Big fiction needs bold editors

When accepting the German Peace Prize at the Frankfurt Book Fair this year, Salman Rushdie delivered a rousing defence of freedom of expression, urging us to "let a thousand and one voices speak in a thousand and one different ways". This, Rushdie reminded us, is what literature at its best can do. Reading Big Fiction, Dan Sinykin’s impressive study of "conglomeration" in the publishing industry, published in October by Columbia University Press, we might worry that Rushdie’s call for variety is incompatible with the way books are published today. The focus of Sinykin’s book is America but, given that the publishing giants—led by Penguin Random House—have strongholds on both sides of the Atlantic, his portrait is a mirror of the UK publishing industry. He tells us that our obsession with the voice of an inspired author is a "trick of history": literary success is generated by a well-oiled machine of marketing executives, agents, reviewers and even influencers. 

The result of this "conglomerate machine", Sinykin implies, is a narrowing of literature that belies the "big fiction" of his title. Even as the big publishers have spent the past 50 years sizing up, swallowing independent houses and occupying an ever-larger market share, they have slimmed down the range of titles they are willing to invest in. Conglomerates, Sinykin claims, are in thrall to "logic of comps" (comparative titles) that says, "what will work is what has worked". Due to the tyranny of profit margins, these publishers are loath to take risks. According to this logic, when breakthrough successes such as Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987) sold well, they themselves became "comps" that dictated what kinds of books would follow them. Sinykin accounts for the increasing diversity of fiction lists from the 1990s onwards within this argument: conglomeration allowed "multicultural" literature to flourish within strict limits so that it became dominated by historical fiction in the vein of Morrison’s novels.

Sinykin tells us that a "negotiation between an author and the institution" happens when novels are written, so that texts fit the approved mould even before they reach an editor’s desk.

Amid stricter hiring budgets, resources are shifting away from the time-intensive, slow process of editorial content development and towards those areas guaranteed to boost profits

The problem with Sinykin’s argument is that it can’t really be proven.  This "negotiation" is "often (but not always) subliminal, happening at the level of intuition"; it’s hard to pinpoint what, for example, about Cormac McCarthy’s writing allowed him to suddenly become, with All the Pretty Horses (1992), a bestselling author. Sinykin’s language analysis, unlike his sweeping panorama of the industry, can be unconvincing: when exploring what it was about Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey sailing series that made it such a smash hit, Sinykin declares that O’Brian "clearly loves words". This is no doubt true, but it doesn’t nail down why these books took root in the imaginations of thousands of readers. 

Sinykin says that literary success is "unattributable to any single element" in the "beehive" of the publishing "superorganism". This does ring true with certain recent bestsellers (I won’t name names here) that have generated huge profits due to excellent marketing, publicity, design, and word-of-mouth promotion, but are underwhelming as novels. A friend of mine who works at one of the "Big Five" publishers admitted recently that even the editorial staff are sometimes disappointed by their company’s much-vaunted bestsellers. Within Sinykin’s beehive, the quality of the book risks falling out of view. Conglomerate publishing is, in such instances, the quintessence of capitalism: we’re told that we need to buy something, so we buy it, and big companies reap their reward.

While Sinykin doesn’t deliver judgement about whether conglomerate publishing has damaged the quality of literature, he does suggest that it has dramatically altered the author-editor relationship. If authorial genius is one casualty of conglomeration, another is the editor with their red pen and printed manuscript. In an illuminating conclusion, Sinykin describes how the financial crash and Kindle revolution of 2008 brought about a culling of personnel that persists today. Roles such as "business intelligence analyst" and "vice-president of data science and analytics", he tells us, have disrupted the former hierarchy which placed editors at the top. This has occurred alongside an increasing focus on bestsellers which will yield the highest possible return; the "midlist", titles which aren’t immediately profitable but may accrue a following over time, is shrinking.

Amid stricter hiring budgets, resources are shifting away from the time-intensive, slow process of editorial content development and towards those areas guaranteed to boost profits, such as publicity and sales departments. It has never been harder to secure an entry-level role in an editorial department, even as access schemes seek to increase diversity within them. A scarcity of positions means that even after securing that coveted assistant role, limited progression opportunities and tiny salaries ensure that only the most determined (or privately wealthy) can stay the course. If we are truly, as Rushdie hopes, to "let a thousand and one voices speak in a thousand and one different ways", then the editor’s laborious, long work of nurturing authors cannot be done away with. Sinykin shows us the sheer might of conglomerate publishing; let us not overlook the wonder of words themselves.