Sinykin 2023. Big Fiction: How conglomeration changed the publishing industry and American literature
Sinykin, Dan. 2023. Big Fiction: How Conglomeration Changed the Publishing Industry and American Literature. Literature Now. New York: Columbia University Press.
A very interesting history of American publishing from the second half of the twentieth century to more-or-less the present day (roughly the Pandemic, but a little less secure after the 2008 recession).
The book is divided into four main sections:
- Mass market: the rise of pulps like Dell and New American Library
- Trade: the rise of first-edition paperbacks
- Non-profits: an alternate publishing universe
- Independents: mostly about W.W. Norton.
Most of this is really a history of big names from the late Greatest/Silent Generation through Baby-Boomer people in publishing: Sinykin builds his book around the hiring and firing of André Schiffrin (1935-2013) and a variety of other names from the period.
For me the big take away was the importance of Norton: publisher (in America) of Fight Club, Trainspotting, How late it was, how late it was, and so on. I’d never thought of it as anything but the publisher of the Norton Anthology of English Literature and the Norton “Critical Editions” (I term I hate, because it isn’t accurate: a “critical edition” is not what Norton publish).
