Is Publishing Dead?

The problems we face in the publishing industry aren’t new, though they are exacerbated by the way they are now converging. To understand where we have arrived, we have to go back more than 30 years, to the time when large corporations unconnected to publishing began to buy up established firms. With an influx of cash, New York publishers expanded, moving into expensive “uptown” rental space and, in passing, learning the corporate approach to the expense account. Overheads began to far outstrip profit margins, and the new owners discovered they might have better put their money into savings accounts. Curiously, it took them far longer than expected to move in on these balance sheets. But move they did, and by the 1970s, publishers soon found that the bottom line was not some hypothetical notion requiring only lip service.

It should have come as no surprise. Most of their new owners were, after all, publicly held corporations. But what may surprise some is that the immediate impact of the bottom line was not some ruthless hacking away at literature. The truly important effect was that this was the moment when management ceased to be drawn from editorial or even marketing ranks and publishing houses began to be headed by MBAs, men with little or no connection to, or knowledge of, the product or the customer, and when middle management ceased to be a bookkeeper and a contracts manager and became bloated with hundreds of financial officers all dutifully engaged in doing the numbers, their very existence on the payroll producing more overheads publishing could ill afford. But neither could publishing any longer ignore the imperatives of modern management.

Problems, then, of management, leadership and finance have been with us for quite a while, though perhaps not as prominently as today.

The solutions to these problems became problems in themselves. As balance sheets bled into red, more oversight managers were hired, thereby distancing management all the more from the “product” (books), the “producers” (writers) and the “market” (readers). “Funny” accounting practices (endemic to large corporations in America) were put in place: here, loss was gain, debts were assets and one runaway bestseller could bail out a fiscal year and even put bonuses in the pockets of management. Best-selling authors went from being writers a publisher had developed over the years to established writers who could simply be bought, given enough money, and by the ‘80s, checkbook publishing was a given. It ruined a lot of reputations as publishers pushed too many books into the stores in order to justify out-sized advances, then took astronomical returns. Mostly, the author paid the price when he was next shopped around by his agent. Damaged goods. Enter the celebrity book. Can’t be damaged--it is usually only a one-shot. If it bombs, only the publisher suffers, but put enough out there and there were bound to be major successes. And with celebrity books, there are so many interconnected media reasons why it will very possibly hit that it seems to be market-tested, something those MBA managers understand. (Many a hit never earns out its spectacular advance; but then again, enter funny accounting and the land of the write-off.)

Meanwhile, publishers, already walking a fine line between profit and loss, were sandbagged by their large accounts--chain stores and wholesalers--into offering deeper discounts, more promotional money, more ad money. Of course, in some ways they’d left themselves open to this when, back in the ‘60s, they’d agreed to offer higher discounts on larger orders even if those orders were for multiple titles (the deeper discount had originally been justified on the grounds of getting more of each title into the stores, but as the system worked, large accounts merely combined their orders, taking just what they’d always taken of the smaller titles). Small bookstores couldn’t meet the numbers even in a combined order. Since their large competitors used the higher discounts to cut list prices, the process put many small bookstores out of business. You might say publishers were unwitting accomplices in undermining an important part of their sales and distribution system, which left them even more vulnerable to the demands of the large operators. (Other factors aided the demise of the small bookstore, of course, including the death of the downtowns in major cities, with its concomitant loss of foot traffic--book buyers were until then usually browsers, not people who jumped into a car, drove to the suburban mall and bought an armload of titles.) One surprise of adversity: The small stores, now calling themselves “independents,” came back stronger and smarter than before. They invented the author reading circuit, they set up the first readers’ groups, they came up with off-site multi-sponsored book events, customer newsletters, and discount club memberships and a whole host of innovative programs that reached out to readers and to their communities, keeping alive the idea of the book as a creative, integrative force.

These independents (and to a lesser degree, the chains) now see themselves threatened by the Internet. Whether they are, in fact, is still an open question. Internet sales are especially appealing to buyers who are seeking hard-to-find titles--say, books published several seasons back and no longer stocked by bookstores or titles from university and small press lists--and to those who live in areas remote from good bookstores, and the Internet provides a serious service in these cases. For the consumer, there is also the savings to be had from not having to pay a sales tax--something I consider reprehensible, since it penalizes bricks-and-mortar stores, which not only do have to collect such taxes from their customers but which also pay local property taxes (in terms of social policy, it’s also a penalty to the localities that forfeit these monies). But other than the tax savings, the Internet customer is getting minimal discounts on purchases and the shipping charges--always where the old-fashioned book clubs made their money--are steep for small orders.

For some buyers, it may be fun to use a machine to place an order. Some may find bookstores intimidating. Some may even find the mini-reviews and cross-referencing useful. But I’m not sure the Internet has ever “sold” a book to a customer. There is something visceral about the book, about browsing shelves, picking up books, scanning pages--perhaps even talking to a shop attendant--that makes a book purchase an act of play, makes it deeply satisfying intellectually and aesthetically. Ordering on the Internet has always struck me (save in the two exceptions noted above) as a very solitary and functional act. One needs eggs, one buys eggs. No surprises. Not much to think about. I like buying eggs, but as long as they are in plentiful supply, I don’t think it’s an exciting purchase. I don’t feel that odd happiness that comes when I pick out something that looks as if it will be an indulgent treat. So I think stores--chains and independents--will be around a lot longer than the new-technology boosters and the doomsayers would have us believe.

