The End of Everything

(aka Happy Holidays!)

Trade publishing has a problem. It took the advent of AI for executives to admit it. At the 2023 Frankfurt Rights Meeting, which took place in September, Madeline McIntosh, former Chairman of Penguin Random House, unleashed a pistol from her holster and fired this shot: “Everyone in publishing is severely overworked; I think we can all acknowledge that.” She further posited AI as a solution. Then she put the barrel to her lips and coolly blew smoke from the muzzle (a ready exemplar of ex-CEO chic) as people in the room took stock of her candor.

I worked at PRH for thirty-two years, and this was the first time I had ever heard McIntosh, or anyone in senior management, publicly admit that people were severely overworked. Privately, of course, the CEOs at all the majors acknowledge that their employees are overworked, under-resourced, underpaid, and generally unhappy. The question that remains unanswered: what are they going to do about it?

*

They’re all fuckin’ miserable.

I know.

But we have them over a barrel.

Of course, we do. They have no place to go.

Plus, they’re soft as Teletubbies, this woke mob.

They are indeed.

The economy is tanking. Inflation’s running hot. Interest rates are through the roof.

And our business?

Our business? BEAT. Our business feels irreparably broken.

Exactly.

They’re all concerned about triggering language in Cormac’s books when they should be worried about their fucking futures!

*

Of course, the problems in publishing extend beyond publishing. The adjacent businesses we rely on to drive awareness in the marketplace – earned, social, and paid media – continue to erode in efficacy. I mean, look at Twitter/X. This was a platform that effectively amplified book talk despite its multitude of shortcomings. It wasn’t perfect, but it mattered. Now, it’s broken beyond repair. And yet, people who built up agency on the app are still there, wandering the vertical as if locked in an asylum, barking out commentary like they have Tourette’s, their identities irrevocably wed to (insert name of social media app).

*

Why is everyone so afraid of letting go? I think it is because we have forgotten who we are and how we were meant to live.

*

Some have left. The good people have made an exodus from X. But most of them have migrated to other platforms, still on the hunt for tethers.

*

Those connected to these areas often find the lifting dispiriting. It shouldn’t feel like a miracle when someone responds to an email, yet it does. It shouldn’t be hard to engineer marketing campaigns that drive results, but being asked to do so without spend, well, that kind of lifting is hard.

Then there are all the book bans. The presentation of books and ideas as the enemies of our republic. This can’t be good for business (or democracy), but I’m mostly writing about business because a part of me feels our democracy cannot be saved (even with Madeline running around New York in black knee-high boots with a Glock attached to her hip - there to save us, she, along with her wingman, Donny W!)

*

I used to think Madeline had the chops to take El Chapo down (I say this with great affection). Back in 2019, when Sonny was sick, he called me into his office, sat me down, and said to me:

I need your help finding a successor.

I was stunned.

You OK, he said.

It was a tough moment. Sonny had not been well. I knew where all this was going and did my best to keep it together.

I’m fine.

I can count on you?

Always.

See what the boss has to say.

*

I haven’t been close to that many people in the world. My mother died when I was eighteen. She’d been sick for a while. Cancer. So, when the RA from my dorm knocked on my door saying Harry was on the phone, I knew it was bad.

You need to come home.

Is it Mom?

Yes.

That was a long drive. Harry was standing in the hallway at St. Francis when I arrived. The doctor was standing next to him. The doctor pulled me aside, said my mother had been waiting for me. Then he opened the door to her room. I walked in, sat down, and took her hand in mine. Five minutes later, Rose took her last breath. My dad knew it was coming, and, you know, he was a tough old salt, but he cried like a baby when I came out of the room. Years later, I realized her death had steeled me from others. Sonny, however, wore me down. We shared an unlikely intimacy. I came to love him.

*

I called Madeline the next day.

Sonny is ready to identify a successor, I said.

Good.

Is the decision his to make?

It is with a caveat.

What’s that?

He doesn’t have carte blanche.

Cool, calm, always with her gun cocked (“And I said to myself, this is the business we’ve chosen; I didn’t ask who gave the order, because it had nothing to do with business.”)

