But I still don't know what they're good for. As far as I can tell, this is an entire profession devoted to schmoozing, hype, and matching the value of a "deal" to the value of a "property." It's all based on insider knowledge and speculative bidding-up based on market perceptions rather than intrinsic values. Scouts (if I got this right) are trying to sell options and rights, based on exaggerated speculation on market movements years in the future, before the
The innocents here are writers and readers. Williams' article mentions authors only off-handedly, as people who entrust their product to an agent so the marketplace can work its magic. Readers—actual readers of published books that have managed to survive this process—are never mentioned at all.
I don't know Emily Williams, but I'm sure she and her fellow scouts are all lovely people. Within the world of publishing conglomerates, apparently this is the way the game is played, and I'm sure it's possible to be good at the game and still be a nice person. (Really: I have known nice people who were investment bankers. Not at the same time—they were bankers, and then they stopped being bankers, and then they were nice—but they were the same people.) But to me it just emphasizes how little the world of publishing conglomerates has to do with writers, readers, and what I know as literature.
Williams' article will be followed by two more parts, discussing the international scene and translation. Fortunately, they're a week or more off, so there's some chance I'll be able to calm down and read them with an open mind.
2 comments:
Actually Matt, scouts earn their living by being paid an annual fee by the publisher or occasionally movie studio they represent. They've no involvement in the transaction. Most of them derive their greatest satisfaction by finding below the radar screen books for their clients, as I'd continued direct personal experience of when scouts were checking out Soft Skull books. Writers are beneficiaries if scouts' activity, not victims...
Thanks, Richard, that does clarify some things I didn't get from the article. So scouts are innocent of involvement in the financial rewards of the transactions they facilitate—but Ms. Williams' description still seems to be all about mega-deals and the exhilaration of getting a scoop on a blockbuster. In that model, the measurements of value are all about big publishers and their profits.
Some worthy authors—and those tertiary participants, readers—may end up doing OK with this system, but that doesn't mean the system itself is the best, or even a good, way of managing things. In a system organized around personal access to information, competitive bidding for rights, and the breathless hyping of blockbuster deals, what rises to the top will be precisely the empty, easily hype-able product that will make nice paychecks for everyone with a financial stake.
Readers end up in the role of the small investor—the sucker taxpayer who gets told C'mon, just invest another $700B and this time we promise we'll fix our mistakes. How much crap will people buy and read before they give up on reading? No, conglomerate publishing's not that bad, but the decision-making seems awfully far removed from the necessary corrective inputs. A bad book may not be as destructive as a bad investment, but it's still nothing to be cheered.
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