New York Observer

Three Things I’d Like to See #2.1

December 1, 2008 | by Pat Holt

#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…)

Suddenly This Summer: The Firing of Jane Friedman

July 1, 2008 | by Pat Holt

Jane Friedman

IT RANKLES, AND IT’S WRONG

No matter how many times it happens, I’m always surprised that a corporate mogul like Rupert Murdoch has the audacity to fire a CEO like Jane Friedman (right), who in her quietly visionary way brought a middling publisher, HarperCollins, into the 21st century and kept the bottom line thriving as well.

But fire her Murdoch did, in a meeting that took Friedman completely by surprise, according to “Pub Crawl” columnist Leon Neyfakh in the June 16th New York Observer.

And thank you, Robert Gottlieb, former editor-in-chief at Knopf (and Friedman’s superior years ago), for saying what needs to be said – that replacing Friedman is “a dreadful mistake. Jane rescued HarperCollins from decades of sleepiness and irrelevance. … What can be in the minds of these people, losing somebody that valuable, is simply beyond my comprehension.”

Of course “these people” are the swaggering power mongers who make arbitrary decisions that damage book publishing as well as the careers of very good CEOs like Friedman.

Over the years, hasn’t it at least rankled you to see book publishing houses depend on the largesse of some jackass who either robs the company pension fund (Macmillan’s Robert Maxwell), turns himself into a rock star (Bertelsmann’s Thomas Middelhoff), forces the top editorial staff to resign (Random House’s Alberto Vitali), overrules editors to cancel a book (Richard Snyder of Simon & Schuster) or chortles to the New York Times about the many people “I fired personally” (Random House’s Peter Olson)?

The reason this latest dictatorial act is significant is that Jane Friedman raised the standards of her company and kept the bottom-liners happy for 10 years, all the while working for the megalomaniacal Murdoch (left). Her tenure reminded us that book publishers are still the great caretakers of a nation’s literature (whether their CEOs want them to be or not). Any sign that an ideal is still being sought or new frontiers explored with integrity could harbor new health for a creatively and fiscally stagnant industry.

All of us in the book business can learn from Friedman’s leadership, but we can also abominate the cruel act that ended her career. Only a week or so earlier (at BookExpo in L.A.), Friedman told The Observer, “I love being CEO at HarperCollins.” You’d think she could say that with confidence after a decade of quiet vision, but no. Murdoch not only sent her packing but made Friedman pretend that she planned to retire all along to get the severance package she deserves. That’s demeaning and outrageous, and yet it’s become routine in the publishing industry we know today.

The only good thing about the Rupert Murdochs of our era is that they operate by Swivel-Headed Rule, which is to say they tend to scan one company at a time and usually leave middle management alone. Happily that’s where the real work of book publishing continues and where anybody with a personal philosophy about publishing (I think we all have one) can make a difference.