I didn’t have a problem with her response. Sonny didn’t either. There is something refreshing about this kind of clarity from an executive. You always know where things stand. It’s the other executives – the least transparent ones, the ones who walk around with smiles on their faces – that you need to worry about.

*

David Foster Wallace once suggested you shouldn’t worry about what people think of you because, largely, they don’t think about you as often as you imagine, but am I alone in thinking about people all the time? I mean, I have lists and lists of people in my head, former colleagues, all sorted and suited up and sometimes naked, in scenes playing out like the living room rehearsal on the last episode of The Idol, a show that will probably result in my being canceled for having both watched and enjoyed it.

*

Finally, no one, it seems, can make a decent living in the industries adjacent to publishing (and in publishing proper). Writers. Agents. Booksellers. Reporters. All struggling with one exception: the five percenters (also known as the Sag Harbor crew). Publishing is a lot like America in that sense.

And so, what we are left with here is a self-fulfilling spiral of doom for most workers while the minority continue to trade punches over lunches at the Polo Club (I wrote a Tumblr post some years ago called “Nothing is Selling” that explored this terrain, and yeah, it feels worse now. Even the hairdos. But where do I put the period/question mark in a parenthetical, Ben? Inside or out? And what is the rule for ending the parenthetical?)

*

Britney is selling.

Yes.

But the gap between Britney and Harry and everything else is worrisome.

Imagine if she’d done some interviews.

I’m not sure it would’ve helped. She’s a live wire. You don’t want her showing up on the set of the Today Show juggling a set of kitchen knives. That kind of shit gets picked up on TMZ. Becomes a thing to manage. BEAT. I don’t know who made the call – keeping her sequestered – but it was absolutely the right one.

I guess. BEAT. A lot of other big books haven’t hit the mark. And a lot of repeat authors are down by double digits.

Did you read the NEA study?

Not good.

Not good? It’s depressing as fuck. You want to know why repeat authors are down by double digits? Because the people who had been reading these authors are starting to die.

What about young people?

They’re all on TikTok.

We’re doomed.

What would you say to someone thinking about entering the business today?

Don’t.

Seriously?

Yes.

I’m not giving up. We still have surprises. Books that quietly sell 500,000 copies.

Name one.

The Creative Act. Rick Rubin.

500,000 copies?

Yes. With big holiday sales to come. BEAT. He’s like the Paulo Coelho of the music industry.

A bright spot for sure.

And you know who published him?

No.

Ann Godoff.

She’s still around?

Yes.

Jeezus. The producers of Survivor should reach out to her. She would quietly assassinate everyone on the island.

*

I ran into Drake in the lobby.

How is he?

Good. Positive about the industry. Says the shackles are off and things are looking up.

Well, the bar from where he is looking is low.

Correct. Up is the only way out from the bottom of a crater.

Always liked him.

Me too. I particularly admire his decidedly unkempt appearance.

Right. He always smells like cigarettes and looks like he just woke up from a bender.

A disheveled elegance, his.

He’s the Jackson Lamb of book publishing!

He should walk around with a pair of binoculars draped from his neck.

Ha!

He is a bird guy.

Really?

Yeah. Spends his weekends hoofing around wetlands looking for Pied-billed Grebes.

It’s a life.

BEAT

I ran into Harls too. They want us back in the office, she said.

It’s good to be wanted, I said.

There’s always a caveat, she said. They are requiring us to commit to three days a week to have a desk. BEAT. They took away my phone. And my assistant. Now they want my desk.

They’re just things, I said.

*

Publishers want everyone back in the office. They’re soft-launching these demands, but they’ll come harder at staff in the months ahead. I understand this, having been a remote employee for three years and a somewhat isolated business owner for two. A sense of camaraderie comes with occupying the same physical space. Publishers say having employees in adjacent spaces is “good for creativity.” Horseshit. The good that comes from being together is being together. The smell of her perfume. The kinetic attraction that comes from being near one another. I see him looking at me. The hunger for connection we all feel. I would love to spend the weekend fucking him/her/them. This is how things get done in the world.

There’s also gossip. An endless fountain of it. That’s what work is, mostly. People coming together to gossip and fuck. In the absence of gossip and sex, office life becomes, well, kind of dull.

