Opinion Under the Big Five

The creation of Penguin Random House is partly a response to unprecedented pressures on these “legacy” publishers — especially from Amazon,which came out on the winning end of an antitrust lawsuit over the setting of ebook prices. It is also a way to gain leverage and capital in an industry that has been turned upside down. This endgame may be inevitable,but its consequences can’t be ignored. Consolidation carries costs you won’t find on a price sticker. Dozens of formerly independent firms have been folded into this conglomerate. Many of these have been reduced to mere imprints,brands stamped on a book’s title page,though every good imprint bears the faint mark of a bygone firm with its own mission and sensibility.

Decades of consolidation have cost writers and consumers alike. There is,for one,the persistent gripe of writers and agents: companies either forbid (as at Penguin) or restrict (at Random House) their constituent imprints from bidding against one another for a manuscript. That means not only lower advances,but also fewer options for writers to get the kind of painstaking attention that it takes to turn their manuscripts into something valuable.

Among the imprints that survive,the tendency is to homogenise and focus on a few general fields like ambitious nonfiction,accessible literary fiction or thrillers. “Legacy” publishing does best in the first category: it commands the advances needed for research,the editing talent to shape the writing and the marketing muscle to distribute those doorstop biographies on Father’s Day. In the more commercial genres — romance,horror,Fifty Shades — writers are beginning to find success in self-publishing. That’s a bit of a misnomer,because often it involves an agent who packages a book with any number of freelance editors and marketers,many of them refugees from the ever-shrinking houses. (Amazon’s publishing platform,which runs on more of a packaging model,has made inroads into these genres.) As for literary fiction,more and more of the interesting and strange variety — the labours of love on which famous editors like Robert Giroux,Maxwell Perkins and Barney Rosset once placed their bets — may migrate to smaller presses.

So many books are published — almost certainly,more than ever — that predicting a blanket decline in quality would be ridiculous. But whether literary culture is best served by the ceaseless centralisation of publishing is a question worth asking. The Big Five have been so busy reducing old companies to brands that they’ve neglected the notion of what a brand should mean. The logo doesn’t do the trick. The value of a publishing house — and now an imprint — has been its function as that dreaded straw man of the self-publishing gurus: a gatekeeper.

“A new imprint on a book gathers character through the years,” declared the first sentence of the first catalogue printed by Farrar,Straus in 1946. But an old imprint,once merged,tends to lose it.

Kachka is the author of the forthcoming book ‘Hothouse: The Art of Survival and the Survival of Art at America’s Most Celebrated Publishing House,Farrar,Straus & Giroux’

Curated For You

India U19 vs Pakistan U19 Live Cricket Score, Asia Cup 2025 Final: IND lose final to PAK by 191 runs

Dhurandhar Box Office Collection Day 16 Update: Ranveer Singh film earns over Rs 28 crore on Sunday

Maharashtra Local Body Election Results 2025 Live Updates: Victory of Team BJP, says Fadnavis as Mahayuti crosses 200-seat mark