Friday, December 22, 2006

Holiday Break

Yep, just as in the West, it's holiday season in Seoul. My wife and I know this because when we take the bus downtown we pass department store after department store. And all of them are covered in even more festive lights than the shopping monoliths in my old home-town, Toronto. And that -- given the quiet Canadian fetish for "world class" consumerism -- is a lot of lights.

Here at "Conversations in the Book Trade" we don't do lights. We just do interviews. And here are some already in the can that will appear in the New Year:

- R. M. Vaughan (The National Post)
- Jon Paul Fiorentino (Matrix Magazine, Snare Books)
- Michael Bryson (The Danforth Review)
- Robert Lasner (Ig Publishing)


Happy holidays. And remember, in 2007, perhaps even more than ever, it's worth doing the altruistic wish thing.... Peace.

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

When Books Don't Sell - 2

[This is the second and final part of an article about an exchange I had with Laura Miller and the changing publishing landscape. To see part one, simply scroll down]


.... In any case, all this is a lead-up to the email correspondence Miller and I had.

When I wrote to her, she was kind enough to reply. Here is the beginning of what she said:


About 175,000 new titles are published every year in the US. In fiction alone, a new work is published every 30 minutes. Even writers who do manage to get published by a major house often find that their work gets no press attention at all and vanishes as if it [never] existed. Even writers who are well reviewed find that their books go largely unsold. At every stage of the process, there is an supply that vastly exceeds demand. More books are reviewed than can be read by the average reader (assuming that reader choice is distributed over the field of possibilities); more books are published than can be effectively reviewed; more books are shopped by agents than can be published; more manuscripts are submitted to agents than can be represented by those agents.

I think it would be fair to say that what Miller wanted to do was offer me a reality check. She does not know me, and is being kinder than many arts journalists would be by simply acknowledging my email. From her point of view, it's possible that I'm a decent writer (I described my work in so little detail that she had to assume I write fiction). It's also possible I'm an untalented crank. In either case, my argument, that the big houses need to change their ways and at least offer that sliver of hope to emerging writers, was, she felt, beside the point. The main thing to think of was the reality of the book market today: it is saturated with new books, and starved of enough readers.

She continued:


Books, especially fiction, are unfortunately
something that many, many people want to write and relatively few people want to read, at least not in commensurate amounts. (See last year's NEA survey, "Reading at Risk.") People tend to point their finger at the part of the process where the book they've written has gotten stuck. If it doesn't make it to the agent, it's the agents' fault; if it doesn't make it to a publisher, it's the publishers' fault; if it doesn't get reviewed, it's the press. But, in reality, the whole system is overloaded. Everything that most people dislike about the system really derives from this fact. If people were as enthusiastic about reading (or rather, buying) books as they are about writing them, the industry overall would not be in the poor economic situation it's in now.

Again, fair enough. But already there is more than one way to consider the current crisis in falling sales of literary fiction. (I'm going to go into alternatives in a later post.) For the time being, though, I think it's worth pointing out that probably everyone -- from industry insiders to the the most obscure writers -- agree that the goal of literary publishing remains finding the best possible work. And so the question arises, is the current system of relying exclusively on agented work going to bring out the best?

Agents are an extremely varied group: some of them are wonderful and committed to good writing. Others are woefully incapable of recognizing anything except marketable pap.

Underlying the agenting business are two essential factors: the first is that the top agents are often already too busy to consider work by emerging writers -- that avenue of approaching a major publisher is closed, too. (And if at this point you're asking, well, why approach a big house? Why not publish with a small one? The answer is, writers who are serious want to make a decent living. Small houses are almost saintly in their devotion to the cause of literature, but are too often squeezed out by the muscle of the big houses.)

The second factor is agents are unregulated; even real estate agents have to meet more stringent professional standards before they can go into business. Some agents are outright charlatans, and, for writers, it is very much a case of caveat emptor. The agents that publishers will listen to are the ones worth doing business with. They are the ones the publishers refer to with the adjective "established". But they, unfortunately, usually fall into the the group described above: the very, very busy ones who themselves don't consider unsolicited work.

