it operates
now, barely deserves to be saved. The stories I've heard about
giant advances to books that barely sold 3,000 copies would
make you puke. Young publicists and editors who labor in publishing
for low salaries (they're low for college educated peeps—in
New York City, editorial assistants start at around $28,000,
which works out to about $11 an hour) quickly have their enthusiasm
beaten down by CEOs and faceless corporate whores who are
all about the bottom line. Many of the really good books—the
books we love as opposed to the books regular people love—have
no place anymore at the major publishers. Occasionally, one
slips through, especially at houses like FSG and HMH, but
their money people are trying to make sure that never happens.
 One
thing publishing companies can do right off the bat is to
limit the huge advances they pay to celebrity authors. All
it would take would be one success story of a smallish advance
with good royalty payouts to convince just about everyone
that this is the way to go. Celebrity authors would feel motivated
to write the best book they could in order to get cash and
accolades. Readers would get better books to read, and publishing
houses would only be paying for what was selling. Everyone
wins!
And what
about buying books that editors actually love and believe
in? I have witnessed this at a few big publishing companies.
I remember my friend's excitement when Michael Pietsch bought
Joshua Ferris's Then We Came to the End for Little,
Brown. She told me that Pietsch was practically giddy, telling
people about this great new manuscript and how the title was
the first line from Don DeLillo's classic Americana.
When an editor is that excited about a book, it spreads to
everyone involved, including the readers.
Of course,
paying smaller advances and publishing books that editors
think are great are two of the things the more successful
indie publishers do. I'll be looking at how indie presses
operate in next month's column.
Publishing
can serve everyone's needs, not just the needs of hungry corporations,
and it could easily put good literature and quality nonfiction
into the hands of everyone interested if they want to do so.
What has happened is that big corporate publishing has decided
their business is more about commerce than about art. Until
they break out of their 1980s Greed Is Good mindset,
I say let them flounder.
(February,
2009)
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