Three industry leaders worry that publishing--swept up in a hunt for big books and megabucks--is trading its soul for profits. : Warning: Danger Ahead

It’s a familiar story in the book business: The old giants of publishing disappear, and a skittish economy shrinks the profits of once-robust companies. As the world of letters becomes more corporate, critics complain that publishing has lost its soul.

That was the view in 1920, and it turned out to be a false alarm. American literature was about to enter its golden era, with Hemingway, Wolfe and Fitzgerald on the horizon. But critics are saying the same things in 1992--and this time, the storm warnings may be real.

“I fear for the heart and soul of publishing in this country, like I fear for any American institution,” says novelist Norman Mailer. “People have always said these things about publishing, yet I’m concerned. Does this industry have a conscience anymore?”

Maybe not, but it sure knows how to party. Over the next few days, the American Booksellers Assn. (ABA) will gather in California at the Anaheim Convention Center for its annual meeting, and while clear answers about the state of American books may be hard to come by, there will be no shortage of celebrities, panel discussions and dinners to fill up the hours.

The convention, which runs through Tuesday, is expected to attract more than 26,000 people and is the largest gathering of publishing mavens in the English-speaking world. It’s a time for book-biz heavies to ponder new directions for an industry that is bigger than ever but seems rudderless in the ‘90s.

On the surface, not all the news is bad. Publishing made $8 billion last year, and sales increased 63% from 1982 to 1987. More Americans than ever are buying books, and the number of chain bookstores is growing.

Yet there are danger signs: The industry seems to be reeling from the go-go ‘80s, when a new breed of corporate managers took control. Once a tweedy haven for men and women of letters, publishing has become a noisy casino of chance, glamour and high-risk investment.

Swept up in a hunt for big books and megabucks, large companies gobbled up book firms in the last 10 years and have run them like factories, with an apparently diminished concern for the written word. While mass-market authors like Robert Ludlum, Judith Krantz, Tom Clancy and Danielle Steel sell millions of books in the malls, works by gifted but lesser-known writers of fiction and nonfiction are often hard to find.

In addition, there are concerns that U.S. reading habits have been eroded by competing media. A 1991 ABA survey showed that 60% of Americans bought no books at all the previous year. And the evidence of declining literacy causes some publishers to worry.

For some movers and shakers, however, the industry has never seemed healthier. After years of inefficiencies, they say, publishing is finally learning how to live within its means. They don’t believe the book world has lost its sense of purpose, and suggest that the only people wringing their hands over the latest bestseller list are snobs.

To explore these issues, The Times asked three prominent members of the industry to speculate on the state of American publishing. Although publisher Joni Evans, literary agent Andrew Wylie and author Robert Stone see the world from different vantage points, they all raise troubling questions about the future of quality writing and the American reader.

Joni Evans is a survivor.

As she chats on the phone with authors in the offices of Turtle Bay Books, the publisher waves a visitor in and shows off her latest empire. It’s a beautiful brownstone on Manhattan’s East Side, and the four-story building houses a book division that is all her own.

Once, Evans was a powerful editor and publisher at Simon & Schuster. She signed up authors like Mario Puzo, Helen Gurley Brown and Jeffrey Archer and was a rising star in the sprawling company. But she was also married to Dick Snyder, the firm’s top officer, and when their marriage broke up in 1987, Evans moved across town to the top job at Random House.

The same tabloid gossip that dogged her when the marriage ended plagued Evans two years ago, when Random House announced that she was stepping down from her prestigious post to launch Turtle Bay, a smaller, in-house publishing venture. At the time, Evans said she sought the change, and she reiterates that message today. Bright, tough and outspoken, she’s happy with her new digs but less than pleased with some trends in the industry.

Although some say mega-corporate ownership has transformed publishing, Evans suggests the real catalyst for change is the computerized system of book distribution. These days, titles are shipped on a moment’s notice, and 57,000 new books flood stores each year. Most stores are hard-pressed to market so many titles, and a work that shows literary promise but uncertain commercial potential can easily get lost.

“Once upon a time, there was an indulgence in lovely writing that was good for its own sake and would sell 7,000, 8,000 copies, or maybe just 3,000, 4,000 copies,” Evans says. “But now you self-censor a little bit more than you would have before. Wonderful writing isn’t enough anymore. For today’s bookstore, it has to be wonderful writing that will definitely sell.”

Troubling changes also have occurred within publishing houses, she says. Once, authors were loyal to a company for years. Editors spent months working on manuscripts, and executives stuck with writers through good and bad times.

Now, it’s everybody for themselves, says Evans. Authors are mainly interested in the best financial deal they can get, and editors spend less time editing, shouldering more responsibility for publicity and marketing. Meanwhile, publishers grow impatient with unsuccessful authors and frequently cut them loose if sales do not measure up.

“The nuclear family of publishing has broken down,” says Evans. “If you’re looking for one dramatic and unfortunate change, there you have it.”

But the worst trend she sees has nothing to do with business: For whatever reasons, there is a disturbing absence of great fiction, a lack of writers who inspire entire generations.

“We don’t have great fiction to read, and I don’t think people are writing it,” says Evans. “People don’t come home anymore and say, ‘Wow, you have to read this.’ Not the way we used to, when there was a book by J.D. Salinger or even Philip Roth.

