Worth A Look
Along Publishers' Row
Authorship is Undervalued in Today's America
Campbell Geeslin
Source: From the Authors Guild Bulletin, Reprinted by permission of Campbell Geeslin and the Authors Guild, http://www.authorsguild.org.
Date: Winter 2006
Author and critic Matthew J. Bruccoli is on the faculty at the University of South Carolina. He delivered a paper at a conference in Oslo entitled “The Profession of Authorship in 21st Century America.” Here are a few quotes:
“My position is that bestseller lists, which began in America in 1885, are pernicious and should be abolished because they substitute fashion for individual judgment.”
“In this century writers have become a necessary nuisance. The process of publishing excludes authors unless they are needed to peddle books. National Book Award winner Mary Lee Settle has elegantly observed that a ‘whole industry depends on us and treats us like shit’.”
“There used to be the shared conviction that the author’s job was to write masterpieces and that the publisher’s job was to publish masterpieces. I have known editors and publishers who believed it. They are all dead.”
“Publishers have always insisted that books sell by word-of-mouth, not by advertising. In 2004 that means getting on television. Not only does the author have to write well; now he is expected to sell himself and his book.”
After a discussion of new technologies, Bruccoli said, “Publication is the essential act of authorship. The ways in which new and old literary works are produced and published will change in the 21st century. So will the profession of authorship in America. The only certainty is that writers will go on writing.”