Talk to enough literary publishers and you could be forgiven for thinking that they must sit, besuited, listening to dirges on their 1970s radiograms as they squat in cellar offices pondering, with funereal solemnity, the future of serious literature. They’d have to squat, of course, because they’re quite likely to be surrounded by boxes of unsold and returned books, literally packed floor to ceiling. This is what in bookselling terms is known as a palletised bankruptcy. Most literary businesses fail, and for a wide range of reasons: choosing product which doesn’t sell, patrons or sponsors no longer footing the bill, expanding beyond the limits of cash, taking a punt on a wooden horse. The reasons are as varied as the lists. Most of the publishing remains in the cellar, propping up the sinking foundations of spec-built Victorian terraces. Of course, as many consumers know, it will eventually leak out into used-book stalls, where a dishevelled and disinterested audience finally catches up with the author’s review copies: fifteenth-hand, stained and musty. Fugitive publishers are often confronted with their taste and it’s nearly always packed in cardboard and, to paraphrase John Lewis, never knowingly sold.
Perhaps some literary publishers are susceptible to such caricatures. However, there’s another kind, usually young and less weighed down by mortgages and children. These too give no consideration to literature as commerce, but try to publish people they think will impress and delight their peers and pals within a defined community. This breed of publisher, social, committed, lauded and perhaps a touch deluded, can form yet another class of business without sales. Perhaps some see literature as perfectible, or that writing moves independently of customers in the world of publishing. But for most it is an efficient way of losing money, or spending someone else’s. Publishing one’s pals is never really a good move in any corner of the trade, and especially where poetry is concerned. Everyone recognises this game: they wait their turn, perhaps demand it with threats and coercion, and few expect sales beyond the complimentary copies. Yes, literature is certainly not a meritocracy. What creates an audience beyond one’s peers is frustratingly unpredictable, taking a strange mix of charisma, approachability, appearance and work which somehow meets a need. Such publishing is often accompanied by the fife and drum, but in the end, everyone tires of band music, and successful authors rest on their readers, rather than their laurels.
What is characteristic of these admittedly silly sketches is the idea of literature without audience. Or what might be better expressed as books without readers. I find it rather hard to support any idea of artistic quality and value when no one wants something. It’s hard to see what any available criticism and even academic support can make of all the dead stock, or indeed how anyone can establish a Canon of the Unread. Which almost sounds like a George A. Romero movie.
Plenty of time to read when you're dead?
Maybe we need a Theory of Absence for such markets. But let’s not dwell on the hours spent bolstering publishing which intends to pursue a vacuum of readers; this publishing is indefensible, if also charmingly batty.
For a long time, I imagined somewhere within literary publishing there must be a few editors who can spot a safe bet, who always back the right horse, make a mint, and retire to Mexico to ponder on Malcolm Lowry’s bar bills and liver. No, I’ve never met such a publisher, everyone has some successes, almost in spite of their modus operandi, but their fortunes are inextricably linked to a kind of calculated luck. I imagine very few escape the long term addiction of taking a further punt on yet another writer, and losing their shirts. Even their hair shirts. Taste does so get in the way for editors. But dowsing for talent is a deeply mysterious, bittersweet occupation. What exactly is one looking for?
Well, for me, if I like a book, it comes down to how I can answer three basic questions:
1. Do I want to work with this author?
2. Who is really going to buy this book and in what numbers?
3. Is there anything I can do with this book in order to really sell it?
Find positive answers to all three and the risk and pleasure of a gamble is so much sweeter. Any in the negative and the show is naturally over.
tags: publishers, publishing, book, sales, authors
