ARS GRATIA LUCRUM

We’ve banged on about the mainstream publishing industry before but a recent analysis suggests a confirmatory update. It appeared in the Times Literary Supplement No 6298 December 15 2023*

The whole business sounds corruptly commercial – capitalism’s gift to literature. No surprises there then. The review opens with:

Dan Sinykin has written a history of American publishing in the free-market era that began with the market liberalizations of the 1980s and the effect of conglomeration - the combination, through purchase and merger, of business entities - on what and how we read. "This is not a tale about a Golden Age ransacked by barbarians", he says. "This is ... a tale of trans­formation." Yet anyone who cares about books should take a deep breath before opening Big Fic­tion, for it is a story of Goliaths subduing every David, of a business so beset with problems that Donald, Lamm of WW Norton used to ask young people interested in publishing if they had ever con­sidered mining coal.

Is it all down to marketing? If so then it looks like we’re buggered.eg:

Stephen King, worried that it was his brand as a horror writer and not his writing that guaranteed sales, published several books under a pseudonym; they sold poorly, and even after he was unmasked as the real author, they never gained the popularity of his horror novels.

Poor Steve! Even he yearned, ineffectually, for the elusive Ars. It’s just the nature of the business or, more comprehensively - capitalism. Beckett’s first novel was rejected 78 times and Nabokov was about to burn the typescript of Lolita until the missis stopped him. Sinykin goes on:

 

One concept central to his interpretation of the sector is "emergent intelligence", which he deploys to explain how individual publishing professionals interact with their workplaces and societies to generate, sometimes despite themselves, fads and trends that guide not just what gets published and how it is received, but what gets written and by whom: "the dispersal of power out of the hands of the author and ... into a great many hands" as part of a system defined by shareholder profits and corporate stratagems that guide how people think about the value of any specific text. With that comes a simultaneous dispersal of moral responsibility (it's the market making the choices)

 

On the nail Dan. So whaddyagonna do? My own solution, aired in previous  editorials, is to do the whole show right here in the barn. If you acquaint yourself with the arcane procedures of the print-on demand industry and learn how to knock up a website you can get clear of all this. You can publish your own masterpiece for about a tenner – get it listed on Amazon and stored for ever in the deposit libraries such as the British Library at Boston Spa – where, incidentally this text will reside in perpetuity. – like the sarcophagus of Tutankhamun

That’s about as immortal as you’re going to get. And who wants to be immortal anyway?

Ken Clay Jan 2024

 

*Big Fiction How conglomerates changed the publishing industry and American literature  - Columbia University Press

Reviewed by Tadzio Koelb

A RIGHT ROYAL BIRD

MARK WARD 

Rick Martin is a Romany gypsy who blends his own fine teas and hires out rowing boats from his lakeside kiosk Faeryland, which is set in a sheltered inlet beyond the village. It is the most picturesque of places and I’ve wiled away many an idle moment there. The bay is protected from the worst of the weather by trees and two promontories of land that give a pincer effect separating it from the main body of the lake and through which you must pass to get into open water.

Each Spring Grasmere’s resident mute swans Henry and Henrietta build a nest on the edge of the headland and while she sits quietly with her brood, he patrols the channel. He’s a cantankerous, unpredictable old sod and passing through can be like navigating the Straits of Hormuz – anything can happen. The situation isn’t helped by the shallows where the long-fingered weeds cling to the hull giving the effect of rowing through treacle and it’s always with a sense of relief that you get through and out into deeper water without incident. I feel myself fortunate that, while I’ve often had him trail in my wake or glide alongside like a frigate, he’s never actually had a go.

He finds canoeists particularly objectionable and has capsized a number of unsuspecting enthusiasts over the years by approaching at speed then flying low at them to knock them off balance. The poet Carola Luther, herself a keen canoeist, spent many hours out on the lake, but on occasion Rick had to place himself in a boat between her and Henry to allow her safe passage. Familiarity is no guarantee. He fears no one, this is his territory and the decision to let people pass is entirely at his discretion.

He’s there as I write – regal and proud: policing the channel; casually scanning the lake and shoreline for his next victim.