 Nine-Part Series!
By John F. Harnish - author of My Book's Published - Now What???
Special Projects Director, Infinity Publishing
IntroductionYou might be thinking, I’m a writer, I’m writing a book, when I’m finished writing my book will be published – so why do I need to understand about the evolution of book publishing???
Good grief, Charlie Brown, if you have any hope of having your book published you need to know a few basic facts about publishing beyond how to format your manuscript, which publishers to submit your labor of love to, and when will your newly published book be for sale in bookstores – when will it be listed on Amazon.com??? Indeed those answers are important but not as mission critical as your awareness of the publishing process that transforms your expressive wordsmithing into the publication phase that makes it available for sale to the public. Without your successful connection with some form of publishing you just have lots of pages of unpublished content and nothing more.
Understanding the evolution of book publishing is essential because the book publishing industry had changed so dynamically at the close of the 20th century that huge segments were propelled into the new millennium at warp speed. There was also a bit of a time warp, because what was old is suddenly new again, and some of what’s proclaimed as being new is nothing more than twisted variations of the same old greedy ways of book publishing. Authors beware: if you don’t know what’s what when it comes to getting your book into print you could have a horrible time full of frustrations.
Did you know that Ben Franklin was a subsidy-publisher and a self-published author??? But he never used those “S” words to define his style of publishing. Ben was perhaps the first POD publisher – he kept the hand-set type of popular pieces locked up so upon demands from customers he could put those forms on a letterpress and print as many copies as needed. All of the publishing models in use today have direct roots with Franklin’s successful printing enterprise. By his very nature, Ben was author-friendly because he knew that without the content written by authors his printing presses would gather dust and there’s no profit from idle presses!!! Alas, but there was the potential for fair profits in publishing author-originated content – especially good profits if you controlled the content, owned the presses, and enjoyed vast avenues of distributions.
It was the potential for profits from book publishing that later spawned the early establishment of commercial publishing houses. Pure and simple they were in the publishing business to make money. However, what we refer to as traditional publishing today, isn’t pure and the process of making a profit is far removed from being simple. What you don’t know about publishing could be harmful to the life of your book.
Perhaps the greatest gift Ben Franklin gave to authors is the freedom of expression as he guaranteed this cherished right in the First Amendment. Without the right to write as you choose to write there wouldn’t be much writing happening, and only heavily censored books would be allowed to be published for public consumption. Ben insisted that this had to be at the top of the Bill of Rights, as he explained, without guaranteeing individuals the right to freely express their thoughts, opinions, and concerns through an open press, well then, nothing else really matters. His logic is just as sound centuries later, and that’s why this is the topic of Part One in my Nine Part series.
Take care and enjoy often…John
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Book publishing as we know it to be in the spring of 2008 would not be as open as it is if not for the visionary provisions of the First Amendment. Briefly said, believe as you will or not — speak your mind and express yourself in print — folks may freely assemble, and citizens may hold the government accountable for their actions or inactions. |
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During the passing centuries, Ben Franklin’s concept of a free and open press has been bastardized by the changing tides of publishing commerce. There were no demeaning definitions of self-publishing, subsidy publishing, or vanity publishing; that later came into being in the late 1800s, to identify the production and distribution of books beyond the control of commercial publishing houses. Truth be told, Ben engaged in all of these forms of publishing in ways that benefited the published authors, the reading public, and Ben. In fact, when he was accused of succumbing to vanity by writing and publishing his autobiography, he quickly pointed out that there was nothing wrong with a bit of vanity — and he’d know the details are accurate because of wrote them. Printing was Ben’s trade, and subsidizing aspiring authors by publishing their work was how he made a fair profit, along with the author. |
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Entrenched publishing house gatekeepers have traditionally selected books scheduled for publication based solely on their potential commercial value — if they have literary merit, so much the better. The quality of the purchased content is secondary to the marketability of the book into which the content can be molded. The value is believed to be enhanced by the imposed editorial control of the publisher’s executed revisions to make their formulated by-the-number books sell successfully. This is especially challenging to accomplish in a shrinking market where books are competing for attention within a vast entertainment industry. This is the amuse-me era, where entertainment/pop-culture/sports/multi-media “authors,” complete with newly published books, are going after those disposable entertain-me bucks, where market shares are measured in billions — multi-billions — having grown from only multi-millions in the latter decades of the 20th century. Even with inflation, that’s a horrific bounce in profit bucks produced by commercialized books done according to the repeated patterns of previously profitable mass-market successes. |
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At the close of the 20th century, many changes had happened with traditional publishers. Many of the large- to medium-size mainstream houses had been merged into multi-national corporations; other houses were downsized, and some went out of business because of the ever-increasing costs of producing and distributing books – it’s the economy, stupid!!! The high ratio of returns from bookstores, compared with books actually sold, was a killer. Those surefire ways of publishing books by formulated numbers were producing less-than-acceptable returns on investments and the shrinking net profits were simply unacceptable to the bean counters. Authors with a book in print today might suddenly discover, much to their disappointment, that their book is out-of-print tomorrow. Layoffs prematurely ended careers of many publishing professionals caught in the squeeze of downsizing, or jobs eliminated by mergers. Many positions with commercial publishers were lost as the work was consolidated, outsourced, and/or taken off-shore because the cost was far less, as a corporate way of combating inflation and making a profit. Although the big publishers grew huge through corporate realignments and entanglements, the staffs performing the actual work of acquiring, publishing, and selling books dwindled to the lean and mean size — business is business and a profit is a profit. Fact is, without turning a profit publishing companies are soon out of business. |
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In the 1990s, the introduction of inexpensive home computers linked with high-speed digital printers suddenly made it very cost-effective for all writers to exercise their rights guaranteed by the First Amendment – to publish their authored books through an affordable, free, and open press. Historians have said that Johannes Gutenberg’s work perfecting letterpress printing from movable type was the cannon boom that bounced the world like a basketball, around 1439. Then, I dare say, the modern-day perfection of book printing using high-speed digital printers is a booming 21-gun salute that reverberated throughout every aspect of civilization, with the nearing of the new 2000 millennium. |
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