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Dec. 4th, 2008 05:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lagilmanand more to the publishing industry: this
At Random House, it was clear that saving the imprints was key. Markus Dohle talked about aligning “existing strengths and publishing affinities” and how this imprint or that will be better, stronger, safer. As if that matters. Who really cares if Crown or Knopf or Ballantine or Bantam Dell survives? I’m serious. Who. Cares.
No really, who cares if these groups are retaining editorial independence while combining strengths? Is that really going to change the business dynamic, or is it just focusing on the wrong problem?
Speaking as someone who still has a (thankfully fading) emotional attachement to the imprint she used to run, I understand the insider's view of imprints -- it's your baby, your identity, your chance to say "this is what I think is good." And in a perfect world it would be a useful and understood brand. But that's a lot easier to do in specialized genres (DAW, Baen, Nocturne, etc). For general fiction? Not so much. Not much at all, in fact.
Y'know, it's a very weird thing, being an insider-trained writer. I'm never quite sure if I'm a Christian or a Lion.
At Random House, it was clear that saving the imprints was key. Markus Dohle talked about aligning “existing strengths and publishing affinities” and how this imprint or that will be better, stronger, safer. As if that matters. Who really cares if Crown or Knopf or Ballantine or Bantam Dell survives? I’m serious. Who. Cares.
No really, who cares if these groups are retaining editorial independence while combining strengths? Is that really going to change the business dynamic, or is it just focusing on the wrong problem?
Speaking as someone who still has a (thankfully fading) emotional attachement to the imprint she used to run, I understand the insider's view of imprints -- it's your baby, your identity, your chance to say "this is what I think is good." And in a perfect world it would be a useful and understood brand. But that's a lot easier to do in specialized genres (DAW, Baen, Nocturne, etc). For general fiction? Not so much. Not much at all, in fact.
Y'know, it's a very weird thing, being an insider-trained writer. I'm never quite sure if I'm a Christian or a Lion.
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Date: 2008-12-04 12:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-04 02:01 pm (UTC)The advantage of retaining an imprint or two like Bantam or Ballentine is that you can run your popular fiction through them and not dilute your prestige brand. But I think the publishers are deluding themselves if they think the mass audience is generally aware of the imprint as a brand at all, and that is their own fault. In the branding hierarchy you have genre/subgenre and then author or maybe pretty picture. If you associate your imprint with the genre brand, like you say, maybe. But to imagine that the beach-read public cares about the editorial philosophy of its imprint publisher--pardon me while I run away and laugh!
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Date: 2008-12-04 02:12 pm (UTC)Y'know, unless you meant "literary" world, I'm not sure I can take the rest of your post without a very large grain of salt....
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Date: 2008-12-04 02:20 pm (UTC)Having taught English at the college level, though, I'm not sure I'm willing to give up the word "literate."
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Date: 2008-12-04 02:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-04 03:00 pm (UTC)It's not a matter of what's in the books, but of how people pick them off the shelf. A publisher may put out very good books under an imprint, but past a very few recognizable labels, the commercial fiction audience won't pick their books based on the imprint itself, but based on the authors or genres they're shelved under. We'd care more about imprints if the stores shelved that way.
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Date: 2008-12-04 03:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-04 04:13 pm (UTC)Wow. How very New York Times Book Review of you.
I'm sure that's exactly what RH was thinking-- "Lo,let us retain the prestige imprints and fold the commoners together for the rest of the hoi polloi!"
Please.
The RH reorg has been a long time coming and it has nothing to do with "prestige" or "brands" or whatever. It has to do with too many imprints overlapping. It sucks-- to see an imprint like Doubleday, which has existed longer than Knopf or Random House, btw, essentially cease to exist. And speaking as a writer, it also takes away the (admittedly mythical) safety net of having multiple houses to which to send a submission.
It sucks to see people lose their jobs-- publishers and editors who have worked hard to define their imprints essentially being told, "Well, because Imprint A is too much like Imprint B, we're going to fold them all into Imprint C."
And seriously, how many readers outside of the literati actually care? The greater book buying public wants a good story--they're going to continue to want good stories as times get more difficult. Escapist literature that takes them somewhere else, whether it's a fantasy world or a Cold War-era espionage thriller or a romance or the world of a Dominican über-geek and those readers, they won't care what the label on the spine of the book says. Just because they happen to be published via a commercial imprint such as, say, Ballantine, doesn't make those stories any less valuable or important.
no subject
Date: 2008-12-04 05:53 pm (UTC)Indeedy-hoo-hah.
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Date: 2008-12-04 07:38 pm (UTC)Probably the Lion Trainer... you want the best for the kitties, but you do personally know some of the Participants
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Date: 2008-12-04 08:13 pm (UTC)And may (or may not) care if they get eaten.
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Date: 2008-12-05 03:10 pm (UTC)Speaking of editors, did you hear the Groell/Keck good news?
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Date: 2008-12-05 03:14 pm (UTC)