The New Publishing Model
A new
publishing model is emerging. Companies like Context Books,
MacAdam/Cage, and McSweeney's Books are breaking with what has become
standard publishing practice, and authors, agents, and the media are
taking notice. Some of the changes are not that radical. Carl Lennertz,
publishing program director of Book Sense (a national marketing program
for independent booksellers that promotes selected titles), said some
of the newer houses do what publishers have always done—look for books,
then edit and sell them—but in a more focused way, as they have fewer
books to market. Other strategies, however, such as dispensing with an
advance against royalties and putting that money toward marketing and
promoting a title instead, are beginning to make a contrarian sense,
especially to writers who have experienced the midlist short shrift at
major publishing houses.
"When
you deal with the conglomerate publishers, you eventually come to
realize that they're not on your side, they're on their side," says
Daniel Quinn, author of the best-selling Ishmael (Bantam, 1991) and After Dachau
(Context, 2001). "Not quite enemies, but definitely people you have to
be on guard with. At Context, there are no two sides— [the author and
the publisher are] on the same side, knocking ourselves out to make
every book as successful as it can be."
Context's
founder, Beau Friedlander, isn't in a position to play the
conglomerates' numbers game of putting out hundreds of titles knowing
that some will do well, some will break even, and some will just
disappear. To make ends meet, Friedlander has to personally get behind
each title and convey his enthusiasm to bookstore owners and sales
reps. Few conglomerate publishers are hand-selling each of their
titles.
"I am very
hands-on," Friedlander says. "We try to be creative, given the utter
poverty that is our natural state. I think we succeed by virtue of a
subtle balancing act: fifty percent relentlessness, fifty percent
heart."
David
Pointdexter, who in 1998 founded the upstart MacAdam/Cage Publishing,
based in San Francisco, also thinks of publishing fiction as a
creatively driven, entrepreneurial endeavor.
"Over the years, publishing houses have gone through consolidation
after consolidation, until today, when the vast majority of fiction is
produced by divisions of giant media corporations. The number one goal
of any large corporation is to maximize profits. In order to maximize
profits, they strive to minimize risk."
This
dynamic, Pointdexter believes, has set in motion a trend in which
publishers back away from fiction, which is generally high-risk, and
instead put their resources more and more into nonfiction, which
presents less risk. Until the consolidation stops, Pointdexter doesn't
see this trend reversing, at least anytime soon. Because of that, he
says, "Independent entrepreneurial publishers will play an increasingly
important role in bringing out new and notable works of fiction."
MacAdam/Cage
works to re-create the culture that thrived in publishing houses during
the early part of the last century, back when "publishing houses
acquired authors and not just books," says Pointdexter. MacAdam/Cage
does not make editorial decisions based on the opinions of its sales or
marketing departments. Instead it chooses each title carefully and
produces only as many books as it believes it can fully support from an
editorial and sales perspective. So far this has been no more than a
dozen books a year. It doesn't pay advances to authors, but rather puts
that money into marketing, tours, and publicity. Both Pointdexter and
the editorial director of MacAdam/Cage, Pat Walsh, say their model is
to do fewer books but to do them right.
Hensley
agrees with this strategy wholeheartedly. She says that houses like
MacAdam/Cage and Context are getting serious attention among book
buyers because they are operating as if their success rides on each
title. And it does. "They are accountable for every single book that
they publish. And it shows," says the woman Book magazine
called one of the 10 most important people in publishing in 2001, who
buys about 7 million total copies of 2,500 titles a year. (This number
includes trade paper reprints, but not mass-market books.)
Hensley
thinks the industry would fare better and do authors a service if the
large houses cut their lists by at least 30 percent and paid more
attention to the remaining titles. "There are just too many books out
there, without any viable way to expose them to the readers. No matter
how hard we try to merchandise the titles and make potential readers
aware of them, thirty-five hundred novels a year are too many."
But
what if a publisher took the profit margin out of the publishing
equation and let the authors run the show? Would those titles stand out
among the glut? Certainly some of McSweeney's Books have been singled
out by the media. Even more significant, the publisher assuredly has
the most satisfied authors in town. Dave Eggers, the author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
and founder of McSweeney's Books, lets his authors set the prices for
their own work and, once costs are covered, bank all the profits.
Price
isn't the only thing controlled by McSweeney's authors. They can, if
they want, be involved with marketing plans, tours, interviews, book
design, and cover. "The main impetus behind giving authors more control
over things is our own interest, and my own interest, in process. I
like every aspect of publishing. I like choosing the type, the page
size, the cover materials, the artwork, all that, and we've found that
most writers do too. So we let everyone in on as much of it as they
want," Eggers says.
Not
all authors like having a say in every aspect of publishing their
books. "But," Eggers says, "most appreciate at least having the chance
to take it or leave it. It makes the process more agreeable for all,
actually, because it removes the guesswork and whatever
miscommunication [that is] likely to happen when the author is
alienated from different aspects of the publishing process."
Before he started his book division, Eggers began publishing McSweeney's Quarterly Concern,
a literary journal that now, at times, showcases authors before or
after their book comes out from the press. Both the journal and
McSweeney's books can be purchased in bookstores or direct from the
publisher, either at its Brooklyn bookstore or through its Web site.
Another
new house, Soft Skull, has taken a page from the venerable publisher
Scribner, which, before being purchased by Barnes & Noble in 1989,
also sold directly to the reading public through its elegant bookstore
on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue. Soft Skull's bookstore is a bit farther
downtown. In addition to selling a wide selection of other publishers'
work and its own books, Soft Skull's store sells CDs of the bands that
play in the nearby nightclub TONIC. "That brings in people who don't
always think to browse around a bookstore," says publisher Richard Eoin
Nash.
Soft Skull
explicitly seeks material ignored, rejected, or dropped by major
presses. Recent titles that have emerged from the slush pile include Scorch (A.D. Nauman), which was a 2001 Book Sense selection, and Why Things Burn
(Daphne Gottlieb), which received a 2001 Lambda nomination. Part of
Soft Skull's approach is to use nontraditional channels to get its
titles out, which include hand-selling at concerts and political
protests.
Edgework
Books is an author's cooperative of a dozen published authors who were
fed up with corporate publishing. Not only do the authors who make up
this collective all act as publisher, they are also the company's
editors and investors. "We have a revolving three-person editorial
board. Decisions are made by a simple majority, but we listen closely
to the objections of the one dissent- ing party," says cofounder Kim
Chernin. "Sometimes we edit en masse, six, seven, or eight of our
members reading a manuscript, meeting with the author, and commenting.
The author is, of course, free to accept or reject the comments."
Edgework
established itself last year and to date has published nine titles, all
of which fit within the cooperative's mission: "Our goal is to publish
in all genres new, arresting and politically relevant work of the
highest literary quality by women of all races, ethnic backgrounds and
ages." Many of the goals of these new houses are the same as those of
their larger counterparts. But their size, commitment, and lack of
towering overhead enable them come up with creative ways to get good
books to a deserving reading public. As Lennertz (also included in Book's most-important list) points out, they have "no magic secret; just focus, passion, and faster market response."