AZGrizFan said:
bearister said:
Grizbeer, have you ever walked by the book aisle at Costco?
You almost always have your pick of several screeds by Dick Cheney, Sarah Palin and the like claiming that President Obama is responsible for the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby. I've never noticed a left wing agenda in the book selection. Seems to me to be about selling books.
You're not paying attention then. :roll:
Although the industry is changing fast, most of the really big book publishers are still based in New York City, and the acquisition editors live their. There
main emphasis is in acquiring books they think will sell. (I meet these people all the time at writers' conferences -- and they admit they have no magic formula for doing that ... but that's the idea.) However, all other things being (reasonably) equal, they lean heavily toward "PC" and a liberal/left agenda. Again ... this is what
they say when you talk over beer or wine. Some are, actually, rather middle-of-the-road or even "conservative." However, before they even let a contract for a book, the editors have to "sell" the book to management. With a staff of publicists, numbers guys, and managers who are embedded in the left-wing environment of NYC, guess what they are going to favor?
Other than that, they like books that are "controversial" for
whatever reason. Controversy generates sales, and that's their mantra (naturally). I know for a fact -- having talked to a number of published nonfiction authors -- that "balanced" is not a favored editorial approach. They will -- and some make no bones about it -- advise the author to cut material that "softens" the edge of some controversial topic.
Now, so-called "small presses," largely based outside of New York, may have different priorities. But Costco has to put large numbers of books in hundreds of locations all over the country. For them, books are commodities. Since they basically do not advertise, their buyers
prefer to stock books where they know the publisher is going to print a large run of copies, and spend a lot of money on promoting them. Publishers
only heavily promote books that are "authored" (perhaps with a ghost writer) by celebrities, are highly controversial, or link to some headline-grabbing event. Krakauer is a celebrity (of sorts) himself, and most of his books have generated a fair amount (and sometimes a lot) of controversy/publicity.
That's the "formula." Corporate buyers "may be wrong, but they are never uncertain."