BOOKS: The Culture and Commerce of Publishing

by Lewis A.; Charles Kadushin & Walter W. Powell Coser ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 15, 1981

Three sociologists have pored over the publishing industry and managed, laboriously, to learn some things known to virtually everyone in the trade. (They might, of course, have done worse.) One should perhaps speak rather of trades--for after vainly trying to classify publishers by size or ownership, they realized that the only tenable division is by type of publishing: trade books, textbooks, scholarly books. In each of those areas, policies and procedures do indeed differ. The consequence for their ponderous study is that it does have something to offer beyond hedging observations on ""the tension between commerce and culture"" (it has always been with us--but then again it may be different today), the requisite concern about ""the blockbuster complex"" (per the Whiteside book of that title), and a generally vapid discussion of the best-known form of publishing, that of trade books. (An elaborate rating system produced the intelligence that Knopf was the highest-regarded house among all types of editors; another computer correlation found that editors have more contact with agents than with anyone else outside the firm.) There is, however, a great deal of miscellaneous if mushy information on everything from editorial intake (""Our interviews revealed six major sources of manuscripts, ideas, outlines, projects"") to marketing and sales (""The essential point is that most editors report increased concern with sales"") to the reviewing media (""The claim that advertising dollars affect reviews"" in the New York Times, ""while superficially plausible, has yet to be substantiated""). But as regards college texts and scholarly books, the authors seem both better-informed and more astute; one can only regret that the particulars--on the ""managed,"" team-written text or the ""invisible college"" of scholarly researchers--are scattered throughout the book. It comes to no fresh conclusions--sociological, economic, or cultural. Outside of the textbook field, it does not demonstrate a correlation between any aspect of publishing and the finished product (in part, because the interviewees were granted anonymity--but the authors seem also not to have pursued this angle). On the mechanics of trade publishing, it is less instructive than Judith Appelbaum and Nancy Evans' How to Get Happily Published; for a factual description, it's outpointed by Chandler Grannis' What Happens in Book Publishing. But those who share the authors' ""naive fantasies about publishing"" will find them studiously dismantled here.

Pub Date: Jan. 15, 1981

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Basic Books

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1981

Categories: NONFICTION