Publishing: Past and Present, Part 1 of 6

("A Look at Publishing", remarks made by Godfrey Harris)


The printed-version is a speech that was presented twice in April, 2005, to various groups. It was prepared for the membership of the "Book Publicists of Southern California", a group of some 800 writers, editors, publishers, printers, and others who are involved in the book trade. Godfrey Harris has been the Executive Director of International Publishers Alliance for the last thirteen years, a group of some 750 small and independent publishers.

Godfrey has been a public policy consultant based in Los Angeles, California, since 1968. He started consulting after serving as a university lecturer, U.S. Army intelligence officer, U.S. foreign service officer with the Department of State, an organizational specialist in President Lyndon Johnson’s Executive Office, and as a program manager for an international financial company in Geneva.

In all of these positions, Godfrey has been called upon "to develop original ideas to solve problems or to take advantage of new situations". As President of Harris/Ragan Management Group, He has "focused the firm’s activities on projects that offer alternative solutions to matters of community concern" and he has written 52 books, on his own or with associates.

Publishing books with a look at publishing and publishers

"A Look at Publishing"

I am excited about sharing some of my thoughts on the status of publishing today. After all, I just started on my second million as a publisher; of course I had to give up on the first million because I couldn't get close.

To understand what the future of the book biz may hold, let me first quickly review how publishing got to be where it is today. We start with something many of you heard me say the last time I spoke here five years ago: that ALL publishing before the middle of the 19th Century was self-publishing. Rich authors sent their completed handwritten manuscripts to a printer who would design the pages, set the type, run the number of copies desired, and bind the lot for delivery to the author. The author would distribute the finished copies to his friends, associates, interested publics, and a few of the libraries of the day. Most would be given away; sometimes he would collect money for the book from people he didn't know, sometimes not.

The fact that today it still takes 90 to 180 days for publishers to get paid is a legacy of post roads, horse drawn coaches, and rich men who didn't care about sullying themselves with having to ask for payment. Point: Self-publishing was the only form of publishing for 400 years between Gutenberg and the Victorian era. It is not only honorable, it is historic.

Then in the mid-nineteenth century, new energy sources arose: first steam, then electricity. That made substantial amounts of leisure time and significant amounts of educational opportunity available to more people. Suddenly story tellers; such as, William Thackeray (Vanity Fair), Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Washington Irving; and others, started to write down what had previously been done orally.

Printers soon realized that they could make a lot of money by not only printing the books, but by selling them for others to distribute. Ben Franklin had in fact created the model for this in the public policy journals, pamphlets, and tracts he printed and distributed all over the colonies from his base in Philadelphia; but he has always been called a printer, not a publisher. Why? Because he was never involved on the editorial side of what his shop produced.

Despite the fact that Gutenberg's invention of moveable type has been around since the 1450s, publishing is just 150 years old. And also please note that it was born as a commercial exercise, not to foster someone's writing skills, teach great moral lessons, or present new ideas to change society. The point of publishing from the start was to make money, not literary or social history.

Listen carefully [read on]:


You may go on to Part 2: "A Look at Publishing", remarks made by Godfrey Harris, or the complete Index.