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Rating: 
Summary: Bottom Line: Buy it
Review: ...At least from a writer's perspective, all of Schiffrin's assertions about the publishing industry are stunningly true. In fact, my agent quit the business some years ago after attending a lecture by a revoltingly wealthy and revoltingly arrogant agent who assured her and the rest of the audience that yes, money is indeed the bottom line. As Mr. Schiffrin points out, publishers are simply not interested in authors anymore, they are interested only in the book being submitted. That is to say, there is no attempt-as in the days of Max Perkins, the legendary Scribner's editor of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Thomas Wolfe-to invest in an author whose first book may not be a great seller, nor even her second but who will nonetheless write books the house can be proud of and may some day turn produce that most marvelous of beasts, the literary bestseller (a la Gabriel Garcia Marquez, John Updike, Toni Morrison). In a smooth, flowing voice that, while it may lack bells and whistles, is exceptionally lucid, Schiffrin tells the story of how publishing houses went from being, for the most part, "family owned and small, content with the modest profits that came from a business that still saw itself as linked to intellectual and cultural life" to an industry in which some of the executives, such as Alberto Vitale at Random House, freely admit they are too busy to read a book! I was riveted almost from the opening page. Some of the reviewers have accused Schiffrin of being elitist-maybe because he lives on the Upper West Side or because he believes editors should have some say-beyond profitability--in what is being published. They find him distressingly left wing. The fact is, Schiffrin is arguing for all editors, EVERYwhere to get behind authors of their choice. Many small houses will present many diverse voices rather than 5 huge conglomerates chasing the same dollar with their celebrity memoirs and Tom Clancy thrillers. He argues for the freedom for editors and houses to express their tastes and to let the public decide whether that taste suits them or not. But if a book never sees the light of day because corporate executives, who often know nothing about books (Vitale, Schiffrin points out "did eventually agree to read the novels of Judith Krantz" published by his own company), decide it won't sell enough copies, then you have market censorship. When that happens on a large enough scale, it's not the end of democracy, but democracy is certainly weakened by a shrinking pool of ideas and opinions from which to draw. Schiffrin quotes the German publisher, Klaus Wagenbach: "If books with small print runs disappear, the future will die. Kafka's first book was published with a printing of 800 copies. Brecht's first work merited 600. What would have happened if someone had decided that was not worth it?" Somehow, advocating books with tiny print runs like this doesn't strike me as elitist. If you are even slightly connected to the book business, if you are at all interested in books, if you give any thought at all to the future of the free exchange of ideas in this country and abroad, this is a must-read. I can't recommend it highly enough.
Rating:
Summary: Well written and insightfull
Review: I enjoyed the book very much. The story telling was enjoyable. As to the "whine", I work in a completly different industry that suffers from the money only direction of the country. It is sad that no one is allowed to be in any vocation in this country for its own sake. Even if you make money, you have to make the most money, good is not good enough, only best will do.
Rating:
Summary: Well written and insightfull
Review: I enjoyed the book very much. The story telling was enjoyable. As to the "whine", I work in a completly different industry that suffers from the money only direction of the country. It is sad that no one is allowed to be in any vocation in this country for its own sake. Even if you make money, you have to make the most money, good is not good enough, only best will do.
Rating:
Summary: A superb book!
Review: I learned a lot from this book. Everyone concerned about consolidation in the publishing industry should read this book. Andre provides a lot of information found nowhere else.
A whine? Give me a break! His critique of bottom-line censorship and book publishing applies to all forms of media: radio, TV, and print media alike. These are vitally important issues!
Rating: 
Summary: The Mindlessness of the market
Review: If you seem to have fond memories of the well-stocked bookstores of twenty or twenty-five years ago, it may not be all false nostalgia or a curmudgeonly disgust with modern "culture." Schiffrin, the former head of Pantheon Books, lays out in detail the sad decline of American publishing. The chief culprits are the mega-mergered conglomerates that have established a virtual stranglehold on the book trade in this country and elsewhere. Schiffrin's experience at Pantheon is used as an example of the disastrous effects of the takeover of small independent publishers by large, bottom-line oriented corporations. One remembers the incredibly interesting books Pantheon itself used to publish, which, if similar offerings were to even see the light of day now, they would be taken on by a university press, if at all. Schiffrin's thesis that the short-term bottom-line oriented outlook of the major publishing conglomerates is the main culprit, and it is hard to dispute this. Although a lot of titles continue to be published in this country, there has been a marginalization of serious "challenging" books from the mainstream publishing houses, and there has been a rightward shift in the politics of those books that deal with social and political issues, to coincide with the politics of their publishers. Schiffrin's accounts of the mendacity of the often near-illiterate businesspeople in charge is funny and sad. Book publishing should not be totally dictated by short-term profits. The intellectual decline of this counrty will only accelerate if this trend is perpetuated. My only gripe with this book is that Schiffrin himself is in need of better editors, as there are some mistakes here that his publisher should have caught.
Rating:
Summary: The Mindlessness of the market
Review: If you seem to have fond memories of the well-stocked bookstores of twenty or twenty-five years ago, it may not be all false nostalgia or a curmudgeonly disgust with modern "culture." Schiffrin, the former head of Pantheon Books, lays out in detail the sad decline of American publishing. The chief culprits are the mega-mergered conglomerates that have established a virtual stranglehold on the book trade in this country and elsewhere. Schiffrin's experience at Pantheon is used as an example of the disastrous effects of the takeover of small independent publishers by large, bottom-line oriented corporations. One remembers the incredibly interesting books Pantheon itself used to publish, which, if similar offerings were to even see the light of day now, they would be taken on by a university press, if at all. Schiffrin's thesis that the short-term bottom-line oriented outlook of the major publishing conglomerates is the main culprit, and it is hard to dispute this. Although a lot of titles continue to be published in this country, there has been a marginalization of serious "challenging" books from the mainstream publishing houses, and there has been a rightward shift in the politics of those books that deal with social and political issues, to coincide with the politics of their publishers. Schiffrin's accounts of the mendacity of the often near-illiterate businesspeople in charge is funny and sad. Book publishing should not be totally dictated by short-term profits. The intellectual decline of this counrty will only accelerate if this trend is perpetuated. My only gripe with this book is that Schiffrin himself is in need of better editors, as there are some mistakes here that his publisher should have caught.
