Publisher Proves Genius by Stating the Obvious

At the most recent Publishers Advertising and Marketing Association (PAMA) luncheon in swanky New York City, stressed-out publicists and marketing flacks were made aghast by guest speaker Jonathan Karp's revolutionary idea to save the sinking ship: Publish less crap!

That's right, people, someone within the industry that's been tripping all over itself to become #1 in the out-of-ideas category--Hollywood will never surrender!--is actually speaking up for a little thing called common sense and advocating for quality over quantity. Well, it's about damn time.

According to GalleyCat, Karp, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of TWELVE--a relatively young house that cranks out no more than one book per month--had this to impart to his weary yet stoic colleagues:

"We're not unlike the banks that sprung up... offering credit cards and loans to everyone who walked in the door. There are too many books, and too many of them are derivative of each other... Express your enthusiasm and your criticism of specific books loudly, and be truthful—in my ideal world, no book would be launched until the people responsible for its launch had read it, discussed it, and decided it was ready to go out into the world."

My my my my my--that's exactly the kind of talk that would have landed you on a fast motorboat into publishing exile not one year ago. No doubt, the very notion that publicists and marketing folk should discuss let alone read a book their pushing to the masses must have hit the ears of those in attendance as something bordering on the absurd--mad even.

To those who meet Karp's words with shudders of disgust and fear, I urge you to remember this: Change is hard but death is final.

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