Customer Reviews

Book Business: Publishing Past, Present, and Future

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"Technologies change the world but human nature remains the same." That quote sums up the theme of the 7 essays in this interesting book. Mr. Epstein makes a persuasive case for electronics reducing the costs of reaching readers in ways so that authors and their readers will interact more directly, as they did before the 20th century. The bulk of the book is an anecdotal history of publishing and book retailing in the United States over the last 150 years. In most cases, Mr. Epstein uses his own career for examples of the changes that have occurred in the last 50 years.

Mr. Epstein takes on this challenge from a position of considerable authority. He been a top editor, working with authors like Norman Mailer, Vladimir Nabokov, E.L. Doctorow, Philip Roth, and Gore Vidal. Beyond that, he has been an important industry innovator, having helped introduce the quality paperback through Anchor Books, being a founder of The New York Review of books, and helping establish the Library of America (featuring authentic versions of important American works in paperback). When time-shared computer services were first expanding, he helped develop the "Reader's Catalog" for getting backlist books.... He was the first recipient of the National Book Award for Distinguished Service for American Letters for "inventing new kinds of publishing and editing."

Basically, the economics of creating a book involve getting the book edited and produced at the lowest possible fixed cost, and then being able to create copies at low marginal cost rates. Anything you can do to avoid any other overhead is all to the good. If an author simply publishes his own work electronically (as Stephen King has started doing), both costs reach a bare bones minimum. The potential for profits is enormous. Unfortunately for publishers and retailers, this new economic circumstance favors the authors and the readers. More and more book sales are coming from fewer and fewer authors (6 authors did over 60 percent of the top 100 books from 1986-1996). These authors now see themselves as needing business managers more than literary agents, so they can earn profits in more ways from their production. Mr. Epstein forecasts that more successful authors will simply buy the services they need from specialized firms rather than using publishers at all.

The implication of this is that the major publishing conglomerates will soon be dismantled in a scramble to avoid the diseconomies of bidding higher and higher advances. Having not focused on building a backlist business, these firms will be unprofitable compared with alternative investments. The book business will probably go back to being run by people who do it for love of books, rather than love of profits. He sees chain bookstores surviving, but more as a place to have a cup of coffee and meet with others to discuss books. Nonbook outlets (possibly including Kinko's) could become places where you can go to get any book you want made to order. .... Authors will flourish as books always remain in print. New forms of books will arise that allow different combinations of material to be created, just to match the needs of an individual reader.

This book is an expanded version of three lectures that Mr. Epstein gave at the New York Public Library in October 1999. The first chapter has already been published in the New York Review of Books. Unfortunately, after that chapter the book reads like a series of disconnected lectures rather than as one book.

The first chapter is dynamite. The rest isn't nearly as good. The other sections are just detailed expositions of the points in the first chapter. So the content, while charming and interesting, is an elaborated magazine article. If Mr. Epstein had developed his economic insights in more depth, rather than providing a lot of historical background on the industry, the book would have been a lot better. As written, the book is backward looking 85 percent of the time and forward looking 15 percent of the time.

Mr. Epstein needed a stronger editor to take his marvelous thoughts and shape them into something more visionary and coherent than this book is. But it must be tough to edit a legendary editor. I graded the book down one star for these faults. Some will grade it down more. If the book had been better focused and organized on the industry's future, I would have said that it was a more than five star book. So, you could say that I am really grading it down two or three stars for this problem.

Now, please understand that the book is well written. The sentences and thoughts are beautiful. It just isn't formed into the best book it could be. If you like to read books of lectures, you won't mind a bit. So "Book Notes" junkies will love it!

Ask yourself these questions: Where would you like to get your stories and information from the world's best writers and thinkers? How could the material be made more attractive and useful to you? How important are cost and convenience as issues for you?

Cherish the potential of technology to expand our access to each other . . . always!

