Book Business: Publishing Past, Present, and Future

Given that this was the compilation of 3 lectures given in 1999, that the Afterwards was from an article in 2001 and that the `Preface to the Paperback Edition' was written in 2002 this book is interesting as a historical footnote to the impact of various communication and information storage technologies on the publishing industry. As far as analysis, there is very little of that, and what there is is more like an `executive summary' type commentary. Nothing really trenchant or substantive. As a memoir of Epstein's work history and a general history of trends and structure in the U.S. publishing industry it is fairly interesting though not in any way comprehensive.

Why two stars? There were a couple of problems I could not get around. Epstein wants his book and to edit it too. He is neither a business analyst nor an academic, and it shows. Though he repeatedly cites the numerous structural and business process inefficiencies of the publishing industry he defends the necessity and role of the editor, that is to say, by turns he criticizes writers, agents, publicists, retailers, corporate owners of publishing houses, and readers (consumer trends) but he reiterates the necessity of professional editors and expresses the belief that book publishing does not well conform to conventional business models and practices.

Epstein displays a superficial understanding of basic business principles (his work with The Reader's Catalog and his commentary [...] as well as his consortium idea are just a laugh-riots, he should have taken some business courses at Columbia) and a lack of anything remotely approximating an academic, much less a high level business analysis of the industry, "Trade book publishing is by nature a cottage industry, decentralized, improvisational, personal; best performed by small groups of like minded people, devoted to their craft, jealous of their autonomy, sensitive to the needs of their writers and to the diverse interests of readers.", "During this time book publishing has deviated from its true nature by assuming, . . .the posture of a conventional business." First of all, his understanding of a cottage industry is flawed and romanticized. The penchants of a cottage industry are scarcity of resources, brutal efficiency, and filling a specific and exact need for a customer. Epstein admits to the inefficiency of the current methods that describe finding a manuscript (and writer) through editing/finishing a manuscript for publication but notes this as a necessary part of the process rather than one of the inherent flaws. If 80% of commercial fiction FAILS to make a profit isn't that as much of an indictment against the selection/editing process as a failure of distribution outlets??

Epstein completely dismisses the transformative aspects of communication technologies with respect to process and overemphasizes the impact on distribution methods. "It is highly improbable that from this clutter (literary web sites that offer publishing-on-demand) works of value will emerge. . . The filter that distinguishes value is a function of human nature, not of particular technologies." I think I can forgive this because at the time he was writing this, fan fiction, via message boards (most notable Harry Potter related) were just starting to emerge large scale and the peer review through specific social networking was probably way out of Epstein's realm of understanding. He fails to anticipate any sort author to reader selling through social networking. He does not mention blogging in any detail in the book. The power of various functionalities of advancing technology to narrow and in most cases eliminate the distinction between amateur and professional in the catagory of selecting/editing a book is nonexistent. **I would bet the if at the publication of this book Mr. Epstein had been given a one paragraph explanation of a free online dictionary edited by anyone (Wikipedia) he would have scoffed. In the same vein if you suggested to him now that groups of non-professional reviewers could edit a novel he would also scoff**

Here is the capper, "For readers who are accustomed to an orderly literary marketplace the much less disciplined digital future may seem as threatening as widespread literacy seemed to the priests of the 15th century." Ohhhhh Mr Epstein, if only you had gone to just a few business classes. The consumer of today is NOT frightened of expanded choice and they willing embrace anything that expands their choices, and they reward producers and companies who make it easy for them to choose among hundreds of choices [...].

Other than a memoir, a broad overview of the book industry, and a example of professional bias this book misses as any sort of substantive analysis of transformation in the publishing industry.

Jason Epstein has had an extraordinary career in literary publishing, and if he ever writes a full-blown memoir of that career, it would make interesting reading. Epstein has also watched the publishing industry change radically since he entered it in 1950, and thought deeply about it. A book-length discussion of those changes would also make interesting reading.

_Book Business_ reads like condensed versions of both those books, inexpertly woven together. It jumps frequently and (it seems to me) awkwardly from big-picture analysis to "there I was having drinks with Nabokov" anecdotes. Ultimately, neither half of the story is entirely satisfying.

The business analysis is interesting as far as it goes, but too narrow. Epstein dismisses all of popular fiction in a sentence as "formulaic melodrama," and (aside from literary criticism) barely mentions serious non-fiction at all. He seems to make no distinction between "How Stella Got Her Groove Back" and Harlequin Romances, or between David McCullough's "John Adams" and the latest diet book. His ideas about the future role of the internet in publishing are equally narrow. He spends pages explaining (in 2001!) why Amazon.com can't possibly succeed. His enthusiasm for print-on-demand "book vending machines" is infectious . . . but takes little account of the staggering mechanical (not electronic) challenges they would present.

The literary-memoir side of the book also feels curiously shallow. The anecdotes about Nabokov, Edmund Wilson, and the like are fascinating, but the sum of them feels like an after-dinner speech on "Great Authors I Have Known" rather than a discussion of what it's like to edit great writers. The stories from Epstein's career are also great reading, but they are so obviously *just* the high points that they give little sense of the texture of his career as a whole. Did he *never*, in fifty years in the business, suffer a setback?