*

Gossip and sex are energizing, and I remember some of my industry colleagues as being very good at both.

*

Now, of course, companies have guardrails and policies to police these kinds of erotic charges. Where is the fun in that? You want to sap the creativity from office life? Start by desexing everything.

*

He was looking at me.

And that made you uncomfortable.

Extremely.

Did he touch you?

He looked like he wanted to touch me. He handed me a manuscript and was looking at me when he did. I know there was a sheaf of paper between us, but I consider his handoff a default touch. BEAT. I’m applying the laws of physics here.

It is part of your job to read for him?

Yes. BEAT. Listen: I came to you because I felt threatened. He could’ve left the manuscript on his desk for me to pick up. But he chose not to. He wanted to hand it to me. He wanted to look at me. He was standing next to me. Adjacent! BEAT. Now I want this incident reported in his file, and him spoken to.

*

Here is the bigger problem with people returning to the office: Publishers are not interested in creating an office everyone wants to return to. Because that requires spend and new thinking, that requires an admission that maybe these open floor plans weren’t the best idea ever, that requires acknowledging that the infrastructure employees rely on in the tri-state region is failing (and will only worsen given the commercial real estate fallout), that requires an understanding that more training isn’t something employees want or ever asked for, that requires an admission that office culture is often toxic. Finally, who wants to return to an office only to continue with the same routines: having to attend an obscene number of meetings, fill out employee assessments, and then worry about Goebbels sizing you up for the next seat on the bus to the woods? 

*

Who’s that guy staring at me?

Where?

There. In the cube.

That’s our CEO. The Peach.

Why does he keep peeking out over his divider with a notepad?

He’s taking attendance.

Does he do that often?

Every fucking day, man.

*

What employees really want is the freedom to manage their own time. They aren’t interested in attending meetings where nothing gets done (other than people keeping some opaque score). If you were to ask colleagues what’s important to them in the long employment game, I think you’d get a lot of interesting responses. Unlimited time off, housing subsidies, profit-sharing, gym memberships, free books for friends and family, vacation reimbursements, scholarships for children, subsidized food, happy hours, salary transparency, honesty from executives, beer and wine gardens, and a reasonable expectation of having a life outside work. Publishers offer some of these benefits, but all of it is engineered by HR teams who think they know what people want. But do they really know? Have they ever asked you what you want? I liked a surprising number of my HR colleagues through the years, but I often felt like they were missing the point of their endeavor. They were all advocates for the company when they really should’ve been advocates for me and you.

*

Prior to the formal PRH VSO offer landing on employee desks, I had a lot of former colleagues reaching out to me, asking for advice.

What should I do?

How is that even a question?

You think I should take the package?

Listen: you have CEO who has stated publicly that he will to “prune to achieve growth.” Do you understand the implications of that?

I guess.

You guess? Not to put too fine a point on it, but my interpretation of that would be: heads are gonna roll. BEAT. The package is generous. You’re not going to get a better offer. Anywhere. Ever. Also: you’ve been at the company seventy-five fucking years. It’s time. So here is my advice: don’t wait for the offer to land on your desk. Take the money and run.

*

It’s been a rough few years. Most of our circumstances are fortunate relationally to populations of the world, and still, we struggle. All of us. The news about everything seems bad. The planet is dying. The geopolitical situation is grim. The economy is not in a place where any of us are getting richer. Nothing is selling. Everyone seems mostly sad and a little lonely and anxious about the future. You go into a bar and the woman sitting next to you is staring at her mobile, scrolling.

*

You can do that at home.

Excuse me?

Stare at your phone. Why come to a bar and do it?

I wanted a drink.

You can do that at home too.

I enjoy drinking in a bar.

Bars are inherently social.

I enjoy drinking by myself, asshole.

George Thorogood wrote a song about that.

*

I mean, who signed up for this kind of future? I remember life in the before times when you could walk into a bar and start a conversation with someone without it escalating into World War III. 

*

Do you worry about the future?

No.

Why not?

Because Madeline McIntosh and Elon Musk are there to save us.

