Publishers Should Start Using Birth Control
- Posted by: Anne Trubek
- on April 18, 2009 at 9:00 am
We’re (still) publishing a city’s worth of books each year.
Twelve is a book publisher, established in 2005, with a smart, small mission:
“We strive to publish the singular book, by authors who have a unique perspective and compelling authority. Works that explain our culture; that illuminate, inspire, provoke, and entertain. We seek to establish communities of conversation surrounding our books. Talented authors deserve attention not only from publishers, but from readers as well. To sell the book is only the beginning of our mission. To build avid audiences of readers who are enriched by these works – that is our ultimate purpose.”
Why is it called Twelve? Because they publish only one book a month. Any more than that and they could not give each book the attention it deserves. Any more than that and they could not ensure quality. After, all, a book may not be a car, but it ain’t easy to put one out, either.
Compare that number, twelve, with this number: 173,680. That is the total number of books published in America in 2007, according to the 2008 Library & Book Trade Almanac (formerly Bowker’s Annual).
That’s 173,680! Convert it to people and it’s a medium-sized city (drive 30 miles and you can visit slightly smaller 2006, population 169,637!). Convert it to dollars and it’s an upper-middle class salary. Stack them one on top of the other and they would…topple over and make a big mess.
Publishing has been dying ever since I was born, but that has not stopped the industry from pumping out more books each year, in some perverse irrational economics: maybe this one will turn things around? No? Maybe this one will? We spend oodles of pixels bemoaning the loss of readers, a tenuous argument to make in a day when every email, Facebook page, and twitter screen has a reader on the other side. Let me waste just a few pixels bemoaning the fact that too many books are being pumped out in our fair land.
Not very sustainable is this model either now, is it? When books go unsold, they are pulped. So too are staff. In Fall 2008, when the big wigs started cutting back, real live people lost their jobs at all the major publishing houses. The smaller presses, with fewer products and a more nimble business plan, have done better. (If Twelve had to downsize to, say, Eleven, chances are they would not have huge layoffs).
During these days of increased savings and measured spending, we are all consumer advocates. We exercise options not with trades but with purchases. Each time we open our wallets we think more about who we are giving our money to. I have argued before that book buyers should always approach purchases as political acts. We need to support book publishers, yes. But selectively, so we can help the larger players in the industry, who may be too big to fail, come to their senses. Let us encourage them to print fewer, more quality titles come 2010.
Below are some great presses that are careful with their dollars, and some great recent books they have published. Buy one and you get triple rewards: a great book to read, an investment in a sustainable industry model, and a statement against excessive title-pumping.
Twelve, publisher of the just-released and much-praised Columbine by Dave Cullen.
Dalkey Archive, a non-profit and publisher of a new edition of Manuel Puig’s classic Betrayed by Rita Hayworth (20 percent off!)
MIT Press, which always published with a keen eye for design, another non-profit and publisher of the brilliant Big Box Reuse by Julia Christensen, about what happens to empty Wal-Marts and KMarts.
DISCUSSION: 5 Comments
This argument is pretty reductive, and is undercut by the fact that two of your examples are nonprofits and one of those is a university press. If MIT Press can publish high quality titles, it’s because it’s a) mandated by its mission as a university press to publish peer-reviewed works, and b) fully sponsored by the university. One thing you forgot in this argument is the economic model that makes publishing work, which has the publisher front all the production expense and buy back unsold merchandise from the retailer. When books are unsold, they are definitely not pulped. They are returned to the publisher’s warehouse, most of them in sellable condition, and are then resold to another retailer, who is also able to return them if unsold. In cases of megachains like B&N, books are routinely routed via the publisher’s warehouse as they are shifted from store to store. Who pays for all that transport, restocking, and manufacturing guesswork? The publisher, and you.Another thing you glossed over is the complete lack of correlation between book quality and sales. You’re presupposing that people actually *want* to read only the best books. The bestseller list and the prizewinner list seldom overlap by very much. I worked at a university press that published 7 pulitzer winners in 10 years. How many of those topped 30,000 units in sales? You guessed it.The result is the editorial crapshoot you’re rightfully complaining about. You have to publish a bunch of things with the potential to be bestsellers to be able to publish the few gems nobody will buy. Publishing is a sprawling, dysfunctional industry, but like the dying print news industry, the size of the publishing ecosystem is partly necessary. You say “The smaller presses, with fewer products and a more nimble business plan, have done better.” Really? That’s not the view from where I sit. Please go back and reconsider the massive consolidation of the publishing industry that’s been accelerating for the last 5 years.
I am thrilled with your whole mission – I found you, because you used the word attention, on which I have a Google alert – Columbine, is really all about attention!!!I was actually interviewed on TV when that horrific event happened! My work, speaking, writing, giving workshops, for the last 18 years has been called TheAttentionFactor(R), as it’s all about that A word…attention is the most important part of our lives – it’s with us 24/7 and when people don’t get the kind they need or want, they do leave signs around and pull a metaphoric-Columbine , one way or another. You’re dong GOOD work. aa.march@verizon.net
I agree with Second Anonymous that there is the issue that people *want* to read a lot of the throwaway literature that is published, it supports so much of the rest of the industry. There is a desire for this stuff — anecdotally I’ve heard that crime and romance are some of the most popular titles on e-readers. I agree there is some scope for trimming back some fat, but a lot of the fat is necessary for literary and sophisticated publishing to survive. On the other hand, people like McSweeney’s show that it is possible to engage in quality publishing without compromising principles. You do have to be canny with marketing, and know how to get your books seen, but it is possible!
From the publisher of Twelve, “12 Steps To Better Book Publishing”:http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6652430.html?q=karp
Instead of saying that publishers publish lots of books “for some strange reason” you should investigate that reason.