Patricia
Nell Warren, publisher, writer, and most assuredly teacher and
mentor of many writers contributes an article from a series originally
published in Outlands Magazine, titled "Falling
Dominoes: The Threats to GLBT Book Publishing"&
"LBT Women Authors Spotlighted at Texas Conference"
Patricia Warren's writings and books can be found at Wildcat International—a multimedia company
 FALLING DOMINOS: THE THREATS TO GLBT BOOK PUBLISHING A Series by Patricia Nell Warren Originally published in Outlands Magazine Part 1: What Is a Book Worth? Six years ago, I wrote a widely reprinted article titled "Twilight of the Books," in which I outlined some of the dire challenges facing the gay book business at that time. Among them were these: Some GLBT bookstores and publishers were going out of business. Fewer gay books were being published by mainstream publishers. Since then, things have gotten worse instead of better. Though many of us in the business are painfully aware of the problems we face, most people in the “gay community” appear blissfully unaware of what’s happening. Most of the gay media actually ignore the subject, other than to publish bits about the latest bookstore closing. A few weeks ago, a bombshell event happened. A prominent gay-owned book distributor -- Alamo Square Distributors, a company that had been in business for many years -- announced that they were deep in debt and would shut down. Distributor bankruptcies are serious stuff in the book world. So are publisher closings – many of the older established GLBT-owned small presses, like pioneering Naiad Press, have vanished from the scene in the last few years. Since the Alamo news went out, I've gotten a number of concerned emails and phone calls from other authors and publishers. "What's going to happen to us, Patricia?" I wish I knew. It’s true that there are bright spots – a whole crop of talented new authors, the launching of InsightOut Book Club, and a couple dozen new young publishing companies, including my own Wildcat Press. More about these later in the series. For community-owned distributors we still have Bella Distribution, and a new company, ASP Wholesalers, that announced its startup after Alamo closed. But the problems are serious. If something isn't done soon, gay people will wake up some morning and find that their book scene -- built with such enormous pride and effort since the 1960s – has tumbled like a row of dominos. Most of our authors will be finding another way to make a living (gee, some authors are doing that already.) Others will be selling their books in booths at Pride festivals, because that will be the last dependable market outlet left to them. A lot of the negative things that happen to mainstream books, out there in the national cultural arena and the national marketplace, have a deadly domino effect that comes racing along to our own books and pushes them down. But the gay world generates some falling dominos of its own, that also hurt our books. This series of articles will look at those different cascades of falling dominos, both in the mainstream and in the GLBT world. I also hope to propose some solutions. To discuss the value of GLBT books, I realized that it's important to start with the general value of all books in today's world. What Is a Book Worth? The mainstream book business is struggling with massive change. It isn’t just the economy, the high price of gas and housing. It isn't just the ripple effects of Iraq and Katrina engulfing our lives. No -- there are deep paradigm shifts going on, that erode the fundamental and historical value always put on books. One reason why many Americans don’t value books any more is that there are now such colossal numbers of books in print. The total number of book publishers has almost doubled just in the last 10 years, from 46,000 in 1995 to 83,000 today. Of these, around 70,000 are small presses, including those with only 1-10 titles in print. As to the actual number of books being published -- in 1950 there were only around 12,000 titles in print. But in 2004, the U.S. industry churned out a mind-boggling 195,000 book titles. You can buy cheap books everywhere – the supermarket, airport shops, pet stores, truck stops, CostCo, WalMart, even Home Depot. The history of commerce tells us that, when an item is scarce, its value soars; when it gluts the market, its value plummets. For many people today, books have become something disposable that you read on the airplane and leave behind on the seat when you de-plane. So it isn't surprising that, despite this annual diarrhea of new titles, the overall sales of U.S. books are down in recent years. 2003 was a bad year, with big declines in a number of categories, including adult hardcover and paperback, childrens’ books and audio books. This year the Association of American Publishers is knocking itself out trying to report good news for 2004. It insists that total sales were up by 1.3 percent. And yes, they can report that the latest Harry Potter novel sold 8.9 million copies in the first 24 hours! But let’s look more closely at the AAP figures. That 1.3% registers as an increase because the AAP includes a whopping 12.4% spurt in the category of standardized tests for schools -- these are actually counted among “book sales.” These new tests are selling heavily because the law now holds a gun to educators' heads and requires schools to buy them. If you take the mandated test sales out of the mix (after all, they hardly reflect consumer taste!), the total sales are actually down, not up. Meanwhile the AAP admits that juvenile books are down 16.9%, books clubs and mail order are down by 8.9, and mass market paperbacks down by 8.9%. What the AAP numbers really reveal, if you take away the smoke and mirrors, is a continued decline in recreational and educational reading, especially among young people. While sales of conventional books (meaning those printed on paper and bound between two covers) keep sliding down the slippery slope, the sales of e-books are up a dizzying 1447.4 percent in one year. This means that many in a new generation of Americans now view a book as a handful of digital bits -- ephemeral, chuckable, like a Styrofoam cup. When they’re done reading, a book’s icon can be whisked into the desktop trash-can. They don’t see their books as a growing collection of wonderful physical objects on their living-room shelves -- collectibles that have not only an intrinsic value for the permanent information and experience they contain but also an intrinsic beauty of their own. The domino effect of the e-book trend also means that more public and university libraries are dumping their book collections in favor of CDs and e-books. Several years ago the San Francisco Public Library ignited a firestorm of public protest when it went heavily electronic. Values From the Ancients In short, a core Western tradition of valuing and collecting