Dear Suzie,
In a nutshell, things are terrible everywhere right now. Commercial publishers are freaking out because they can't make profits. The latest news: Harper Collins is tottering on the verge of collapse. I've heard editors there have their resumes out. They just canceled 100 books. Meaning--these were books they had signed contracts on and had already listed in the forthcoming catalogues that go to bookstores. They decided they'd be better off just paying the authors off and NOT publishing their books. This way, they save themselves the PR and production costs. And, probably, will now be able to remain in business.
I spent most of my time in NYC talking to commercial publishing types--authors, editors, agents, and publicists. People are pointing fingers of blame left and right. ("Publishers can't market!" "Editors don't care about writing anymore!" "Agents don't care about their clients!" "Bean-counters have cut the soul out of the business!" "Writers aren't delivering commercial ideas!" You get the picture.) The theory that the big bookstore chains are ruining the biz is another example of this. There is some truth to it, but it isn't the whole story. It is true that the ascension of the big chains and corollary decline of the indies changes the nature of the biz but the problem is much larger than that.
Look, booksellers are businesspeople, not philanthropists, now more than ever, when capitalism's become the world's leading religion. The earnest ones who selflessly supported starving writers--the Sylvia Beaches--were always the exceptions. Book merchants take what they can get and what they're getting from the publishing houses are PRODUCT which bookstores can quickly sell. Did you know that shelf-life for most books these days is about three months? Then the books are remaindered or simply shredded and recycled for paper! Can you imagine?? You spend years of your life working on a novel, then if you're lucky you sell it. Even if you do sell it, you're likely only to get a few thousand and then, three months after it hits stores, poof, it's gone, as if it never existed. Add it up. You work on a book for two or three years, earn less than the average burger-flipper for your efforts, and then publishers print such tiny runs (3 to 5 thousand copies a printing is typical) that it barely sells, and then--the icing on the cake--the paper it's printed on is turned back into pulp in three months.
Markets for anything literary--not just poetry but novels too--are in serious trouble. Editors and, even more alarming, many agents are refusing to read literary fiction, even by authors with track records. A very successful writer friend was recently told that his beautifully-written novel was declined by a major house because it is "too literary."
What's selling? Non-fiction. Genre fiction (romance, mystery, thriller). Celebrity bios. Memoirs. New Age. Religion. I heard that a novel by Margaret Drabble went to 23 separate places before someone bid on it. I don't know how much it sold for but how much do you want to bet it wasn't in the six figures? On the other hand, the memoirs of a 32-year old tapdancer just went for for $175k. How's that for sheer lunacy?
It's all about creating slick, hot products. Me-too books, look-alikes, books about whatever is currently obsessing the popular media (sensational trials, new diets or drugs, celebrity scandals, etc.). If the marketing departments don't believe that a book fits an identifiable niche which they know how to market to, the editor's hands are tied and the deal dies there. So that's how books are being bought. Which should give you some insight into why you see so much shit lining shelves.
Now, you asked me whether it's the take-over by big booksellers which is hurting the little magazine scene. I can't speak directly to this market, but in my view, it's just down the foodchain in the same ecological catastrophe.
Remember: it's the "product with margins" mentality. Litmags have tiny markets, low margins, and take up shelf space that could be occupied by some royal piece of poopie by Sydney Sheldon or Danielle Steel that is guaranteed to sell. Think of such authors as name-brands--like Nike or IBM. They are readily identifiable, fairly reliable (you always know, more or less, what kind of book they're going to produce), and they have developed incredible consumer loyalty over the years. So, if you were a bookseller with a limited amount of shelf space and constantly rising costs, and you must choose between carrying Anne Rice vampire t-shirts which you know will sell and which have a $5 profit margin as opposed to literary magazines you can't be sure you'll sell, and which have only a $2 profit margin...which would you choose?
In other words, Suzie, it is a very complex economic bind we find ourselves in. Free-market economics and publishing simply haven't worked out a comfortable balance. It will get worse before it gets better: there will have to be a whole lot of shaking out, in my opinion, before publishing is profitable again.
Meanwhile, it isn't fairer to blame any one segment of the book industry than to blame the consumers who, apparently, are quite happy to keep buying silly hats and t-shirts and "who's sleeping with whom" tomes, and have lost interest in challenging work by new writers.
I know an exceptionally successful, high-placed publishing executive who got a ton of press this summer for coming up with a brilliantly cynical idea to take advantage of the personality cults that have developed around big-name authors. He's starting an imprint which will feature short books--essays, really, which run only 10,000 words--by celebrity writers (the ones who are consistently on the Times' bestseller lists). The hook is that they get to write about whatever they want to write about in a non-fiction format. He's going to pay them each $100k to do a book that's the length of three magazine articles, and he's going to sell the books to those stars' devoted fans for ten bucks a pop.
The writer in me would like to slap my friend upside the head for perpetuating the problem. Big money to big-earners who don't need it means those writers who can't command even double-digit advances are going to starve. But the laissez-faire capitalist in me has to admire it. He's going to make money, that's for sure.
I think writers and poets too must accept some blame for still living in an idealized past where serious readers would spend days or weeks lingering over the meaning of a text. Writers have to ask themselves how they must now adapt to the inevitable: that succeeding generations will be even less inclined to spend time with books that demand intellectual effort. So how can we write the books we want to write without compromising our artistic ideals, and still seem attractive to a general readership which is being bombarded with too much information on every front?
Besides, more and more people are doing the bulk of their extra-curricular reading on-line. I'm a case in point: I seldom buy newspapers anymore, except to look at ads. I read the Times and the AP wire on the Web, subscribe to a news service which delivers a daily report to my mailbox, and fill in the rest with CNN and C-SPAN. I imagine most people on-line find themselves turning more and more to the Internet for news, fiction, and poetry than to newspapers, books, and magazines.
To sell books and magazines into the next century, publishers are going to have to change the way they do business and writers may well have to change the way we write. Where will it lead? Beats me. But I tend to be optimistic. I truly believe the demand for good writing is there--it's just that publishing hasn't yet figured out how to do business in this brave new techno-world. A small illustration: of the six book editors interested in CONSENTING ADULTS, only one knew how to access the Web. When I began talking about my website, trying to explain the publishing opportunities on-line, their eyes glazed over. We're talking highly literate, sophisticated, successful editors. So what's that tell you?
Let me keep thinking about ELF's situation. I wish I could do more for your website, but I just don't have the time. I think, though, that your site could be instrumental in your ongoing success. If the old way of doing biz doesn't work anymore, we'll just have to come up with new ones. Think: bridge to the 21st century.
I didn't really write that, did I? :-)
Despite hysteria in the media over how the Net is a new social evil, I believe the Net has already demonstrated that it is a boon to literacy. Kids are going to have to be on-line to be competitive when they're ready to enter the workforce; in fact, most can't get through college anymore without a computer. So the reading public will grow and this is positive for writers. The question is: will writers know how to write for our new audience and will publishers figure out how to profit by it?
My magic eightball says: "Ask again later."
xx,
Glory
(and puppylicks from Bobo)