Publishing's E-Savior

"The Rattle of Pebbles" by Jason Epstein, in The New York Review of Books (Apr. 27, 2000), 1755 Broadway, Fifth floor, New York, N.Y. 10019–3780.

Thanks to the World Wide Web and other new technologies, book publishing is on the brink of "a vast transformation"—and none too soon, argues Epstein, an industry veteran who recently stepped down as editorial director of Random House. Providentially, he writes, "these technologies have emerged just as the publishing industry has fallen into terminal collapse."

Bertelsmann, a German-based media conglomerate, and four other corporate empires now dominate book publishing in the United States, he notes. Bertelsmann, for example, owns such well-known imprints as Random House, Knopf, Doubleday, Bantam, Pantheon, Dell, Crown, and Ballantine. "By liquidating redundant overheads," says Epstein, "these corporate owners hope to improve the low profit margins typical of the industry." But they are likely to be disappointed.

Publishers have committed themselves, he says, to "an impossible goal": turning out "a constant supply of best sellers" to satisfy Borders and Barnes & Noble, the dominant bookstore chains, "whose high operating costs demand high rates of turnover" of titles. Most worthwhile books "are not meant to be best sellers," Epstein points out, and though more such worthy books may be published today than ever before, they stay in print only briefly. Publishers once "cultivated their backlists as their major asset, choosing titles for their permanent value as much as for their immediate appeal." Bestsellers were "lucky accidents."

The million-copy sales of a handful of "name-brand" authors, such as John Grisham, have fostered the illusion that book publishing is "a predictable, mass market business," Epstein says. Between 1986 and 1996, the share of all books sold represented by the 30 top bestsellers nearly doubled. But of the 100 bestsellers in roughly the same period, 63 were turned out by only six authors. This concentration was "a mixed blessing to publishers," he observes, since profits are often gobbled up in the effort to keep "name-brand" writers.

To reach their mass readers, such authors really need only routine publishing services— printing, advertising, and distribution—which, in the likely event that publishers sooner or later cease to exist, Epstein speculates, could easily be provided by independent contractors.

With the emerging digital technologies, he says, writers and readers "will no longer need publishers or traditional booksellers to bring them together." Recently, a Stephen King short story sold exclusively online resulted in 400,000 requests to download it in just the first day. But readers will still need help separating the literary wheat from the chaff, Epstein believes, so "distinguished websites, like good bookstores," are likely to emerge. "On the infinitely expandable shelves of the World Wide Web, there will be room for an infinite variety of books." None will ever have to go out of print.

Though distribution of books will radically change, "the essential work of editing and publicity" will remain, says Epstein. And book publishing may become again what it once was: "a cottage industry of diverse, creative, autonomous units."