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Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Books Another Publisher in Trouble

Posted by Paul Constant on Wed, Dec 3, 2008 at 2:25 PM

Yesterday I wrote about Houghton Mifflin Harcourt reshuffling. Today, Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind explains today's reshuffling at Random House. If this confuses you, my two-bit analysis is after the quote:

* The Random House Publishing Group, under the leadership of President and Publisher Gina Centrello, will expand to include the imprints of the Bantam Dell Publishing Group, including The Dial Press, along with Doubleday’s Spiegel & Grau.
* The Knopf Publishing Group, led by Chairman Sonny Mehta, will expand to include the Doubleday and Nan A. Talese imprints from the Doubleday Publishing Group.
* The Crown Publishing Group, under the direction of President and Publisher Jenny Frost, will expand to include the other imprints from the Doubleday Publishing Group—Broadway, Doubleday Business, Doubleday Religion and WaterBrook Multnomah.
* As a result of the reorganization, Bantam Dell publisher Irwyn Appelbaum and Doubleday publisher Steve Rubin are leaving the company. Appelbaum leaves immediately while Rubin is in discussions with Dohle about "creating a new role for him in the company."

This might be a little inside baseball for some of you, but the important thing is this: Knopf is Random House's big old prestige imprint, and the fact that they're watering down the brand with Doubleday, which is more of a solid mid-level performer, is a sign that somebody doesn't understand their product strength. And Bantam Dell—the big mass market, genre fiction producer for the company—having its publisher completely cut out of the equation is a sign that something's really rough on the bottom line. So they're cutting the highbrow and the lowbrow with other imprints, which, to me, smacks of desperation. And this is one of the biggest publishers in the United States.

Comments (7) RSS

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Does this mean John Updike will publish "The Zombies of Eastwick" through lulu.com?

Posted by Travis Nichols on December 3, 2008 at 3:00 PM

Paul, I don't understand why the fall of some or all of Big Publishing is a bad thing. Similar to the situation with the auto industry, demand isn't necessarily down due to disinterest in the products, but because people don't have money to fling around everywhere. Unlike the auto industry, however, if publishing companies die, we won't have a 30% unemployment rate.

So if all or some of the big companies die off, and demand is still there, just reduced for the time being, then either new publishing companies will rise to giant status, or local publishers will start cropping up everywhere. With Borders dying, and Barnes and Noble perhaps not doing that great either, maybe these new or local publishers can resume selling books at normal book prices, instead of $40 dollar heavyweight tomes. And if prices ultimately drop substantially, sales will begin picking up again.

Right?

Posted by Chris in Tampa on December 3, 2008 at 3:50 PM

Remember, they're not independent any more, so check what their corporate master Bertelsmann's up to as well.

Posted by tomasyalba on December 3, 2008 at 3:51 PM

Hey, whatever happened to Brace and Jovanovich, anyways?

Posted by Fnarf on December 3, 2008 at 4:07 PM

Will publishers be next in line for a Federal bailout?

Posted by elswinger on December 3, 2008 at 8:12 PM

I used to buy a lot of paperbacks in the 80's - the price was usually a penny a page.

It's 3 or 4 times that much now - you can't tell me we've had 400% inflation in the pas 20 years?

I also find todays drek even worse and more padded than 80's drek. This is the same thing that happened to music and I think the end result will be a democratization of the medium.

A good thing for consumers - bad for big corperate giants with old school distribution networks.

Posted by DavidC on December 4, 2008 at 9:28 AM

As a published author (Bantam, Dell, Zebra & Dorchester), I can tell you that things began to go down hill when publishers became elitetist, agents sold the powers that be the idea that "auctions" were the way to gather up so-called worthy manuscripts, extremely high advances were paid to one book wonders or instant celebrities cashing in on their 15 minutes of fame, series under made-up author names were poured into the mass market bins, and the desires of the public for what they wanted to read were totally ignored.

Sorry that was so long winded; but it is a real tragedy when people at the top fail to realize that what their job is, is to provide entertainment at a decent price: but, then again, this is an industry where a book actually gets on the New York Times Best Sellers List before it's released to the general public. How does that happen???? Might explain that 400% inflation. And the seven figure salaries at the top level. How crazy is that?

Posted by kp on December 4, 2008 at 1:40 PM