Category / Publishing Industry

by Edward Champion

Is the AAP’s Google Lawsuit Truly Reflective of Its Members?

Richard Nash has returned from Frankfurt and he’s now blogging up a storm. Perhaps his most interesting entry is this exchange between Nash and the Association of American Publishers over the Google Library Project lawsuit. (Background reading on the subject can be found here.) What’s particularly interesting is that the AAP’s litigious ardor stems from its representative government. Further, other AAP members (say, smaller presses) don’t seem to factor into the Board’s decision. The unnamed representative at the AAP writes:

As you know, AAP has a Board of Directors that is elected by our members and empowered by AAP’s bylaws to make decisions and take actions on behalf of the entire AAP membership. Quite often, issues that eventually come before the Board for decisions and actions are initially explored and considered by one or more of AAP’s committees and divisions. AAP staff routinely work to facilitate participation in these committees and divisions by all interested members, and members are always encouraged to contact AAP staff to make known their interests, concerns and views on relevant matters.

I tried hunting around the AAP site to see if I could locate a copy of these bylaws. Given that the publishing industry is a mighty and multifarious zoo populated by animals of different stripes, I figured (perhaps naively) that any large organization might have some exigencies for allowing minority opinions (such as Nash’s) to be voiced and considered, if not outright memorialized before the Board. Alas, no such luck.

However, I did locate this list of the Board of Directors. And I’m not certain if the Board’s current makeup genuinely reflects the industry as a whole. Sure, we have the big behemoths (with Houghton Mifflin as chair, Random House as vice chair) well represented. But aside from a few midsize educational publishers, why isn’t a single member of the board a small or midsize fiction publisher? Surely, any board hoping to represent the entire publishing industry would fill at least one slot along these lines. Then again, “small publisher” probably means something fundamentally different to me than it does to Pat Schroeder.

Further, the AAP’s lawsuit seems to work against their stated agenda. Among the AAP’s goals: “To expand the market for American books and other published books in all media” (emphasis mine) and “To aid AAP member publishers in exploring the challenges and opportunities of the emerging technologies.”

So we’re left with the AAP’s letter to Nash, which is, as Nash notes, “civil” but ultimately a bit dismissive towards anyone who disagrees with the unquestionable wisdom of the mighty Board (“We would certainly welcome the opportunity to answer any questions you may have regarding the basis for AAP’s actions, and perhaps to even persuade you to reconsider your disagreement with those actions.”).

In other words, the sense I’m getting here is that, if you happen to be an AAP member and you have a different spin on an issue that the representative board is considering, not only are your thoughts disregarded when the Board decides upon a course of action that has a tremendous effect on the whole (and, in this case, the lasting power of backlist titles), but the Board doesn’t offer a viable alternative that might help the member explore the “opportunities of the emerging technologies.”

So I have to ask: Is the AAP really there for its Google Library-friendly members? Or does this lawsuit exist to appease the big boys rather than considering this issue holistically?

by Edward Champion

When You’re a Press Release, You’re a Press Release All the Way

Mediabistro Still in Operation
October 22, 2005

Mediabistro, now in the practice of issuing press releases any time the earth rotates, is still in business mere days after Elizabeth Spiers’ departure. No feelings have been hurt. No drinks have been thrown in anyone’s face. Mediabistro and Spiers are not, repeat NOT, at war. “I’m very happy that mediabistro is still in operation,” said Spiers. “I took the liberty of sending Laurel a few extra feather boas, just to staunch the flow. You know, no hard feelings.”

“We plan to issue more press releases reporting on mediabistro’s existence,” said 23 year-old Willia Milqueton, an unpaid intern regularly putting in sixty hours a week. “We want to out-Denton the competition. Regular updates about nothing is what keeps us in the magazines. Everyone likes a cat fight.” Mediabistro Associate Editor Aileen Gallagher is scheduled to be the next person locked in Jessica Coen’s crosshairs. Gallagher is now viewing Parallax View-style training films of Coen to ensure unnecessary enmity, more contumacious blog posts, and more silly press releases.

by Edward Champion

Well, If the Memoir Market Has to Be Saturated, This is the Way to Do It

Vanity Fair: “And I believe I have discovered the contours of a new genre of nonfiction, one that has yet to receive its cultural due and perhaps never will: the tawdry porn-star memoir. As pornography’s popularity has mainstreamed out of its once mole-like existence, the porn-star memoir has graduated from cheap paperbacks released by no-name publishers to Judith Regan high-profile schlocktaculars. A genre that should be investigated with an open mind and with a dispenser of anti-bacterial wipes handy, the porn-star memoir packs the center-stage, spotlit “I” of the confessional memoir, the celebrity memoir, and the recovery memoir into one overnight kit. Each tell-all reflects the personality or absence thereof of the porn star who buckled down to bare the hidden recesses of their “inner me” to a tape recorder. ” (via Porn Happy)

by Edward Champion

Mass-Market Paperbacks and Auctorial Legacies

Today’s New York Times reports on the emerging trend of mass market paperbacks being published in larger type. Much of this has been effected to placate the declining eyesight of baby boomers. The new mass market books, being larger in size, have also seen their prices go up a few bucks to $9.99. Discount retailers (read: Wal-Mart) have, of course, complained. Additionally, the Times article reports that some have complained about how unwieldy the larger size books are.

But the Times fails to consider the larger issue here: With this new larger-print format, will we begin seeing books over a certain length denied this sizable consumer base? If the high watermark was once set at 300 pages, will this be reduced to 200 or so because of prohibitive costs? In other words, does this close the door on ambitious novelists finding an audience through airport bookracks?

Granted, mass market paperbacks aren’t really a sanctuary for literary titles. But they can be an effective format for allowing a midlist author to become more of a household name. (Regrettably, it is usually the likes of John Grisham and James Patterson that succeed along these lines.)

Or is this perhaps a disingenuous way to squeeze out the mass-market paperback and turn the trade paperback into the paperback format of choice? After all with only about a $5 difference between the mass-market paperback and the trade paperback, the reader voracious for an author’s latest is more likely to pony up the dough early if the print remains comparable and the trade paperback’s size is more managable than the mass-market paperback.

If that’s the case, then I’d like to see publishers be honest about the situation. Like most readers, I often like to put a book in a coat pocket, particularly if it’s the only item in my possession. Unfortunately, with some trade paperbacks, this is damn near impossible and results in the book’s ends being curved so the book will fit into the pocket, resulting in a battered and dog-earred copy that quickly falls apart. That’s probably the basic idea. But if these paperbacks are doomed to fall apart, with the original trade paperback concept becoming more accepted, I’m wondering if this dwindling durability will restrict such authors as Sam Lipsyte and David Mitchell from having their work endure for tomorrow’s literary scholars.