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Consuming Books
The buying, selling and writing of books is a massive industry, one in which
marketing looms large. Yet there are very few books on the marketing of
books – ‘how-to’ texts excepted – and fewer still on the consumption of
them. Consuming Books not only rectifies this omission, but it also argues that
the book business epitomises today’s Entertainment Economy (fast moving,
hit driven, intense competition, rapid technological change, etc.). Written
by a remarkable roster of renowned marketing authorities, many with experience of the book trade and all gifted writers in their own right, Consuming
Books knows whereof it speaks. Unlike the majority of ‘how-to’ books, it
steps back from the practicalities of book marketing and takes a look at the
industry from a broader consumer research perspective.
Consuming Books consists of sixteen chapters, divided into four ‘sections’ of
four chapters each. The first section offers an historical overview; the second
deals with the often acrimonious marketing/literature interface; section
three engages with consumers of books, everything from book groups to
bookcrossing; and the final section considers the tensions that literary types
feel in a sector where marketing increasingly calls the shots (and, conversely,
that marketers feel in an industry where marketing is deeply disdained).
Consuming Books contains something for everyone. It not only complements
the ‘how-to’ genre but provides the depth that previous studies of book
consumption conspicuously lack.
Stephen Brown is Professor of Marketing Research at the University of
Ulster. Best known for Postmodern Marketing, he has published numerous
books including Free Gift Inside!! and Wizard. His papers have appeared in
the Harvard Business Review, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Consumer Research
and many more.
Routledge Interpretive Marketing Research
Edited by Stephen Brown and Barbara B. Stern
University of Ulster, Northern Ireland and Rutgers, the State University of
New Jersey, USA
Recent years have witnessed an ‘interpretative turn’ in marketing and
consumer research. Methodologists from the humanities are taking their place
alongside those drawn from the traditional social sciences.
Qualitative and literary modes of marketing discourse are growing in popularity. Art and aesthetics are increasingly firing the marketing imagination.
This series brings together the most innovative work in the burgeoning
interpretative marketing research tradition. It ranges across the methodological spectrum from grounded theory to personal introspection, covers all
aspects of the postmodern marketing ‘mix’, from advertising to product
development, and embraces marketing’s principal sub-disciplines.
1. The Why of Consumption
Edited by S. Ratneshwar, Glen Mick
and Cynthia Huffman
2. Imagining Marketing
Art, aesthetics and the avant-garde
Edited by Stephen Brown and
Anthony Patterson
4. Visual Consumption
Jonathan Schroeder
5. Consuming Books
The marketing and consumption
of literature
Edited by Stephen Brown
3. Marketing and Social
Construction
Exploring the rhetorics of
managed consumption
Chris Hackley
Also available in Routledge Interpretive Marketing Research series:
Representing Consumers
Voices, views and visions
Edited by Barbara B. Stern
Romancing the Market
Edited by Stephen Brown,
Anne Marie Doherty and
Bill Clarke
Consumer Value
A framework for analysis
and research
Edited by Morris B. Holbrook
Marketing and Feminism
Current issues and research
Edited by Miriam Catterall,
Pauline Maclaran and Lorna Stevens
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Consuming Books
The marketing and
consumption of literature
Edited by
Stephen Brown
First published 2006 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
© 2006 Edited by Stephen Brown
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2006.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or
other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying
and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Consuming books: the marketing and consumption of
literature/edited by Stephen Brown.
p. cm.
