The Business of Books: How international Conglomerates Took Over Publishing and Changed the Way We Read by Andre Schiffrin//Book Business; Publishing Past Present and Future by Jason Epstein

In: Dissent: a journal devoted to radical ideas and the values of socialism and democracy, Band 48, Heft 4, S. 148

Abstract

SCHIFFRIN'S BOOK is also a polemic against the corrosive influence of international conglomerates on U.S. publishing. To understand his enmity, one must appreciate his biography. Schiffrin's father, Jacques, a Russian Jew living in France, founded his own publishing house, Editions de La Pleiade, with help from his friend Andre Gide, who translated a number of Russian classics into French. Pleiade, whose mission was to make affordable editions of the classics, was so successful that Gallimard (where Jacques Schiffrin had worked until he was drafted into the French army) bought it in 1936. Shortly after the French defeat in 1940, Jacques Schiffrin was fired. His dear Pleiade remained in the hands of Gallimard, which, according to his son, obeyed the imperative of Aryanization over loyalty to its employees. In 1942, Jacques Schiffrin, his wife, and son Andre, emigrated to New York, and Jacques resumed his work as a publisher, issuing French editions of resistance writing for the small exile community. Soon, he sold foreign licenses for these editions, and the business, which he established with capital raised from friends, joined forces with Kurt Wolff's Pantheon Books. Schiffrin's short tenure at the NAL was his first and last foray into traditional publishing. He joined Pantheon shortly after it had been acquired by Random House (and shortly after his father's death). Understanding, perhaps from his father's example, the need to maintain control over his contributions to a larger corporate entity, Schiffrin quickly set out to establish his independence within the company. Schiffrin's description of his years at the helm of Pantheon, before Random's acquisition by RCA, are somewhat idyllic. Pantheon remained profitable, if not wildly so, through a combination of shrewd academic publishing, much of it by way of Europe, and new best-sellers from Pantheon's backlist authors--a formula that afforded Schiffrin the luxury of satisfying profit expectations without sacrificing editorial freedom. In spite of this, Schiffrin wears as a badge of honor his distinct disinterest in the bottom line. This idyll of quality publishing, in Schiffrin's estimation, ended as soon as the merciless searchlight of corporate avarice trained itself on his peaceable kingdom. In 1965, RCA-owned Random House decided to no longer credit Pantheon with the proceeds from its own backlist. In effect, Schiffrin lost his birthright: the Pantheon history that was his proudest accomplishment. A series of punishing cost-saving measures were ordered, all of them amounting to a kind of tithing for Pantheon's place in the Random House firmament. The environment for Pantheon grew more hostile with S. I. Newhouse's acquisition of Random House in the 1980s. After a proposed corporate restructuring that would have severely restricted Pantheon's output, Schiffrin and his staff quit en masse. Shortly thereafter, Schiffrin established the New Press, which, with its slim undergirding of financial support from various foundations, stands immune from its founder's industry-wide indictment.