After reading the New York Times Book Review write-up and a review in Newsday about Book Business: Publishing Past, Present, and Future, I was excited that someone had finally written a book about the business in which I work. However, readers need to heed the warning: "Don't judge a book by its cover" (or, in this case, its title). I have worked in the book publishing industry for 15 years, and have seen firsthand a great deal of what the author describes in this book. It seemed that the beginning of each chapter captured me, as I personally related to what was being discussed. But after a few paragraphs in each chapter, the author digresses into biographical issues that lend no value or substantial insight into aspects of the general history of the book publishing business, which might affect or interest someone in the industry. With all due respect to the author (and I truly appreciate his attempt at such a work), the book is much too brief to live up to the hype I read in reviews touting it as some type of benchmark work. The author's analyses of the various aspects of the industry are simply not profound enough. He begins a discussion of a particular aspect of the business, and then maunders into a personal story, which is far from relative to general interest.

The book is a very quick-and-easy read considering the author's style, which was obviously maintained throughout (leading me to believe that he was probably his own editor; some sentences are nearly a paragraph long). His use of a William F. Buckley-like vocabulary was probably not necessary for the typical reader. As an editor, I was, however, impressed that I could find but one typographical error in the entire book.

I would not recommend this book for someone interested in starting a career in the publishing industry. It does, however, serve as an amusing little folk tale for those of us already in the business.

Like the hedgehog of legend, Jason Epstein in this book has one big idea: The Internet, he says, changes everything! All the rest of this book is commentary, memoir and historical anecdote recalled from a lifetime of experience in the hermetically sealed world of New York publishing.

In fact, Mr. Epstein has written an interesting if only moderately useful book about the changes he has witnessed in the publishing arena, a book which, regrettably, does not offer much beyond an earlier essay he presented on-line about these same issues, although it is fleshed out here by the anecdotal descriptions of his personal experiences in the field. His basic thesis is that the publishing industry, by rights, ought to be a small scale business, but has grown, over time, into an unpromising corporate behemoth which cannot, in the end, sustain itself. However, the advent of the Internet should bring this chapter of the business to a resounding close, he suggests, as authors discover how to reach readers directly and, thereby, marginalize publishers.

What, after all, do publishers do, he asks? They make books available to the public by investing in titles through a selection and editing process and then by financing the books' production (editing, layout/design, printing and binding), distribution (warehousing, linking with distributors and re-sellers) and promotion (advertising, networking with the review community and sales outreach to retailers). This is not very much, in the end, says Mr. Epstein, given the powers conferred upon authors through the Web.

Thanks to modern e-publishing (on-line electronic publication and print-on-demand), authors can now do much of this themselves through on-line service providers at very minimal cost. The existence of on-line sales outlets such as amazon and bn.com (which have seen their share of book purchases grow from an early 1-2% to a more recently reported 6%) makes all this feasible since buyers cannot easily distinguish between self-published works which are well presented and their more commercially published cousins at the on-line sites. So, says Mr. Epstein, the business he has spent his life in is about to change radically . . . and for the better.

Unfortunately, his own book does not go much beyond this basic point, aside from the interesting life experiences in the publishing world he has to recount. And so I was somewhat disappointed by it. I came to it hoping to learn more about the publishing business and how to circumvent it, having been a rejected author for the better part of my professional life.

(In the interests of full disclosure I should say, at this point, that I am one of those "empowered" authors Mr. Epstein seems to be alluding to who has found an alternative to the closed world of "big" publishing through the exigencies of the Internet. Unable to place my first novel with a bona fide commercial publisher, I went the POD -- print-on-demand -- route to generally good reviews. But I have found that this means of publishing falls well-short of expectations as I still lack the means to connect with the big-time review community, which seems to have a prejudice against the self-published, or to promote my book on a scale which the traditional publishing world can offer.)

So I was looking for more in Epstein's book, hoping to learn something I did not already know and gain insight into how I might parlay my foray into on-line based self-publishing into something bigger. But Epstein doesn't deliver that. Instead he offers only a few insights and generalities about changes in the offing.