1. Books – Marketing. 2. Booksellers and bookselling. 3. Book
industries and trade. 4. Literature publishing. 5. Books and
reading. 6. Authorship. I. Brown, Stephen, 1955–
Z278.C66 2006
002′.068′8–dc22
2005023538
ISBN10: 0–415–36767–0 (Print Edition)
ISBN13: 978–0–415–36767–7
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Contents
List of illustrations
Notes on contributors
Preface: beanz meanz bookz
1 Rattles from the swill bucket
vii
viii
xiii
1
STEPHEN BROWN
2 Selling God’s book
18
RUSSELL BELK
3 The extraordinary tale of an eight point eight million
dollar book
32
MICHAEL THOMAS
4 The pleasures of the used text: revealing traces of
consumption
46
JANET L. BORGERSON AND JONATHAN E. SCHROEDER
5 Culture club: marketing and consuming The Da Vinci
Code
60
KENT DRUMMOND
6 Martin Amis on marketing
73
DARAGH O’REILLY
7 Paperback mother . . .
83
LISA O’MALLEY, MAURICE PATTERSON AND CAOILFHIONN NÍ BHEACHÁIN
8 On the commercial exaltation of artistic mediocrity:
books, bread, postmodern statistics, surprising success
stories, and the doomed magnificence of way too many
big words
MORRIS B. HOLBROOK
96
vi Contents
9 Book-reading groups: a ‘male outsider’ perspective
114
AVI SHANKAR
10 You can’t tell a book by its cover: bookworms,
bookcases and bookcrossing
126
PAULINE MACLARAN AND ROSALIND MASTERSON
11 Consuming literature
138
HOPE JENSEN SCHAU
12 Riddikulus! Consumer reflections on the Harry Potter
phenomenon
146
AL TEREGO AND SUE DENIM
13 Telling tales of Virago Press
160
LORNA STEVENS
14 No experience necessary (or, how I learned to stop
worrying and love marketing)
167
CHARLES CHANDLER
15 I write marketing textbooks but I’m really a swill guy
175
CHRIS HACKLEY
16 A step-by-step guide to Bridget Jones’s Diary, Fight Club
and the ‘how to’ industry
183
ANTHONY PATTERSON AND STEPHEN BROWN
Index
208
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Illustrations
Figures
3.1
4.1
4.2
4.3
4.4
4.5
J.J. Audubon, self-portrait
The ABC of Cocktails, frontispiece, 1953
Festive Salads and Molds, 1966
The ABC of Chafing Dish Cookery, 1956
The Geisha Cookbook: Japanese Cookery for Americans, 1973
Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman, 1968
33
49
49
50
52
55
Tables
7.1 Top ten pregnancy and childcare titles
7.2 A blow-by-blow account
16.1 Lost the plot?
84
88
190
Contributors
Russell Belk is N. Eldon Tanner Professor of Business at the University of
Utah. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. He is past
president of the Association for Consumer Research and the International
Association of Marketing and Development, and is a fellow in the
Association for Consumer Research. He has received the Paul D. Converse
Award, two Fulbright Fellowships, and honorary professorships on four
continents. He is the co-founder of the Association for Consumer Research
Film Festival and has over 350 publications to his name. His research
involves the meanings of possessions, collecting, gift-giving and materialism. His work is often cultural, visual, qualitative and interpretive.
Janet L. Borgerson is a Lecturer in the University of Exeter School of
Business and Economics. She received her Ph.D. in philosophy from the
University of Wisconsin, Madison, and completed postdoctoral work in
existential phenomenology at Brown University. Apart from being a
serious book collector, she has held faculty positions in philosophy and
management at the University of Rhode Island, Stockholm University
and the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm. Her research has
appeared in European Journal of Marketing, Advances in Consumer Research,
Consumption Markets and Culture, Culture and Organization, Journal of
Knowledge Management, Organization Studies, Gender Work and Organization,
Feminist Theory, Radical Philosophy Review and Journal of Philosophical
Research.
Stephen Brown is the treat you can read between deals without ruining
your marketing strategy.
Charles Chandler was an acquisitions editor at American Marketing
Association. He is now a donor relations writer at Northwestern University. Charles received a Master’s degree from the University of Chicago
in 1999. His thesis, ‘The Influence of Rudolf Steiner on Humboldt’s
Gift’, was published in the Saul Bellow Journal in 2002. He has taught a
course entitled ‘Art and Society’ for the Philosophy Institute. Charles was
born and raised in Texas, where he attended Amarillo College and the
Contributors ix
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University of North Texas. In his spare time, he makes mashups and
researches his family’s history.
