Logic's BDSM

Baroque is utterly gorgeous; its complexity delights and impresses. But it's a hell of a way to organise an industry.

Since the advent of the printing press, publishing has more or less looked like this:

Author writes a work.

Publisher publishes it.

Bookseller sells it.

Everyone gets a cut.

This is perhaps overly simplified. So let’s make it a little more realistic:

Author writes a work.

Author sends it to an agent who pitches it to a publisher who accepts it.

Publisher edits and proofreads it, designs it and prints it up.

Distributor stores copies in its warehouse and sells the idea of the book to bookstores and sends copies to Wholesaler as requested.

Author sells the idea of the work on-line to create a demand.

Wholesaler sends copies to bookstores, including on-line platforms.

Booksellers, including platforms, sell and keep a % of the RRP, then repatriate the rest to the wholesaler and/or distributor, which keeps a % of the RRP and repatriates the rest to the publisher, which keeps a % of the RRP and repatriates the rest to the agent who keeps a % and repatriates the remaining amount to the author.

It’s just completely unreasonable. It’s not just that this whole edifice is baroque in its complexity, it’s now Jenga, held together with inertia as much as anything, losing a piece here or there.

I have in the past suggested that the distributor is going the way of the dodo bird. It is now possible to do small-batch printing in reasonable quality and to a reasonable per unit cost. It is possible for bookstores to see what’s appropriate for their customers based on Instagram feeds and data from Nielsen Book Data. So the distributor is no longer integral to this complex piece of machinery. Instead, we are seeing now the emergence of printer-distributors or printer-wholesalers. Of the two, I’d put my money on printer-wholesalers.

I have also in the past suggested that for authors, especially debut authors, agents are not needed. Debut authors can now pitch to small indie publishers directly, thanks to listings of what each publisher is looking for, automated mailings, and the many blogs and podcasts explaining exactly how to shape a professional cover letter. Small indies can have a standard contract for all authors that is not open to negotiation. This raises the obvious question of why an author needs an agent.

Publishing has more dodos about to go extinct than are stuffed in the Natural History Museum.

Then I had a coffee last week with a highly respected man in publishing. He was lovely, the café was darling and the coffee was strong. But the man kicked over my apple cart, which always makes one peevish.

In the modernisation of the baroque complexity of publishing into something more streamlined, I’d always assumed that the publisher was essential. Undoubtedly that’s a bias of my own status: You might not be needed but I am. He suggested the possibility that publishers will disappear, even the biggies. Publishers used to be the bottleneck. Now we’re surplus to requirement, a charming anachronism, like a grandpa at a rave.

Here’s his logic:

Author writes a work.

Author hires an editor, proofreader and designer, and then self publishes in small batches through a printer-wholesaler.

Author sells the idea of the work on-line to create a demand.

Wholesaler sends to bookstores, including on-line platforms.

Booksellers sell and keep a % of the RRP, then repatriate the rest to the wholesaler, which keeps a % of the RRP, and repatriates the rest to the publisher/agent/author.

After the work becomes a bestseller or wins an award, an agent can sell it into multimedia or foreign language or merchandise. So agents are still necessary. Booksellers are still necessary. For the foreseeable future, both printer-wholesaler and author are necessary. Their roles might be diminished or redefined, but they’re not going to disappear.

The dissolution of publishers is the most reasonable outcome of the turmoil in the publishing eco-system.

Some may not find modernisation as aesthetically pleasing as baroque. Some might point out that people are not rational and therefore an industry organised around rationality is not a given.

While all this might be true, the mechanics of turning a profit is persuasive, highly persuasive.

I do rather like logic. It feels good when people lay out a process before me and I can follow it to its inexorable conclusion. It feels better than good. It feels amazing. Nonetheless, acknowledging the obliteration of my own little publishing house was a painful experience.

Call it logic’s BDSM. Others may have a safe word to reduce the pain. Retirement? Lateral shift into agenting? Teaching?

Not me. I intend to be Houdini and escape the logic that binds.