In the end, the result for writers who are outside the loop is extraordinarily frustrating. And if it turns out that some of these writers are worth giving at least a reading to, well, that may not be the way it works out in reality. Luck has become an increasingly important aspect of getting your foot in the door. (Speaking for myself, I've had several tantalizing close-calls. And I think my work is worth at least consideration: I have both a completed memoir and a working draft of a screenplay novel.)

The history of culture of rife with examples of writers, artists and musicians who were either under-recognized or unrecognized in their life times. The filtering system by which those we consider talented are distinguished from those who are, so to speak, clogging up the drains of civilization, has never been perfect. Why assume the the current system of almost entirely walling off major publishers will lead to continued publishing of the very best manuscripts available? If nothing else, the majors should return to giving emerging writers a small chance: if a return to the classic slush-pile is too much to ask for, they should at least allow emerging writers to submit cover letters and sample chapters.

It's not too much to ask.


Tuesday, December 19, 2006

When Books Don't Sell - 1

[This is part one of a piece I wrote a few months ago]


Laura Miller is a journalist who frequently writes reviews for Salon. For my money, she's one of the best literary journalists around. She has a direct, unaffected yet highly intelligent style that usually gets to the heart of the matter.

Recently, she wrote a column entitled "Rank Insubordination" on the New York Times list of the best American novels of the last quarter century. Or rather, she wrote on the compilation of literary best-of lists generally, and the fact they raise as many questions as they answer. (Miller's conclusion was while a single best-of list may have made sense a few decades ago, the reading public has become so diverse that what is really required is a series of best-of lists; a recognition that standards are not absolute, and have become more varied as reading audiences have become more diverse.)

I wrote her an email in response to this piece. I agreed with the column and its conclusion, so what I focussed on instead was my own opinion that part of the problem with achieving diversity in literature was that the major publishing houses were now walling themselves off from emerging writers. That is, emerging writes who don't have an agent.

I can't remember exactly how I worded my argument, but it was along these lines. This question of how the major houses process (or refuse to process) work by lesser-knowns is connected, I think, to the question of canon formation ... which in turn is what lists like the NYT's effectively influence. Furthermore, the fact that major publishers are not looking at any work by emerging writers has received almost no critical attention. It seems to me the lit-world's equivalent of the Patriot Act: shave off a few traditions and liberties here and there ... what's the big deal?

Essentially, what has happened is this: the major publishers have killed the slush pile. You know the slush pile -- it was that means by which an emerging writer could submit his/her manuscript to a publishing house. There, it would be read by a junior editor with negligible influence over final publishing decisions. But at least it offered a small ray of hope. And it is this hope that generations of writers have clung to during the early phases of their career. Once upon the time, the slush-pile was "just how things are done". Well, those days are gone now, at least as far as the big houses are concerned.

And this change has gone unannounced: some houses simply pretend that no one is interested in submitting to them and evade the issue altogether, but a few major publishers will state clearly at their webites that they simply will not consider unsolicited work. This doesn't mean they will consider a cover letter and a sample chapter (this was the way it worked until just a few years ago). It doesn't mean they will consider even a cover letter and CV (this is how some agents work). It means they will consider ... nothing -- nothing that does not come through an agent. But here's the thing: many agents do not consider unsolicited work these days either. The Catch-22 is obvious.

[to be continued]

Sunday, December 17, 2006

Richard Nash, Softskull Press

Richard Nash, of Softskull Press:

1. Ever since Sept. 11, there has been a decline in book sales, particularly sales of literary fiction. And since that time, it's been common in publishing circles to explain Sept. 11 as the main "cause" of this phenomenon. Do you agree? Or have other, equally important factors been driving the decline in sales?