And yet, perhaps that's the best one can do, as this is a new and growing field and none of us can really foretell the future, not even a man of Mr. Epstein's substantial experience. At the least, I think his basic insight is correct, that the Internet does indeed alter the present landscape dramatically. Still, as noted, I was left a trifle disappointed at the book's end (which came rather quickly, as it's a very short book). Aside from learning a bit about Epstein's own contributions to publishing past, and seeing reiterated in words my own experiences with on-line publishing, and learning that Epstein doesn't hold out much hope for outfits like amazon either (he proposes, instead, that amazon become a broker to publishers and authors, taking a small fee for linking readers with the books they want, through a publishers' consortium, each time a sale is rung up), he doesn't have much that is new to tell us.

And, if I may be picky for a moment, I was a little put off by the editing/proofing of the book which I expected more from, given its professional provenance. I counted at least three typos (including two "thats", a common enough error, and the use of the word "identify" when "identity" was meant, among them). Worse Mr. Epstein got his reference to Albert Payson Terhune wrong! Terhune was famous for his books about collie dogs but he did not write any Lassie books, contrary to what Mr. Epstein reports. That was a fellow named Knight. Terhune wrote LAD, A DOG and numerous subsequent works based on the generations of Lad. A one-note theme, to be sure, but he kept me reading in my youth and was probably the first writer to inspire me to try my own luck in the publishing arena. Unfortunately, I did not have the same good luck as he did in finding a publishing outlet, until the advent of the Internet which, as Mr. Epstein suggests, may well, and hopefully will, change everything.

SWM
author of The King of Vinland's Saga

Jason Epstein has had a wonderful 50 years in the publishing industry. Good for him. I respect all that he's done. But upon reading this book, which was touted as "the book they'll be talking about for decades," I am terribly disappointed. I bought the book hoping to find some insight into the publishing world of today. The first chapter or so, and a bit at the end of the book, gave me information and his opinions, which I value. The article "Mistah Perkins, He Dead," written years ago, however, says much more succinctly what this 175-page book for $25 ever did. And believe me, I kept hoping.

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.

Jason Epstein has worked with many of the best writers of the twentieth century. He has helped revolutionize the American book market by introducing the quality trade paperback, the purchase of choice for today's avid readers. His "Book Business" was written amid the present publishing crisis, which has many precursors, including competition with other media. So why write this book now?

This book is a memoir, a book created out of a series of three lectures that Mr. Epstein gave at the New York Public Library in 1999, where he discusses, more than anything else, his own background. He details one of the most all-encompasing career paths that were ever born in a world of books, from his beginnings with Random House, his more recent founding of the New York Review of Books, to his current endeavors to shake up the publishing industry. Some of it nostalgic, some historical, but all is stamped with a very biographical hand.

This is not a book to read if you are looking for a historical analysis of the the book in the United States. Nor will it offer a deep understanding today's publishing world--in this regard it is an adequate overview. Book history is an actual academic discipline that has existed in Europe for decades and is just now becoming interesting to scholars in North America. In that sense, the subtitle, "Publishing Past Present and Future," is incredibly misleading, a supreme overstatement. What this book can give you is insight into the life of a man (and his wife), who has committed his life to books and continue to do so. Epstein is a man to admire, a true man of letters.

Perhaps this book is merely a preface to Epstein's next endeavor, a book-machine that can spit out any text, anywhere on the face of the earth, in any language. Books become digitalized, small language groups will be preserved, no book will be out-of-print. E-books, digital screens instead of musty yellowed pages--the digitalization of literature already has many enemies. But whatever huge advance rocks the boat of the publishing world, Epstein is sure to be there at the helm, or perhaps even be the wave itself.

Publishing is a notoriously conservative, unprofitable, non-linear line of business. The most fascinating parts of Epstein's book are his accounts of how he did something a little differently ("thought outside the box," to use a current cliche) and helped create something truly innovative and worthwhile--like quality paperbacks (Anchor Books) and the Library of America (uniform editions of carefully edited American classics on acid-free paper). While this book is essentially an extended essay on where publishing is going (as publishing houses become lesser components in larger media companies, and author advances for the turner-outers of blockbuster titles sap publishers of their resources and makes them unwilling to take risks on more significant literary voices), there are some interesting portraits of key figures from publishing's past, such as Horace Liveright, Bennett Cerf, and Donald Klopfer.