Sue Denim is the pseudonym of Al Terego, an Australian publishing magnate. Having secured his reputation with Outback Front, a challenging cult
novel about Australia’s colonial experiences, he ‘sold out’ with the charttopping international bestseller, Sheep Shearing for Dummies. Al used his
royalties to establish a bohemian publishing house, ALT, which publishes
off-beat novels under a variety of imprints including Bondi Books (Oz surf
classics), Digger Dagger (Aussie crime fiction) and Ewe2 (stories of rock
stars and sheep molestation). He reads Harry Potter to relax.
Kent Drummond is an Associate Professor in the Department of Management and Marketing at the University of Wyoming. His research focuses
on arts marketing, symbolic capital and cultural consumption. He has
published widely on the cultural industries – including theatre, dance,
rock music and art – and their connections to consumer culture. He
received his BA from Stanford University, MBA from Northwestern
University and Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin.
Chris Hackley is Professor of Marketing at Royal Holloway, University of
London. His books include Doing Research Projects in Marketing, Management
and Consumer Research with Routledge, and Advertising and Promotion:
Communicating Brands with Sage. He is writing an introductory text on
marketing for Sage, to be published in 2007.
Morris B. Holbrook is the W.T. Dillard Professor of Marketing in the
Graduate School of Business at Columbia University. Since 1975, he has
taught courses at the Columbia Business School in such areas as Marketing
Strategy, Consumer Behaviour and Commercial Communication in the
Culture of Consumption. His research has covered a wide variety of topics
in marketing and consumer behaviour with a special focus on issues related
to communication in general and to aesthetics, semiotics, hermeneutics,
art, entertainment, music, motion pictures, nostalgia and stereography
in particular. Recent books include The Semiotics of Consumption (with
Elizabeth C. Hirschman, Mouton de Gruyter, 1993); Consumer Research
(Sage, 1995); and Consumer Value (edited, Routledge, 1999). Holbrook
pursues such hobbies as playing the piano, attending jazz and classical
concerts, going to movies and the theatre, collecting musical recordings,
taking stereographic photos, and being kind to cats.
Pauline Maclaran is Professor of Marketing at the Leicester Business School,
De Montfort University. Her research has two main strands: gender issues
in marketing and consumer behaviour; and the experiential dimensions
of contemporary consumption, particularly in relation to utopia and the
festival marketplace. This work has been published in journals such as
x Contributors
the Journal of Advertising, Journal of Marketing Management, Consumption,
Markets and Culture, Marketing Theory, Psychology and Marketing, and is
forthcoming in the Journal of Consumer Research. She is an editor-in-chief
of Marketing Theory, a journal dedicated to the development and dissemination of alternative and critical perspectives on marketing theory.
Rosalind Masterson is a Senior Lecturer in Marketing at the Leicester
Business School, De Montfort University. Her main teaching and research
interests are in the field of Marketing Communications, particularly commercial sponsorship and image creation. She is the author of a number of
journal and conference papers and of Marketing: An Introduction published
by McGraw Hill.
Caoilfhionn Ní Bheacháin is a Lecturer in Communications at the Kemmy
Business School, University of Limerick. She has just completed her Ph.D.
in English from the National University of Ireland, Galway. This work
focuses upon the interrelationship between narrative and agency in Irish
cultural history.
Lisa O’Malley is a Lecturer in Marketing at the Kemmy Business School,
University of Limerick and mother to Molly and Noah. In an effort to
reduce the divide between work and home, her current research centres
upon motherhood, identity, experience and consumption (although she
finds that the demands of actual motherhood create immense challenges
in finding the time to deal with motherhood on a more abstract level).
This is part of a wider interest in the area of Family and Consumption.
