A thought-leader type once told me that he dreamed of a publishing house that didn’t publish. (I think he was imagining that experts in publishing would hang out a shingle and advise authors on how to make their own books, or something like that.) Another guy, at a think tank, told me that the emphasis in publishing is shifting from books to business models, so that what gets published is less important than innovating new ideas for the “dissemination of content.” There’s a whole infrastructure for this sort of thing, heavily populated by what I called, in an essay last year, the Lanyard People.
But publishing is making things, and making things has a valence that’s particularly favorable at the moment. “How do we get more Americans making stuff again?” asks Thomas Friedman in the Times, describing himself as a “Waymo Democrat.” Driverless cars from tech disruptors like Waymo are indeed stuff, but so are books. Celebrating publishing as the making of stuff feels like a way to help champion the usefulness and honesty of work in an industry that’s often maligned or misunderstood, and where disinvestment is a constant threat.
The satisfaction of making something was a significant part of the draw when I left a PhD program in history to start work in publishing. For me, that meant not just the pleasing sensation of holding a physical product (something they sell in stores!), but the rhythms and metabolism that come with the lifecycle of stuff. Unlike a position as a teacher, archivist, or librarian, working in publishing meant the application of humanities training to the making of things. I’ve never understood why book people don’t do more with what feels like a resonant talking point.
And I think the players involved with books and publishing can mobilize pride in making things without falling into the trap of endorsing bellicose, Trumpian sentiments about manufacturing, trade wars, and the like. Putting a liberal-arts spin on making stuff feels like a potent intervention—a way to tap into shifting priorities about work while centering academic degrees that so many critics deride as useless.
Some will point out that when it comes to making things, driverless cars are more important than books because the automobile industry is bigger than publishing. That’s certainly true, but also a little self-fulfilling. When libraries are poorly funded or encouraged to spend their budgets in ways other than buying books, and when A.I. entrepreneurs and their allies conspire to deprive people involved with books of compensation for their work, then shrinking book publishing feels like a choice rather than an inevitability. It’s a state of affairs that can change. And the way people talk about it matters.