That’s what the publishing industry newsletter PUBLISHER’S LUNCH is calling it. This past Wednesday quite a few of the big publishing houses announced lay-offs, resignations, and departmental consolidations, which always results in lay-offs as well. This followed the news a while ago that Houghton Mifflin Harcourt was putting a freeze on acquisitions. I don’t know if that has ever happened before but it is frightening to think that a major publishing house has simply stopped buying new books because the market is so bad.
Anyway you should definitely check out the following blogs (2 editors and an agent) for more information and a professional perspective on the whole thing.
http://editorialanonymous.blogspot.com/
http://editorialass.blogspot.com/
http://nathanbransford.blogspot.com/
It must be a scary and unsettling time for a lot of people and my heart goes out to them. Why does big business always let people go around the holidays? Or is it just so they can start the New Year with a clean slate? Anyway it sucks.
That said, I have experienced something similar while I was working in the record industry. Twice. There was a massive upheaval in the eighties, while I was working for Rough Trade, after the major labels gobbled up every alternative band out there who sounded like the Smiths, New Order, The Replacements or Black Flag, and every indie label that pretty much existed, in a frenzied gorging that resulted in bloated bureaucratic companies run by greedy businessmen who had no idea what they were doing. A ton of labels went under, a lot of distributors sank, and then sort of like a forest which has been ravaged by wild fire, amongst the charred, smoking stubble, tiny leaves of grass poked out and almost overnight the scene was transformed into a lush, green landscape again. Independent labels appeared, mushroomed and music became interesting, edgy and different again and we proceeded as if nothing had happened. And out of this came Nirvana and then it happened all over again except that major labels realized they could just buy the bands by waving money around rather than take on the whole record label which had spawned them.
And then in the nineties it was Napster and music pirating (a ridiculous term in my opinion) and the majors were suspicious and too greedy to realize that promotion is promotion and helps get people into the stores to buy music, which is what we were all hoping for, right? My label (Dogday Records) embraced mp3s and the digital technology. All of our music was available for free download. We were not driven by commercial singles like the majors who force fed one or two radio and video- driven songs to the public to sell mediocre albums, because of course they had already expunged the CD-single and before that the cassette single which sold for two or three dollars. We concentrated on releasing quality albums with nice artwork and liner notes. Instead of seeing Napster as the enemy the majors should have investigated, and changed and adapted to the current times and consumer demands to keep the customer in the stores and buying music.
It’s hard not to draw parallels with the rise of Kindle and electronic books and the demise of the mom and pop retailer and the proliferation of chain stores that are not booksellers per se but just sell a bit of everything as long as it is a big name release. Imagine going to the only store around that sells books and finding a selection of maybe twenty titles and most of them James Patterson. No wonder most people are staying at home with their TiVo and their Netflix.
Taking the human element out of the equation for a moment. Is this a bad thing for authors especially those who have yet to be published? Or is this in fact a good- and dare I say it? – Natural development? Does the upheaval lead to positive and dynamic changes in a business model which might well be stilted, unwieldy and hopelessly out of date?
It’s too soon to tell, but maybe a better way to make a deal will come out of this and maybe writers will have to work harder to meet a raised bar quality and much of the mediocrity on both sides will be washed away. Boy, I hope I can deliver.
I’m, no doubt, jumping the gun here but lately it has seemed to me that in the music industry there has been a renewed focus on quality and fully conceptualized albums. And many of the old record people- veterans who love music and can hear a hit and find a band- people who were laid off a few years ago are getting their old jobs back.
Perhaps it’s a portent of good things to come?
In the meantime we’ll just have to cinch our belts with the rest of the country, and remain as optimistic as we can.
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