His key thesis, that the future of publishing lay in being able to obtain printed books on demand from ATM-like kiosks, is both hopeful and scary. It means that there will be no need for any title to ever go out of print, no matter how limited its audience. (Hopeful.) But will books produced in this manner be as satisfying to read, hold, and collect as any single title in the Library of America? (Scary.)

Many successful careers are the result of surprising and totally unpredictable turns of events, particularly turns of a psychological kind. Jason Epstein originally went into the book business to associate with authors and to learn from them first hand as a continuing education, with the distant idea of becoming a writer himself. To his surprise he turned out to be something of a visionary and a sharp, effective publisher, whose romantic, yet business-like nature fitted the New York publishing world like a well-tailored suit. He had discovered, as he puts it on page 59, "that literature, like all religions, is also a business, though not a very good business."

Epstein sought to make it better, and in succeeding represents that rare species, the romantic as a successful book publisher. The emphasis should be on the word "successful," of course, but I'll emphasize the romantic because in the book business they (at least in my modest experience) they are now as rare as dodos, and for similar reasons. Epstein's delicious and gracefully written little memoir recalls his fifty years in publishing with the kind of understated, buttoned-down, perceptive style that one associates with the New York world of books before the rise of the conglomerates and the block buster mentality. There are chewy reminiscents of Edmund Wilson and Vladimir Nabokov, of Faulkner with brown bags under his arms, of Donald Klopfer and Bennet Cerf who "accidentally" became a millionaire because of his love of quality books, and many other illuminati, curious creatures from a more genteel time when literature mattered, and the bottom line was secondary.

But, as the title insists, Epstein is looking forward as well as backward, supplementing the story with forecasts and guesses about the future. He believes that the Internet, "the electronic literary marketplace," is going to revolutionize the business in ways we cannot guess, and the scope of the changes will be comparable to those brought about by the invention of movable type. He sees machines capable of printing a single copy of a book downloaded from the Internet on the corner of his Manhattan street or "at the headwaters of the Nile" or "in the foothills of the Himalayas" or even in our homes (p. xii). He compares Amazon.com's margin problems to his experience with The Reader's Catalog and the direct-mail selling of books. Because of his past success in anticipating trends and because of his innovative skill, people in the business will read this book with mercenary as well as nostalgic interest.

Besides editing some of the great writers of our time (the book jacket contains praise and appreciation from Toni Morrison, Norman Mailer, Michael Korda and E. L. Doctorow) Epstein was the first to see the potential for quality paperbacks with his launching of Anchor Books in 1952. He also started the very influential The New York Review of Books in1963 opportunely during a strike that shut down The New York Times and its Book Review. Epstein was also instrumental with in bringing about the Library of America, a story he recounts in the chapter entitled "Groves of Academe."

Others have remarked on the clear and even elegant style of this memoir; and it is certainly pleasant to praise an editor for his writing ability. I would like to join the chorus and add that I recognize a lesson he is implicitly teaching, namely that of brevity and economy of expression, but with a kind of leisurely urbanity that is unafraid of the complex sentence. One can also see that every sentence was polished, resulting in that seeming serendipity known to every editor as the easy reading that comes from hard work. Note however the missing word "year" near the end of page 60, and the unclear sentence spanning pages 97 and 98. (I take a writer's delight in, as it were, "editing" an editor!)

It might be noted that one of the pleasures of writing a memoir is to thank (and to make look good) one's friends and the people one admires (which Epstein does very well), while slyly, almost inadvertently, assassinating the character of others. Epstein indulges himself sparingly, but gives it to Vladimir Nabokov right between the eyes. His recall of the celebrated author of Lolita aping an American tourist at a Manhattan restaurant while cheering on Nixon and our tragic involvement in Vietnam is unsettling. His sketch of Bennet Cerf is warm and admiring without any insincerity, and his recall of half a dozen other editors and publishers seems objective and even kindly. Epstein comes across as a man pleased with himself and the world and what he has done with his life.