“In the ‘60s or ‘70s, a novel could change your life. But fearlessness seems to be asleep these days. Writers used to take us through great changes in our lives, but somehow Danielle Steel’s not doing that for us.”

Evans seems subdued, but then her mood brightens.

“I don’t mean to sound so negative, and I don’t think anything sinister is going on. I think publishing will survive. But it’s just not as much fun anymore. It’s not as honest.”

When publishing executives complain about skyrocketing costs and search for scapegoats, it’s easy to blame the literary agent. Who, after all, is more responsible for the stunning rise in six- and seven-figure advances than the hired gun who negotiates for an author?

In the pantheon of New York agents, none is more controversial--or effective--than Andrew Wylie. An impeccably attired man whose clients include Salman Rushdie, he triggered shock waves several years ago by spiriting Philip Roth away from his longtime publisher and winning him a $1.3-million contract at Simon & Schuster.

It was a blunt sign of the times, and Wylie remains unapologetic about the new realities governing the book world. He looks with suspicion on the state of the industry.

“The trend has been toward a more conservative and mainstream approach, and that’s made things a little duller,” Wylie says in his midtown Manhattan office. “Publishers are inclined to play it safe, and so they want to buy what sells. They want to buy a little more of what they’ve done before, and so anything that comes through that’s new, especially if it comes from a younger writer, is probably in a bit of trouble and danger.”

A key problem, he suggests, is that publishers almost guarantee a book will become a bestseller when they fork over millions of dollars to buy and promote it. They set off a chain reaction that ensures most bookstores will be top-heavy with glitzy titles, leaving customers to roam through independent stores for quality fiction or classics.

“If you pay $1 million for a new book, then you print 300,000 copies. If you print 300,000 copies, your sales force better place them in the stores, and so it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy,” Wylie says. “America doesn’t read Danielle Steel because it wants to. America reads Danielle Steel because it has to. You go into a store, and there are all these green books.”

Wylie suggests that many titles on bestseller lists seem more like literary versions of prime-time television than original fiction. But he refuses to blame the public, suggesting instead that financial pressures driving chain bookstores give customers little choice. Although it’s heartening to see people buying books who did not have access to bookstores before, Wylie says, the boom in pulp fiction can be a blessing and a curse.

“I don’t think it’s fair to accuse Americans of being relentlessly stupid, but I think you can accuse them of not having very much time,” he notes.

“They go into a store as deeply as they need to, which is usually the first row. And what’s there? The books that publishers paid the most money for recently. Hence, the success of the chain; hence, the bestseller list--and hence, the stupidity of high school students.”

Better that publishers think of long-term values, he says. In the 1920s, Scribner’s Books made a fortune by investing in writers like Fitzgerald and Hemingway. Years later, those works continue to sell and make vast sums of money for those who own the copyrights.

“You can’t say the same thing about publishers today,” Wylie adds. “I don’t think the worth of a publisher will be enhanced in the year 2020 because it published ‘Scruples’ by Judith Krantz. What we need in publishing is a different definition of value.”

For a writer whose books have been critically praised but pigeonholed as “marginal fiction” by publishing executives, Robert Stone is a happy man these days. His latest novel, “Outerbridge Reach” (Ticknor & Fields), spent six weeks on the New York Times bestseller lists and looks to be his most commercially successful work.

Reflecting on his good fortune, the author of “Dog Soldiers,” “A Flag for Sunrise” and “A Hall of Mirrors” reclines in a leather chair and looks out at Long Island Sound from his Connecticut waterfront home. His savors a Scotch on the rocks and talks about a sense of vindication, but his mood grows somber when a visitor asks about the future of publishing.

He’s troubled, for example, by declining literacy in America and an apparent erosion of interest by young readers in books. In the 1960s adolescents snapped up copies of “Steppenwolf” by Hermann Hesse or the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien as a badge of cultural identity. But the MTV generation has different priorities.

“There was once a literary culture that really seems to be thinning out, and as it dries up it’s rather difficult to see how the culture that I’ve served all my life, that I grew up with, is going to continue to exist,” he says. “At this point, it still exists and we have young writers coming up. Yet the level of verbal skills in our schools is declining.”

At the risk of sounding elitist, Stone complains that many readers cannot distinguish between mass-market fiction and great writing. When a highly praised American novel is considered successful because it sells 40,000 copies--less than the number of people who attend a professional football game--the written word is in trouble, he says.

“For what I do to have any meaning, there has to be a sensibility that can rejoice in the language . . . there’s got to be a certain sophistication,” Stone contends. “And when I read a really successful writer like Robert Ludlum, I don’t understand how people can read lifeless, colorless, pedestrian language, page after page.”

Stone insists it’s not a matter of sour grapes. Writers like him never expected to make a fortune, but just to survive. Royalty checks are important, he says, yet good reviews--and the sense that his book is being read--matter more.

Publishing has changed dramatically, yet Stone remains optimistic that it will grow. He suggests that first novelists still have an excellent chance of finding their way into print, and he’s encouraged by the crowds who have been attending readings by him and other writers in recent years.

“I’ve been doing readings in bookstores all over the country, and I’ve been looking at the young people, the people just out of college,” Stone says. “They’re crucial to all of this, and as long as you see them coming out for books, I’m not too worried.”