One of the issues is reputational. Trad pub sees itself as a cultural linchpin - the gate-iest of a gatekeepers, a setter of major trends.
From one POV this is nonsense. Trad pub throws a lot of books at the wall and a few of them stick.
But from another it does so selectively. In fiction the big advances go to established or potential personalities - not so much to outstanding authors, but to authors who are known to sell well.
For new authors that means trad pub looks for individuals who will appeal to a target demographic. (For new contemporary fiction that usually - but not exclusively - means aspirational, college-educated, female.)
Which being the case, even limited PR is better than no PR. And the big pubs can do effective PR in a way that solo self-pubbed authors can't, by setting up reviews/interviews in the mainstream press.
An interview or a review typically costs nothing, but can be a huge driver of sales. The author needs to be reasonably interesting, at least a little photogenic, and have some kind of personal story the demographic can identify with and maybe admire. (Not usually the same story as the one in the book.)
So it matters who does this, because it's not just about the money. It's really about a monopoly on gatekeeping cultural status.
The money takes second place.
Which is why publishing is simultaneously almost comically amateurish but also throws big sums around. The amateurishness is a remnant of the days when there were tens of medium sized publishers run by amateurs and enthusiasts who would often publish books just because they liked them.
The industry is much more of a corporate monoculture now. But clearly it's still better to hang on to some remnants of choice and diversity - even if the choice is between a handful of monoliths, each of which still has a unique culture of sorts, instead of tens of smaller houses.
Thanks for the perspective. While I was in the industry, being on the tech side felt like it insulated me from a lot of the drama of the editorial world. I would share your sentiments about money being secondary for them, you would meet people that had been in "assistant editorial" style roles for decades! All waiting for the chance to be in charge and have the cultural cache that came along with gatekeeping/creating trends.
At that level, definitely not in it for the money. At the C level though I got the sense that there was supreme respect for the cultural role of publishers - but it was a narrow second to business concerns, and they would make that tradeoff if necessary.
In the Anglosphere, my very indirect connection is that there was/is a very New York/London-centric web of connections/lunches. And I have to admit that even my modest connection to publishing a book in the tech world led from a dinner at a North American tech event followed by a coffee meeting in London with an acquisitions editor.
At that level, definitely not in it for the money. At the C level though I got the sense that there was supreme respect for the cultural role of publishers - but it was a narrow second to business concerns, and they would make that tradeoff if necessary.
The "cultural role" is drummed up in order to get people to work on below-subsistence salaries.
It's probably more about ego than money for the high-level people. Since people are cheap (because "passion") they can have large teams under them without their organizations having to pay the typical costs of large teams.
The truth about it, though, is that the culture is too balkanized for any of this stuff to make sense. Very few people go out of their way to read or find the best books; for good or for bad, they've all self-segregated into warring
genres and subgenres--and the so-called "literary" crowd who insist their genre is not a genre are often the worst in this regard. The balkanization is probably why no one knows how to market books anymore; people really understand a small slice of the total readership and, in any case, the lines are always changing.
I don't think I agree with the framing that the situation is some kind of scheme by executives to underpay people. All jobs have compensation, status, quality of life, "passion" components, etc. If someone wants to take a job that is higher status and that they're passionate about in exchange for lower direct compensation, who's to say that's not that person's preference?
Now, is it unfair that the compensation component is so low that people who don't have other means of income effectively can't take the job? Personally, I don't think so. I would love to research butterflies 24/7 and if I was independently wealthy perhaps would, but I completely understand that demand for butterfly research doesn't generate enough funding to make it possible to do that and lead the life I live now.
FWIW, from my limited experience leadership were all perfectly lovely people, extremely passionate about publishing as well, who in some cases had worked all of these "drummed up" jobs themselves on their way up the ladder.
>The "cultural role" is drummed up in order to get people to work on below-subsistence salaries.
The stereotype in NYC of publishing is of it attracting young, well-educated daughters of families who can subsidize New York living beyond the low salaries.
From one POV this is nonsense. Trad pub throws a lot of books at the wall and a few of them stick.
But from another it does so selectively. In fiction the big advances go to established or potential personalities - not so much to outstanding authors, but to authors who are known to sell well.
For new authors that means trad pub looks for individuals who will appeal to a target demographic. (For new contemporary fiction that usually - but not exclusively - means aspirational, college-educated, female.)
Which being the case, even limited PR is better than no PR. And the big pubs can do effective PR in a way that solo self-pubbed authors can't, by setting up reviews/interviews in the mainstream press.
An interview or a review typically costs nothing, but can be a huge driver of sales. The author needs to be reasonably interesting, at least a little photogenic, and have some kind of personal story the demographic can identify with and maybe admire. (Not usually the same story as the one in the book.)
So it matters who does this, because it's not just about the money. It's really about a monopoly on gatekeeping cultural status.
The money takes second place.
Which is why publishing is simultaneously almost comically amateurish but also throws big sums around. The amateurishness is a remnant of the days when there were tens of medium sized publishers run by amateurs and enthusiasts who would often publish books just because they liked them.
The industry is much more of a corporate monoculture now. But clearly it's still better to hang on to some remnants of choice and diversity - even if the choice is between a handful of monoliths, each of which still has a unique culture of sorts, instead of tens of smaller houses.