1. I’m actually not aware there has been a decline in sales. I’ve certainly heard various bits of pontification here and there, but my sense is that it is soundbite stuff, and journalists trying to shoehorn trend pieces

2. The publishing industry has always been a marriage of art and commerce. But in recent years, the Cult of the Deal has become more influential, with agents demanding larger advances and marketing people paying especially close attention to sales figures. Is the "art" side of the business being pushed out?

The “art” side of the business has always been pretty marginal. Michael Korda, who ran Simon & Schuster in the 1980’s, has said that the publishing business’s relationship to supporting literature has never been all that significant, and that was a welcome bit of candor. That said, the business has become more hit-driven, hence the larger advances

3. Many major publishers now refuse to accept "unsolicited" work; that is, they will not even consider work unless it is agented. Is this a sound policy from point of view of finding the best new literary voices? Isn't there a chance good writing will be squeezed out?

They’re not trying to find the best literary voices, they’re trying to find hits. The agents are doing the same thing. The agents have more time to read than do editors so, as a division of labor, that seem “smart.” Sure, sometimes those qualities may overlap, and sure editors would like them to overlap, but ultimately it is only slightly more than coincidental. Which is something that has been true lo these many centuries. It is of course true that I am not going to publish something that I know is crap, but will sell, and that’ll be true for some of my indie publisher peers, but it is just as true that I will not publish something just cause it is good. The best literary voices will be found over a long period of time, true cultural processes, of criticism, word-of-mouth, the entire cultural apparatus. Publishing is simply a significant component of the economic component of the culture-making process...

4. Alternatively, for small presses that do accept unsolicited work, is the problem that the majors are squeezing the small houses at the distribution/retail marketing end? In other words, even when good writers get published by small houses, do they have a fair chance of winning an audience? Or are the major houses introducing an overly corporate, overly aggressive mentality to the book trade?

Retailers are the issue here, not the publishers. The biggest publisher in the US has maybe 5% market share...the biggest four retailers have over half the market. (in Canada, one has 70%...) Retailers mostly want velocity. Books selling fast in the first few weeks there are there, and wanting co-op/payola. Also, many independents don’t read unsolicited work any more—there’s simply not enough time. I’ve 400 MSS going back to Summer 2004...

5. Returning to the question of agents -- are they too powerful? If so, in what ways? Or are they a largely beneficial and necessary element of contemporary publishing?

5. There are a great many different kinds of agents. Some might have too much pricing power vis-à-vis publishers, but they don’t affect me at all. For the most part, agents are part of the filtering process, just like creative writing programs, freelance editors, professors, reviewers, critics etc etc. However yes, if there are a couple thousand editors in the business, and several hundred thousand manuscripts, then yes, obviously agents will be a crucial component...

7. Does America have too many publishers? Or too few?

Too few.

8. In your opinion, how will new technologies such as the e-book or audio books affect the "form" of the book?

Way way way too soon to tell, as Mao’s premier Chou Enlai famously said about the French revolution when talking to Kissinger in the 1970’s. There will be massive changes.

9. Putting aside the hype, does the Internet provide a real opportunity to publishers? If so, how?

Developments in technology, many of which don’t have that much to do with the internet (the PDF, Quark & Adobe, higher quality printing) have an ongoing year-in, year-out significant incremental improvement to all publishers, though it slightly favors smaller ones, as the benefits of those technologies are only loosely related to scale. The internet constitutes an improvement in communications technology, improving the word-of-mouth process by which most books are sold, allowing retailers like Amazon to carry a broader array of inventory (though it is as much improvements in distribution and warehouse technology that enable Amazon as it is the internet...)

10. And what role can traditional, venerable institutions such as libraries and English Departments play in reversing the decline in sales of literary fiction?

Libraries none, since certainly there the sales of books have declined. English depts...well...it really depends on what you mean...the proliferation of creative writing programs have helped the sales of literary fiction, but the graduates are mostly too broke to buy books, and mostly focus on trying to get publishers to publish book. So there’s a small net positive effect. But English depts certainly don’t create lifelong readers.