Rating: 
Summary: Look to the underground.
Review: Many of the other reviewers have done a fine job pointing out the merits and flaws of this book, so I will only add a quote that I find significant from Hardy Green, Business Week's Books Editor: "Much of Schiffrin's indictment is accurate. Questions of quality are, of course, highly subjective, but to this reviewer, it seems that some publishers have indeed lowered standards without much improving the business picture." With such a pro-business authority as Business Week seconding Schiffrin's concerns, Schriffin's claims appear stronger - and, sadly, those of the publishing industry's to quality and good sense appear that much weaker.
Rating:
Summary: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
Review: One of the most important functions of publishers for the last 400 years has been to discover and develop new authors who have something important to say about their culture. The development of a truly democratic society depends upon the free exchange of new ideas, many of which may take a very long time to be accepted as valuable. Therefore the willingness of adventurous editors and publishers to take a chance on publishing and promoting new voices is one of the most important contributions to the development of society. At no time in the past has this been as important as it is today when the rate of social and technical change has speeded up so much that many of the old truths about how we need to conduct our lives have changed and new values need to be articulated at an ever-increasing rate. Schiffrin combines history and memoires, it is true, but so far I have found no other source of the information he provides, which tells the story of the dismantling of the capacity of Random House and the publishers it controls to discover and promote controversial new voices. Schiffrin also reveals how the story he has to tell was systematically kept out of the media with a kind of silent consorship that has truly horrifying implications. What emerges from his book is a first hand story of some of the most frightening vanadalism that has ever been inflicted on a social institution. What's most ironic about his story is that the quest for profits actually decreased the rate of the economic growth and profitability of the publishers involved. Schiffrin takes a dim view of the possibilities for recovering from the blow to the solar plexus that the current me-too capitalism of an ever less socially conscious electorate has dealt the publishing industry. I disagree with him about the capacity of the Internet to help publishing recover from this blow, and I agree to some extent with one reviewer's comment about Amazon as a symptom of the new kind of accessibility of books. That comment is beside Schiffrin's point, however, which is that many of the best authors need the championing of editors and publishers willing to see to it that their books get a hearing, and as such writers may not be very good at sales and marketing themselves, they may end up completely silenced. Hopefully, the Internet will be able to do more about this problem than Schiffrin thinks it can. That hasn't happened yet, though.
Rating:
Summary: Strong views on publishing
Review: Schiffrin's book is provocative and well written. There is a little too much "And then I published...." along with a lot of name dropping. But there are also eye-opening insights into changes that the last 30 years have brought to publishing, as well as some good behind-the-scenes stories. Schiffrin clearly has an axe to grind, but he also has a point of view worth hearing. Reviewers who suggest this is a "whine" or a leftist diatribe would seem to have axes of their own that they are working on.
Rating: 
Summary: An Arrogant Whine
Review: Through this "memoir/history," Andre Schiffrin has not allowed a thirty year career at Pantheon to pass without comment. Largely a critique of the dynamic aspects of the publishing industry, Schiffrin bemoans the emerging, profit driven behemoths geared toward publishing commercially viable works while ignoring "books with new, controversial ideas or challenging literary voices." Not without hubris, the author portrays his nurturing of the likes of Studs Terkel, Noam Chomsky. R.D. Laing, and a host of literary luminaries. He seems to delight in the contrast of Michael Korda's best selling authors, Harold Robbins, Irving Wallace, and Jaqueline Susann. These authors are discussed in Korda's memoir, "Another Life," selected as one of the best hundred books of 1999 by Publisher's Weekly (see my review of this work). Schiffrin's hostility over leaving Pantheon, along with a coterie of editorial honchos, is understandable. However, he was not flexible enough to get with the program of the new owners. Schiffrin's logic is flawed. It does not follow that a profit making mandate precludes the release of worthwhile works. While Schiffrin recognizes the Internet as an avenue for disseminating information, he balks at the vastness of the material on line. "How can we know if what is offered is reliable?" With characteristic arrogance he avers that, "publishers, above all, are people who make a selection, who choose and edit material that will be distributed according to certain criteria, and then market and publish it. By putting their name to writers' work, they provide a guarantee and guide to the reader." Tell this reviewer, gentle reader, when was the last time you bought a book because it was published by Random House, Simon & Schuster, or the dubious Free Press? What Schiffrin has ignored, and what is bringing about iconoclastic changes in publishing, is the new technology, Print on Demand (POD). This technology will bypass the Schiffrin's, and enfranchise tens of thousands of authors who would heretofore remain unpublished (see iUniverse.com) due to the likes of self appointed mavens, who through whatever whims, wield the power to decide who gets published and who doesn't. Even major publishers are now utilizing POD. This means no significant investment by the publisher for questionable initial print runs. The more the public wants, the more they can get from Print on Demand. If they don't want it, it doesn't get printed. Therefore, the 40% returns from booksellers are diminished or virtually eliminated. There is no need to earn out an advance when one may not exist. While this reviewer does not concur with Schiffrin, his book is nonetheless a worthwhile read.
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