David Thayer

Lynne Scanlon, the Wicked Witch of Publishing, offers a critique of Borders New Strategy to drive sales at her blog. No, at their website: you can see the power of the dangling modifier.

Lynne is skeptical about the changes announced by Borders CEO George Jones. She notes that Jones came from Saks with a promise to revive Waldenbooks, shake up Borders marketing, make Mr. and Mrs. America and Miss America for that matter, want to shop at Borders, or Waldenbooks if one is trapped in a mal,l and has already been to Mrs. Fields.

We all know the dreadful problems gripping the publishing industry although the silver lining is we aren’t subject to product recall, just returns and remaindering ( R&R). Product recall is about product malfunction, injury, tort claims, litigation. We don’t have that. Sure we have Madonna’s nanny and Kavya and James Frey, the composite guy from San Francisco, stuff like that. Problems, certainly, but with rare exception, books perform well as products not like the soda cans on airplanes that become miniature Old Faithfuls.

Marty the Mogul can solve the industry’s problems. You may remember that Marty ruined the book business by acquiring dozens of publishers after a bitter divorce. All he wanted was his Lazy Boy: instead, he got Henry Holt. Marty proposes the following split on advances and royalties:

15% to the Literary Agent.

85% to the Publisher.

Foreign sales and dramatic rights: 20% Literary Agent, 80% to the Publisher.

What do authors receive under Marty’s plan? 100 free copies of the book they wrote, not including the manuscript. That would be 101.

An annual picnic in Fairlawn, New Jersey. This year’s event was held in February, but next year Marty’s planning on May. The snow and ice were a problem, but 400 hundred lucky authors showed up for pigs in a blanket and box wine. That beats cash any day.

If you’ve ever studied economics you were taught the marketplace is efficient. This simple idea has been mangled and mauled by everyone from Leonid Breshnev ( so underrated) to Hilary Clinton, so it’s only fair that to point out that the marketplace may be efficient for publishers of books but not in our lifetime. What we tend to forget is that the marketplace is efficient if sufficient time is allowed to iron out the wrinkles. I’m talking about centuries here: after a century the logic of the book buisness emerges.

1907: Book publishing is young, not quite efficient yet. Word that San Francisco is destroyed by an earthquake in 1906 reaches New York.

1927: Plenty of froth in the Roaring Twenties. The Lost Generation is about to make the marketplace so efficient that Wall Street takes notice. Calvin Coolidge tells Herbert Hoover the secrets of governance.

1947: The Noir Era. Incredibly efficient. Cigarette me, baby.

1957: Other than Elvis all is well. Possibly a high point is reached during the Pax Americana. Europe fights to retain its colonies. California begins to look glamorous.

1967: A major hiccup as the generational baton is applied to the skulls of disenchanted youth. A few cities burn to the ground.

1977: The merger of sideburns and mustaches rekindles the spirit of the 1890s. Moms are urged to “whip inflation now” and stop speculating on oil futures.

1987: Wealth is trickling down. We knew it would.

1997: We feel the pain: someone invents Talk Radio.

2007: Marking the centenary of this analysis word reaches New York that San Francisco has been rebuilt. Efficency skyrockets thanks to book packagers. Madonna’s nanny becomes chair of Random House. Oil futures dip as moms relent. The belief is this inefficiency will correct in 2107. Time is money.