Book Business: Publishing Past, Present, and Future by Jason Epstein

From the Publisher

Jason Epstein has led arguably the most creative career in book publishing during the past half-century. He founded Anchor Books and launched the quality paperback revolution, cofounded the New York Review of Books, and created of the Library of America, the prestigious publisher of American classics, and The Reader's Catalog, the precursor of online bookselling. In this short book he discusses the severe crisis facing the book business today-a crisis that affects writers and readers as well as publishers-and looks ahead to the radically transformed industry that will revolutionize the idea of the book as profoundly as the introduction of movable type did five centuries ago.

Norman Mailer

It is possible, even likely, that no one knows more about the publishing industry than Jason Epstein.

Michael Korda

A wise and insightful book on the present state and the future of book publishing.

Toni Morrison

A brilliant, moving and profoundly insightful rendering of the history, status and future of American publishing.

Howard Gardner

A must read for all who love books and publishing and for all who wonder whether either will survive.

Peter Davison

Epstein is not only thoughtful and experienced, but also a hell of a good writer. —Boston Sunday Globe

E.L. Doctorow

History, memoir, and prophecy ... [by a] man who has been at the creative heart of American publishing for fifty years.

Michael Dirda

An irresistible book about Grub Street, authorship and the literary marketplace. —Washington Post Book World

New York Times Book Review

Reading [Epstein's] book is like enjoying a great jazz impresario: there's a wonderful riff coming at any moment.

Laurence J. Kirshbaum

Reading [Epstein's] book is like enjoying a great jazz impresario: there's a wonderful riff coming at any moment. —New York Times Book Review

Washington Post Book World

An irresistible book about Grub Street, authorship and the literary marketplace.

Publishers Weekly

In October 1999, Epstein, former editorial director of Random House, delivered a series of lectures at the New York Public Library that galvanized the publishing world. This book is based on those lectures. A genuine elder statesman of the industry, Epstein has spent about 50 years in publishing, during which he helped create the "paperback revolution," the New York Review of Books and the Library of America. Here, short, magisterial chapters describe the recent past of American publishing through the lens of Epstein's career, and lookDnow fearfully, now hopefullyDat the spirit of book publishing to come. Epstein explains that, in his youth, the book trade was as much vocation as business, bringing to the world the fruits of literary modernism. In more recent decades, by contrast, investors and conglomerates, he says, seeking "name-brand authors" and economies of scale, have treated books as a product like any other. New technologies, however, might reverse these baleful (as seen by Epstein) trends. This forceful if hardly startling analysis introduces Epstein's compact and compelling reminiscences, which form the bulk of the book. Each chapter includes famous names (Auden, Nabokov, Edmund Wilson, Bennett Cerf, cyber-pioneer Norbert Weiner); revealing, amusing anecdotes; and clear accounts of who paid the bills for what, and how, and why. Most strikingly, Epstein looks forward to the "worldwide village green" the digital age might createDone in which books, he says, will keep a place, and publishing will "become once more a cottage industry of diverse, creative, autonomous" work, albeit at the expense of many of the middlemen who stand between author and reader, including today's big publishers. Congenial, erudite, electrifying, this book is a must read for anyone who cares about books and their business. (Jan. 15) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Drawing on his W.W. Norton Lectures at the New York Public Library in October 1999, publishing giant Epstein considers what's wrong with the industry today. Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

New York Times Book Review - Kirshbaum

A charming ode to that past, even as it tries to decipher the technological future . . . The reader is swept up by Epstein's fingertip brilliance as he ranges swiftly across the history of publishing . . .

The New Republic - Larry McMurtry

Part of Epstein's book is credo, part of it is history, and part of it is prophecy; the credo is passionate, the history is confident, and the prophecy is hesitant, though I suspect it was chiefly for the prophecy that Epstein was induced to speak.

Product Details

• Table of Contents

Table of Contents