Tom Rider's Reviews

This past spring semester I have audited and enjoyed a course in the history of American capitalism taught by Sean Adams, history department, UF. One of the books that Professor Adams assigned was To Serve God and Wal-Mart; The Making of Christian Free Enterprise by Bethany Moreton (Harvard University Press, paper, 2010). In my review, posted on www.goerings.com, I take issue with Moreton on a number of counts. She echoes the Walton Foundation’s claim that Wal-Mart’s present position in the retailing sector validates the model of free enterprise and the market economy. In fact most studies show that a new Wal-Mart kills existing retailing in its vicinity and is an impediment to future enterprise

I would like to use an allegory to suggest a comparison between the role of Wal-Mart and its “market position” to a phenomenon found in nature: allelopathy and its presence over time. Certain species produce a substance that decreases competition from other plants in its immediate vicinity. In most cases this involves seedlings of other species, in some cases the seedlings of the same species. The phenomenon is particularly striking in dry climates and flat terrains.

The black walnut (Juglans nigra), once common in our area, produces and releases a chemical called juglone which suppresses understory plants. Juglone is distributed under the tree’s canopy by leaf decomposition and fruit hulls. Many invasives — for example the ubiquitous tree-of-heaven (Ailanthus altissima) — are also allelopathic, which accounts for their rapid spread. (Some botanists are critical of the concept, believing that competition for water and other resources rather than chemicals are the principal explanation for the phenomenon of a stand-alone, individual specimen.)

Moreton describes the Walton family enterprise as growing out of stand-alone “five and ten” stores, comparable to our present phenomenon of the “dollar store.” But there is another pattern of retailing that fits better the Wal-Mart phenomenon: the anchor store. The success of suburban malls has usually required the presence of one or more anchor stores: Belk, Dillard’s, J.C. Penny, Macy’s, and Sears, to name those present in our community. Wal-Marts tended to be in their own building though initially part of a “center” that included an array of complementarY, but not competitive retailing. That has been less true in the last several decades; Wal-Marts are now mostly stand-alone and carry nearly all classes of merchandise and even services that would originally have been left to smaller neighboring stores. Looking under ‘Wal-Mart’s canopy,’ one will find a barren and anti-competitive soil.

Thus allelopathy: the controlling agent in Wal-Mart’s world is not a chemical but rather a lease or other legal document that limits surrounding retailing. Or the assertion of market power by this immense retailer, shading them out.

Why didn’t local stores move out to the new malls? Mother Nature, that is, suburban mall developers selected established national chains to move into their new malls because a signed leasing agreement with them could be used as collateral for the large loans they needed to finance their enterprise. A Goerings Book Store lease wouldn’t do.

I am the son of a merchant who owned a grocery and dry goods store in Garwin, Iowa (population 550) in the 1940s and early 50s. I worked for the subsequent owners, who kept the store open until the early 1970s. Chain competition – an A & P Store in the neighboring city of Marshalltown (population 23,000) – was one of the factors in its closing. The store was self-service. It did not sell meat because there was a meat market in town. It did not sell hardware because Garwin had two hardware stores. Drugs – drugstore, etc. There was no allelopathy here; these small-scale businessmen and women tolerated their fellow merchants.

(The store was in a grand retail space — for Garwin — built to house a consumer co-operative in the 1920s, when the town had a populist layer on top its Republican soil.)

The following essay is intended to open a window into the authors’ world and the challenges they face in getting published. It will describe the several paths available to the would-be author. (From here on out, I shall drop the would-be.) Desktop publishing software, print-on-demand, and electronic formats have opened new opportunities for authors.

The print media has in recent years been giving much attention to self-published books. Publishers Weekly, always a bellwether of the publishing industry, now provides a list of author-published titles six times a year. Of the books listed by PW this winter, roughly 60% were fiction (adult and kids’). Of the non-fiction, a good portion was biography/autobiography.

The term “self publishing’” includes a number of different options. The do-it-yourself author/publisher performs the publishing services himself. Local print shops can make the arrangements easier. I suggested the three printers nearest our stores, Renaissance Printing, Target Copy Center, and Xerographic Copy Center.

