Prove the Publishing Houses Wrong. Please?
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
In today's New York Times, Motoko Rich continues the less-than-pretty news stream regarding the future of publishing. Less-than-pretty? No. Let's just call it what it is: Wholly distressing. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has announced that, "with rare exceptions," editors won't be acquiring anything new. Indefinitely, that is. Indefinitely. All those stories authors have been working and reworking for years, all that hope, all that passion, all that possibility will have to find another home, a door that will open when it is knocked upon. And good luck, too, if that book is quiet, or literary, a work of art as opposed to a commercial venture, for, as Rich reports:
Once upon a time, some publishers suggested, they could cultivate under-the-radar authors and slowly build an audience for them over several books. Now, with few exceptions, books tend to come out of the gate at the top of the best-seller list or be deemed failures.
“It is seriously going to be a time for known commodities,” said Esther Newberg, a literary agent who represents blockbuster authors like the thriller writers Patricia Cornwell and Linda Fairstein and Thomas L. Friedman, a columnist for The Times. “I would hate to be starting out in the business.”
There is, of course, only one fix to this, and that's us consumers proving the publishing houses wrong. Proving that we are a civilization that needs more than vampire stories and thrillers and beach books to survive. That expects more from books than made-for-movie plots. We have just elected a tremendously literary president—a man who both reads and writes. He's calling for programs designed not just to fix a broken economy but to redress a spoiled, mucked-over planet. We have before us a new generation of young people who care so much about their country that they campaigned for change in force.
There's got to be more for them to read than books a publishing house declares a blockbuster.
There has to be more for all of us.
Keep books alive by buying them. Keep culture breathing in, breathing out.