About Softskull:

[by Ginny Weihart]

Soft Skull Press, an independent press based in Brooklyn, NY, was founded in 1993. Soft Skull Press publishes approximately forty titles per year, one-fourth to one-third of which are fiction. The average print run for a fiction title is 4,000.



[To get a broader overview of Softskull (as well as another interview with Richard Nash), go to "Your Guide to "Fiction Writing" ]


UPDATE: Also check out the following, here and here.

Sunday, December 10, 2006

Conversations in the Book Trade -- Fred Ramey

Fred Ramey is Co-Publisher with Greg Michalson of Unbridled Books, a decentralized publisher of quality fiction and narrative nonfiction. Known for debuting literary talent, Unbridled’s books make frequent appearances on the Book Sense lists and in the Discover program at Barnes & Noble. Ramey and Michalson have been publishing together since 1992 when they opened the fiction line at MacMurray & Beck. Among many other award-winning writers, they have handled the debut novels of Susan Vreeland, William Gay, Steve Yarbrough, Patricia Henley, Nancy Zafris, Rick Collignon, and Frederick Reuss. Take a look at www.unbridledbooks.com .


1. Ever since Sept. 11, there has been a decline in book sales, particularly sales of literary fiction. And since that time, it's been common in publishing circles to explain Sept. 11 as the main "cause" of this phenomenon. Do you agree? Or have other, equally important factors been driving the decline in sales?


Speaking here of fiction publishing only, there is little doubt that the events of September 11 changed the equations. At first, it appeared that serious work in literature would return to a more prominent place as Americans looked for meaning. And I think that, aside from their obvious literary value, the critical attention such works as Philip Roths The Plot Against America and Marilynne Robinsons Gilead , among other books, received when we were finally getting back on our feet may owe something to a desire in the American reader to read that which explains who we are, a desire that has risen in the political air since 9/11. This is the same desire, I think, that has moved nonfiction titles about the Founders and about the Revolutionary War and World War II onto the best-seller lists. But September 11 had another effect on literary publishing: It increased the corporate drive toward fiscal caution in the publishing of fiction. This led to an increased focus on the fiction that appears most nearly a sure thing and ultimately resulted in the sense now that at any given moment everyone is reading the same novel. (I think the one-city/one-book programs are furthering this.) Book sales overall have not dropped as dramatically as your question implies, but fewer books seem to reach the readers consciousness now and literary fiction has taken a hit in that process. This may have begun with the caution 9/11 introduced, but that caution itself seems to me the real source. If everyone is reading the same book, newspapers see less need to review books, a handful of books in the big-box stores will cover the reading habits of their customers who dont now frequent bookstores, the reality of fewer book-only retail outlets make it easier to keep the readers attention focused on a manageable inventory of an artificially finite number of titles, etc. The cause of the decline in literary book sales is complex (though it is not untraceable).


2. The publishing industry has always been a marriage of art and commerce. But in recent years, the Cult of the Deal has become more influential, with agents demanding larger advances and marketing people paying especially close attention to sales figures. Is the "art" side of the business being pushed out?


The art side of the business is being cornered perhaps, but its not because of the Deal. Certainly the two-book deal that Spiegel & Grau made for Sara Gruens next works would indicate that the Big-Deal thinking you refer to is still operational. But high-profile, high-dollar deals seem to me far less frequently reported these days. What is shadowing the art of literature seems, rather, to be a combination of the corporate need for a sure thing and the instant availability of sales numbers. Of course booksellers have always been able to access their own sales records and to know how an authors previous book has sold. And theyve always used that information to guide their buys. But now a chain fiction buyer can instantly tell how many copies of an authors first book sold through hundreds of stores, and acquiring editors can get a pretty good look at the authors sales record even if they werent the publisher for the earlier titles. As a result of this, an authors second novel might be under-stocked in the chains that is, IF he or she is able to sell that second book to a publisher in the first place. This makes it far more difficult for authors to develop across long careers, to gain an expectant readership while developing their art, to expand their literary reach. I consider this use of numbers as though they were predictive a real threat to American literature. We all know that sales records of past books do not indicate what an authors next will sell unless that next book is not acquired or is under-stocked to make the prediction self-fulfilling.


