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January 22, 2002
ARTICLES: Finding the words
THERE’S something in the air in New York, and it’s not just particular to the collapsed World Trade Centre. The media corporations in the city have been sniffing the post 9/11 zeitgeist and deciding that what many might regard as an already supine approach to the Bush administration needs to get flatter still. ABC Newsline anchor Ted Koppel introduced Arundhati Roy’s acerbic comments on the Afghan campaign from Delhi with the following precis: “Some of you may not like what we are about to broadcast. My advice to you is that you don’t have to listen.”
The invitation to ignore dissident opinion has been taken up by the book publishing industry in the city. Last week brought the news that HarperCollins has declined to release Michael Moore’s new book, Stupid white men and other excuses for the state of the nation. Moore, whose film “Roger and me” uproariously skewered the CEO of General Motors back in the 1980s, has been a prominent critic of the Bush presidency. His book was scheduled to appear in September but, along with a slew of other titles, was postponed in the immediate wake of the disaster.
Now, the latest Publishers weekly reports that HarperCollins considers sections of the book to be “inappropriate” and has decided to delay further the release of the 100,000 copies it has printed. Apparently Moore was asked to rewrite up to 50 per cent of the book, which he declined to do. Cal Morgan, editorial director of Regan Books, the division responsible for the book, said: “As much as anything, it’s a matter of publishing a book about the world situation when the world situation has changed.”
HarperCollins has a long history of balking at the politically sensitive. In 1941 it decided not to release Leon Trotsky’s critical biography of Stalin until the second world war was safely over.
Increasing timorousness is likely to be one of the more enduring legacies of the September events. But the attacks have had financial implications too. Coming on the back of a mounting recession, they have stoked nervousness inside the financial departments of the large companies. Peter Olson, CEO at Random House, captured the mood of the industry in his end-of-year report to staff: “We are selling fewer copies of our bestselling titles than in previous years. Christmas sell-through, at best, looks to be just moderate compared to last year and the year before.” And he adds: “It won’t get any easier for us in 2002.”
A new astringency is the result. Within days of Olson’s letter, Random House announced the redundancy of nine editors, with more expected in the New Year. Random House and Penguin’s cancellations of their national sales conferences this autumn, replaced by less expensive regional meetings, and reports that Henry Holt told its editors not to take authors and agents out for Christmas lunches, are harbingers of more drastic action likely to follow.
On the other hand, those companies lucky enough to be able to dust off backlist titles dealing with Afghanistan have had a great final quarter. Yale University has enjoyed sales of 300,000 for Ahmed Rashid’s Taliban: militant Islam, oil and fundamentalism in Central Asia, a book it purchased from the small UK independent I.B. Tauris for a sum approaching six figures. Pan Macmillan bought mass-market rights in the UK.
Another small UK independent, Pluto Press, has seen a doubling of its US turnover this year thanks to the bounce in sales of a couple of previously published titles: Reaping the whirlwind, an account of the Taliban, and Unholy wars: Afghanistan, America and international terrorism. Pluto has shipped 50,000 copies in the last two months. “We’re going to be careful not to blow the money,” says editorial director Ann Beech determinedly. “This is going to pay down debt at the bank.”
Other companies have been able to maintain their top lines by producing instant books on the tragedy and the ensuing war. Not all have been in-depth considerations of the issues involved. Newmarket Publications, better known for its movie tie-ins, quickly printed George Bush’s post-September 11 speech to Congress and sold 70,000 copies of a $6 book titled Our mission, our moment, with proceeds from the book going to victims of the disaster. Powerhouse books, which had previously been limping along in a hard-hit arts-book market, has revived its fortunes by rushing out a collection of Magnum photographers’ work on the attacks in Washington and New York. The demand for coffee-table picture books on the disaster is perhaps surprising, but marked nonetheless. Life Magazine’s One nation: America remembers September 11, 2001 is also riding high on the bestseller lists.
More serious and challenging reaction books are now hitting the stores; and, as is so often the case, it is the small independent publishers that are making the running. Seven Stories press, located just nine blocks from the World Trade Centre, has responded to the disaster on its doorstep with, among other titles, 9-11 by Noam Chomsky, a quickly assembled collection of interviews and journalism that has already sold 50,000 copies in four printings.
“It’s the fastest-selling book in the company’s history,” says Dan Simon, director of the press. “We came in to work on the Thursday after the attack. Everything was covered in dust and the phones weren’t working. So we just headed off to a bar and started drinking. It was the only way we could cope. It wasn’t long before talk turned to how, as publishers, we could respond to what had happened. Then we had an idea. That evening we contacted our authors by email and asked them if they would like to write brief essays on what had happened.”
Ariel Dorfman, Howard Zinn and Chomsky all sent messages straight back. Alice Walker wrote 5,000 words. Seven Stories published the replies electronically, entitling them “e-blasts”. They’re now in the process of issuing the texts as a series of short books. “Rushing them through,” adds Simon, “has been our attempt to breathe, to dig ourselves out of the hole.” — Dawn/Guardian news service
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