Publishing and the promotional racket

It is gradually seeping out (although there should be much more publicity for it) that the world of publishing is not quite as fair as people might think.

In its most insidious form, the anti-competitiveness of the business can be seen in the lack of openness that lies behind how books are ‘selected’, not just for prizes but also for promotional campaigns by large retailers.

There may still be quite a few readers who believe the following: – that prizes such as the Man Booker prize are awarded to books carefully selected from all the relevant books published in the period concerned and not just from books entered by publishers with payment of a fee required, up to £10,000 in the Man Booker case; – that the new Richard and Judy Book Club, operating through WH Smith, chooses only those books that the Club have specially chosen as the best in class for readers (and not just from those publishers prepared to cough up a fat fee – of £25,000 per title); – that large chains, such as Waterstone’s and WHSmith, stock and promote books on merit alone, displaying and pushing books that they believe in and not just those from publishers who fork out a large contribution to achieve that status (up to £50,000 plus); and – that book review pages can be relied upon to be representative of books currently available.

Sorry readers, very little that is available to you in the bookshops or supermarkets is purely through the merit of the book itself, or of the good taste of the retailer, and prizes are not dispassionately awarded to the best of the best.

Someone should really write a book about all this (what is above is only the tip of an iceberg in a very murky sea). The trouble is, no-one would be able to see it as the big book retailers or supermarkets wouldn’t stock it and, of course, none of the big publishers would publish it in the first place.

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