Of the Trade Book: an American Export?

LOGOS 11(3) crc 17/10/00 11:24 am Page 139

LOGOS “Massmediatization” of the trade book: An American export?

Ian Willison There is a history waiting to be written about what has happened to trade publishing and trade bookselling in the last three decades of the 20th century. It amounts to the most substantial change in the structure of these two occupations since they began to differentiate themselves from each other 200 years ago. The traditional publishing firm – inde- Senior Research Fellow of the pendent, face to face with its authors, under-capi- Institute of English Studies in the talized, supported by its backlist, owned by a University of London, Ian partnership or family – has been progressively absorbed by multinational, multimedia corpora- Willison was until 1987 on the tions, to whom trade books are often a minor activ- staff of the British Library, ity. These corporations, heavily capitalized and latterly in charge of its English- preoccupied with short-term profitability, have a language collections. At the predilection for frontlist, mass-market paperbacks Institute, he is co-chairman of its and deals brokered by literary agents, often characterized by multimedia packages with huge advance Seminar on the Sociology of royalties and blockbuster print runs. Texts. He is also one of three Some traditional publishers, seeking to general editors of the projected evade takeover, have pioneered niche markets out- seven-volume History of the Book side the range of the corporate leviathans. Some of the surviving mainline independent publishers seek in Britain. security by expanding into untried areas. For example, France’s Flammarion, following Hachette’s example, is buying into British publishing, and the UK’s Faber went into the publishing of film scripts. But one of the icons of independent US trade publishing, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, after much protest- ing, has been taken over by Germany’s Holtzbrinck, who acquired Macmillan in the UK in 1999. The independent general trade bookshop has been not so much taken over as overtaken, some independents having joined existing special- ists in select niches (sometimes reluctantly) in the face of invasion by the bookselling equivalents of the media corporations – Borders and Barnes & Noble in the US; Waterstones in the UK; or Hugendubel in Germany. These superstores’ mas- sively inclusive inventories embrace impartially

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romances, westerns, poetry, children’s books, erot- the trade publishing decision, marginal forty years ica, popular magazines and audio-visual materials, ago, is now substantial. in addition to mainline fiction and non-fiction. Are Surrounding and concomitant with these they, as some have hopefully claimed, thereby help- changes in relationships, the entire book business is ing books to take their place as an accepted part of now becoming essentially, and not coincidentally, the mass media culture? Whether they are or not, what is grandly called “global”. (To be more accu- the remaining independent bookstores, in the rate, and modest, the book business has become de- words of Jason Epstein (“The Rattle of Pebbles” in nationalized.) And for all of these changes, the US the New York Review of Books), “will have to be ... is mostly credited as the pioneer or blamed as the tangible, intimate and local: communal shrines, originator (depending on one’s point of view). To perhaps with coffee bars offering pleasure and wis- what extent is this true? dom in the company of others who share one’s interests amid well-chosen inventories where the * * * * * book one wants can always be found and surprises and temptations spring from every shelf.” It is true that this change of what E Hem- mungs Wirtén (see reading list) has called “paradig- … contradicting the matic scope” originated conspicuously in America American export theory, in the 1960s. In 1966, Random House – publisher equally conspicuous of James Joyce, William Faulkner, W H Auden and others – was taken over by the Radio Corporation takeovers and chains have of America, creating a minor sensation on Wall originated independently Street. This was followed by two decades of bidding outside the US. wars, at the end of which the heavyweight Paramount Film Corporation emerged as one of the So, for better or for worse, the trade book top players in the book industry, having taken over world is polarized between the large, the imper- Simon & Schuster and Pocket Books. Also in the sonal, the powerful and the small, personal but 1960s, the first national bookstore chains in Amer- financially vulnerable. It seems that the takeover ica – Waldenbooks and B Dalton – had been set up, frenzy, which began in the 1960s and peaked in the to be themselves absorbed in the 1980s by the first 1980s, has subsided. The media corporations now superstore chains – Borders and Barnes & Noble. tend to trade unwanted lists with each other, seek- Exports of these “models” can be traced in ing optimum market positions. It seems that we are Random House’s 1987 acquisition of the London entering a phase of relative stability, a decent trade houses Chatto & Windus, the Bodley Head cohabitation which not even the latest technologi- and Jonathan Cape; and the arrival of Borders to cal fix to hit the stock markets – electronic publish- set up its first superstore in the UK, in the ‘90s. ing and bookselling – can destabilize radically. However, contradicting the American This period is also characterized by the export theory, equally conspicuous takeovers and proactive sharing of enterprise between superstore chains have originated independently outside the booksellers and publishers. The simple supplier/cus- US. Examples were the 1962 takeover of Thomas tomer relationship of old has been subverted by Nelson by International Thomson and, conspicu- mass-market research, advertising and the drive for ously, the takeover of the classic family firm of rapid turnover to handle huge print runs. Thus we Longman, founded in 1724, by Pearson, whose have sales predictions based on feedback from 1970 takeover of Penguin, founded by Allen Lane bookstores on authors’ past performances; a in 1935 – against a counter-bid by McGraw-Hill – plethora of literary prizes; the “mediatized” author. was an all-British affair. In France, Hachette, one of It almost seems as if the separation of publishing the great names in French trade publishing and and bookselling which began two centuries ago is bookselling, established in 1826, was taken over in being reversed. The two occupations are coming 1978 by the French military/industrial conglomer- closer together, and the booksellers’ influence on ate Matra.