“What in Heaven’s Name Are Big Publishers Thinking?” is an excellent post by Carolyn Howard-Johnson on her Sharing with Writers and Readers blog. Carolyn cites The New York Times article “Puttin’ Off the Ritz: The New Austerity in Publishing” byMotoko Rich, then shares her thoughts on the subject. Both are interesting. Both are illuminating. One is inspiring – Carolyn’s.

If you haven’t visited Sharing with Writers and Readers before, I suggest adding it to your blog roll or your feedblitz and paying attention. Especially if you have a book you wish to make popular. Carolyn’s post doesn’t require anything further from me then the recommendation to read it. Rather, I’m going to spend my time on other observations.

Rich’s article, while presenting the current nature of publishing – at least big house publishing as we know it – is pessimistic. He doesn’t offer hope for the future of the industry; simply spins his tale and shrugs his shoulders at the incongruity of it.  Most discouraging, he doesn’t explore the connotations of several of the lines he types:

For authors it means the prospect of smaller advances and fewer books being acquired.

Cash advances for authors, which have risen in recent years, are being reviewed.

…experimenting with a model that substitutes profit sharing with authors for cash advances…

“The two biggest sucking sounds on profits in our business are on advances and returns,” the wonderful soundbite from Robert S. Miller, president and publisher of the new HarperStudio.

Sorry. I’m not buying it. Let’s put blame where it fair-and-squarely lies: on the shoulders of the big publishers. Not on the author’s advances; not even on the bookseller’s returns, though I am a huge proponent of eliminating, or at least severely restricting, them. Rich spends paragraphs relaying sob stories of editors who must refrain from ‘two-martini lunches’ and houses that must eliminate holiday parties or transform them from galas to pot-lucks. God forbid the desk jockeys give up their corporate Town Cars.

Where’s the voice of reason here, the voice noting the glaringly obviously absent fact here? Where’s the voice pointing out that this industry and all its sundry positions, titles (How many editors does it take to publish a book?), and roles owe 100% of their existence to forces outside themselves? Publishing is not a self-contained industry. No one within its greedy walls creates a dang thing. They simply package and sell the product of other people’s blood, sweat, and tears – hand-delivered by those very same creators. Who is pointing out that what the publishing industry ‘makes’ is absolutely nothing – but money off the backs of people who don’t even work for them! Even Hollywood has to make something by turning one medium into another.

With the advent of print-on-demand (POD) publishing and Internet marketing, anyone with a computer and words to share can sell those words. Just as abolition of the income tax and institution of a consumption tax has earned the eternal enmity of tax accountants, so too, has the abolition and replacement of big-business publishing with POD and viral marketing raised fierce opposition. Better – for the people and use of technology – is not enough for the power-players. They fear change, for change means less money NOW!

Running before the demands of NOW! is a terrible way to conduct any business. The American automotive industry fears non-gas fueled cars. American government fears a non-income tax form of taxation. Publishers fear POD and open bookkeeping. Foreign competition is forcing the first matter; the second seems impervious to change; medium and small press publishers have a chance to slip to the forefront and lead the way for the third.

I don’t like ‘The New Austerity.’ We might as well use the same label on the TARP requirements for executive compensation. I’d rather call them both ‘Common Sense’ – common sense methods of conducting business.

With this mentality, I fear the Rich article sums it best in this quote from Michael Korda, former editor in chief of Simon & Schuster:

“And everybody went back to doing what they were doing before.”