Lisa is better known for her work on Relationship Marketing which has
appeared in the Journal of Business Research, Journal of Strategic Marketing,
the European Journal of Marketing and the Journal of Marketing Management.
She has also co-authored a book in the area.
Daragh O’Reilly is a Lecturer in Marketing at Leeds University Business
School. His research interest is in the relationship between business and
culture. His principal focus at present is a doctoral project on brand–fan
relationships in popular music. He is current chair of the Arts and Heritage
Marketing SIG of the UK Academy of Marketing. Prior to entering academia, he held a variety of roles in sales, marketing and management in
Ireland, the UK and West Africa. He holds a BA in Modern Languages
from the University of Dublin, and an MBA from Bradford University
School of Management.
Anthony Patterson is a Lecturer in Marketing at Liverpool University. Coeditor of Imagining Marketing (Routledge, 2000), Tony’s papers have been
published in the Journal of Marketing Management, Qualitative Marketing
Research, Marketing Intelligence and Planning, and many more. His current
research project takes a post-colonial approach to Irish pub culture.
Contributors xi
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Maurice Patterson is a Lecturer in Marketing at the Kemmy Business
School, University of Limerick. Current research interests centre on the
relationship between consumption and embodiment although he has been
known to dash off a paper or two on marketing management, direct
marketing and branding. He has co-written a textbook in the field of
direct and relationship marketing, and his publications have appeared in
Consumption, Markets and Culture, the Journal of Marketing Management,
Marketing Theory, the Marketing Review, and a variety of other scholarly
outlets. He is on the editorial board of the Journal of Consumer Behaviour.
Hope Jensen Schau is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at the University
of Arizona. Her research focuses primarily on the impact of technology
on marketplace relationships and illuminating lived consumer experience.
Jonathan E. Schroeder is Professor of Marketing at the University of Exeter
School of Business and Economics. When he is not collecting books, his
research focuses on the production and consumption of images, and has
been published widely in marketing, psychology, design and law journals. His recent publications include Visual Consumption, and an edited
collection, Brand Culture. He received his Ph.D. from the University of
California, Berkeley, and pursued postdoctoral work in visual studies at
the Rhode Island School of Design and Christies Auction House, New
York. He is a Visiting Professor in Marketing Semiotics at Bocconi
University in Milan, Italy.
Avi Shankar is a Lecturer in Marketing and Consumer Research at Exeter
University. When not teaching, researching or writing articles that no
one reads, he likes to grow vegetables, watch television or go fishing.
Lorna Stevens is a Lecturer in Marketing at the University of Ulster. She
has a Ph.D. in consumer behaviour and her research interests lie in the
areas of feminist perspectives and gender issues in consumer behaviour,
marketing, consumption and the media, with particular emphasis on
women’s magazines and advertising. Prior to becoming an academic she
spent ten years working in the book publishing industry in Ireland and
the UK. She lives in Coleraine with her three children and five cats.
Al Terego is the alter ego of Sue Denim, an anarcho-situationist, postcolonial, neo-Marxist, radical feminist playwright-cum-novelist. She shot
to fame with Boxers or Briefs?, consolidated her position with The Lingerie
Menagerie and has latterly taken a Beckettian turn. Her latest play, Waiting
for Godotcom, is a tragicomedy for the Internet age. It is a two-act dialogue
between Bill Gates (E-stragon) and Steve Jobs (iVladimir), with cameo
appearances by Larry (Ellison) and Bezzo (as in Jeff ). She is currently
working on a sequel, Krapp’s Last Download, which features Sue’s signature cyber-statement, ‘You must go online, I can’t go online, I’ll go
online.’ She reads Harry Potter in her spare time.
xii
Contributors
Michael Thomas, OBE, OM (Poland), DBA, MBA, B.Sc. is Professor
Emeritus of Marketing, Strathclyde University. Though a former President
of the Market Research Society and Chairman of the Chartered Institute of
Marketing, he believes that ornithology is the only path to civilisation, or
at the very least, salvation. Hence his interest in John James Audubon.