There's much here that's interesting, and Epstein is a graceful writer, but I think in the end I'd have rather read the two separate, longer books he might have written.

The preface of BOOK BUSINESS mentions the very origins of written language: cutting or "scoring" a mark onto a board. He notes that "scorekeepers still keep score on boards". He might also have added that the early scoring was the first expression of binary code, the language understood by the tiny chips that run the giant scoreboards at the Super Bowl, as well as every other scoreboard or "computer" on Earth.

Epstein gives here a curious insider/outsider account of the book business over the last half century. He was decidedly inside when he began in the fifties, working with Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer to "publish" such legends as Nabokov and Faulkner. His anecdote of Nabokov is a gem. He runs into the author in the bar of the Paris Ritz in the early seventies. Nabokov, in a loud Hawaiian shirt and a loud Midwestern accent, raises a toast to Richard Nixon. Why Nixon? Because he believed Nixon would eventually triumph over the Viet Cong and that would lead, dominolike, to the fall of the Soviet Union, enabling him to return to his beloved homeland.

By the eighties Epstein and his ilk are being overwhelmed by mass market forces. Chain bookstores seem to be taking over the industry and reducing drastically the numbers of titles available for sale (and by extension able to be published). The pressure of real estate costs at the malls steadily reduced the selection at bookstores to a handful of bestsellers, "whose faithful readers are addicted to their formulaic melodramas". Publishers who in Epstein's early years were like intellectual families had by the eighties been reduced to mere distributors and advertisers. Between 1986 and 1996, he relates, "63 of the 100 bestselling titles were written by a mere 6 writers".

By way of hinting at what was to come, Epstein tells of meeting a man who in the 1950s described to Epstein in some detail...the Internet. Epstein liked and respected the man, Norbert Wiener, an engineering prof at MIT, but "dismissed this prophecy as science fiction". Courageously, Epstein admits his failure to take the prophecy seriously reflected "the limitations of my own worldview at the time and that of my intellectual friends who were increasingly absorbed in Cold War issues and felt that the fate of Western civilization depended upon the positions they took in their articles for Partisan Review or in their dinner party conversation". One sees the limitations of his worldview pop up again when he meets a man named Bezos, who is committed to changing the book business. After a fairly short time, Epstein pronounces Bezos to be "committed to an incorrect business model".

But in spite of revealing himself to be a bit of a mossback, Epstein also gives what I found to be one of the most exhilerating glimpses anywhere of what technology can do for the book business: A kiosk, containing an "ATM machine for books". In it, an integrated set of computer, internet connection, laser printer, and binder. You put your money in, type onto a keyboard what text you want--anything from a transcript of the Nixon tapes to a copy of LOLITA to a handbook of Siberian butterflies--and the computer downloads it, the laser prints it, and the binder binds it. It doesn't matter if it's "out of print". That phrase is obsolescent. It doesn't matter if the book is banned. The newly printed and bound book will fall into a slot like a can of Coke. Your wait will be perhaps 5 minutes in 2005, falling to 5 seconds in 2010.

____________________________________________
Just a quick note recommending this short book. Epstein, who spent most of his career at Random House, remarks on how publishing has changed over the years, with plenty of juicy anecdotes. Forex, the Dickens:

As you may know, the US was a book-pirate haven in the 19th century, and Harper Bros. grew to be the nation's largest publisher by pirating Dickens, Thackeray, the Brontes, Macauley -- really, the entire roster of bestselling British authors. Macauley's (pirated) History of England sold a remarkable 400,000 copies here.

Charles Dickens, who kept a close eye on revenues, made a trip to the US in the 1840's, to protest the theft of his work. His plea was ignored, and he didn't much like the country, either. He wrote a short, glum account of his visit, _American Notes_, which Harpers promptly pirated.
Dickens recounts a train trip from Washington to Philadelphia through what he thought was a storm of feathers, but which proved to be spittle from passengers in the forward coaches. He also reported that US Senators spit so wide of the cuspidors that the carpets were "like swamps".

WH Auden, Epstein reports, had the disconcerting habit of showing up an hour or so early for parties and dinner invitations, so he could be home in bed by 9 PM.

Epstein was the first to publish a line of quality paperbacks (Doubleday Anchor) in 1952, and was a founder of the NY Review of Books. From his memoir, I'd say he had an interesting and fun career in publishing .

Happy reading!
Pete Tillman

The world of book publishing and all of its adjunct business like book superstores, are an interesting yet hidden mystery. (Or at least I feel that way)

The author takes through the journey of publishing and his life, which are tightly intertwined. He starts with the early and maybe exciting years of publishing in the 50's -60's to the movement of paperbacks to quality and outside the drug store.

Along the way he also shares with us his prospective on the current book publishing/selling/writing situation around us. While I don't want to say much about this part, he doesn't paint a good picture of the overall situation.

But then after describing the current situation he takes to his idea, vision, and hope for the future of publishing were authors would sell directly to readers.

This is a fun and educational book to read for any book lover. I high recommend it to everyone.