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Internet fails to crack book publishing

John Crace

It has given new music a shot in the arm. But in book publishing, conservatism reigns.

WITH THE right amount of money and hype you can still force almost any old turkey into the pop charts. Just ask Simon Cowell. But the Internet has shifted the balance of power — just about every band now has a MySpace site and a YouTube presence and can reach a global online audience without the backing of a major record label. They don't all make it big, of course, as most are still a bit rubbish, and the ones that do almost always end up in the arms of the conglomerates; but there's no getting away from the fact that there's a process of democratisation going on. If you've got some talent, it's never been so easy to make yourself heard.

You might have imagined that much the same thing was going on in the publishing industry. After all, the Internet provides much the same platform for writers as it does for musicians. Just create a website and start blogging. Take a look at the bestseller lists and you can see it's the same old that dominate. Literary fiction is still lorded over by your Ian McEwans, Zadie Smiths, Graham Swifts, and Sebastian Faulkses; crime and thrillers still come courtesy of Ian Rankin, P.D. James, Michael Connelly, and Tom Clancy; and non-fiction is still in the hands of any celeb or politician who can fool a publisher into overpaying for their memoirs.

Bleak scenario

The picture is actually even bleaker than it looks. It is not just that publishers have been a bit slow on the new technology uptake and are playing catch-up with the music business; off the record — as it were — most publishers will now admit it's harder than ever to break new writers and are increasingly unwilling to give them a chance. There are exceptions, obviously. Journalist Zoe Margolis has written in favour of the Blooker, a prize for books that began as blogs. But even she had to admit that the award attracted fewer than 100 entries. The musical equivalent would dwarf that number.

On the whole, the Internet is far less user-friendly for those wanting to make money out of writing. Musicians can give away a few free downloads on their websites and still increase revenues by treating them as a plug for albums and live performances.

There is little such incremental value for writers. Once something is up on a website it has almost no inherent financial value. Book readings and signings are hardly major revenue streams.

But if you really want to know where to point the finger, you don't have to look any further than the book trade itself — everyone from the publishers to booksellers. They just want to play safe. No one really believes that the next book by Ian McEwan or Zadie Smith will automatically be better than their last — or even necessarily better than that of a first-time novelist — but the fiction, in every sense of the word, is allowed to prevail because the numbers stack up.

This way everyone makes money: publishers, booksellers, and authors — at least the top 10 per cent who scoop up more than 50 per cent of the available pot. What's more, the bookseller chains get to make a nice little earner on top by charging publishers extra for displaying the books at the front of the store. In any other business this would be called a cartel. A medium that was once the springboard for radicalism is in danger of dying of conservatism. —

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2007

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