WHY MARK AND I AREN'T IN THE POST

In the sometimes clueless and almost-always terrifying world of book publishing, certain engines of public sanction are grails to be sought -- the New York Times Review of Books, for one, or Rolling Stone or the Village Voice or perhaps some slightly more borderline periodical, one which recommends reading with an "edge" that somehow makes you feel like you're scoring under-the-counter speed.

How about The Washington Post Book World?

One certainty these organs share in common is that any criticism levied upon any written work within their high-visibility pages will automatically transmogrify to blurb status. Such publications are any writer's basic foothold on the co-opted and extremely conservative American reading public-at-large. That's right: the mainstream.

And a mainstream readership needs clues to channel its tastes when it comes to the equation of entertainment value-received in exchange for bucks spent on books. Hence, blurbs -- little bullets of consumer advocacy from names you may trust or at least, recognize. Possibly.

If we must have blurbs on books (and I don't think we do, but that's a whole 'nother essay), best to cite the Times, the Post, names that ring with mythic, Olympian grandeur ...

... especially if the notices were good ones.

Unlike the perfunctory "reviews" in, say, Publisher's Weekly or Kirkus (where many pans of genre books are rendered psuedonymously or sans accreditation by sniping cowards whojust happen to be in the same field of endeavor), the Post solicits celebrity reviewers -- experts in assorted categories, genres, or styles -- to submit their best-of-the-year lists in time to be published prior to the annual Exmas shopping mall feeding frenzy, in the fervent hope their picks might enable people who want to buy books for that even more endangered species, people who still read books.

Enter Doug "the Hammer" Winter.

The Douglas E. Winter of Prime Evil and Art of Darkness and Faces of Fear, yeah, that Doug Winter, a guy who oughta know what's good for us when it comes to scary stuff.

In the December 4th, 1994 issue of The Washington Post Book World, in a centerfold article titled "Informed Opinions: Experts Choose Their Favorite Books," Doug provided a list of his picks in the Horror and Suspense category -- not even a Top Ten, since only eight books made the year's cut, from Tim Lucas'Throat Sprockets to the "inevitable" Stephen King inclusion, Insomnia. Also cited were two short story collections: The Return of Count Electric and Other Stories by William Browning Spencer (Permanent Press, 1994), and Black Leather Required, a Mark V. Ziesing Production by yours truly.

The Post editor lopped off the collections. In a colder, crueler world (not a doughnut-friendly environment, which would be a cruller world), a similar exchange between writer and editor might have gone something like this:

 

EDITOR: Lose the goddamned collections! Nobody gives a shit about short stories! I want novels, fer fugsake, books with heft, fiction by the pound so people don't feel shortchanged! And who are these fuggin so-called publishers, anyway? I never heard of 'em!

WRITER: Well, sir, they're small presses--

EDITOR: What?! You mean I can't buy these fuggin books-that-aren't-really-books at Brentano's?

WRITER: Well, sir, if you take the effort to seek them out, they're really--

EDITOR: Are you fuggin kidding me? These aren't even professional books! I want normal books that normal people can walk in off the street and buy!

WRITER: But, sir, if we don't tell people about them, they'll never even know they exist, and how does that help get out the word about what's really good fiction?

EDITOR: I don't care about that! Look -- I want people to see the title of the book, so they can go to Bookstar, and buy the damned thing! Just pick some stuff off the bestseller list! You know -- normal books! End of story! Why are you wasting my fuggin time!?

Now this is not what occurred at the Post, mind you. For one thing, the dismissal was a lot more civil. But its roots track to the same place -- the place that defines publishers solely as New York-based corporate entities of big biz. Given that, we need to face the inevitable when it comes to the written word as a commodity.

With seventy percent of the book publishing market dominated by four gigantic chains, mirroring a parallel consolidation of separate publishing houses under ever-bigger corporate umbrellas, the result is not that more books are available to more people, but that more and more people are reading the same books. Why? Because independent sales reps are making fewer and fewer decisions about what gets exposure. The deal brokering, today, right now, is essentially between the big stores and the big suppliers

Characteristically, independent publishers divide into two categories: the small press, and the academic press. Neither is capable of paying the large chain stores "co-op" money -- basically a pay-to-play system wherein publishers mustrent shelf and rack space if they want their product displayed (You didn't think book placement was up to the wily employees, do you? I mean, they hire those people off thestreet!).

This will lend you some small appreciation of what Ziesing Books is up against. Just this year, Coach House Press, High Risk Books, and the US arm of UK publisher Serpent's Tail have all bitten the dust ... thereby narrowing your options when it comes to literary, experimental, edge or just plain risky fiction.

Would it surprise you to know that small press entities are the future of publishing? It surprised me.

Think about it: Just watch what's happening as the huge multimedia entertainment conglomerates swallow each other. Even though Tom Clancy is now responsible for 85% of Putnam's profit margin (no lie!), mother companies will soon become so huge that no one product can possibly satisfy even their broadest demographic. How do you keep the lights on? How do you avoid being squashed by your own overhead?

Niche marketing. It's happening on the Internet already, as the giants battle for dominance. Little hidey-holes for the people who wish to continue their e-mail relationships without consuming the flashier interactive options the Web will soon provide unto death.

Being ever-hungry, the giants will ultimately desire to access the people they don't already possess, the people who want nothing to do with mainstream product, and when they do, they won't be able to use their internal resources, which are all oriented toward the big score to the exclusion of everything else. They'll have the venture outside their normal operating parameters ... which means, eventually, they'll have to go to Mark Ziesing and ask him how in hell he picks his projects.

Mr. Ziesing, just exactly how do you deal with these people who actually read ... ? What's that all about?

A lot of patience will be required to deal with these people, because at that point we'll be speaking two different languages. But maybe, just maybe, Mark and I will get our names in some newspaper on the far coast as a result ...

At which point no one will be capable of reading them.