"Publishing Hasn't Changed; Making Money is Still the Goal."
Just as barbers evolved into surgeons and convinced the public that their new role was worth much more money than the old, so printers evolved into publishers and convinced everyone that this leopard had changed its spots as well. It hadn't, but you still haven't figured that out given the awe in which each of you hold most major publishers.
This is the industry that you secretly hope will bless your ideas, make you famous, grant you a giant advance, and legitimize what you do in the eyes of your family and friends. You still need the praise from your parents and an "A" from the teacher to feel good about what you do. Fine. But as anyone who has been published by a major house knows, the people who work for these publishers have never walked on water and that while they have a few more connections among reviewers and a lot more money for promotion, they have no fairy dust, are not on intimate relations with the gods of good fortune, cannot guarantee sales, and have never engineered an enduring best seller. Ask Tom Wolfe about I Am Charlotte Simmons. It was published by Farrar, Struas & Giroux. Good name. Did you know that it is a division of Holtzbrinck Publishers which in turn is a subsidiary of Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck GmbH, a privately held international media corporation operating in 40 countries? Did you know that Holtzbrinck Publishers also includes W.H. Freeman; Henry Holt and Company; St. Martin's Press, Tor, and a lot more?
Most of all understand that major publishing companies today are no longer just publishers. Publishing is now only one of several revenue streams-and a minor one, for MEDIA CONGLOMERATES! Let me read you the names of the top BOOK publishing companies in the world today: Bertlesmann AG, Viacom, News Corporation.
Catch any famous publishing houses among those names? Ever see Viacom or News Corporation on the spine of a recent book? How about Bertlesmann? No? Hello, it's the 21st century. Are you a part of it?
Consider some of the big publishing house names of old: HarperCollins, Avon, William Morrow
Where are they now? Buried deep inside Mr. Murdock's News Corporation—you know: 20th Century Fox, the London Times, the Sun, the New York Post, the Star, the Fox networks, Fox Searchlight, Direct TV, Sky News, National Rugby League, and on and on. What do you think Mr. Murdock is out to improve: the world or to improve his bottom line and power base?
Where do you think you might find these famous names: Random House, Bantam, Dell, Crown, Alfred A. Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, Ballantine, Doubleday, Everyman, Karl Blessing, and Verlag?
Guess who owns all of them—Bertlesmann AG. Ever heard of them or their headquarters in Gütersloh, Germany, where they printed their first Protestant hymninals in the 1800s? Like WalMart, the world's largest retailer, retaining its headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, Bertlesmann hasn't moved from near Hanover; but they have changed. And if you believe this giant German firm bought all those publishing houses because they wanted to save them from bankruptcy, then you still believe in the tooth fairy. Moreover, do you think that Bertlesmann, as the largest publisher in the world, just does publishing? Delta Printing in nearby Valencia does your phone books, the State ballot pamphlets, a jillion catalogs and flyers you see in your mailbox. BMG is Bertlesmann's music division, run with Sony— you know, Arista, Columbia, Epic, Legacy, RCA Records. RTL is its European TV group, earning for Bertelsmann twice what BMG and Random House—BY FAR AND AWAY AMERICA'S BIGGEST PUBLISHER—earned last year. Guess what? The German company now thinks of itself as a European television company, not a music company or a book publisher. It even sold its Times Square headquarters. No longer needed.
Take Viacom. It owns Simon & Schuster. You know Simon & Schuster—home to Ernest Hemingway and Norman Mailer, Joseph Heller and Bob Woodward, Gloria Steinem, David McCollough, and a ton more. Owns 38 imprints-Pocket Books, Scribners, the Free Press, Touchstone. You get the idea. Despite this history, do you think Simon & Schuster might have trouble getting Sumner Redstone's attention among all the other giant Viacom revenue earners; such as, CBS-TV, MTV, Nickelodeon, Black Entertainment Network, Paramount Pictures, UPN, Showtime, Infinity Broadcasting, Viacom Outdoor, and a lot more.
They are all major players in their fields and most of them are worth more than Bill Gates. Here's a bulletin: Did you know that in Viacom's just announced monster restructuring to split its new media assets from its old media, Simon & Schuster doesn't even figure as old media. Its up for sale. Shows how dedicated they are to publishing quality literature rather than to profit for Wall Street investors.
Am I making sense? Are you hearing me? Is this microphone on? Big publishing is not what you day dream about.