If wishing for more in the way of support services, authors often take on the role similar to a general contractor in the housing industry. Publishing tasks are “out-sourced.” Those tasks include help with the: book’s title, acquiring an ISBN and copyright, editing (possibly copy editing, better line editing), layout, cover design,, illustrations, printing, promoting, selling the book, shipping, dealing with e-book sales, tracking royalties, maintaining a website, engaging the social media, and producing a video trailer and interview. There are lots of companies that perform these services, but coordinating them is a formidable job. Fortunately the learning curve is steep!

More commonly authors use one of a number of companies that provide various bundles of these tasks. Amazon’s CreateSpace is the largest, publishing 57,600 books annually. Author Solutions is a poor second with 14,600. iUniverse, xlibris, and Trafford are three other companies that help authors self-publish their books, to name but a few. Vantage Press recently closed. Founded in 1949, it was the leader in what was called the “vanity press.” We don’t talk about vanity these days; we talk about self-publishing.

The internet provides opportunity for making contact with these companies. There are dozens of companies with packages to offer, and the competition is intense. Their advice is, of course, ‘canned.’ Their websites may also have a ‘book store’ feature allowing readers to order directly from them. Their packages range in price from $500 to $10,000. You probably pay for what you get.

This segment of the book industry is characterized by easy entry, easy exit. Little in the way of capital or even experience in the industry is required. They can just as easily disappear; paid for services left undone. On the other hand the self-publishing industry is now profitable enough to warrant mergers and acquisitions. Author Solutions and iUniverse are both owned by Penguin USA.

Self-publishing can be an interim strategy. The recent success of the “Shades of Grey” trilogy by E.L. James has given authors hope. She went from being self-published, to a best-seller status, and then to a deal with Random House. James’ good fortune is definitely an outlier, but self-published titles have lead to a traditional publisher’s interest.

There is still the world of traditional publishing. Authors can try one of the many, many wonderful small publishers. Their web sites are informative about their publishing programs and how submissions should be made. Their acquiring editor would like to see a table of contents, a couple of chapters, a brief analysis of the book’s potential readership, and why you think that their house is appropriate. Sadly submitting books “over the transom,” that is, submitting a manuscript without prior contact is rarely successful. The going is tough, but finding a suitable publisher means that all of those publishing tasks are absorbed by your publisher. If things work out, you;ll get an advance and eventually smallish royalty checks.

In deciding about what small press to approach amongst the many, an author can begin by consulting the Literary Market Place 2013; The Directory of the American Book Publishing Industry with Industry Yellow Pages. Or go to a good book store, find the shelf where books on the subject of your book are shelved, and look for publishers that have already published books in that area. This may seem counterintuitive. But an acquiring editor may be on the lookout for other books similar to the titles they have recently published and will have a good eye for possibilities. Publishers are “focused,” and that is ultimately to the author’s advantage.

Small publishers have often been accused of failing to promote their titles. That may be so. One question to ask is if they employ book representatives who visit independent book stores and how aggressively they go after book distributors.

University presses are generally small to medium-sized. I think the world of academic publishing, and there are many academics with books to be published in a university town such as Gainesville. University presses, unlike trade publishers, actively solicit manuscripts but mostly within the academic community and if the book fits well into their publishing program.

That leaves medium-sized and large trade publishers. I am enormously impressed with the titles that get published each season. (Check out my “Recent Books.”) But there has been a lot of consolidation in the industry leaving fewer options for authors. The big five or six occupy an enormous corner of the industry, and even more of best-sellers and literary awards.

Authors will need a literary agent if they decide to try for the big time. Agents are an important part of the publishing industry. They know their business. They act as brokers, guiding perspective authors to the most probable houses for their book. They are generally paid a 15% commission if they find you a publisher in return for an exclusive over a book proposal. Agents often specialize in particular genres. They may suggest changes to make the book more saleable to a publisher, and authors should listen to those suggestions. They give the author essential advice on contracts before you sign.

Literary agents now perform much of the work of sorting and selecting that acquiring editors once performed in-house; this is an instance of out-sourcing a publishing task which makes sense for everyone involved. But they serve two masters, their authors and publishers. They don’t want to have the reputation for proposing bad matches, so their referrals need to be thoughtful. Ultimately that will be a win-win situation for publishers, authors, and readers; I believe in gate-keepers in a publishing world that produces 350,000 new titles each year.

Be glad that you’re a reader!