In the late 1950s, Random House editor Jason Epstein would talk jazz with Ralph Ellison or chat with Andy Warhol while pouring drinks in his office. By the 1970s, editors were poring over profit-and-loss statements. The electronics company RCA bought Random House in 1965, and then other large corporations purchased other formerly independent publishers. As multinational conglomerates consolidated the industry, the business of literature—and literature itself—transformed.
Dan Sinykin explores how changes in the publishing industry have affected fiction, literary form, and what it means to be an author. Giving an inside look at the industry's daily routines, personal dramas, and institutional crises, he reveals how conglomeration has shaped what kinds of books and writers are published. Sinykin examines four different sectors of the publishing industry: mass-market books by brand-name authors like Danielle Steel; trade publishers that encouraged genre elements in literary fiction; nonprofits such as Graywolf that aspired to protect literature from market pressures; and the distinctive niche of employee-owned W. W. Norton. He emphasizes how women and people of color navigated shifts in publishing, arguing that writers such as Toni Morrison allegorized their experiences in their fiction. This deeply original book recasts the past six decades of American fiction.
Dan Sinykin is an assistant professor of English at Emory University with a courtesy appointment in quantitative theory and methods. He is the author of American Literature and the Long Downturn: Neoliberal Apocalypse. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Rumpus, Dissent, and other publications.
Mike Lenz has been an audiobook narrator and voice actor for more than fourteen years. Having narrated titles in genres ranging from fiction, entertainment, science, and children's literature to Christian, business, self-help, and history, Mike loves bringing nonfiction and fiction stories to life with his engaging, confident, and trustworthy voice.
Mike's broad background includes voicing commercials, eLearning projects, real estate videos, corporate and web-based videos, and brand imaging, appearing in regional and national television commercials as an on-camera talent, and serving as the mayor of his hometown of Saratoga Springs, New York.
Mike is also a Voice Arts Award-nominated podcast producer as well as an author. He is a frequent speaker at learning and voice-over conferences. Mike currently lives in Saratoga Springs, New York, with his wife and four children.
Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Mass Market (I): How Mass-Market Books Changed Publishing 2. Mass Market (II): How the Mass Market Won the World, Lost Its Soul—Then Lost the World 3. Trade (I): How Women Resisted Sexism and Reinvented the Novel 4. Trade (II): How Literary Writers Embraced Genre 5. Nonprofits: How Rebels Found Funding and Rejected New York 6. Independents: How W. W. Norton Stayed Free and Housed the Misfits Conclusion Glossary of Publishing Figures Notes Index
