Certainly a dangerous art

I’d like to address something that is generally taken for granted, but turns out not to be so obvious: the art of publishing books. And first of all I would like to consider the notion of publishing itself, for it seems to be shrouded by a number of misunderstandings. If someone is asked what a publishing house does, the general and most reasonable answer is the following: it is a lesser branch of industry that tries to make money publishing books. And what should a good publishing house be? We suppose a good publishing house to be one—if you’ll allow the tautology—that publishes, so far as possible, only good books. Thus, to use a summary definition, those books of which the publisher tends to feel proud rather than ashamed. From this point of view, a good publishing house is unlikely to be of any particular interest in economic terms. Publishing good books has never made anyone terribly rich. Or, at least, not in comparison with what someone might make supplying the market with mineral water or microchips or buttons. It would appear that a publishing business can produce substantial profits only on condition that good books are submerged beneath many other things of very different quality. And when you are submerged, it is much easier to drown—and so disappear altogether.

It is also worth remembering that publishing has often shown itself to be a sure and rapid way of squandering substantial amounts of money. One might even add that, along with roulette and cocottes, founding a publishing house has always been one of the most effective ways for a young man of noble birth to fritter away his fortune. If this is so, we might wonder why the role of the publisher has attracted so many people over the centuries—and continues to be regarded as fascinating, and in some ways mysterious, even today. For example, it is not hard to see that no job title is more coveted by certain tycoons, who often obtain it literally at a high price. If such people were able to declare that they publish frozen vegetables, rather than produce them, they would presumably be very happy about it. We can therefore conclude that, apart from being one branch of business, publishing has always involved prestige, if only because it is a kind of business that is also an art. An art in every sense, and certainly a dangerous art since, in order to practice it, money is an essential element. From this point of view it can be argued that very little has changed since Gutenberg’s time.

And yet, if we look back over five centuries of publishing and try to think of publishing as an art, we immediately see paradoxes of every kind. The first might be this: on the basis of what criteria can the greatness of a publisher be judged? On this point, as a Spanish friend of mine often used to say, there is no bibliography.

Roberto Calasso
The Art of the Publisher