The Snobbery of Publishing ...continued
A similar chasm still exists in today’s publishing houses. The young hopeful who wants to go into publishing is not thinking of bargaining for paper. There are few production managers or book reps at board level. It’s the commissioning editor who gets the lunch and the kudos, who gets the coverage in The Bookseller for ‘winning’ that pricey author with a large chunk of the publisher’s revenue. The sweaty ones in the engine room marked ‘production, sales and marketing’ are rarely the subject of headline-grabbing headhunting.
Before the conglomerates slotted their staff into glass houses, the very buildings in Bloomsbury that housed publishing companies reflected a hierarchy, with the bosses on the top floor (that has changed little) and the worker ants in the basement. Even the nastier lighting was found in the bowels. The book reps, those coalface workers, wouldn’t even get desk space. They, well, they sold, they were salesmen.
The Frankfurt Book Fair, that forum for foreign rights (very appropriate word, ‘forum’: much blood on the ground from those trying to get on a stand without an appointment) bears witness to the publishing pecking order. The chief executive’s brief and lordly visit may take in the party, with much meeting and greeting of peers. The forlorn figure of the lonely author won’t even get a slot to visit the frantic foreign rights buyer whose deals won’t include any analysis of true costs. Production Managers, who may well have to sort out a hopeful Frankfurt deal, don’t get to climb aboard the Frankfurt gravy train. And spare a thought for the minions who have to stay to the bitter end of the Fair, long after the top dogs have departed.
But let us anatomise authors and see what elitism breeds around their hearts. Are you with a posh publisher or a piddling little imprint to whom you might have, er, contributed some funding? Does your literary agent (what, no literary agent?) have a roster of glittering names, of whom you are naturally one, or does she live in Bootle and last sold How The Squirrel Lost His Nuts to some obscure house in Oz? Is your publicity budget in line with your huge advance or have you merely been sent that uninspired template that wants to know if your local paper will interview you?
And now that the chains and supermarkets dictate terms to the publishers, is your book one of the ‘2 for 3’ offers? Would you want your book on the supermarket shelves alongside the latest celebrity from Big Brother? The bookbuyers for supermarkets may wield tremendous purchasing power in our world, but their background is as likely to be in selling white goods at Currys as the old underpaid apprenticeship in a bookshop. Dear me, would you invite a supermarket buyer to dinner?
We all have a tendency to snobbery about what we read, the authors we buy. Reading Harry Potter on the tube was a sort of style statement, showing the openness of one’s mind, far more acceptable than holding up a Barbara Cartland. That implied something quite different. The reviewers could hardly ignore JK Rowling. There are more plus points to be gained by saying you haven’t read The Da Vinci Code, rather like never watching television.
Publishing is a funny old trade. Perhaps that is why there is so much point scoring: it is a trade, not a profession. What would you say are the qualifications to get a job in Publicity – a question that perplexes many authors? I can hear a dyspeptic author hissing the answer - ‘live near Sloane Square’.
Publishers and booksellers often emanate a lofty regard for what they do. The book is A Good Thing – and therefore we are too. I remember a pompous speaker at a PICA Dinner saying that we (publishers) carry the Holy Grail of the written word in our hands. Look what Dan Brown has done to that.
There is a piety apparent in some booksellers, as though running a bookshop was a vocation for the priesthood, holier than the shop next door which, if it’s another mobile phone shop, is probably well justified (yes, that’s a snobby comment). And to be a struggling independent is somehow more worthy than being a branch of a chain.
The Internet blows a raspberry at these traditional postures. The anonymity of Amazon, Google and eBay, and the trampling steps of their power make such snobberies seem petty and small - but perhaps makes them at least seem human.
The web is introducing a few elitisms of its own. It is more prestigious to appear in print on paper than on a screen, since the web has democratised the written word and allows it to appear unedited, unhoned and ungrammatical.
Writers, we once thought, should struggle, but words can be posted onto the web with a trowel. Wikipedia boasts of being ‘the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit’, not an attribute we would expect of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. But that is the democratic voice of the web and it cocks a snoot at the squirearchy of publishing. It is a form of inverted snobbery.
If you’re lucky enough to have a launch party for your next book, spare a thought for those who are not on the invitation list, the project editor, the proof reader, even the printer who struggled on your behalf to make that deadline. More than likely, those at the launch will be more familiar with The Groucho than they will be with a Quark file.
No ink on their hands.
Colin Walsh FIP3