3. Many major publishers now refuse to accept "unsolicited" work; that is, they will not even consider work unless it is agented. Is this a sound policy from point of view of finding the best new literary voices? Isn't there a chance good writing will be squeezed out?


There is a chance, of course, that an unagented book could be good. But, first, there is a sea of independent presses to handle that and, second, this big-house policy has allowed to develop an editorial role for agents which the large publishers apparently need.


4. Alternatively, for small presses that do accept unsolicited work, is the problem that the majors are squeezing the small houses at the distribution/retail marketing end? In other words, even when good writers get published by small houses, do they have a fair chance of winning an audience? Or are the major houses introducing an overly corporate, overly aggressive mentality to the book trade?


I think my preceding answers probably imply the answer to this one.


5. Returning to the question of agents -- are they too powerful? If so, in what ways? Or are they a largely beneficial and necessary element of contemporary publishing?


Once we did battle with agents. We no longer do much of that. The changes weve been discussing here that have arisen from the caution of the larger houses and the focusing of readers upon a smaller number of titles at any given moment have changed that relationship for the kinds of books we handle. (As an aside here, we had to delay publication of one of our books in 2006 for two weeks because of how much print capacity the latest Harry Potter took up that month. This indicates the world agents now work in, too.) Now, agents know that while the smaller houses may not be able to put much money down for advances, they will take good care of the authors and their books, give the books a chance, invest in them and the authors over a longer period of time. In this context, the remaining problem for independents seems to be the agents inability to resist the big-house offer once an independent publisher has succeeded with an authors first or second or third book. That can at times be dangerous to the authors career, but it isnt always. I suppose its just part of the small-press reality.


7. Does America have too many publishers? Or too few?


The marketplace dictates that. If one new publisher survives over the long haul, I suppose there arent too many. A better question is whether collectively we publish too many books. Where are we now? 175,000 titles a year? If we publishers focused on what is good, would more people be able to find what they like and thereby read more books on their own rather than waiting for a single book to be anointed by this taste maker or that one?


8. In your opinion, how will new technologies such as the e-book or audio books affect the "form" of the book?


It is my opinion that, while new technologies will certainly but only eventually change the delivery of the text, the answers to the issues that face publishing are not technological. Again, Im speaking here only as a publisher of quality fiction and speaking only about fiction. People need narrative. For a long while yet, I imagine, the artifact of the book will be necessary to those people who read narrative rather than get it only through media including audio books. And I dont think that users of audiobooks are the same market as users of e-book devices (though I have no empirical evidence for that). It seems to me that the wrong term is in quotation marks in your question: its book that will eventually be antiquated. Those publishers who can convert their practices as the book itself converts will survive we all assume this, but none of us knows what that conversion will be or how quickly it will happen. This is because the people who are developing the technologies are not the publishers. What other industry runs that way? What other industry yields R&D up to outsiders?


9. Putting aside the hype, does the Internet provide a real opportunity to publishers? If so, how?


The practical uses it offers in the editing and production of books aside, in the current reality, the Internet is a tremendous tool for publishers to reach those readers who want something besides the designated book of the season. This will become even more the case so long as review inches are shrinking in the print media (which I fear will be right to their complete disappearance). And as the influence of the literary bloggers grows as I think it will once they convince those readers who are not bloggers that the blogs are the source of information about What to Read that is, once readers recognize that bloggers have an authority that the reader reviews on Amazon do not then the Internet will be an even more powerful tool for publishers. Of course at the same time as all of this is occurring, the Internet is becoming a more valuable tool for readers and authors. Whether this will ultimately result in its replacing publishers is something we all wish we knew.


