American Authors and the Literary Marketplace Since 1900

by James L.W. West III

This book examines literary authorship in the twentieth century and covers such topics as publishing, book distribution, the trade editor, the literary agent, the magazine market, subsidiary rights, and the blockbuster mentality.

Genres: Nonfiction

188 pages, Hardcover

First published December 19, 1988

About the author

James L. W. West III, a native of Virginia, is Sparks Professor of English at Pennsylvania State University. West is a book historian, scholarly editor, and biographer. He has written books on F. Scott Fitzgerald and on the history of professional authorship in America and has held fellowships from the J. S. Guggenheim Foundation, the National Humanities Center, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. West has had Fulbright appointments in England (at Cambridge University) and in Belgium (at the Université de Liège). He is the general editor of The Cambridge Edition of the Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald and is at work on a volume of essays.

Reviews

[Colleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even if RBS ends up getting cancelled I am still going to read through the required and recommended readings for the course.

This was such a great one to start with! Each chapter had a clearly defined theme starting with the different roles of workers in the publishing fields and ended with some thoughts on different aspects of production. I'll probably be spending the next several days thinking about what blockbusters mean in the context of current publishing though since this was completed before e-books were a thing.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

A terrific read--much better than its title, which sounds more stuffy or academic than the prose. West's writing is wonderfully free of jargon: he doesn't use the words "limning" or "boundaries" at all and never resorts to using pretentious parenthetical prefixes, as in "(Un)Masking Zorro," "(Re)Imagining Faulkner," etc. West's book is an illuminating read for anyone interested in this question: how did publishing in America begin and change since 1900? In eight chapters, each dealing with a specific person (the editor, the agent) or idea (rights, blockbusters) West draws upon an obvious lifetime of reading to clearly explain to the reader how things were, how things are, and how they got that way. West does all this with many examples. Since the book was published in 1988, West never addresses the web, but a reader can apply what he teaches to the current phenomenon of authors tweeting and posting. While mostly expository, West does present an argument at the end directed at those who bemoan the loss of gentlemanly publishers and the vocation of authorship: those big chains and sites like Amazon are frequent targets of hand-wringing Artists, but these stores and sites get more books into more readers' hands than ever before. Highly recommended.