PW: Publishers Ponder Future At L.A. Festival

Roxane Farmanfarmaian |

May 04, 1998

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Publishers Ponder Future At L.A. Festival
Roxane Farmanfarmaian -- 5/4/98
"Serious trade book publishing is undergoing its most serious structural crisis in 100 years," said Steve Wasserman, book review editor for the Los Angeles Times, at one of the 79 panels that took place all around the UCLA campus during the third annual L.A. Book Festival, April 25-26. To judge by the more than 100,000 attendees of the two-day event, that crisis went unnoticed.
"I'm very optimistic about publishing," said Phyllis Grann, CEO of Penguin Putnam, one of the -- as Wasserman dubbed them -- "distinguished members of the Republic of Letters" who sat on his panel, "D s Serious Publishing Have a Future?" Co-panelists Paul Gottlieb, publisher of Abrams, and Charlie Winton, founder and CEO of PGW, agreed. Said Gottlieb, "There is a caring about serious cultural issues. In the middle, still, are books that live because somebody is really enthusiastic and g s and infects the marketplace. We're a business of enthusiasm."

Outside, as people milled around the 300-plus booths, talking to authors and listening to readings by celebrities such as Charlton Heston, Oliver Stone and Arianna Huffington, the enthusiasm was palpable. The festival was bigger and more diverse than last year's, with more than 160 scheduled events, including p try readings, appearances by the Cat in the Hat and Lamb Chop, and open-air concerts.

Only "D s Serious Publishing Have a Future?" panelist Michael Naumann, CEO of Holt, seemed unimpressed with the direction of today's publishing industry. "D s modern society need serious books?" he wondered. "Is the financial trouble we all find ourselves in a reflection of a cultural change?" Grann, who several times emphasized that a book that sells only 7000 copies can be very profitable, even for big conglomerates, said the problem lay with the expectations of the publicly traded companies that had bought the large publishing houses in the false hope of seeing double-digit growth -- "and that is unrealistic." Grann predicted that the next cycle of significant expansion would be among independent publishers, which would grow in size from the $30-million to $50-million range to the $300-million range over the next decade, sparking a new round of consolidation.

Disagreement over the future of serious publishing was not the only important issue publicly aired at the festival. At the awards ceremony the previous Friday night, Ray Bradbury, in his acceptance speech for the Robert Kirsch Lifetime Achievement Award, expressed concern that the Los Angeles Times Book Review was so "flimsy," and challenged the paper to increase its size over the next several months.

"It was shocking to hear this in the midst of such a lovely evening," Times v-p Narda Zacchino told PW. "And I think we have a very fine Review. But I do agree with him on one point. There's a real disconnect between this being the biggest book market in the country, and the lack of advertising. But we have a strategy for the Book Review now, and we're really hoping to make it bigger."
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A version of this article appeared in the 05/04/1998 issue of Publishers Weekly under the headline: