All the talented writers in the world can’t create a lasting, dynamic literature—a literature that moves forward—if there are no workers to push their books to a higher standard, guide them, pay them, or get their books into the hands of readers who might appreciate it.
wow…there is a lot of hostility in these comments!! but I enjoyed reading this and especially the Fran Leibowitz detail you brought up, about how important audience and connoisseurship are in sustaining a rich artistic culture.
lately I’ve been thinking of an idea from the former president of the Modern Languages Association, Christopher Newfield: “Strong professions don’t adapt to markets: to support their interests, they make markets. Strong professions intervene relentlessly to build healthy job structures. Markets favor profits, not knowledge. Professions came into existence in part to support knowledge where markets will not.” (https://online.ucpress.edu/representations/article/164/1/1/197731/Criticism-After-This-CrisisToward-a-National)
for literature, perhaps the intervention comes from realizing there are strong social, cultural, intellectual, &c functions that great literature can fulfill; that those functions cannot be fulfilled by pure profit seeking but involve a combination of money and idealism (publishing daring experimental works, say, and creating an audience for them instead of assuming that a lack of initial audience means you give up immediately); and that it is worth it, in the long run, to create that market. I would love to live in a world with a huge demand for experimental literature and intellectually/philosophically rigorous nonfiction and a keen interest in genuine pluralism (from around the world, all kinds of authors, etc—but all with serious artistic ambitions)
major publishing houses are creating demand (not merely responding to existing demand) whenever they pay an enormous advance for a politician’s memoir and put marketing behind it…they could cultivate different demands
I guess I mostly read the New Left Review extended universe, obscure academic shit and "reactionary liberals" for the frisson, but I had no idea anybody held the combination of opinions expressed in this very interesting essay.
What a load of bollocks. There are large to small publishing houses flourishing everywhere. As you say: "In New York, home to more publishing professionals than any other American city, the average entry level salary is around $45,000." Not a high salary but considerably more, probably quadruple, the average income for an author in the same city. Meanwhile the paid employees of these publishing houses increasingly view literature through a narrow political lens, generally a so-called progressive lens. Such a lens is blind to great writing in which aesthetics will always trump social concerns and political manifestos. Physician heal thyself.
Maybe someone should write a brief essay about how low publishing salaries, low author advances, and the pressure to market literature through a political lens as though it's a commodity are all somehow related.
This is a really poorly structured piece; You try to argue that publishers have plenty of extra money to increase employee pay but don't cite any evidence iregarding them running huge-profits or paying lavish salaries to executives; instead you cite their choice to give well-paying book deals to odious politicians; which ignores the fact that these are lucrative finicial designs which puts money into the publisher. Even your point that these books are mostly bought as a promotional tool and not for reading ignores the fact it's still a profitable choice for a publisher.
> In the publishing industry as it exists today, large sums of money are directed away from the workers who acquire, edit, design, support, and market literature, and into the hands of an already-wealthy elite whose books exist only as marketing tools in political campaigns to further deprive others of their rights, personhood, or livelihood, whether directly (as in the case of DeSantis) or indirectly (as in the case of, say, Barack and Michelle Obama, who received $65 million in 2017 for a two book deal).
This is just wrong, publishing works by selling books to people. Labour, book-deals and everything else is a means to the end. The idea that if instead of selling these admittedly boring political book the purchasers would instead be buying another book is totally unsupported. Book readers are not fungible, Someone who would have bought a Ron DeSantis book won't be buying something from Tony Morrison.
You try and compensate by doing a material analysis regarding consumers claiming that the audience for literature has been destroyed but you're just wrong. Inflation-adjusted spending on luxuries and entertainment is at an all-time high. You ignore the absolute giant elephant in the room which is the attention economy which literature is up against. Trying to do a material analysis of literature while ignoring the attention economy is pointless. Whatever points you might raise about the lack of people reading quality and the decline in literary criticism, it's masked by such off-base financial and structural analysis.
I came to this via Arts & Letters Daily and can't figure out what made them think it worthy of their 'Nota Bene' column. Denis Dutton would spit. The lack of self-awareness is staggering.
As I said, it's the abject lack of self-awareness. The mewling self-pity in ill-fitting, leftist garb. The barely-concealed snobbery. The envy of a woman whose shoes you're not fit to shine. The offensive hyperbole of invoking fascism. The inability or refusal to see the asphyxiating effect of an orthodoxy which - it is no secret - predominates in publishing. The parochialism. The foot-stamping caterwauling of an entitled American brat.
wow…there is a lot of hostility in these comments!! but I enjoyed reading this and especially the Fran Leibowitz detail you brought up, about how important audience and connoisseurship are in sustaining a rich artistic culture.
lately I’ve been thinking of an idea from the former president of the Modern Languages Association, Christopher Newfield: “Strong professions don’t adapt to markets: to support their interests, they make markets. Strong professions intervene relentlessly to build healthy job structures. Markets favor profits, not knowledge. Professions came into existence in part to support knowledge where markets will not.” (https://online.ucpress.edu/representations/article/164/1/1/197731/Criticism-After-This-CrisisToward-a-National)
for literature, perhaps the intervention comes from realizing there are strong social, cultural, intellectual, &c functions that great literature can fulfill; that those functions cannot be fulfilled by pure profit seeking but involve a combination of money and idealism (publishing daring experimental works, say, and creating an audience for them instead of assuming that a lack of initial audience means you give up immediately); and that it is worth it, in the long run, to create that market. I would love to live in a world with a huge demand for experimental literature and intellectually/philosophically rigorous nonfiction and a keen interest in genuine pluralism (from around the world, all kinds of authors, etc—but all with serious artistic ambitions)
major publishing houses are creating demand (not merely responding to existing demand) whenever they pay an enormous advance for a politician’s memoir and put marketing behind it…they could cultivate different demands
I guess I mostly read the New Left Review extended universe, obscure academic shit and "reactionary liberals" for the frisson, but I had no idea anybody held the combination of opinions expressed in this very interesting essay.
'How to Read Now' by Elaine Castillo
Is this why Emma Corrin is the hip new literary film star ?
What a load of bollocks. There are large to small publishing houses flourishing everywhere. As you say: "In New York, home to more publishing professionals than any other American city, the average entry level salary is around $45,000." Not a high salary but considerably more, probably quadruple, the average income for an author in the same city. Meanwhile the paid employees of these publishing houses increasingly view literature through a narrow political lens, generally a so-called progressive lens. Such a lens is blind to great writing in which aesthetics will always trump social concerns and political manifestos. Physician heal thyself.
Maybe someone should write a brief essay about how low publishing salaries, low author advances, and the pressure to market literature through a political lens as though it's a commodity are all somehow related.
This is a really poorly structured piece; You try to argue that publishers have plenty of extra money to increase employee pay but don't cite any evidence iregarding them running huge-profits or paying lavish salaries to executives; instead you cite their choice to give well-paying book deals to odious politicians; which ignores the fact that these are lucrative finicial designs which puts money into the publisher. Even your point that these books are mostly bought as a promotional tool and not for reading ignores the fact it's still a profitable choice for a publisher.
> In the publishing industry as it exists today, large sums of money are directed away from the workers who acquire, edit, design, support, and market literature, and into the hands of an already-wealthy elite whose books exist only as marketing tools in political campaigns to further deprive others of their rights, personhood, or livelihood, whether directly (as in the case of DeSantis) or indirectly (as in the case of, say, Barack and Michelle Obama, who received $65 million in 2017 for a two book deal).
This is just wrong, publishing works by selling books to people. Labour, book-deals and everything else is a means to the end. The idea that if instead of selling these admittedly boring political book the purchasers would instead be buying another book is totally unsupported. Book readers are not fungible, Someone who would have bought a Ron DeSantis book won't be buying something from Tony Morrison.
You try and compensate by doing a material analysis regarding consumers claiming that the audience for literature has been destroyed but you're just wrong. Inflation-adjusted spending on luxuries and entertainment is at an all-time high. You ignore the absolute giant elephant in the room which is the attention economy which literature is up against. Trying to do a material analysis of literature while ignoring the attention economy is pointless. Whatever points you might raise about the lack of people reading quality and the decline in literary criticism, it's masked by such off-base financial and structural analysis.
https://www.ajc.com/things-to-do/travel/travel-and-entertainment-spending-at-an-all-time-high-for-americans/QOGUCTVP2NFGRGJB5CVLH4SD2M/
I came to this via Arts & Letters Daily and can't figure out what made them think it worthy of their 'Nota Bene' column. Denis Dutton would spit. The lack of self-awareness is staggering.
So which is it: do you not think people who work in publishing deserve fair wages, or do you not think trans women are women?
As I said, it's the abject lack of self-awareness. The mewling self-pity in ill-fitting, leftist garb. The barely-concealed snobbery. The envy of a woman whose shoes you're not fit to shine. The offensive hyperbole of invoking fascism. The inability or refusal to see the asphyxiating effect of an orthodoxy which - it is no secret - predominates in publishing. The parochialism. The foot-stamping caterwauling of an entitled American brat.
That kind of thing.
Got it - it’s both. Thanks.
Maybe it's just you.