In book publishing since 1950, Jason Epstein knows firsthand the problems the industry has faced over the years and how recent technological advances are about to bring a much-needed change. And though this may seem boring on the surface, read on, for according to Epstein, the future of book publishing is about to change dramatically.

No stranger to innovation, Epstein launched The New York Review of Books, and the Library of America, in addition to creating Doubleday's Anchor Books, the imprint that started the quality trade paperback revolution. Now he envisions another revolution, but he's not talking about electronic books (e-books).

In the preface to Book Business, Epstein says, "Technologies change the world but human nature remains the same," which seems to sum up how most readers feel about e-books. You can't replicate the experience of curling up with a good book if you're glued to a computer screen or fumbling with a stack of loose-leaf printed pages. What he is talking about is print-on-demand (POD) publishing - technology that is capable of transferring book text electronically to book kiosks which will be able to print and bind a finished book, either in a central location or, eventually, in your own home.

Joining Random House in 1958, when the company was housed in New York's Villard mansion, Epstein witnessed an exciting part of book publishing history. He recounts tales of W. H. Auden showing up unannounced "in torn overcoat and carpet slippers delivering the manuscript of The Dyer's Hand"; Theodore Geisel (Dr. Suess) "arriving with his storyboards to recite Green Eggs and Ham"; and Andy Warhol "bowing slightly and addressing me in a deferential whisper as Mr. Epstein, as if I were not someone in a torn sweater and corduroy trousers hardly older than he was...."

Epstein elucidates a time in New York after the Second World War when the sounds of Johnny Mercer and Ella Fitzgerald could be heard at the Vanguard or Café Society and, if you had a few pennies, you could enjoy a beer while you were listening.

But irregardless of the social opportunities it affords, Epstein asserts that publishing, by its nature, is not suited to becoming a commercially viable enterprise, and that attempts at making it so have oft led to disappointment, since the publishing paradigm includes allowing booksellers to return unsold stock for full credit. When he was at Doubleday, Epstein later learned, the company's treasurer was advising its owner to sell the business and invest the proceeds in government bonds, arguing that this would yield a greater profit. "The book business as I have known it," Epstein confesses, "is already obsolete."

Meanwhile, the marketplace has come to be monopolized by superstores, whose accompanying high overhead costs require high turnover. The trouble started with the migration from cities to suburbs, since the only place booksellers could set up shop in the suburbs was in the malls, where high rent precludes the profitable operation of a retail business that requires a great deal of inventory with very little turnover. "When this phenomenon first became apparent some 30 years ago," Epstein quips, "the industry joke was that the shelf life of a book had fallen somewhere between milk and yogurt. Since then the situation has worsened...."

Internet booksellers have attempted to bring these inconsistencies within line, but even their dismal profit performance shows continuing difficulty. The problem is that even in a warehouse, overhead rises with increased sales and profits never improve.

Enter the "ATM for books," POD machines proficient at printing and binding any paperback book for the cost of a few dollars. They are already in use at book wholesaler Ingram, and other publishers and retailers. Smaller, less-costly versions of these machines are now in development, coming soon to a store (or library, or post office?) near you. One day you might have one attached to your computer as your conventional printer is now.

In the meantime, many publishers are scurrying to digitize their backlists, although there is still controversy over whether they, or their authors, own electronic rights; while another hurdle to be overcome involves developing reliable encryption to prevent against copyright infringement.

But imagine the possibilities: any book ever written available instantly, or the ability to create custom books with combinations of text from one or more authors, all from the comfort and convenience of your own home.

Book Business is not only premonitory when it comes to the coming revolution in publishing - which makes it a compelling read - but well-written and conversational; the kind of book you don't want to end. If Epstein's predictions ring true, our world will almost assuredly be a different place for publishers, booksellers, authors, and readers alike.

When it comes to considering the possibilities this technology brings, the mind boggles and I feel the urge to visit my local bookstore, this time spending a little more time, so I'll be able to tell my grandchildren what one looked like.

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.