books for their own sake may be coming to an end. This tradition stretches back to the Renaissance men and women who rummaged around Europe trying to find 800-year-old manuscript copies of forgotten pagan Greek and Roman writings. To church copyists of the early Christian era who valued the ancient pagan writings and risked papal displeasure to gather aging fragile papyrus copies of the Iliad and other ancient works and make laborious new handwritten copies on durable parchment. To the Library of Alexandria, founded in the third century CE, whose shelves were filled with an estimated half million manuscripts representing the sum of Western thought and science. All during those long centuries, great figures like the Medici family made history by saving and collecting important books and making them available to the public. During the Inquisition, dissidents were burned at the stake because of books they published. Galileo spent the last years of his life in house arrest by the Catholic Church because he published his revolutionary Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems in 1632. Even after the printing press hit Europe in the mid-1400s and books were more widely available to the public, they were still considered a precious addition to anyone's household. When the Americas began to be settled by Europeans, educated emigrants arrived here with trunkfuls of their most treasured books. So the allegation that “Americans read less these days” needs to be scrutinized more closely. Some people think of this trend as simply the result of hard times, or “people choosing to watch movies or TV.” If you believe this, you should take a close look at the anti-book propaganda being cranked out by the computer industry, which sees books as competition to be crippled. Recently, in Los Angeles, I was shocked to see a back-to-school window display in the Apple Store at The Grove. In front of a floor-to-ceiling background of packed library shelves, a row of shiny state-of-the-art laptops sat in state…along with the slogan: “These are all the books you’ll ever need.” A friend and I saw this display as we were on our way to a movie at the Grove Theater. We stopped in our tracks, and our jaws dropped. “The message is crystal clear, isn’t it?” said my friend drily. This down-with-books propaganda is proving to be deadly effective with American educators. Schools are starting to junk textbooks (which are admittedly expensive) in favor of laptop computers (which are even more expensive and a juicy target for campus theft). Parents don't want their children lugging around loads of heavy books in their backpacks, and welcome the digital revolution. No wonder many young people don’t value books today! ____________________________ Next installment: "Censorship: Visible and Not-So-Visible: Author's note: Patricia Nell Warren has worked in publishing since 1959. She published her first bestselling gay novel, The Front Runner, in 1974. Since then, she has gone on to publish seven other novels, and to co-found Wildcat Press, a small independent publisher (with media specialist Tyler St. Mark). Wildcat is based in Los Angeles and has its webpage at www.wildcatpress.com. Warren has written widely on publishing issues for Out Magazine, Lambda Book Report, Gay & Lesbian Review, Foreword, Independent Gay Writer, PressPassQ and other publications. Copyright (c) 2005 by Patricia Nell Warren. All rights reserved. |
LBT Women Authors Spotlighted at Texas Conference By Patricia Nell Warren After Texas voters passed the homophobic Prop. 2 on November 8, many LGBT people feel that we have to write that state off. But not so fast. There may be hope yet for the Lone Star State! In Denton on Nov. 3-4, at the University of North Texas (a campus that's said to be somewhat conservative), there was the exciting 2nd annual Diverse Women's Seminar. This year it was titled, "Developing Multicultural Leaders: Women Who are Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender and Their Allies." I was there because I'd been invited to moderate the conference for the second year running. The conference is put on by UNT's Division of Equity and Diversity, headed by associate vice president Cassandra Berry. Berry, with whom I've talked at length, is a woman with a vision for a liberated Texas. To put on the conference, she has the able organizational help of Dan Emenheiser, UNT director of diversity education, and a group of volunteers. The division's aims include respect and understanding for lesbian, bi and transgendered women of every ethnic and social background. Many among the dozens of conference attendees were black, Asian and Latina. See details at http://www.unt.edu/edo/. Its third edition is planned for 2006. In addition to the usual focuses on social, legal and political issues, the conference featured LBT artists and writers as keynote speakers. Alison Bechdel, creator of the well-known cartoon strip "Dykes to Watch Out For," talked about her life and sensibilities and writing career, as "politically pertinent" cartoons came up on the big screen behind her, greeted by appreciated laughter from the audience. Many of the best DTWOF strips can be found in her collection, "The Indelible Alison Bechdel," published by Firebrand Books in 1998. Later in the day, black lesbian author Sharon Bridgforth did a powerful performance reading from her landmark work, "The Bull-Jean Stories." Published by Redbone Press in 1998, this book is described by Bridgforth as "non-linear writing" with a strong jazz influence. Bridgforth says, "I wanted to celebrate the rural/southern working-class Black bulldaggas/who were aunty-momma-sister-friends of the church." As Bridgforth reads, her voice fills the room and takes on the tones and rhythms of music. Other keynote speakers were Lupe Valdez, Dallas County Sheriff, and Kate Kendell, executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights. To cap the day, the UNT Bookstore was there in full force, was a long table covered in books and CDs by LBT authors. Just a few days later, in a large voter turnout, Texans voted to pass Prop. 2 by a margin of over 3 to 1. But I think it's always a mistake to generalize about any group, or country, or state. Right now Texas is being massively generalized in the gay media as the home base of institutionalized homophobia. But not every Texan feels that way. Americans appear to be awakening from their apathy of recent years and starting to vote in record numbers -- in California that same day, a huge Democratic and liberal turnout gave the death blow to our Republican governor's four cherished propositions on the ballot. So we must pin our hopes on that one-third of Texas that opposed the senseless Prop. 2 amendment. If Texas ever turns around, it will be with the help of university events like the one at UNT. _____________________ Copyright 2005 by Patricia Nell Warren. All rights reserved. |