*

Musk posits that our future will be one of wealth and leisure. AI and robotics will replace many jobs, so there will be less for us to do, and things will practically be free because the cost of making goods will go down exponentially with robots and AI doing all the work, and with companies ostensibly giving goods away, it will cost less for us to live, and with nothing to do, since AI and robots will do it for us, we will have more leisure time on our hands than at any moment in history, and money will flow freely between us without anyone having to work.

*

Where will the money come from?

They will give it to us.

Who will give it to us?

He doesn’t specify. Just says there will be a lot of it to give. A universal income type thing.

Maybe all this leisure time will be an opportunity for reading?

AI will take care of that too.

How so?

AI will read for us.

That’s not the point of reading.

What is the point of reading?

To learn.

AI can teach us. Faster and better. They are introducing technology where people can read while they’re sleeping. All of Churchill in two nights. Dickens. Shakespeare. You will wake up a scholar, able to quote passages by rote.

I don’t want to read in my sleep.

Why not?

Because the experience of reading is unique.

Is it really? I mean, 920 pages on Barbara? Four hundred thousand column inches on her life in the Times? We’ve lost our way, man. BEAT.

The Times has become a pipe organ for celebrity memoirs. They ran like six stories on Britney. They’re giving the Post a run for their money.

BEAT

You ever meet Gilbert?

I have.

How’d he strike you?

As someone too tall to be editor of the TBR.

Exactly! He should be playin’ fuckin’ ball.

He does not have the carriage of a literary editor.

John Leonard had the carriage of a literary editor. We need a guy like him at the helm. Just for presentation purposes. BEAT. Gil would make a good point guard though.

I’d want him on my team for sure.

We don’t even know if he plays.

BEAT.

The Times used to have weight.

That was ten years ago.

Just sayin’ that it used to make a difference.

Not anymore.

But it’s still the first outlet authors ask about.

Yup. That’s mostly an ego thing. They all want to be in the Times. They’re all seeking validation. A colophon on the spine isn’t enough.

If I were an author, I wouldn’t give two fucks about the Times.

AP is where it’s at.

Hillel still alive?

I think so. As far as I can tell, he only writes stories about Robert Caro.

He still alive?

Alive and on the job, baby.

He ever gonna finish?

The man swims twenty fuckin’ laps every day. He’s gonna outlive us all.

*

I had a friend some years ago who asked me why I would spend all day preparing a meal. I told him that’s how long some meals take. He said he never spent time cooking, and that he wouldn’t spend time eating either if he could find a way around it, that if there was a pill he could take that would provide him with all of his caloric and nutritional needs, that would be enough. Where is the joy in that, I asked. He said eating wasn’t joyful. It was a waste of time. That there were other things he wanted to do instead. BEAT. I think that’s how a lot of people view reading today.

That is a grim fucking view of the world.

The killer here is that he was married to an Italian whose cooking was magnificent.

*

All of this leaves me wondering about the state of the industry from the point of view of those working in the trenches. And that is where I need your help. I can’t posit about our present (and future) absent your input. Possibly some of you are thinking, well, fuck him. He’s too negative on the industry. I’m not really. I mean, I started a business somewhat adjacent to the industry. And I’m here grinding out singles every day. Does it sometimes feel like I’ve been demoted into the job I started forty years ago? YES! Am I the only person in publishing willing to give you an honest assessment of the soul-sucking enterprise all of this happens to be? YES! Do I think all of this will come to a bad ending? ABSOLUTELY!

*

I see her gauzy portraits surfacing again and am reminded of the unique hotel requirements – 600 thread count sheets, lavender pillow spray, etc. - thinking no one should ever have to deal with this kind of nonsense because it’s the kind of shit that rattles around your brain for the rest of your life. And yet, there she is. Enabled by her publisher. A darling to critics. If only they knew.

*

Did I ever tell you about the writer who wanted 8 gallons of milk delivered to her hotel?

What?

Seriously. She picks up the phone, calls Jordan, says to her, “I need some milk delivered to my hotel room.”

Jordan comes into my office in a panic. “What should I do?” I was like, “Tell her to call room service.”

“She said she already called room service, and they told her they could not deliver 8 gallons of milk to her room.”

BEAT

What’d she need the milk for?

A bath.

A bath?

