I think of publishing as the Big Lebowksy, those 170,000 books, or 300,000 books, or whatever the number, cascading forth from the publishers of the world, an annual output of prodigious scale. Literary agents all agree that fewer than 2% of manuscripts are accepted for publication. That suggests to me that 8,500,000 maunscripts must be submitted each year to sustain 170,000 printed titles. Those are US figures; they do not take into account 15,000,000 additional English language manuscripts required to configure the output of Great Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland, to name a few. Let’s throw in books written in languages other than English and round up. There are 25,000,000 manuscripts in circulation. A couple of them are mine.
Let’s envision this scenario: all 25,000,000 manuscripts find a home. All are published. Don’t tell me that scarcity equals value. Scarcity is preserved; book buyers in search of a title or an author want what they want, unaware of the scale of available choices. Does anyone watch 250 channels? Does the fact that C-Span is available haunt the fans of CSI Miami?
We have the capability to ramp up production from 170,000 to 25,000,000. Certain aspects of the process need to be modernized, streamlined, and rationalized. Let’s take the book party. To accomodate this many titles, one continuous party would be organized. Each day 68,493 authors would be feted, lionized, heralded, and praised. Sure, a noon timeslot would be more coveted than one at 3am, but it’s a party, and who knows who might be awake at that hour craving something to read. The event could be televized, fed into the homes of those tired of watching CSI Miami.
25,000,000 books. Let’s not flinch my friends. This is big, bigger than big. We can build a Greater Lebowsky and use the state of Delaware and certain possessions and archipelagos for storage. They don’t mind. As we grow, they grow. Delaware from sea to shining sea, book capital of the universe.
25,000,000 manuscripts only includes those manuscripts that are *completed*. Speaking anecdotally, I know at least half a dozen gifted individuals whose main problem is procrastination. And one reason they procrastinate is because they realize (with greater clarity than I do) that there is, at present, no hope.
But they *would* complete these manuscripts if they realized getting published was a sure thing. When we factor in the potential number of manuscripts that would be complete under the auspices of such a project (let’s call it Operation Enduring Reading), then I think a more accurate figure might be 75,000,000 to 1,000,000,000. Hell, who knows? Let’s say 2,000,000,000 manuscripts just to be on the safe side.
Delaware isn’t big enough. Look north. Look to Ontario.
I was envisioning an expansist Delaware flexing its muscles or muscle as the case may be. Canada has great potential, but I’d look to the Northwest Territories for the Frozen Moment.
Lawrence Block once wrote that people told him that they’d love to write but “lacked the discipline,” to which he suggested the only reasonable answer was, “Good for you–stick to it!”
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