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A Note from Pat about Holt Uncensored
Where Did All The Good Books Go? On The Internet Where Did All The Good Books Go? The genesis of this column began in the late 1980s, when I found myself walking around the Book Review office at the San Francisco Chronicle looking for serious books about history, biography, science, philosophy and social issues - not to mention literary and midlist fiction. Each year there were fewer. I began to realize that in the midst of corporate takeovers and commercialism in the book industry, good books were getting lost in the shuffle. The category of history, for example, was being overtaken by books on war and military leaders. Biography was losing ground to titles about the Royal Family, American presidents and First Ladies. Science books seemed to hit various trends (quantum physics, ecology), almost always to the exclusion of others. Midlist fiction was sinking like a stone until Oprah Winfrey resurrected it, but how could that be? How could an entire publishing establishment, hundreds of years old, find itself dependent on a TV star to establish literary standards? Merger Mania I felt that the media kept missing the point in their coverage of "merger mania," that now-very-American process in which mainstream publishers were (and are still) being gobbled up by conglomerates. From the 50 or so independent publishers in the mainstream industry about 30 years ago, when I started work in publishing, today about 7 conglomerates publish the bulk of mainstream books. This awesome consolidation of power is having a disastrous effect on the kinds of choices readers are offered -- and on the very health of our democracy: Not only are gimmicky, high-turnover, "no-risk" books replacing serious literature, an invisible censorship is taking hold of the industry as more and more decisions about what Americans can read fall into fewer and fewer hands. Corporate-owned publishers like to say that small presses are picking up the slack, but what an unfair burden it is to place upon these struggling and inventive independents, so often maligned as fringe mavericks and almost always dependent on sales or grants to pay the bills, rarely on stockholders or venture capital firms. Enter the Chains At the same time, the appearance of chain bookstores, beginning in the 1970s, has been devastating to independent booksellers. Despite deep corporate pockets backing B. Dalton and Walden bookstores, independents with their (by comparison) paltry profits found that they could compete against one chain store down the freeway or even down the block. But they could not survive against two chains that happened to appear in the same mall or neighborhood, let alone three or four or, in an increasing number of cities and suburbs around the country, 7 and 8. The Bookstore Wars . . . and Amazon.com To understand the incredible resilience of independent bookstores, I often remind myself that "the bookstore wars" encompass a struggle of three decades. Those independents who survived the Dalton/Waldens in the 1970s were hit again by heavy discounters (Crown and SuperCrown), cheapo department stores (Target, Wal-Mart) and price clubs like Costco in the '80s. They faced even tougher competition by the big-box superstores (Barnes & Noble, Borders) in the early '90s and by Wall-Street-backed online booksellers like Amazon.com, Barnesandnoble.com and Borders.com in the late '90s and first year(s) of 2000. Yet stories about "the bookstore wars" in the media were not about independents struggling to survive against predatory chain bookstores and market-share-stealing Internet retailers but about Barnes & Noble and Borders trying to survive against Amazon.com. Over and over, these "Goliath vs. Goliath" headlines seemed to dismiss or malign independents as poor players in a fast-paced, high-stakes game they could never win. The Independents as Models Even as their numbers were falling by the thousands, those independent bookstores that survived were models of good business. They succeeded on the basis of sales and bank loans, not junk bonds and Wall Street popularity as did Amazon.com and other online retailers. They paid their bills on time, kept their returns low and gave their staffs fair salaries, unlike chain bookstores. And they contributed to their communities with programs linked to schools, libraries, literacy programs, writing groups, book clubs and neighborhood interests. In the Larger Scheme of Things Like many critics, I'm also concerned about the significance of independent booksellers in the larger scheme of things - how they discover new books that the chains often miss; how they support unknown writers; how they cultivate audiences of readers and writers, how they aren't comfortable with the kind of "paid placements" that bring Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble and Borders hundreds of thousands of dollars; how they continue to play a key role in the preservation of literature, even though they are routinely dismissed by mainstream publishers as powerless. Well, how powerless is this: Taken together, independent bookstores offer a wider range and variety of titles than do all chain stores put together. Indeed, independents' ability to single out books they consider worthy makes them far more powerful than Amazon.com or any online book outlet in terms of launching and sustaining books that would otherwise get lost in the shuffle. This persistance in introducing many different books to many different audiences has ensured the kind of literary diversity that is essential to a free exchange of ideas in any healthy democracy. The Purpose of Holt Uncensored This column is a place for critical commentary about the publishing and bookselling industry. Its aim is to provide an exchange of ideas that will contribute to the shape and future of literature in the United States. It's also a place to have a little fun with the industry through irreverent looks at corporate dominance on and off the Internet, interviews with authors, book reviews, bookstore anecdotes, news scoops hot tips, obits, links and a serialized spoof called "Remainders of the Day" (Part II coming soon). With letters from readers throughout the world, the column has also become a forum for controversy and opinion that can be so valuable in this time of upheaval in the book industry. On The Internet The wonder of writing about all this on the Internet is to feel a larger expertise "out there" grab hold of every story and run with it. On the Internet, there is no such thing as The Designated Journalist deciding all about covering the news, thank heaven. On the Internet, the audience sits a breath away from the writer and contributes equally to that great ball of conversation that rolls throughout cyberspace, wherever it wants to go. In our case, with all the upheavals that have convulsed the book business, this is a conversation I hope you'll want to follow.
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