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Michael Merschel: Michael Merschel edits books coverage for The Dallas Morning News. November 2010
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David LaBounty, publisher of Plano's Blue Cubicle Press, had a lengthy response to my previous post on the doomed book industry. I'm posting it here. You can also read David this week on Utne Reader's Great Writing blog, where he lists some must-read Web sites. "Every successful publisher--really successful, mind you--could make more money by going into some other business." Walter Hines Page - A Publisher's Confession, 1905 In the ten years since I've mistakenly picked publishing as a profession, I've experienced the highs of finding great writers to the lows of losing money and fretting about few readers (a decade, and not one profitable year). But two years ago, I found an article in an old Life magazine about the "current" state of publishing, and I suddenly felt better about my inadequacies. "Besides being totally obscure, U.S. book publishing has in the past been a chronically gloomy business: its occupational disease has been melancholia, verging on paranoia. There have been no completely happy publishers. Indeed publishers as a class have ranked second only to soldiers in their addiction to the grouse and gripe." Ernest Havemann - "No More Headache, Book Business Booms," Life, May 12, 1961. Havemann's article is a fascinating look at the resurgence of books in the 1960s. Every paragraph has a quote that could easily have been written by a publisher today, including, my favorite: "Book publishing: 'The business that capitalism forgot.'" Not too long after I read the Life article, I found Publishers on Publishing by Gerald Gross at Recycled Books in Denton. (Great store.) Gross collected essays written by some of the greatest names in publishing about their businesses. (The book was released in 1961, the same year as the Life article.) The essays go back to 1840s, and it is striking how little the business of publishing has changed, how much these publishers complained about the same things that affect us today. For example: "A friend of mine suddenly became much agitated over the business of book publishing. What is bothering him is not one of the usual complaints: the faulty price structure, the dominance of the best seller over the worthy book, the pitifully inadequate circulation of books, or even the menace of sex and revolution." Curtice Hitchcock - "Are Publishers Important?," Journal of Adult Education. June 1937 "Everything is unpredictable. The book may live and flourish for a week and a month, and then die with a low thud that sickens the heart of the bookseller, publisher, and author. Or it may go onward and upward to best-seller heights. In that case the literary brigands and the doddering fossils, after paying for the plates, promotion, overhead, and royalties, are able to make a small profit. This they immediately put back into the business where it is quickly eaten up by the losses sustained on four other books by young authors whom the incurable publishing optimists have hailed as 'finds.'" Thomas R. Coward - "After the Manuscript is Delivered," The Literary Observer, May, 1934. My point is this: Book publishing has survived for almost two centuries on bad business practices and little to no readership, the advent of eBooks won't 'doom' publishing anymore than the disappearance of trees. Whereas newspapers are needed, book publishing is an exercise in vanity. It's a fool's sport, and there will always be enough of us willing to suit up. Archived Comments |
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Great way to bring everything into perspective.
Nice point. :)
Taylor J. Beisler
www.taylorbeisler.com
http://www.eloquentbooks.com/ArintSaratir-WarriorsLight.html