As someone lucky enough to be a best-selling author, I have personally profited from many of the tactics I am decrying. The heavy discounting of best-sellers meant I sold more books and thus made more money because royalties on physical books are paid as a percentage of the cover price. Even Amazon’s e-book pricing practices were better for me than the agency model.
But I am also a reader who believes that our literary culture and our democracy are at their best with the greatest diversity of voices. This comes from allowing the largest number of authors possible to maintain careers as professional writers.
Physical bookstores offer not simply an intoxicating experience for serious readers. They have an irreplaceable role in introducing new writers. Market research consistently shows that readers are far more adventurous in their choice of books when in a bookstore than when shopping online. In bookstores, readers are open to trying new genres and new authors: It’s by far the best way for new works to be discovered.
Publishing shouldn’t have to choose between bricks and clicks. A robust book marketplace demands both bookstore showrooms to properly display new titles and online distribution for the convenience of customers. (Apple thrives on this very model: a strong retail presence to display its high-touch products coupled with vigorous online distribution.)
It may seem strange to hear the president of the Authors Guild expressing sympathy for the plight of American publishers. We have been at each other’s throats since the guild came into being a century ago, and we still have serious differences.
But publishers, big and small, have played a vital role in broadening American literary culture. They add value for authors with editing and marketing, and most importantly by advancing the money so that writers can write. If publishing ultimately goes under, to be replaced by a model in which authors sell their books directly to the reading public online, it will become a winner-take-all fiasco in which the best-known authors make enough to live between books and new authors have a far harder time breaking in. Not all writers are blessed at self- promotion; ironically, success in an introvert’s calling would depend even more on extroverted behavior.