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Preface
Beanz meanz bookz
Many years ago, on the day my four-year-old twin daughters started school,
a colleague from the university called by. The girls were resplendent in their
first school uniforms and, in keeping with their elevated status, he asked
them an appropriately adult question: ‘What do you want to be when you
grow up, girls?’ Nonplussed, they looked at him in silence. So he tried again,
‘Do you want to be like your daddy when you grow up?’ Bemused, the twins
exchanged glances and said nothing. So he tried another angle, ‘Sophie, do
you know what work your daddy does?’ She thought about this for a minute
and solemnly replied, ‘He reads books’.
Out of the mouths of babes! Would that Sophie had said, ‘He writes books’
or even ‘He works at the university’. But, no, my darling daughter had me
pegged as a consumer rather than a producer of literature. She’s right too,
since I am a hopeless bibliophile. If not quite Amazon’s biggest customer,
I’ve certainly given generously to Jeff Bezos’ retirement fund. I’ve also done
my bit for Borders, Waterstone’s, Barnes & Noble, and assorted second-hand
emporia. Granted, I’m not as desperate as some of the abject booklovers
described in Nicholas Basbanes’ classic tome, A Gentle Madness, nor do I have
a thing about expensive first editions, thank goodness. Nevertheless, when
I look enviously at my marketing colleagues’ BMWs, Jaguars and Lexuses
in the university car park, I comfort myself with the thought that my BMW
is parked along the shelves of my study. Hey, who needs an ultimate driving
machine when a reading and writing machine is to hand?
Bookish wretch I may be, but I’m more than a mere bibliomane. As a
marketing academic of sorts, I’ve long been fascinated by the bookselling
process. On the one hand, the book business epitomises today’s Entertainment Economy (fast moving, hit driven, intense competition, rapid
technological change, etc.). On the other hand, the industry seems caught
in a congenital cleft stick (culture versus commerce, the anti-marketing ethos
of literary types, et al.). Books are sold like any other commodity – and
always have been – but the business of selling them causes much consternation, lamentation, heart-searching and, not to put too fine a point on it,
harrumphing. Books are special, some say, and should be treated as such.
Books are the new baked beans, others proclaim, and should be sold as such.
xiv Preface
Books are special edition baked beans, yet others maintain, and require more
than 4Ps-style mass marketing.
It seems to me, then, that the beanz meanz bookz business is ripe for careful study by marketing and consumer researchers. There are, of course, countless books about book marketing, though the bulk of these are ‘how-to’
handbooks rather than reflections on the sector as a whole (Alison Baverstock’s
is perhaps the best-known). There are almost as many texts that consider the
‘consumption’ of books, broadly defined, though the authors might bridle at
such an attribution (I’m thinking, for example, of the bookish memoirs
of Anne Fadiman or Sven Birkerts, or Larry McMurtry, or John Baxter).
However, there are very few books that step back from the practicalities of
book marketing and take a look at the industry from a broader consumer
research perspective.
This book aims to occupy that reflective niche. Consuming Books consists
of sixteen chapters, divided into four loose ‘sections’ of four chapters each.
The first section, Chapters 1 to 4, takes what may be termed an historical
stance. Brown summarises recent book trade trends and contends that
marketing savvy has long been a salient feature of the sector. Belk provides
a characteristically thorough chronicle of the first – and continuing – bestseller, The Bible. Thomas contributes a case study of Audubon’s Birds of
America, a landmark volume in the noble art of bookselling. Borgerson and
Schroeder, by contrast, cogitate on their collection of bibliobibelots, a series
of novelty 1950s’ texts published by Peter Pauper Books.
