A Prophet of Publishing?

By Bob Hughes - Jan 19 , 2011

Does the future of publishing mean a return to publishing as it used to be? With a focus on authors, rather than brand-name bestselling writers?

Jason Epstein seems to think so. And he’s one to know. He launched trade paperbacks in the U.S. over half a century ago, when he was a young editor at Doubleday, and was not only a co-founder of the Library of America, but also the New York Review of Books, which recently carried a review of his about an interesting book that examines the publishing landscape, “Merchants of Culture: The Publishing Business in the Twenty First Century,” by John B. Thompson.

Epstein is a man who knows the publishing business, of course, having been involved with it for so long. And while he didn’t think all that much of e-reading a decade ago, he is  attuned to the changes in the industry – he founded On Demand Books four years ago. As many readers know, the on-demand business is growing substantially.

Still, in his thoughtful review (actually more of an essay on the state and future of publishing), Epstein waxes eloquent about the past and what he sees may be the salvation of the publishing industry.

In his essay, “Books: Outward to the Digital Revolution,” Epstein is pragmatic about the digital world – the fragility of electronic storage versus the durability of old-fashioned printed pages – but he feels that e-books will be more and more widely accepted and used, in particular for certain genres (women’s erotica) and reference works that can be updated.

What struck me as most fascinating in his remarks, though, was Epstein’s recollections of how it used to be (and then how it might become) in the publishing world. In his youth, and for much of his career, he says, editors and publishers cultivated the backlists of authors, that is to say, their older books, which bookstores continued to recommend to readers. “Best sellers were welcome but not, as they are today, a matter of life and death,” Epstein writes. How shocking is that in today’s megastar world?

In the past, too, most bookstores were locally owned, and there were a lot of them (Manhattan, for example, used to have hundreds; now it has fewer than 30), though now Amazon is the largest seller of books, bigger than Barnes & Noble. That disappeared with the rise of the chains. And the reliance on bestsellers.

Anyway, Epstein, in his look at the book on publishing, outlines the recent history of publishing, and its almost-demise. He feels, as do I and my colleague Michael Drew, that publishing houses might become more like agencies or clearing houses or vendors themselves, selling directly, working as managers rather than content providers.

But he thinks that self-publishing, and print-on-demand, could be adapted by editors, too, to create their own lists of highly regarded authors – something that used to be done in the past. He also thinks that authors may be financed by outside investors – like films are – another idea Michael and I feel is a valid one, and a possible one.

In the end, books will probably be available in both formats (and maybe other ones), but is it such a bad thing if the publishing industry changes, thanks to new technology, to one where the focus is again on the author?

Of course, as a publisher friend of mine said, big publishing houses still have the marketing wherewithal to help get authors noticed. But why, then, I asked him, do the vast majority of books only sell a few hundred or a couple of thousand copies, and why do so many disappear?

That’s something I’ll address in my next column.