lose the abacus and read the writing on the wall

GalleyCat links to a report at Shelf Awareness about the publication of a statistics-filled—and thus supposedly very serious—book about the book publishing industry, The Culture and Commerce of Publishing in the 21st Century, by Al Greco, Clara Rodriguez and Robert Wharton.According to Greco, this is a “comprehensive” look at the industry, about which he has this to say:

“It’s a nutty business but a great business,” Greco said in a conversation with Shelf Awareness. “It’s a cultural business that’s different. Hollywood talks about culture but couldn’t care less, and newspapers have a cultural tradition but they’re publicly owned and under major pressure.”

This author of a book about the business side of book publishing loves the biz! He really, really loves the biz!—despite the fact that it’s, um, differently abled than other businesses [emphasis mine]:

One way the business is different from many others: it “adapts quickly and is willing to take risks,” Greco said. “If there’s a trend, we pick up on it. It’s one of the wonders of the business. Editors look at cultural trends, the arts, pop trends, and crank out books in response.” And another way the business is different: “most of the product doesn’t work.” Naturally Greco has statistics to illustrate this point: “Seven out of 10 new trade books lose money,” he said. “Two break even. One makes money. The ratio hasn’t changed for years, and it explains why we’re a hit-driven business.”

I love GalleyCat, but I’m surprised they didn’t use that sad but salient part of Greco’s quote. Maybe GalleyCat doesn’t want to think about it, or to repeat it, but I will:

An industry that cannot replace the customers it loses (to other media to death), much less increase its customer base, can simply not afford to keep doing the same old same old. I’m no mogul, but even I know that a 10% success rate (one out of ten books makes money, Greco says) is not exactly a formula for success—particularly when you’re an enterprise that makes a static product in a super-dynamic media landscape. Sooner rather than later, you will be blown away.

Greco is also full of shit about the digital future of trade books:

It’s been a busy period to cover. Not surprisingly a major change in the book business is “the impact of technology, which is obviously moving the business in a faster way,” Greco said. This explains RiverDeep’s purchase last week of Houghton Mifflin. “Now RiverDeep has electronic products and textbooks,” he said. “That technology will ultimately change el-hi but not trade.” (The Sony Reader is not the e-book product that will revolutionize trade book reading, he maintained. “Who’s going to buy that?” Greco asked.)

Hmm, let’s see. Why, no less a literary eminence than Chip McGrath, formerly of the New Yorker and the New York Times Books Review, that’s who. He didn’t buy it, but he reviewed it —favorably, if with a few reservations—for the Times:

By far the best things about the Reader are its capacity — it can hold about 80 books, or more if you use a memory card — and portability. I have crammed mine with both recreational reading and stuff for work, and it all fits in my pocket: a couple of thousand pages of James, two novels by Somerset Maugham and a play by Harley Granville Barker, not to mention Ms. Copland’s masterwork and Ian Rankin’s newest thriller.

I have happily skipped from book to book while riding on a bus, in the car and in between periods at a hockey game, and I even used my Reader at the beach on a bright October day, when it was a great relief not to have to worry about dampness, sand or wind-tossed pages. The Reader is so light and so compact that you can easily forget all about it, and even lose the thing, as I have twice: once between the sofa cushions and once, embarrassingly, right inside my own tote bag when it slithered inside a magazine and I thought it was gone forever.

Call me crazy, but I find it encouraging that when he’s reading, McGrath cares about what he’s reading, not the medium that delivers the reading experience to him.