The second section, Chapters 5 to 8, deals with the often acrimonious
marketing/literature interface. Drummond examines the marketing of Dan
Brown’s mega-bestseller, The Da Vinci Code. O’Reilly interrogates the writings of Martin Amis, whose writings, in turn, often interrogate marketing
matters. O’Malley, Patterson and Ní Bheacháin meditate on the self-help
genre, specifically the ‘Motherhood for Beginners’ sub-category. Holbrook,
meanwhile, sprinkles his legendary literary magic on the perennial high
culture/low culture debate, by means of a postmodern statistical analysis of
prizewinners and bestsellers.
Section three, Chapters 9 to 12, engages directly with consumers of books,
albeit in several different ways. Shankar studies the book club phenomenon
in terms of Maffesoli’s notion of neo-tribalism. Maclaran and Masterson take
a storytelling approach to today’s much-vaunted ‘bookcrossing’ craze. Schau
also has a tale to tell, one that shows how two similar consumers interpret
the same text in radically different ways. And, Terego and Denim take time
out from Hogwarts to present some findings from their on-going, in-depth
study of Harry Pottermania.
The concluding section, Chapters 13 to 16, comprises individual expressions of the tensions that literary types feel in a sector where marketing
increasingly calls the shots (and, conversely, that marketers feel in a sector
where marketing is ineradicably suspect). Stevens describes the creeping disillusion she felt at Virago Press, a radical feminist publishing house that shot
Preface xv
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to prominence in the 1980s. Chandler reveals how marketing types are often
less than marketing-minded when it comes to marketing their own books.
Hackley ruminates on how he sold his scholarly soul in order to sell more
copies of his marketing textbooks. Set against this, Patterson and Brown
shamelessly claim to possess the pedagogic secrets of literary bestsellerdom.
It’s easy when you know how, or so they aver.
If only editing books about consuming books were as easy. This volume
has been a long time in ‘development hell’ and I’d like to thank all the
contributors for sticking with it through thick and thin. I’d also like to
express my gratitude to Terry Clague of Routledge, for supporting this
venture and affably disregarding my manifold proposed titles, which ranged
from (the immodest) International Bestseller!! to (the megalomaniacal) The
Mammoth Book of Book Marketing. Finally, I’d like to thank my family, Sophie
especially, for foregoing their BMW and putting up with a clapped-out
Citroën. It’s good for a few years yet, girls! I’ll get a BMW when my books
start to sell well, or we win the Lottery. Whichever comes first. I just need
a few more paperbacks for the meantime . . .
Stephen Brown
May 2005
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1
Rattles from the swill bucket
Stephen Brown
Keep the aspidistra buying
In his semi-autobiographical novel, Keep the Aspidistra Flying, George Orwell
(1936) describes the miserable existence of an advertising executive, Gordon
Comstock. Despite his natural flair for copywriting, Comstock is unhappy
with his lot. Penning facile slogans on behalf of the New Albion Publicity
Company – and concocting cretinous copy for the Queen of Sheba Toilet
Requisites account – is deeply unfulfilling for someone with literary
ambitions. Selling, he believes, is unseemly, commerce is crass, advertising
is a scam, little more than ‘the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket’
(p. 55). So Gordon quits New Albion, takes a part-time job in McKechnie’s
bookshop and publishes a slim volume of poetry, which sells a grand total
of 153 copies before it is remaindered. The remainders remain resolutely
unsold.
Down on his uppers, and living hand to mouth, Comstock slowly loses
the will to write. He makes no progress on his monumental poem, London
Pleasures – on a good day he deletes five lines – and spends most of his time
in the bookstore, where he keeps a weather eye out for passing trade, scowls
at the puerile advertising posters across the street and ruminates on the behavioural quirks of his customers. He can spot timewasters a mile off; he’s a fair
idea of what browsers are looking for; and he possesses the rare ability to
turn wary prospects into willing purchasers. It thus seems that for all
Gordon’s loathing of the stick-rattling racket, this ex-advertising executive
is blessed with considerable marketing savvy. Comstock, however, refuses to
recognise his calling. He pines for literary acclaim, but gets none. He detests
the bookshop, though that’s where he’s happiest. He hates everything about
copywriting and only returns to it reluctantly when his girlfriend falls pregnant and he has no realistic alternative. Yet selling out to selling is the
smartest move he makes in an otherwise awful existence.
