"Technologies change the world but human nature remains the same." That quote sums up the theme of the 7 essays in this interesting book. Mr. Epstein makes a persuasive case for electronics reducing the costs of reaching readers in ways so that authors and their readers will interact more directly, as they did before the 20th century. The bulk of the book is an anecdotal history of publishing and book retailing in the United States over the last 150 years. In most cases, Mr. Epstein uses his own career for examples of the changes that have occurred in the last 50 years.Mr. Epstein takes on this challenge from a position of considerable authority. He been a top editor, working with authors like Norman Mailer, Vladimir Nabokov, E.L. Doctorow, Philip Roth, and Gore Vidal. Beyond that, he has been an important industry innovator, having helped introduce the quality paperback through Anchor Books, being a founder of The New York Review of books, and helping establish the Library of America (featuring authentic versions of important American works in paperback). When time-shared computer services were first expanding, he helped develop the "Reader's Catalog" for getting backlist books.... He was the first recipient of the National Book Award for Distinguished Service for American Letters for "inventing new kinds of publishing and editing."
Basically, the economics of creating a book involve getting the book edited and produced at the lowest possible fixed cost, and then being able to create copies at low marginal cost rates. Anything you can do to avoid any other overhead is all to the good. If an author simply publishes his own work electronically (as Stephen King has started doing), both costs reach a bare bones minimum. The potential for profits is enormous. Unfortunately for publishers and retailers, this new economic circumstance favors the authors and the readers. More and more book sales are coming from fewer and fewer authors (6 authors did over 60 percent of the top 100 books from 1986-1996). These authors now see themselves as needing business managers more than literary agents, so they can earn profits in more ways from their production. Mr. Epstein forecasts that more successful authors will simply buy the services they need from specialized firms rather than using publishers at all.
The implication of this is that the major publishing conglomerates will soon be dismantled in a scramble to avoid the diseconomies of bidding higher and higher advances. Having not focused on building a backlist business, these firms will be unprofitable compared with alternative investments. The book business will probably go back to being run by people who do it for love of books, rather than love of profits. He sees chain bookstores surviving, but more as a place to have a cup of coffee and meet with others to discuss books. Nonbook outlets (possibly including Kinko's) could become places where you can go to get any book you want made to order. .... Authors will flourish as books always remain in print. New forms of books will arise that allow different combinations of material to be created, just to match the needs of an individual reader.
This book is an expanded version of three lectures that Mr. Epstein gave at the New York Public Library in October 1999. The first chapter has already been published in the New York Review of Books. Unfortunately, after that chapter the book reads like a series of disconnected lectures rather than as one book.
The first chapter is dynamite. The rest isn't nearly as good. The other sections are just detailed expositions of the points in the first chapter. So the content, while charming and interesting, is an elaborated magazine article. If Mr. Epstein had developed his economic insights in more depth, rather than providing a lot of historical background on the industry, the book would have been a lot better. As written, the book is backward looking 85 percent of the time and forward looking 15 percent of the time.
Mr. Epstein needed a stronger editor to take his marvelous thoughts and shape them into something more visionary and coherent than this book is. But it must be tough to edit a legendary editor. I graded the book down one star for these faults. Some will grade it down more. If the book had been better focused and organized on the industry's future, I would have said that it was a more than five star book. So, you could say that I am really grading it down two or three stars for this problem.
Now, please understand that the book is well written. The sentences and thoughts are beautiful. It just isn't formed into the best book it could be. If you like to read books of lectures, you won't mind a bit. So "Book Notes" junkies will love it!
Ask yourself these questions: Where would you like to get your stories and information from the world's best writers and thinkers? How could the material be made more attractive and useful to you? How important are cost and convenience as issues for you?
Cherish the potential of technology to expand our access to each other . . . always!
