Cambridge University professor John Thompson talks about the problems with the publishing industry in this interview with The Brooklyn Rail. He is the author of the book
“The real trouble for the publishing industry, in my view,” Thompson says, “has more to do with the gradual unfolding of this economic transformation that led to this structure of publishing, where we now have five large corporate groups and a small number of retail chains dominating the industry.” He says the large corporations must maintain profitability, and 95% of their revenue is still from printed book sales. When profit margins stretch thin, they must eliminate people or other overhead costs to keep the large companies in the black. Everyone in the process must demonstrate growth for the corporation or risk being let go, and if they understand that to mean selling more books, despite the thousands they currently sell, then they try to crank out more books. Naturally, an environment like this produced the desire for the bestseller, those few great selling books which bring in the dough and relieve the pressure to sell other books, making one’s sales load more manageable.
Other factors putting publishing in its current bind include the rise of agents and the changes in book retailing. Will the whole thing collapse soon? Thompson doesn’t think so. Despite all of the industry changes likely to come, he states, “books are a deeply embedded part of Western culture, indeed of other cultures, too, and I don’t think that is likely to change quickly.”
by Chang-rae Lee. PW says: “Grim, but so is Dostoyevski. Lee, who can craft a sentence, follows several decades in the lives of an American soldier and a Korean orphan whose paths cross during the Korean War, the reverberations of which, Lee shows, are now deeply woven into the fabric of what it means to be American.”