10. And what role can traditional, venerable institutions such as libraries and English Departments play in reversing the decline in sales of literary fiction?


I think this is asking the same institutions that are threatened by the forces of change to resist these developments in the same way that publishers are resisting them. And I dont think that will work. Libraries are already something other than wholly book oriented. Theyve already redefined themselves. And if American literature must move onto the Internet to survive, literature programs at the university level wont have much to do with the continued existence of publishing. (Whether a book sells or not has never been a concern of the Academy.) Certainly it would be fascinating for English Departments to turn their attention from underscoring the literary canon to fostering an ongoing national literature. I suppose it could happen. But it would endanger the canon, and it would be a burdensome addition to the curriculum in Departments that have suffered decreasing numbers of majors for decades.


11. What projects are you working on now that you are excited about?


Each season we have titles that invigorate us, and the 2007 Spring season is no different. We promise our readers a good reading experience and I think Andrea Portess courageous debut, Hick, and Timothy Schafferts charmingly human Devils in the Sugar Shop both will do that. M. Allen Cunningham also returns with the lyrical Lost Son, a gorgeous novel on the life of Rilke. And Elise Blackwells eloquent The Unnatural History of Cypress Parish is an evocative story about the 1927 flooding of New Orleans that rewards the reader line by line. Were also proud of the books in our current season: beautifully wrought novels by William J. Cobb (Goodnight, Texas), Carolyn Turgeon (Rain Village), and Lise Haines (small acts of sex and electricity), Marc Estrins provocative and outrageous Golem Song, and the delicate second memoir of Mireille Marokvia Sins of the Innocent.

But what Im immersed in now is Marcs next project, an annotated edition of a dishonest novel by William Hundwasser. Its called The Annotated Nose and, I think, exists in the narrative tradition of Nabokov. My task as editor is to make the physical artifacts of the original novel, the annotations by its subject, Alexei Pigov, and Estrins editorial notes all chime together in what is a singular, playful, and again outrageous reading experience. This will be the fourth Estrin book to be published, with three more in the works. Hes an absolutely brilliant author I hold onto and hope I dont get tossed off in the ride.


12. Unbridled Books is a literary publishing house that places a lot of emphasis on audio versions of books. Given the recent release of electronic book platforms such as the Sony Reader, how do you think audio books will combine with a technology such as this? In other words, do you foresee the audio book and electronic book as merging?


Thanks for noticing. Were currently producing a series of interviews by Kay Callison under the collective name of Unbridled Aloud. We think that Kay the formidable force behind the American Audio Prose Library is one of the most perceptive readers and insightful literary interviewers at work today. And her interviews with our authors have revealed aspects of the works that I was unaware of even when I was the editor. All of these productions are available for free both as podcasts and as audio cds. In addition, we have a complete version of Estrins Golem Song read by the author, which we serialized on our website, and were hoping to produce more author-read, unabridged recordings of our books.

But your question gets back to the value of the Internet to publishers in the current reality. Literary titles have never been widely available as audiobooks this may be because of an actual separation between of the audiobook market from the traditional reading market, but it may, instead, be the cause of that separation. I dont know. But now that we can use our website to deliver audio versions of quality fiction, especially in the downloadable form of the podcast, we have an opportunity to see whether readers of literary fiction commute to work.

But I want to get back to the assertion that addressing the issues publishers now face is not identical with the need to focus on technology. The issues seem to me, instead, to be behavioral. The leisurely pace of reading (whether on a paper page or on some imaginable, eye-friendly screen) is an essential part of the experience of written narrative. Heard narrative is not paced by the reader. I know that sounds quaintly McLuhanesque, but it remains true. Audio versions of narrative are received. Written versions are taken. So, whatever happens in the delivery of literature, its hard to imagine the ipod replacing the book. Something else will, I suppose, but, no, I dont think that the audiobook market and the e-book market will merge.