E-book publishers, beware! Avoid mistakes of print publishing: A podcast and essay by Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti

Note: You can enjoy an MP3 of the essay below from Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti, TeleRead‘s e-book reviewer.

Editors don’t make editorial decisions any more–sales and marketing people do. An old friend said that recently, and I couldn’t disagree about the obvious.

I remember a time when editors decided if a book would be published; and these days, it’s even worse than that–as I discussed on a national public radio program. You have agents who take on the books of good authors, and no matter who or what the writers have been, as is the case of a friend, published in The New Yorker and The Atlantic Monthly–nothing to scoff at–the agents say: “You won’t make it in those places any more. You need to aim lower and be more realistic.”

They took the road less traveled

Listen, I adore my agent and she’s one of the best, but doesn’t it make sense to aim high before aiming for the second tier presses? Haven’t we enough empirical evidence that the “small” book or the “quiet” book can be the next big bestseller? After all, who would have predicted Elizabeth Wurtzel’s Prozac Nation or The Lovely Bones, a work of fiction, would be a huge best seller? Or what about The Lover by the late Marguerite Duras–which was being presented in this country by several editors, my husband being one of them, only to be told that this book would never fly in the United States. Sure, it might be a big hit in France, but that’s Europe and European books just don’t sell over here. Oh, how many times have I heard that!

And yet… and yet… Marguerite Duras did eventually find a publisher for The Lover and it became a huge best seller and a great classic of our time as did the rest of her works, the last of which I published before she died, Writing translated by my husband, Mark Polizzotti. It was a coup to get the book, but even then, even after so much success I was able to buy one of the greatest writers of our time, in my view, for a mere several thousand dollars. I felt cheap doing so, that I had somehow ripped her and the whole face of literature off. That I was no better than the agents who sold their wares at any cost just to get the author off their back.

And what of e-books?

Will this be the same for e-books in time? How long before there are agents for e-books, before sales and publicity people get in on the deal and it is no longer the authors making the decisions, which is the beauty of e-books at present; but what does the future hold? Moreover, how about e-books in other countries – how global is the e-book movement or is it stuck, like traditional publishing, which seems to have no use for work in translation as they feel it does not or will not “play for the American public”? That somehow, we all became stupid or took stupid pills overnight and wouldn’t understand a book, translated into English from French.

Lost in Translation

Think of Jean Echenoz (Google translation). Do you know the name? It seems doubtful, yet everyone of his works pretty much has been translated into English/American and is readily available in most bookstores and through huge venues like Amazon and B&N. Echenoz recently won Le Prix Goncourt, which is rather like winning the Pulitzer in France, yet few people here have even heard of him, let alone read him or his prize-winning book Je m’en vais

Does Jean just have ineffectual press and publicity people, or have bookstores, both independent and chain, closed ranks on work in translation in favor of the larger name books because that’s what sells.

I’ll tell you, that is always what will sell if that is what you present. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Present oranges and people will buy oranges when maybe what they are really dying for is a pomegranate but none is to be found. In brief, the rarer items are rarer and rarer when, in fact, the proud and proven ought be household names.

When I was in France, and I’ll end near here, I went into many bookstores. What struck me most of all was that in each bookstore there were different sections: English, French, German, Dutch, Chinese, Spanish… you name it. All of the major languages of the world were given their own section and you could buy a book in almost any language.

I don’t mean this as a diss, but isn’t it curious that America that gets more than its share of tourists, doesn’t have such sections? That everything is in American and that’s it?The attitude: if you want a book in French, go to a specialty bookstore or bring it with you.

All of this is to say stay awake, be aware of what is going on in the publishing industry so that it doesn’t creep into the e-book world and begin to welcome any e-books in translation or even, god help us, in their native tongue. Wouldn’t that be something?

/////////////

Moderator’s note: Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti is a former publicity director and editor for David R. Godine, Publisher, and has worked at Conde Nast Publications, The Atlantic Monthly and others. She has been widely published and now writes regularly for several publications including the famous Cleveland Blogcritics, Geek2Geek, Boston Globe Arts Section, and she has also written for Publisher’s Weekly, Independent Publisher and others. Visit her Web site.

Enjoy Sadi’s podcasts regularly by pasting the TeleRead audio feed into your podware. And remember, she welcomes feedback.