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My Say: The Flight to Quantity
Richard Curtis -- 10/16/00
Are we ready to trade our cherished elitism for egalitarian consensus?



As recently as three years ago, critics of Big Publishing bitterly complained that it was impossible for the marketplace to absorb the 50,000 books published annually in the United States. I wonder what they will say when the figure reaches 500,000? That's what one industry observer, M.L. Rose, projected as she eyed the river of self-published books rushing toward us.

Thanks to e-books, print-on-demand technology and the Internet, the wherewithal to print, sell and publicize one's own book is suddenly available to all. Under the auspices of such dot.com companies as Xlibris, iUniverse, Fatbrain, and of countless self-styled publishers popping up daily, anyone can get a book published, and from the looks of it, everyone is doing just that.

Until now, self-publishing was regarded as somewhat disreputable sidetrack of the mainline industry. Writers who couldn't get their books published any other way paid subsidy publishers to do so. We looked down our noses and called it vanity publishing. But now, majors like Random House and Time Warner are getting into the act. The electronic revolution seems not only to be legitimizing self-publishing, but institutionalizing it.

To editorial patricians vested with the solemn calling of separating literary gold from dross, this new publishing model is nothing less than appalling. How are they supposed to react when, overnight, the detested slush pile has become a hot commodity?

The fledgling e-book industry possesses no elite corps of editors, reviewers and critics to filter out inferior product. In the dot-communistic world of self-publishing, no book is better or worse than any other.

Clearly, then, the no. 1 challenge facing our industry in the coming era is "branding," separating good books from bad. However, like so many other values in these revolutionary times, the definitions of "good" and "bad" are now up for grabs. Today branding is performed by a society of professional arbiters. Will it be done by plebiscite tomorrow? Before we repudiate the proletarian approach to publishing, we would be wise to listen to the truths its advocates live by.

The first is that in matters of taste, the gatekeepers of traditional publishing have no right to cast stones at the newcomers. Our ossifying system has arguably failed both writers and readers, all too often promoting scandalously overpaid superstars and tired formulas at the expense of fresh talent and original expression. Though the vast majority of self-published authors may be hopeless duffers, among their ranks are many first-rate writers thrilled to have an alternative to a monolithic, indifferent establishment relying on heartlessly cold numbers.

The second truth is that the new industry happens to be profitable. E-publishers have looked unsentimentally at publishing as a system and grasped that it essentially consists of an author, a reader and a server. Low manufacturing and distribution costs enable e-publishers to turn a profit on the sale of a few hundred units. This may seem a laughable figure to old hands used to dealing in six- and seven-figure laydowns. But who will have the last laugh 10 years from now? The e-press that makes 40% profit uploading masters' theses or the behemoth that takes a million-dollar bath on a 30% sell-through of some tiresome celebrity bio?

An e-publisher's sell-through percentage is 100%, with every copy bought by a customer who really wants it. Which leads to the third significant truth about the new publishing: it offers the potential for maximum exposure of one's writing to an audience that wants to buy and read it. Can Big Publishing make that claim?

We still need someone to tell us what to read. What has yet to be proved is whether John and Jane D 's opinions are as good as any veteran editor's. Are we ready to trade our cherished elitism for egalitarian consensus?

Inevitably, a new establishment of taste makers will arise to guide our judgment and help us absorb the huge influx of new books. Although dedicated review media for e-books are beginning to show up (Publishers Weekly devotes space every few issues to e-book reviews, for instance), we are far from the sort of critical establishment that has supported book publishing for centuries. But--with proletarian books come proletarian means of evaluating them. Zagat initiated the successful technique of using ordinary people to review restaurants, and Amazon.com followed suit, substituting reader comments for book reviews. In Time Warner's iPublish model, writers critique and rate each other, and the highest rated ones move onto the publication tracks. Whether we like it or not, it is likely that the next generation of bestselling authors will come out of such processes.

These are the truths that we must look unflinchingly in the face. And perhaps the hardest one of all to accept is that in this fascinating new terrain, the biggest competitors of publishers are authors themselves.

As James Joyce put it, Here Comes Everybody!