Yes. I gather milk baths are a thing.

Probably good for the skin.

BEAT.

She did have nice skin.

*

Listen: I work hard because that’s what my dad taught me to do and because that’s what everyone in the industry does, even with circumspect resources and weird fucking demands made on us. We’re all milkmen hunting for nickels. Our belief may be dimmed, our spirits somewhat broken, yet here we are.

*

Substack.

I know.

Everyone in the world has a Substack.

They’ve all left Twitter and joined Substack.

To write about the industry.

Yup.

And they’re all soliciting. They expect to be paid for their contributions to the discourse.

Don’t they have jobs?

They do. But, you know, jobs aren’t what they used to be. I mean, it’s deflating to work in an industry where nothing you do drives a result.

BEAT.

You know what Substack is?

What?

An elevated form of panhandling.

You’re on Substack.

I know.

You’re panhandling.

That’s only because the morons running Substack keep telling me I’m supposed to do that. Subscribe here. Become a paid subscriber there. Blah blah blah. I’m here because it’s cathartic. It’s a way for me to process all that I’m seeing and experiencing in the business. BEAT. But, you know, it’s not wrong to ask the question “Would someone pay?” But then the thing would have to be read.

Not necessarily. Most writers are paid and not read. That’s why they’re all so fucking miserable.

I never understood that.

What?

Authors being miserable

What do you mean?

I mean, they’re getting paid for their work. They’re pocketing their advances. Who cares about the rest?

It’s psychology. An advance inflates their worth in the world. It creates an expectation that their book will sell. And when their books don’t sell, well, the wheels come off.

They should be happier than they are. All of ‘em.

They wouldn’t be writers if they were.

BEAT

You know what writers could use?

What?

A hug.

Can’t do that anymore.

I know.

Hugging is verboten.

That, my friend, is why we all feel so forlorn.

*

I’m not sure Substack works as a platform for queries, but we’re about to find out. I am seeking input with or without attribution, on background, kept confidential, etc. – on issues that will help me (you, all of us) assess our present as we prepare for our future. So here goes, and feel free to forward/share, because God knows we’re all looking for change:

What happened to book publishing?

How would you describe the culture at the company you are working at?

What are publishers doing well?

What are they not doing well?

Where do they need help?

Are you despondent about the industry (and if so, why?)

Are you optimistic about the industry (and if so, why?)

Do you feel your compensation is fair?

Are publishers making enough money?

Are publishers making too much money?

Is the equation fair – what companies make vs. what they pay you?

What has changed about the industry?

Do you feel supported at work?

Are we paying authors enough for their work? Too much?

What was the last publication that exceeded your expectations?

Who is doing work you admire (this can be a person, an imprint, a company, a media outlet, a pet, an Only Fans account)?

How do you feel about AI?

How would you feel knowing this entire post was generated by AI?

Why is it that people never ever leave the industry, even after they are fired and/or given generous buyouts?

Do you want to come back to the office (and if so, why?)

What would make you want to come back to the office?

What changes would you make if you were CEO?

Do you feel seen and heard?

Do you take meds for depression? Is this because you work in publishing?

Is the work fun? If yes, what makes it so? If no, what would make it so?

Why are people in the industry afraid to talk about the industry on the record? When did it all become so fearful (and why?)

A question about time (do you have enough of it, given your workload), and expectations (are they realistic)?

Is the 5% - 95% thing real (5% of the titles commanding 95% of the resources)?

Do you feel starved for spend?

What was the last publishing event you attended where you went, “Wow.”

Who (what) has influence? I’m getting at driving awareness/sales here.

Do you think 2.3 billion dollars is too much to spend on a sphere that winks at you?

This is not meant to be homework. It’s just that our business seems somewhat marooned/orphaned/lost, and I’m not sure there are reporters out there who are invested in exploring this aspect of our business. Except Cader (the grim reaper of publishing). Mostly, they like to report on the latest Oprah pick, but not the fact that her picks are losing steam.

Everything is not the same as it once was.

Answers welcome here: paul@bogaardspr.com

I promise to sort through your responses and try to make sense of all this. I will report back on the good, the bad, and the ugly in my next post.

Until next time,

Kill Your Darlings