Literary Editors

The Literary Editors in most quality newspapers have all been able to write newsy articles about the ‘end of publishing as we know it..’ and have pointed out the evidence:

• a year-on-year decline in book sales • the collapse of the Borders chain of shops
• the failure of Waterstones to give trade leadership in book-selling, settling instead in trying to compete with supermarkets (a ray of hope – Waterstones have realised part of the error of their ways and the man supposedly responsible has now been replaced)
• the pursuit by all the bookchains of the pile ‘em high and sell ‘em cheap approach • the failure of celebrity autobiographies to maintain their appeal • the ascendancy of Amazon and other on-line booksellers
• the race to the bottom in pricing – lowest price wins – with the runners being the book chains, the supermarkets and the online sellers • the rise and rise of supermarkets in high-discount, high-volume sales
• the much-punted rise in electronic readers like the Kindle and Sony Reader, to say nothing of Apple’s likely announcement of an iSlate, or iTablet, or whatever it is to be called.

What they (the Literary Editors) have failed to acknowledge is their own role in all this – in particular it is now more difficult to get a book reviewed than it is to persuade the chains that a book is worth stocking.

Instead, Literary Editors are obsessed with being thought of as intellectually superior and they review books that buff up their own narcissistic view of themselves and their reviewers as refined aesthetes of impeccable taste. Books reviewed are mainly ones that you would expect to find cluttering up the storage cellars in some university library and are on niche subjects that have limited appeal.

What they don’t do is find the nuggets in new publishing. They are as much to blame for the struggle that it is to be a publisher of new works of fiction and non-fiction as the book shops they malign (quite rightly as it happens) and they themselves are part of the problem.

Come on Literary Editors! Wake up, get off your snooty high horses and start reviewing new books from new authors and publishers and start sleuthing out some real publishing gems that deserve a wider audience. At the same time you will be doing your own readers a good turn by discovering some really good books.

Can I give an example of what I mean … of course I can. You need look no further than the list of titles from Thorogood Publishing Ltd.

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