The Walrus article by Tajja Isen was fantastic. Thank you for that. I want to state the probably-obvious but socially-unacceptable reason why "track" matters so much: Very few of the people who determine a book's fate actually read them. The agent might. The acquiring editor, in theory, always does. The sales team? The marketing team? The guy who sits in every meeting and bitches about word count, forcing epic fantasy authors to rein it in, because he's been out of ideas for twenty years? Those people just look at the numbers; they don't read the text. Commercial metrics matter because (a) they're immediately evident, and (b) they provide an easy excuse *not* to read. "Bad track, pass. What's next?"
This goes beyond trade publishing, of course. Professors get hired or fired ("denied tenure") based on the h-index, which is the count of published papers, penalized if they aren't cited enough (i.e., to have an h-index of 20, you need 20 papers that have been cited at least 20 times.) This is not hard to game and, unsurprisingly, people do if they want to be employable at the highest levels. It's all metrics because hardly anyone reads in academia either—professors would love to do so, but they don't have time for it, because they're full-time grant-chasers now. Grad students do most of the actual research. But then they leave; there's no continuity.
Publishing gives power to talkers—not readers. And the public reacts to publishing's attitude toward its own product by reading less and less every year. If the decision makers don't read, they set the example for everyone else. It's a game-theoretic sink, like the prisoner's dilemma. Every publishing house is making decisions it believes are short-term optimal, while the long-term effect is that publishing (and literature, since most people only find or read traditionally published books) loses its credibility slowly, one celebrity memoir at a time.
All of this said, the biggest enemy of literature isn't trade publishing at this point. TP sucks right now and it will probably never get better, but the real problem is enshittification, which is damaging self-publishing as well as trade. If we find a way to solve enshittification, then online discovery may work again, and we won't need traditional publishing; given the way the industry is evolving, we should plan not to need it. Maxwell Perkins has been dead for a long time, and the golden age of traditional publishing is almost certainly not coming back.
Thank you so much for this article, and for your whole newsletter. It never fails to provide intelligent, concise, and valuable perspectives on the art, craft, and business of writing. Even having been published multiple times I learn something new every time I read your newsletter.
New paid subscriber, thanks for what you do! A question: My first three books were published in 2006, 2007, and 2010 by Kensington Publishing Corp. Kensington filed all three copyrights. Yet, only the 2006 book appears on the database. Any idea why the other two are missing? Could the thieves be deliberately knocking books off the database in hopes authors and publishers won't notice? Your thoughts would be appreciated.
Thank you! I'm really not an expert at all on the lawsuit or anything. Assuming that it isn't an error (intentional or otherwise), it is possible the publisher didn't file copyright--all publishers are supposed to but they don't always do it--or that some books simply weren't in LibGen library. I searched for some anthologies I was in and didn't see them, even though other anthologies from the same publisher were in it.
I read Fisher's column and do have some questions for when he guests - does he look at indie published authors on Edelweiss or only publisher's catalogs? How many books is "display quantity"? How does his staff get early ARCs to make staff recs that drive his purchses? How many sales reps call on him during a season and do some represent more than one publisher? What's his thoughts on hardcovers vs paperbacks?
The Walrus article by Tajja Isen was fantastic. Thank you for that. I want to state the probably-obvious but socially-unacceptable reason why "track" matters so much: Very few of the people who determine a book's fate actually read them. The agent might. The acquiring editor, in theory, always does. The sales team? The marketing team? The guy who sits in every meeting and bitches about word count, forcing epic fantasy authors to rein it in, because he's been out of ideas for twenty years? Those people just look at the numbers; they don't read the text. Commercial metrics matter because (a) they're immediately evident, and (b) they provide an easy excuse *not* to read. "Bad track, pass. What's next?"
This goes beyond trade publishing, of course. Professors get hired or fired ("denied tenure") based on the h-index, which is the count of published papers, penalized if they aren't cited enough (i.e., to have an h-index of 20, you need 20 papers that have been cited at least 20 times.) This is not hard to game and, unsurprisingly, people do if they want to be employable at the highest levels. It's all metrics because hardly anyone reads in academia either—professors would love to do so, but they don't have time for it, because they're full-time grant-chasers now. Grad students do most of the actual research. But then they leave; there's no continuity.
Publishing gives power to talkers—not readers. And the public reacts to publishing's attitude toward its own product by reading less and less every year. If the decision makers don't read, they set the example for everyone else. It's a game-theoretic sink, like the prisoner's dilemma. Every publishing house is making decisions it believes are short-term optimal, while the long-term effect is that publishing (and literature, since most people only find or read traditionally published books) loses its credibility slowly, one celebrity memoir at a time.
All of this said, the biggest enemy of literature isn't trade publishing at this point. TP sucks right now and it will probably never get better, but the real problem is enshittification, which is damaging self-publishing as well as trade. If we find a way to solve enshittification, then online discovery may work again, and we won't need traditional publishing; given the way the industry is evolving, we should plan not to need it. Maxwell Perkins has been dead for a long time, and the golden age of traditional publishing is almost certainly not coming back.
Thank you so much for this article, and for your whole newsletter. It never fails to provide intelligent, concise, and valuable perspectives on the art, craft, and business of writing. Even having been published multiple times I learn something new every time I read your newsletter.
Thank you so much!
can't wait to hear from Fisher - I've always wondered about the nitty-gritty of what gets featured in a bookstore and why.
New paid subscriber, thanks for what you do! A question: My first three books were published in 2006, 2007, and 2010 by Kensington Publishing Corp. Kensington filed all three copyrights. Yet, only the 2006 book appears on the database. Any idea why the other two are missing? Could the thieves be deliberately knocking books off the database in hopes authors and publishers won't notice? Your thoughts would be appreciated.
Thank you! I'm really not an expert at all on the lawsuit or anything. Assuming that it isn't an error (intentional or otherwise), it is possible the publisher didn't file copyright--all publishers are supposed to but they don't always do it--or that some books simply weren't in LibGen library. I searched for some anthologies I was in and didn't see them, even though other anthologies from the same publisher were in it.
Thanks for this, Lincoln. I'll check out the LibGen library, see what I can find.
I read Fisher's column and do have some questions for when he guests - does he look at indie published authors on Edelweiss or only publisher's catalogs? How many books is "display quantity"? How does his staff get early ARCs to make staff recs that drive his purchses? How many sales reps call on him during a season and do some represent more than one publisher? What's his thoughts on hardcovers vs paperbacks?