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As an electronic idiot, I can’t really speak to the new technologies in any detail. But I don’t think they will necessarily eliminate publishers--after all, who is to say the publisher won’t be controlling the electronic technology that produces a book on demand? If anything, isn’t it, in our futuristic fantasy, possible that the publishers will eliminate all of the middlemen, including chains, indies and Internet operators? Surely they would already control one key aspect--the product--and how difficult would it be for them to set up their own means of production (and distribution)? Of course, there are those--Dave Eggers among them--who have suggested that the author might well control the whole process, eliminating yet another middleman, the publisher. It’s a delightfully radical idea, but I have some problems with it. On just the practical level, even doing one’s own publishing requires some professional services, most especially marketing. At a minimum, the writer would need the help of a publicist to get the word out to the media, get books to reviewers, coordinate advertising and promotion (if there are also to be store sales) and publicity. Then there is the matter of supplies--and of warehousing them. Buying paper on a per-title basis is enormously counterproductive. But how will our writers warehouse paper supplies? By forming a commune of writers, most likely. Which is surely the rough kernel of a publishing company. Of course, if the idea is that the buyer simply downloads and prints the book himself, paper isn’t a problem for our writer. But aesthetics are. I don’t know of many writers who, on getting the first copy of their new work, don’t pull off the dust jacket to check the binding, flip the pages to see the design in bound form and feel the paper. (Once upon a time when we used letterpress and ink, writers would smell that first copy.)

And there is one other practical problem. Who is to furnish the advance that allows the writer the time to write if there are no longer publishers? Presumably, patrons of the arts: But if conglomerates are accused of killing off unprofitable books, what controls would writers have over independent (and often ignorant) private donors? Perhaps banks would pick up the tab--at extortionate interest rates, I’d hazard to guess. After all, what could be a riskier investment than subsidizing an unwritten novel?

The practical problems pale when put beside a more serious question: Can we live with a plethora of self-selected, self-published books? It’s hard enough today to decide what to buy and what to read when faced with the already large number of titles that exist, books that presumably have had to go through a rigorous selection process. If there is no such process, if every man is an author, who will tune in, who will hear of or “buy” the product? This is no elitist question. In fact, it is a serious suggestion that self-publishing on demand will leave us in a condition of chaos in which only the already famous are recognized and read, in which where new, obscure, difficult voices exist in cyberspace alone--in short, are to all intents and purposes unknown and unread.

Some of the hoopla surrounding this electronic business is fallout from real malfunctioning in the distribution networks. There is no doubt that publishers and booksellers are to blame for that. But a lot of it may be put down to the United States’ excessive delight in mechanical objects, in “things” as opposed to ideas. The thingness of electronic publishing has captured the imaginations of young and old alike. For some disgruntled writers, it also seems a way of overthrowing the institutions that they believe have kept them from their deserved fame and fortune. (And surely, for some people, it is another way of avoiding actual human contact.) But to assume the electronic age will solve the problems of this industry is to argue from false premises.

But if the new technologies won’t solve the problem, aren’t we stuck with the managers of engorged conglomerates who seek to publish only the obvious (and the only too obvious) at the expense of the innovative, the difficult, the marginal writer? There are such managers; they have been with us for more than 30 years. Going from the corporate to the conglomerate hasn’t changed that (though it has reduced the number of players and that is a serious issue). But I do not see any indication that they have made publishing quality literature impossible or even very difficult. The key word here is quality.

Thirty years ago, as publishers were being bought up by corporations, as management was being transformed from those with hands-on experience with the product to those with MBA degrees from the best business schools, a funny thing happened to writers. Where once most good universities had writers-in-residence (a boon to their incomes if not to their work), over the last decades they shifted (very profitably) to creative writing programs. For these to work, they not only need luminaries teaching the courses, they need success stories. So young people enter these programs prepared to network, to gain the accolades they know they will need to get agents, to get publishers. The manuscripts come in to publishing offices in the hundreds. Some submissions go so far as to include appealing author photos, and almost all come with at least one and usually three endorsements from faculty who know full well that their own success with their programs is in seeing their students get published. What kind of work do these MFA programs produce? Occasionally, some original voices. Too often, tepid prose containing derivative work that is usually autobiographical. The problem is, few of these young writers have had enough life experience to make their autobiographical stories or their visions of the world of much interest. Creative writing programs do not, however, thrive on gently telling their students to go back and try again. Students generally graduate.

In the history of publishing, it was the rare first work of fiction that became a book--not because publishing first novels is hard or unprofitable but because few first fictions are more than teaching tools, steps to the next novel or the next again. They are the way a writer learns his craft. Put another way, first books were often not first novels. That’s no longer the case. It is easier today to publish a first novel than ever before. Armed with the necessary endorsements from their famous writer teachers, these young novelists are gaining lucrative contracts. That’s because they come with no track records: There are no bad reviews, no mediocre sales. They are tabula rasa. It’s also because there have been enough success stories of “literary” first novels becoming commercial blockbusters to make management hungry for more. Many of these books disappear without leaving much more than a remainder sale (if they get that) as a trace, but the fact remains that the doors have never been so open.

