Disintermediation
Jason Epstein was one of the earliest and most persistent prophets of the digital revolution in publishing. He had tremendous credibility. In 1952 he founded the first quality paperback line, Anchor Books, as a Doubleday imprint. As the legendary editorial director of the old ("little") Random House for some 40 years, he created its rival, Vintage Books. They are now merged. Epstein was also a co-founder of The New York Review of Books, to my mind easily the best book review and essay journal around, as well as the series of classics, the Library of America.
The publisher of Penguin Books, the second largest publishing company in the world, once told me that they lose money on seven out of ten books. One of the main reasons the national publishing industry has been in perennial trouble for the past 50 years is its clumsy distribution system. Probably 75% of what you pay for a book goes to pay for an extremely fussy, inefficient, clumsy and very expensive marketing and retailing apparatus. Like Epstein (with whom I got my start in publishing as an editor at Random House) I have always been dismayed by the fact that most authors get paid so little, and editors work so hard on so many books that fail.
Epstein’s latest venture (at age 80+) is the Espresso Machine, launched earlier this year. It looks like a super-sized office printer, and it can print a paperback book from a file or the Internet in about five minutes; the current list price of these books is $8. A few bookstores round the country now have one, though as far as I’m aware, none yet in Hawaii. There’s no reason, apart from their $70,000 price tag, why these machines could not be installed in libraries, or indeed anywhere.
The key to this is disintermediation, one of the uglier words in the English language, which means cutting out much of the supply chain, or cutting out the middlemen.
The Wall Street Journal reports Epstein declaring that with the Espresso Machine “We’ve come to the end of the Age of Gutenberg. …Anybody can be a publisher, anybody can be a writer. The traditional filters are now going to fail — publishers, editors, critics and so on.”
Hyperbole of self-interest apart, this is one of the radical innovations of the current digital revolution in publishing, and no doubt the machines will eventually become cheaper. It’s certainly a solution for diehard book lovers who feel that the physical book is the perfect artifact for telling a written story.
Tags: Anchor Books, digital revolution, Disintermediation, Espresso Machine, Gutenberg, Jason Epstein, Penguin Books, Publishing, quality paperbacks, Random House, Vintage
October 6th, 2009 at 7:25 am
With bookstores and publishers both barely surviving, even before the economic collapse, what do you recommend? There's not much pie to divide.
October 6th, 2009 at 9:10 pm
This sounds like too little too late. Why would I go to a bookstore if I can't browse the book in the store? Why not just order this on amazon? And if I'm ordering from amazon, why not just get the e-book? I'll resist e-readers as long as possible but I know I'll capitulate eventually as I have to everything else (I was a late adopter for fax machines, for heaven's sake). I don't want to be like the attorney on Star Trek, refusing to use computers, proclaiming, "I've got my own system. Books, young man, books. Thousands of books!"
October 7th, 2009 at 12:23 am
E-books have their place. But a true diehard book lover wanting a physical book would not think of the Expresso Machine (and various print-on-demand options) as a “solution.” Instead it is a settlement accompanied with a sigh of resignation. Just bought a book at a local independent purely on physical aesthetics, a quick decision, didn’t even read the blurbs. And it looks to be a wise choice—the author turns out to live on Kauai and the story has gotten great endorsements; wonderfully smooth creamy paper (with rustic brown front and back pages); intriguing artwork by his wife. A small press at its best. The book? OH! A Mystery of Mono No Aware, by Todd Shimoda, artwork by Linda Shimoda, published by Chin Music Press, Seattle. Can tell already it’s one to be savored.
October 7th, 2009 at 3:39 am
I saw an Espresso Machine in action at BookExpo America last May, and it's awesome. Yes, perhaps the need to browse beforehand is a shortcoming, but the book this large machine manufactured instantly was the real thing.
October 7th, 2009 at 8:09 am
Koa Books sent me a link to the Huffington Post book page, where there is a blog on sustainability in publishing that suggests the answer is "all of the above" - yes beautiful small run books, yes, kindle and yes other models. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/makenna-goodman/the-future-of-publishing_b_308784.html
October 7th, 2009 at 8:55 am
And Page Turner, as someone who went to the ends of the earth to create a book with excellent paper and superb photo printing, I thank you for your commitment to quality.
October 15th, 2009 at 11:15 pm
Page--Thanks for the tip on the Shimodas--I've pencilled them in for HBMF10.
And no, ebooks won't replace all print books. I think we'll be buying many titles in packages of formats--print, Kindle, i-phone, computer--to read at our convenience at any time.
RJ