According to Jason Epstein (Review of Book Business by Jason Epstein W W Norton & Company, 2001 Pp 188 ISBN 0 393 04981 1 $21.95)

LOGOS 12(2) 3rd/JH 1/11/06 9:47 am Page 87

LOGOS Publishing’s brave new world – according to Jason Epstein (Review of Book Business by Jason Epstein W W Norton & Company, 2001 pp 188 ISBN 0 393 04981 1 $21.95)

Stephen Horvath A recent symposium in the Los Angeles Times Book Review considered the question “Is Publishing Dead?” Contributions from thirty-seven veterans of the book wars were prefaced by a review of two new books by participants in the Times forum – André Schiffrin’s The Business of Books (reviewed in LOGOS 11/4) and Jason Epstein’s Book Business. The attention to Epstein’s book was the latest in a After twenty years in the quite remarkable series of exposures–remarkable, at publishing business, during least, for a slight volume of markedly hybrid form: which he worked for a US memoir and essay, history and prophetic conjecture. educational publisher, for an It began as a lecture given at the New York Public Library in 1999, which became a lengthy article in international STM publisher and the New York Review of Books (where I first came as a publisher of academic and across it), followed by another article therein, then professional journals, Steve the widely reviewed book, featured in the LA Times Horvath entered bookselling with symposium and the subject of much commentary in other major media. Barnes & Noble. Recently he Taking my cue from previously published was Assistant Manager of the assessments, I feel obliged to begin by eulogizing Mr Borders Superstore in San Epstein’s career achievements. Since the LOGOS Francisco and Palo Alto, reader is likely already aware of them, I’ll confine myself to a brief paraphrase from John Leonard’s California. Horvath holds AB excellent review (New York Review of Books, Febru- and MBA degrees from ary 8): Epstein is “someone who was present at the Dartmouth College. He currently creation, a divine rainmaker, of three different resides in the San Diego area. American literary institutions”– Anchor Books, the progenitor of the American quality trade paper- back; the New York Review of Books, launched in reaction to the power (and perceived inadequacy) of the New York Times Book Review; and the Library of America, our emulation of the Pleiade editions of the French literary pantheon. (His other great idea, The Reader’s Catalog, a pre-Internet, print-based attempt to do what Amazon does, was an enterpris- ing idea planted in the wrong medium.) He was (and is) editor of a distinguished list of authors, most recently at Random House. For those wanting elaboration on these achievements, Book Business

Stephen Horvath

will satisfy the need at some length. Suffice to say and reader, greatly reducing the roles of both that Epstein is justly famous and rightly considered publishers and booksellers as we now know a colossus of the New York publishing scene. them. The book is sub-titled “Publishing, Past 4. As they are fond of saying in Silicon Valley Present and Future”. The largest portion of the (sometimes, it seems, in the hope that it may book portrays the last half-century of New York be true), the Internet changes everything. trade publishing, largely as exemplified by the expe- Epstein predicts the Net will have a major rience of Jason Epstein. From someone whose impact on book production and distribution, career had followed fewer or narrower channels, and also on the publishing process itself. such history would be far less interesting. In more 5. And finally, all will be well in this best of all pedestrian prose than Epstein’s, the stories would possible worlds. not retain their zest. But he injects just enough of himself into the story to lend an authentic point of Publishing as a business view, without being merely self-serving. There is, The contention that trade book publishing is only perhaps, a bit too much “insider” name-dropping secondarily a business is convincingly argued here. (“Lizzie” for Elizabeth Hardwick, for example), but Epstein calls it “....a cottage industry, decentralized, not to the point of weakening the narrative flow. improvisational, personal; best performed by small The style is felicitous, and the author succeeds groups of like-minded people, devoted to their craft, admirably in connecting his tales with the points jealous of their autonomy, sensitive to the needs of he wishes them to illustrate. It’s not exactly autobi- writers and to the diverse interests of readers. It ography – much too sketchy for that – but the more closely resembles a vocation or an amateur flavor of his life in publishing most surely comes sport in which the primary goal is the activity itself through. There’s an undercurrent of nostalgia for rather than its financial outcome.” From his own days forever gone, easily shared by the reader. experience, “....most publishers and editors I have If this were all there was to the book, it known prefer to think of themselves as I do, as would hardly have created such a stir. That stems devotees of a craft whose reward is the work itself from 1) his analysis of the present straits in which and not its cash value.” That seems a bit disingen- he perceives (trade book) publishing to be; and 2) uous coming from a man who wrote, in the mid- his prognostications of its future in a context of ’60s, of the necessity for income of at least $50,000 rapid technological innovation. His ideas are well (about $140,000 in today’s dollars) to live above thought out, convincingly expressed and stimulat- subsistence level in New York. Nevertheless, he ingly controversial. In the main, his case is built believes that “book publishing has deviated from its upon the following contentions: true nature by assuming, under duress from unfavor- able market conditions and the misconceptions of 1. Publishing is only secondarily a business, in the remote managers [ie, those nasty conglomerators], sense of a profit-maximizing industry; its finan- the posture of a conventional business.” It was not cial returns are sub-standard, and no amount of always so. In the heyday of giants like Alfred A conglomeration, “synergy” or any of the other Knopf and Bennett Cerf, the last thing a publisher fashions inflicted on the industry by outsiders expected to do was make money, although many over the last forty years will change that basic did so in spite of themselves – when they sold out. fact. What accounts for the difficulty in pro- 2. The shift in the market for books from urban to ducing profits from book publishing? In my view, suburban and the accompanying rise of the book the fundamental impediments are an over-supply of chain superstore have been bad for publishing, the product and excessive distribution costs. The not least because they fomented the cult of the industry certainly doesn’t lack for profitable blockbuster bestseller and killed his cherished titles–far from it. The “problem”, from an accoun- Eighth Street Bookstore in New York. tant’s standpoint, is that a few profitable products 3. From here on, publishing will be increasingly must support many more titles which do not gener- subject to “disintermediation” between author ate a financial return, particularly when the cost of