Who Controls Publishing?

To eRead or not to eRead that is the question the cartoon on the cover of yesterday's Sunday's NYT Book Review asks. And the winner is … the underdog hardback! To me the cover seemed fraught with anxiety and dripping with vain hope. It was also something of a stand in for the larger issue of who controls publishing: the informal consortium, not to say cabal of Manhattanits (the major NY publishers, the NYT, The New Yorker, and the NYRB), or the distribution system. In the long run, disputes like the one between Hachette and Amazon are good for small press authors like me. We are absolutely dependent on the net and social media for sales. And the truth is, so are the big publishers—that's what the fuss is about. The Times and the New Yorker reach only a small fraction of the US market, and the worldwide market for English language books is much, much larger. A well-positioned internet company can market and deliver an ebook to any place in the world in a matter of minutes. And online reviews, while often unnuanced and quirky, tell potential readers what they want to know: will I enjoy this book. It's a messy marketplace and everyone is scrapping for a share of the dollar, but the net is my friend.