Why Publishers and Readers are Natural Enemies

Now that fewer and fewer people are reading books and more and more people are writing them, the most lucrative activity in the literary world today is giving advice to wannabe writers on how to write, get an agent, and get published. The advice varies wildly from source to source, and from month to month, but on one thing there is complete agreement: to please a publisher a book should be something to get done with as fast as possible. Publishers today want 'page-turners'--books you can finish reading before the plane lands, or finish listening to before you get to work.

Publishers are like frat boys. Frat boys don't drink to savor the libations--they drink to get drunk. Publishers want books to chug-a-lug. Real readers are like wine connoisseurs--they want books to sip, to savor--books they don't ever want to end. Books they'll want to reread.

Rereading is anathema to publishers. They want to publish books you "can't put down", but once having achieved that difficult goal will never be tempted to pick up again. The ideal books for publishers are potato chip books--books that are all exactly alike, and that you can never consume just one of, because the quality is never quite good enough to be completely satisfying.

The other day I picked up an old English novel by Elizabeth Von Arnim. I was scanning for a remembered funny passage, and found myself reading instead--reading with a sigh of voluptuous pleasure that reading hasn't given me for years, the sense of embarking on a delicious, leisurely journey. How rare that seems lately. With all too many contemporary novels I find myself skimming a lot. I know they're supposed to be good so I hurry through to find out why people think so.

Don't misunderstand me. I have the utmost admiration for several dozen contemporary authors. I read everything they write and recommend them to everyone I know. Yet I rarely read them with that unhurried pleasure of 'curling up with a good book' I wish would never end. More often than not I read, like everyone else seems to today, just to get to the end.

Comments

[Lute]

Lord forbid that publishers would learn how to think, they might start giving us what we need rather than what they want us to want.

The Internet is of course the great enemy. Anybody remember the Star Trek episode where Captain Kirk was accused of murder! and was assigned an old fashioned lawyer who believed the Law was to be found in Books? Luckily for us the concluding argument in that was centered on a bit of technological trickery and thus we were saved from the drudgery of endless books. Oh, my.

At any rate, the competition of the Internet has greatly diminished the need for books, and will, should the future not convulse and implode, make them ever more obsolete. Good for the trees in the long run, not so much for the logging industry. Publishers will find over time that quality and the prestige inherent in the printed word will keep their game alive. Limited runs, first editions, eminent authors who would look good on the unused bookshelves, that sort of thing.

I believe, if the Author above would scan his own soul a little more carefully he would find that his primary purpose in reading a book these days is to find something he could steal, even the most inoffensive of tiny tomes might have phrase or a thought in it somewhere that might be turned to a more grandiose purpose, even though its fate might be to turn up on the Web, where it becomes fair game for the tooth fairies & goblins, that is those entities which eat words.

[Valkyrie]

I have to agree with a couple of commenters here. Your argument is incredibly simplistic. Publishing, as with movies, is a business. Business is there to make money.

To say that publishers want you to only read a book once so that you'll go buy another of the same "poor" quality (by your standards) is a sophomoric guess on your part. Why? Plain and simple. The book is actually advertising and marketing for that publisher.

I remember back in the day when everyone knew Stephen King's publisher. Why? Because it was emblazoned on every copy of every book.

When someone sees you reading something, they usually check it out, right?

But, you are certainly right that publishers want to sell as many books as possible. Of course they do. So would I.

Has book quality gone down hill? I'm sure it has, but perhaps that's not the fault of the publishers. They can only publish what's submitted to them and my guess is that the quality of submissions (as well as the sheer mountain of them) is as much to blame as your simplistic "frat boy" labels.

Look at how many books we hear about in the news that turn out to be plagiarized. That's the submission and not the publisher. But it's easy to label things, right? It makes us understand them better. Label the publishers "frat boys," and of course the books you read, including your choice above, are labeled as "better" and "more-deserving" than what I or someone else might read. Label every issue as right vs. left or red vs. blue or republican vs. democrat. That way everything will fit nicely into our one-sided world view.

[Mrrar]

Elitism, like a fine cheese. I actually like fine cheeses...

You know what the real enemy of Publishers is? The Internet.

Their outmoded business model is deeply amusing. Don't fret, my friend, in a few decades the idea of a 'publishing company' will be right along there with a 'record' company.

[mommadona]

Change is inevitable.
Growth is optional.
Hence, the complex flavors
of a very good cheese.

[doojie]

"EarthWalk" is one of those books I keep going back to. That's a very deep book! Philip Slater's section on the relation between prophets, viruses, and information(The Ugly Swan, Or Curbing The Prophet Motive), described the process by which systems from simple organisms to civilizations re-organize themselves. That book should be required reading at some college level.

[ch4r1iegr1]

Isn't consumer society great? Books, clothes, movies, furniture, digital crap.... You make the transaction, the clerk puts it into a huge, colorful plastic bag that you get to carry home, and then, within days you're already bored with it and think the solution is to buy more, even though the previous purchase was a disappointment. How did marketers manage to brainwash [almost] all of us so successfully?

I wonder if this is what is what those Mayan calendar theorists are getting at when they talk about "time speeding up" which really means that more events are happening in shorter intervals? Are we so inundated and overstimulated with random, irrelevant, global events and random, irrelevant, sneakily-placed advertising messages that nothing is really that interesting to us anymore? We just try to wrap our minds around one disconnected, stressful message after another? So much for reading a good book and enjoying it. Our minds are too anxious.

[andygaus]

Notice your term: "real" readers. This is an example of what I call "real"-ism: "real men," "real Americans," "real people," "real..." This kind of snobbish expression is always a bad idea and always implies that all but a few of us are fakes. Mr. Slater is a "real" reader, how nice. In fact, the people who buy the throwaway books he scorns are also real readers, and obviously very numerous. The actual problem here is not that publishers and readers are enemies, but that publishers are indeed putting out the kind of books that modern readers with short attention spans will tolerate -- leaving Mr. Slater and other "real" readers on the sidelines.

[Desiderata]

Gore Vidal writes those books I read over and over. And always, a first read is slower and slower out of reluctance to arrive at the inevitable last paragraph; and I dread the end of that wise man's life as he approaches the last thought of his brilliant mind.

[TommyMcCarthy]

I have Vidal to thank for my interest in American history. No other author can make history alive like that, and, like "desdirata", I'm afraid no one ever will again once he's gone.......tm

[larry278]

Writers like Mr Vidal are found of creating books which demand countless re-readings to confound publishers. Authors often wish to educate their readers too. One may get a satisfactory eductation by re-reading well written books; subtle writers also teach their readers to think. Mr Vidal & authors of his ilk are devious souls. It takes a wily & devious writer to teach Americans how to think. Authors like that drive publishers insane. Hell, even a publisher can learn how to think.