#2: PUBLISHERS LEAVING NEW YORK
[Part One]
Right, they’ll never do it, but shouldn’t mainstream publishing houses want to explore a world beyond the Hudson River? Maybe talking about it will shed light on such fiascoes as the recent National Book Awards (see below) and the defensive reaction to a Nobel Prize judge’s accusations that the U.S. publishing community has become “too isolated, too insular.” (Honeys, it is.)
I’ve never understood why American publishers duplicated the British model of placing mainstream houses in one location so they would dictate to the tastes of the rest of the nation.
Why didn’t we load our printers and binders into the wagons as we went hacking and slashing across the Plains to the West? We certainly brought our newspaper presses. But for some reason – perhaps it was the independent wealth of publishing founders — we kept book publishing on the East Coast and eventually in New York City itself. We decided to depend on a “cottage industry” ideal in which literary ideas would foment within the social exchange of like-minded people.
By now, however, working in close proximity has made New York book publishers appear inbred and clannish. If you can’t get them on the phone, it’s because they’re calling/emailing/texting each other, lunching at publishing “in” spots, complaining about hotel rates at Frankfurt or BookExpo and working the room at author receptions as if a world outside publishing doesn’t exist. (more…)