Harry Potter and the Publishing Industry

[Demeter]

http://welcome-to-pottersville.blogspot.com/2007/07/bigger-wealthier-pottersville.html


....a study conducted a year ago (31 page .PDF file) by Alan Sorenson of Stanford University... found that 70% of fiction sales in 1994 were generated by a mere five authors. That’s a statistic that ought to startle even people like me who are up on publishing trends... when publishers merge (such as that of Bantam Doubleday Dell) and then merge again with media conglomerates (such as the German giant Bertelsmann, which did acquire Bantam Doubleday Dell through their, or its, parent company Random House in 1998), authors either ambered in mid-list or those like me trying to break in suffer. So does the reader.

The reason? The larger the merger/acquisition, the greater the emphasis on the bottom line. Readers are both given a tighter choice of titles and a faster-closing window of opportunity to discover those non-hyped alternatives. Here’s a heartless reality- New and mid-list authors, already a vanishing breed due to the simultaneously inimical practice of conglomeration and downsizing, have literally 3-4 weeks to hit the ground running...

The larger publishers, typically, will earmark about 3% of their net profit for publicity and advertising. But when 70% of all fiction sales are generated by a number of authors whom you can count on one hand, the trend, obviously, is to devote the lion’s share of your advertising budget to those who already enjoy household name recognition. This is one of the most insidious examples that I've ever seen of a self-fulfilling prophecy....

Publishing, it can be said, is among the most Republican of businesses. It’s heartless, self-interested and self-dealing and hands-off. And if the venture fails, well, it’s your fault.
Publishing. Is. A. Business. Period.

And please dispense with any pretensions to America having a national fucking culture. We have no culture except for the counterculture which is the culture that’s had to seek refuge from that which replaced said culture: Crass commercial consumerism. Let’s face facts, people: We’re a nation that puts more thought into the refrigerated, illuminated cup holders that will accommodate our super-sized Pepsis bought at Burger King or wide-mouth beer cans than we do over what book we’ll read next. We votes tens of times more for American Idol wannabes than the politicians who would largely shape whatever small pretensions to culture to which we still cling.... Pottermania established a sense of community, of belonging, which is exactly what modern day bookstores have gone out of their way to not be ever since they were taken over and bloated by corporate executives who couldn’t give a shit if they’re selling books or toilet paper. Bookstores used to be part of your community before they became cash-generating temples. They, too, have gone the way of Max Perkins and his avuncular advice to authors.

[Demeter]

1. Thanks for the Rec, Here's a Kick!

[Systematic Chaos]

2. Another K&R from me.

It truly is a sad situation. I haven't been in one of the corporate book stores in a couple years. Guess I don't have much of a reason to hurry there from the sound of it. Guess we'll stick with the library.

[sagetea]

3. You've got that right

I was watching "The Today Show" for noise in the morning while picking up the living room.
They were discussing "Air Brushing" on magazine covers, I don't know his name, but he mentioned that American people want "Beauty" so they get out the imperfections through air brushing,m I stopped vacuuming to listen, a lady that was debating him said something that made my jaw drop and wanted to applause her she said "I think what the American people want is authenticity" I believe she is right!!!!

[Igel]

4. Eh.

I just finished a literature class. It was a whirlwind rush through Russian literature. At various points students had the audacity to ask if the stuff we were reading was all there was for a given time in the literature's past, and I said no--often the "classics" weren't as popular as you'd think, and the most common writers have in the 50 years since their deaths been demoted to trivial.

For instance, Russian literature in the 1820s and '30s. We read a few writers. But I said I could name at least a dozen other 'good' poets, and maybe another dozen that I've run across in anthologies--often a writer's only "good" poem. And that doesn't account for the stories and novels that were written at the time. One of the most famous was reprinted as part of the post-Soviet resurrection of bourgeois culture. It was utter crap. We love to filter that out; I made a point of making sure some of it got into class. You know what? That's often what the students liked the best. Crap.

Some classics were really popular when they were printed. Some weren't. Some things that were wildly popular and hailed as classics the decade they were published are barely looked at; a little stuff hailed as tripe when it was printed has been decreed Good for All Time, but not so much--usually that didn't come up to the notice of later scholars.

The oddest thing that can be said is that usually when a large group of people become educated it means that they're going to be working, using their knowledge; they and their children will be busy with reality. And they, by and large, don't like the stuff that the critics say is good. They don't know when stuff is derivative--exactly the state the critic your link refers wishes he had granted his English students, avoiding the classics that provide the knowledge to judge later works derivative. There have been exceptions to "most stuff written and printed is crap", but not so many. Critics from the 1770s to the present have decried the public's reading taste as being unlike their own, perfect, rarefied tastes--the only time it was seriously different in Russia, when the difference didn't rely on a handful of popular living writers accounting for most of the sales (ahem), was under the Soviets. Then there was so much critically acclaimed ideologically validated trash coming out that people turned to the classics. Now that non-ideological tripe can be printed, the famed Russian reading culture is turning out to have been American and British reading cultures on a diet.

Now, this doesn't mean the critics are always wrong. But they're narrow minded, and can't figure out that others aren't like them.

As for 'culture' ... there's a US culture, with a few variants. And it's not like it's imposed from outside, either; in a materalist world it's hard to sell automated purple toe-scratchers if people don't want them; it's why Moxie is a local, acquired taste. Part of the 'high culture' the blogger doesn't like, since, well, he's probably not into contemporary American classical music; that's not culture, it would appear. Or maybe culture that's not universal isn't really culture? No. "Culture", in this sense, is what a speaker says he has and proudly proclaims those that he doesn't approve of lack, a way of saying how good he is and how much worse others are; some egos need massaging. Then again, the denigration of another's culture by some startling narrow-mineded people, and the proclamation of one's own as the Only True Culture, has been a problem for a long, long, time.

People want to read Potter? Great. Better than nothing, by far. But since everything must be black or white, perfection or crap, there's no room in some people's exansive worldviews for intermediates, shades of gray. Pity that perfection has to be so narrow minded.

Now, excuse me. I have a bestselling novel from the 1880s, a period when most surveys of Russian literature say nothing much written, to read. Mamin-Sibiryak? Heard of him? Probably not.

[Demeter]

5. Are You Reading In Translation, Or Original?

One of the things I found most depressing, reading Victor Hugo in high school, was that it was a thoroughly "massaged" and edited translation. Since I will probably die before I ever learn French, I feel cut off twice--once linguistically, the second time, historically. It's hard enough to get a good background in US and British history to get the feel for literature of any historical period. I can't imagine what errors in understanding creep in with the added burden of one or several translators. Annotated copies are very helpful, sometimes.