The real question is why is it so hard to publish second or third novels, and the answer is obvious. Too little return for too much money on the first: There is no incentive for the publisher to continue the relationship. And every publisher knows what those sales were. It’s all in the computer. Once upon a time, publishers paid rotten advances, nurtured their writers regardless of sales and waited for the book that broke the writer out. Today, the cash nexus of publishing--begun, I would add, by agents seeking as much money up front as they could get (and that is their job today)--makes such touching loyalties a thing of the past. (That is an overstatement: There are still editors and houses who fight to keep the connection going.) In any event, the outcome of the MFA is to create more professors of creative writing because, as novelists, having had their moment in the sun, these writers must fall back on teaching as the means to survive.

Writing is hard and lonely work. Great writing calls for resources few very young writers have. It’s a rare young writer who has the freedom from his past, the originality of voice, the independence of mind and the iconoclastic spirit needed to make much of a contribution. Publishers always knew this and made space for young writers to grow and learn. The game has changed, but the fault isn’t that of publishers alone. Publishers may prefer short-term profits, but writers lust for instant fame. These are perhaps the most telling and destructive factors to emerge in the last 30 years.

Was it greed alone that began the great shift 30 years ago? I don’t think so. I do think it was stunning shortsightedness. But I also think publishers saw the influx of corporate money as something that would enable them to continue to publish as they had--only better: that would allow them to pay their employees a living wage (this, of course, mutated as publishing went from independently wealthy un- or underpaid staff, which was why it remained a WASP enclave for so long, to employees who are now compensated as if they were being competed for by investment banks or accounting firms) and their authors decent advances. They were ignorant of how the new corporate managerial class, which saw little difference between marketing frozen peas or great literature, would behave, but they were no more ignorant than big steel or the automotive industry in this regard. They may have taken an almost childlike delight in the new perks that came with the corporation, but in those Vietnam years when we could have both guns and butter, they were hardly alone in believing the sky was the limit. And in this they were certainly supported by all the satellite elements of the business, from the agents maneuvering for big money to a press gone mad for celebrity and a country that could equate big deals and big power plays with value.

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As one who watched all this happening, I sometimes felt like the child in “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” Surely someone would point out the fallacies. But it never happened, so the problems grew exponentially. Bigger deals were needed to shore things up, bigger markets to make growth--that beloved item of corporation planning--happen. Mergers brought larger market shares and larger managements. New markets--the enormous burst in hardcover commercial fiction sales--fueled the demand for big bestsellers and made it harder, no doubt about it, for the small and perhaps great novel to get attention. Failing or merging newspapers saw review space shrink, new technologies distracted potential audiences and literacy--or rather, the love of reading--seemed about to become an anachronism. But somehow, publishing kept going, good fiction and poetry kept on being published. And by god, there were readers out there, more and more of them.

Things have changed in the last 30 years. There is more corporate Mickey Mouse, more meetings, paperwork, strategy sessions, corporate-speak, but it isn’t a universal given: I work in a house that is remarkably free of all that. But some things have changed for the better. Fiscal responsibility isn’t a bad thing--we could actually use more of it in this business. Accountability, too, seems a pretty good idea. Understanding the market, understanding how to place a book so as to reach its readership--and to feel an obligation to do that for every book we take on: That’s no bad thing. Writers who entrust their work to us deserve no less. And this is not the same as not taking on a book because we “can’t market it.” Even a volume of poetry, if it is good, has a potential audience.

I also think my colleagues are smarter today and harder-working. It’s true that sometimes younger editors have problems getting management support at the more corporate (i.e. hierarchical) houses, the ones that demand they do only deals for six-figure price tags, as if a price tag was the ultimate determiner of quality or even salability. It’s harder for them to fight this because they are only just establishing themselves and their reputations. But there have always been ways to fight for what we believe in publishing. The “trick” is to give no hostages. We must live lean and be ready to walk at the first hint we are being kneecapped--are being refused support for our writers, being refused support for the books we want to buy. It’s especially important to live free in the corporate world, to make it clear we cannot be bought. The other “trick” is to keep out of the spotlight. The perverse public celebration of editors that began some 20 years ago created absurd expectations that actually limited editorial freedom because celebrity status is an addiction: It’s hard to walk away from the spotlight. Celebrity is not the same as reputation: An editor who does the job with consummate skill will have all the reputation needed to wield power on behalf of writers.

And that, after all, is what it’s all about: Being able to spot the talent, to nurture the career, to see the writer through the hard lean times and keep our belief in that writer’s talent until the day comes when that belief is shared by readers everywhere. For an editor who does this, that would be world enough and time.

So are we in crisis? Yes and no. The biggest crisis we face isn’t the conglomerate or a celebrity-hungry culture or the technology, or the idiocies of the last 30 years. The biggest problem is keeping reading alive as a passion--and finding ways to reach those passionate readers with the news of a great new writer.