Clearly, there are worse things in life than rattling sticks inside swill
buckets.
2
Stephen Brown
The swill bucket strikes back
Seventy years on from Aspidistra, one can’t help but wonder what Orwell
would make of our literary-advertising-bookselling nexus. Today’s bookstores, for starters, are far removed from the squalid gestalt, uninviting
atmospherics and condescending customer service of McKechnie’s. The
Waterstone’s, Borders, Barnes & Nobles and Amazon.coms of this world are
capacious, commodious, comprehensively stocked, competitively priced and
unfailingly consumer-friendly (Douglass 2005). With their coffee bars, comfy
sofas, calendars of bookish events and customer-oriented marketing strategies, they are ‘third places’ where bibliophiles foregather and time passes
pleasantly (Olderburg 1989).
The twenty-first-century publishing industry, what’s more, is a site where
culture and commerce converge, converse and, on occasion, convert base MSS
into gold (de Bellaigue 2004). Although it isn’t the only such site – every
cultural product wrestles with the lure of lucre – the book business epitomises today’s so-called Entertainment Economy, where every industry is a
stage and all the brands are players (Wolf 1999). Indeed, the cultural industries are not only some of the pre-eminent econo-dynamos of our postmodern
world (movies are America’s second biggest export, after aerospace) but they
are some of the prime movers of urban/regional regeneration (Gateshead,
Baltimore, Glasgow, Bilbao, et al.). The booktown phenomenon, where
settlements on their uppers have been revitalised by boosterish bibliopreneurs, bears witness to this post-industrial propensity. In South Wales,
for instance, the declining mining village of Blaenavon has been completely
transformed thanks to the opening of 17 bookstores and the staging of a
biennial literary festival (de Bruxelles 2004). Similar renaissances have been
reported for Montolieu (France), Fjaerland (Norway), Parati (Brazil) and
Kampung Batu (Malaysia), among others.
South Wales, of course, was a powerhouse of the Industrial Revolution
and, in a world where coal mining, tree felling and steel rolling have been
superseded by data mining, web logging and rolling news programming, it
is entirely appropriate that Blaenavon is at the forefront of today’s Intellectual
Revolution, our inverted post-Marxian world where the cultural superstructure supports the economic base (Leadbeater 1999). This inversion,
nevertheless, has not been without cost. The book business, many critics aver,
has become less and less about books and more and more about business
(Robinson 2004; Sutherland 2004; Trewin 2004). Certainly, the industry
has been transformed by several latter-day developments that have, in effect,
brought books to book. These include increased competition, rapid consolidation,
changing channels of distribution and the perils of celebritude.
Competition
With regard to competition, perhaps the most striking thing about the
twenty-first-century book business is the staggering number of titles now
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available (Rebuck 2004). It is estimated that 120,000 new books per annum
are published in the UK. In the US, it’s 175,000 or thereabouts. The worldwide total is somewhere in the region of 1 million, which works out at approximately 4,000 per day or one every 30 seconds.1 So overwhelming is the flood
of new books that it is increasingly difficult for any single title to stand out
from the crowd. Worse still, Zaid (2003) facetiously argues, the textual deluge is doing nothing for us. Far from adding to the fount of human knowledge, this voluminous inundation is making us ever more ignorant:
If a person read a book a day, he would be neglecting to read 4000
others, published the same day. In other words, the books he didn’t read
would pile up 4000 times faster than the books he did read, and his
ignorance would grow four thousand times faster than his knowledge.
(p. 22)
Above and beyond the tsunami of new books, there’s the perfect storm of
existing publications. The used book trade has been reinvented by the Internet. No more poking around in the uncatalogued bowels of insalubrious
back-street outlets, perversely pleasurable though some people find this.
