Books
are being sold by a few massive retailers, squeezing out the independent
stores. A handful of big publishers are
responsible for most of the marketplace sales.
Corporations control the communications industry.
These
were the concerns expressed in a book about the book industry written not today
but 16 years ago. Apparently the names
and books change, but the book world has been confronting many of the same
issues for decades. Of course, the
growth of the Internet and self-publishing have been game-changers, but many
things that concerned authors, consumers, and the media have been constant over
the years.
Back
in 2000, big-box stores and massive retail chains like Barnes & Noble and
Borders ruled the marketplace. Now it’s Barnes & Noble and Amazon that
control a huge chunk of the market.
Back
then there were a lot of big publishers consolidating with others – Harper
Collins purchased the remnants of Hearst publishing, Time Warner was bought by
AOL and Bertelsmann merged its book clubs.
We recently saw other publishers fold into the Big 5. Back then, five major conglomerates
controlled 80% of American book sales.
The numbers haven’t changed much since then.
In The Business of Books, Andre Schiffring
formerly the head of Pantheon, which was co-founded by his dad, he shared these observations 16 years ago. Do they sound familiar?
“Now
that virtually all of American life is affected by the seemingly never-ending
growth of large corporations, it is fair to ask how much all of this
matters. Is what we are witnessing truly
something new or merely a variation on an old theme? Will it change fundamentally the way we read
and what books are available to us?...Large publishers have always been with
us. And looking back to the nineteenth
century, we see substantial book sales then, too -- numbers that in proportion to
population are often greater than today’s.
But the story of publishing is much more than a list of sales figures.
The important questions are what was being published, what choices were
available, and what new ideas, whether in fiction or non-fiction, were being
offered to the public.”
Interestingly,
he notes trends that continued to this day.
He points out that in the 1940s, the New
York Times Book Review was 64
pages long, twice what it became in 2000.
He
also noted successful books used to sell better, perhaps because of smaller
competition.
It
was interesting to look back, through the eyes of a book that took a
time-capsule approach to the industry, to see what has or hasn’t changed. Reading old books with new eyes helps close
the gap between our distorted memories of the past and the realities of today.
The
book contained a list of 20 leading book cities in 1945 – over seven decades
ago – for a population that was less than half of today’s 321 million – and you
can see that more bookstores per capita existed back then. But one could argue that books are easier to
get now than ever before – they are not only found in bookstores, but
newsstands, drugstores, supermarkets, airports, giftshops, and online 24/7.
Back
in 2000, 70,000 new books were released annually by the traditional publishing
industry. Last year, about 375,000
titles were published by them – and perhaps double that sum were released by
self-published authors. There is
certainly a lot of choices out there.
But Schiffrin lamented back then what’s echoed today:
“In
Europe and in America, publishing has a long tradition as an intellectually and
politically engaged profession.
Publishers have always prided themselves on their ability to balance the
imperative of making money with that of issuing worthwhile books. In recent years, as the ownership of
publishing has changed, that equation has been altered. It is now increasingly the case that the owner’s
only interest is in making money and as much of it as possible.”
The
author noted that by 1947 there was a growing domination of the best-seller
lists by the same authors. Some may say
that this allowed for the country to be on the same page, so to speak, about
what to read and discuss –or it showed a lack of diversity in the marketplace
that left alternative voices on the outside.
But a study in 1947 showed the 20 top fiction best-sellers of that year
contained only one author who had not previously made the list.
Schiffrin
wrote of the late 1940s as being a time when most publishing houses belonged to
the people who started them with only few becoming publicly held
companies. He writes:
“To
be sure, the majority of publishers in the United States and Europe were
interested in profit as well as literature.
But it was understood that entire categories of books, particularly new
fiction and poetry we’re bound to lose money.
It was assumed that believing in authors was an investment for the future
and that they would remain faithful to the publishers who had discovered and
nourished them. Poaching authors from
other firms was not considered fair play.
Overall, trade publishers reckoned they would lose money or at best
break even on their trade books. Profit
would come from subsidiary rights – sales to book clubs or paperback
publishers.”
The
world of book publishing today is greatly changed from the 1940’s and
significantly changed from the turn of this century. But some things, at their core, haven’t
changed.
Books
still get published by a variety of forces, even if there is a concentration in
a handful of big publishers. The existence of
independent presses, university presses, and self-published authors with mass
distribution allows for alternate voices and economic models to prevail.
I think the biggest challenge to authors is not that a handful of huge publishers are run by corporations, but that there is so much competition amongst authors to be heard, discovered, and read. Whereas there was a time where consumers couldn’t find enough content that was diverse and fresh, it is now overwhelmed by choices, domestic and abroad. Whereas books used to go out of print, nothing disappears anymore, so a 2016 reader is now faced literally with millions of choices of what to read. To be clear, I don’t advocate for fewer books to be published, but for a system to be created that could better catalog, review, and summarize each book.
I think the biggest challenge to authors is not that a handful of huge publishers are run by corporations, but that there is so much competition amongst authors to be heard, discovered, and read. Whereas there was a time where consumers couldn’t find enough content that was diverse and fresh, it is now overwhelmed by choices, domestic and abroad. Whereas books used to go out of print, nothing disappears anymore, so a 2016 reader is now faced literally with millions of choices of what to read. To be clear, I don’t advocate for fewer books to be published, but for a system to be created that could better catalog, review, and summarize each book.
The
old system of relying on book critics is broken, as the critics are no longer a
handful of professionals but any blogger with an opinion. None of them can
defend how they choose to review what they review, for they don’t have time or
access to even name all of the book titles being released in a given year let
alone, to actually browse them properly to determine what should be reviewed.
Critics make choices about what to review based in part on access. If publishers, who can afford publicists, can
find reviewers and “sell” them on a book, this will influence the reviewer. But
for the other books that don’t even get on a critic’s radar – due not to quality
but access – what happens to those books?
I
will conclude with an important message Schiffrin conveys at the end of his
book:
The Trump University of Book Promotions
The Author PR Priority List
Rights of Cheating Spouses vs. First Amendment On Display
Can authors audit their writing like they do their taxes?
What is America’s actual reading capacity?
http://bookmarketingbuzzblog.blogspot.com/2016/03/what-is-americas-reading-capacity.html
2016 Book Marketing & Book Publicity Toolkit
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