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the
current
Monday
Report
below!
This week's report by King Wenclas
TAKEOVER!
Big Money Move$ into the
Small Press World
In a civilization run by wealth and dominated by monopolies,
should one small section of culture remain independent; free from
the influence of a growing plutocracy?
THE FACTS
The Council of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP) was
founded in 1967 as the Coordinating Council of Literary
Magazines, with a mission to advocate for independent publishing
endeavors. As recently as 2004 CLMP's Board of Directors
consisted chiefly of actual representatives from the small press
world, including the editor of an obscure poetry journal in
California; the publisher of Graywolf Press; a buyer from City
Lights Books; and a poet from Queens College in New York.
Already, though, the board showed signs of a change in direction
in the person of Constance B. Sayre, a former VP at Simon &
Schuster and current President of Market Partners
International. MPI is "consultant to the ten largest U.S. trade
book publishers and three of the largest U.S. magazine publishing
companies."
Was this someone to represent the small press?
Two years later the CLMP board is dominated by VIPs from the
most monied segments of America. A few of the current board
members:
JAMES L. BILDNER: Owner of New Horizons Partners, a
venture capital firm. Bildner, trustee of the Kresge Foundation,
is former chairman of a chain of food stores.
ELLIS B. LEVINE: Corporate lawyer for Cowan, DaBaets,
Abrahams and Sheppard, Levine is described as a "lawyer for
the book publishing industry." He's former VP and board
member of the publishing giant Random House.
SUZANNE DE BACA: President of Private Capital
Solutions, a financial and investment services firm "that
specializes in helping high net worth individuals plan for and
manage financial change."
JULIE SCHAPER: President of Consortium Book Sales, a
book distributor which was bought in 2001 by investment banker
Don Linn, then sold to Perseus Books Group in July 2006.
Perseus, which comprises seven imprints, is a portfolio company
of Perseus LLC, "a merchant bank and private equity fund
management company." "Perseus manages six investment funds
with capital commitments totaling $1.3 billion. . . ."
JENNIFER BLUESTEIN: VP at Mirram Global, a big
bucks political consulting firm in New York City which received
more than $900,000 to manage Fernando Ferrer's recent
mayoral campaign. Mirram Global's questionable behavior was
addressed by Michael Slackman in the March 10, 2005 New
York Times.
GERALD HOWARD: Executive Editor at Doubleday
Books, a division of Random House.
NICOLE DEWEY: Assistant Director of Publicity at
Doubelday Books.
The board also includes, in addition to Sayre, Sara Nelson,
Editor-in-Chief at Publishers Weekly, a magazine for insiders in
the conglomerate publishing industry, and Ira Silverberg, a
major figure at Donadio & Olson literary agents, whose job is to
serve said industry.
Compared to this array of heavyweight names, remaining boards
members David Lynn of Kenyon Review; Johnny Temple of New
York-based Akashic Books, and "freelance editor" Elizabeth
Bogner appear to be tokens. (Ms. Bogner is in fact married to
Jesse Sheidlower, principal North American editor of the Oxford
English Dictionary, hardly a home of small press outsiders.
Elizabeth's main qualification for board membership seems to be
that of throwing Manhattan parties attended by literary Insiders.
Maybe she's produced some zeens I don't know about.)
My conclusion about this list: The foxes are running the
henhouse!
WHY IT HAPPENED
One can speculate about the reasons for the CLMP board's
transformation. What's fact is that for the fiscal year ending
6/30/2004, CLMP's assets went from $122,869 to $12,930, a loss
of nearly 90% in one year. For his performance, Executive
Director Jeffrey Lependorf, a New York City partygoer friendly
with literary Insiders-- who is paid more than $80,000 a year to
manage the operation-- could have been fired. The board
could've replaced him, then made a few simple moves to solve the
financial problems, such as hiring an arts telemarketer to
conduct a several-month fundraising campaign.
Instead, it looks more like Lependorf fired the board! (He calls it
expanding it.) He threw the doors open to monopolists. Small
press folk, who'd controlled the organization-- who ARE the
organization-- became a small minority of directors. The message
was sent: Take us over! Show us how to do it.
WHAT IT MEANS
Decision-makers from the publishing monsters bring with them
their own standards and values. The entire lit-world from top to
bottom will be following ONE business model, that of the
monopolistic conglomerates. Is their corporate literature a
success? In their eyes, yes-- when the focus is that of the
corporate bottom line.
Others would say the path of American literature the past few
decades has been one of failure. Failure of product-- failure to
produce great novels, poems, and authors. Literature has become
further marginalized in the culture. The writers lauded by
critics, like David Foster Wallace, are unreadable. At best they
write for an enlightened few. The best-selling novels themselves,
when compared to those of 50 or 60 years ago (A Farewell to
Arms; Peyton Place; Tobacco Road) are devoid of literary value.
Further, success of today's bottom line is no predictor of
tomorrow. The bottom line is a snapshot of now, no more-- in a
universe of constant change. One could look at the absolute
dominance of the Big Three of the auto industry in 1960 and say
that here was a model to follow. Their market share was
unquestioned and unassailable. Their home base of Detroit was
optimistic and prosperous. What the snapshot of their success
didn't show was the domestic industry's stagnation and
complacency; an internal corporate rot which to this day hasn't
been solved.
A better example of the failings of bigness, technology, expertise,
and progress is right before us, every day on our televisions. The
U.S. has the world's best funded, best trained, best equipped,
most skilled, most technologically advanced armed forces on the
planet. They're conveying their great knowledge to the fledgling
Iraqi national army, in a similar way as the CLMP board
members are going to convey their wisdom to the small press. Yet
our impressive army, and the Iraqi army it sponsors, seem unable
to deal with grubby bands of upstart insurgents. (A similar
situation occurred recently in south Lebanon.)
THE BOTTOM LINE
The bottom line is that the takeover of CLMP's board is a giant
step away from small press independence; away from new ideas,
new art, and new authors. Following one solitary business model
will lead to following one aesthetic model as well. When one looks
at the conformity of the feeder MFA schools, an essential part of
today's literary Machine, one could say this has already
happened.
The bottom line is that the writer himself has lost leverage. In
dealings with those who would publish him he's been made more
insignificant to the process; has become that much smaller.
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King Wenclas is the ULA's publicity director and head of the newly
created Action Unit. His lit-blog is Attacking the Demi-Puppets.
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