Charity shops, too, have got their bookselling act together – Oxfam currently
sells 15 million books per year in the UK, up from 12 million in 2002 –
which means that traditional bookshops have to fight ever harder for their
share of the nation’s literary outlay (Ahmed 2003). As if that weren’t enough,
competition-wise, recent years have seen the rise of ‘bookcrossing’, where
people leave spare copies of their favourite reads in public places in the
hope that they’ll be picked up, read by and change the life of, anonymous
passers-by (Anon. 2004).
In addition to the increased competition from used-book stores, charity
shops and free gift givers, there’s the ever-burgeoning threat of non-literary
alternatives. One of the publishing industry’s foremost concerns nowadays is
that books are losing out to movies, DVDs, computer games, music downloads, lifestyle magazines, home cinema systems, text messaging, websurfing,
recreational shopping and the rest of the Entertainment Economy’s cornucopian offerings (Michel 2005). This is especially so with the younger
generation, who look to Playstation rather than Plath or Proust, and iTunes
instead of Ishiguro or Isherwood. A 2002 survey by the National Endowment
for the Arts (NEA) found that fewer than half of all American adolescents (46
per cent) had read a work of literature in the previous 12 months. Ten years
earlier, the bookish proportion was 54 per cent, and in 1982 it was 59 per
cent. The trend, NEA concludes, is nothing less than a ‘national crisis’, one
that is likely to be replicated in the rest of the Western world (Italie 2004).2
Consolidation
On top of the rise of inter- and intra-type competition, the book business is
consolidating like there’s no tomorrow. Just as the car industry, chemical
4
Stephen Brown
industry and computer industry evolved in an increasingly oligopolistic direction, so too the once populous publishing sector is dominated by a small
number of extremely large organisations, many of which are subsidiaries of
even larger multimedia empires (de Bellaigue 2004; Epstein 2002; Schiffrin
2002). In August 2004, for instance, the legendary British publishing house
Hodder Headline was acquired by Hachette Livre, a division of the French
conglomerate Lagardère (Irvine 2004). This acquisition makes Hachette
the second biggest publisher in the UK, after Random House, with 13 per
cent of the market. Random House, with 17 per cent, is a subsidiary of
Bertelsmann, the German media group. Penguin, with 10 per cent, HarperCollins, with 9.5 per cent, and Pan Macmillan, with 4.5 per cent, are
subsidiaries of Pearson, News Corporation and Holtzbrinck, respectively. Of
the top eight UK publishing houses, only Bloomsbury (2 per cent) remains
independent, though this is largely attributable to the gazillion-selling Harry
Potter franchise (Robinson 2004).
The rationale for this trans-national consolidation process is transparent
enough.3 On the one hand, publishing is a fairly low-growth industry –
approximately 1–3 per cent per annum, roughly in line with inflation – and
hence the only way to keep profit margins healthy is through acquisition,
rationalisation and the search for scale economies (e.g. through the centralisation of necessary functions, such as accounting and production, and the
bulk buying of consumables, such as paper and packaging). On the other
hand, the resources that parent companies can bring to bear on key titles are
stupendous, in theory at least. All manner of media synergies, between television channels, radio stations, syndicated newspapers, glossy magazines, ISP
portals and suchlike can be pressed into promotional service, which helps
build the all-important buzz that transports titles to the top of the bestseller
lists, guarantees in-store promotional support and gets the nation’s
bibliomanes in a must-read lather (Lieberman and Esgate 2002).
Consolidation, clearly, bestows benefits on certain brand name authors,
but it also incurs costs. The old-school, somewhat fusty, nothing-if-notgentlemanly ethos of the book trade, where ‘challenging’ authors were
supported, often for decades, until such times as the reading public caught
up with them, has been sacrificed on the philistine altar of sales figures.
Every title these days is expected to turn a profit. Failure to do so spells
the end for the author and, as often as not, his or her editor. The upshot is
that fewer risks are taken, dumbing down is rampant, the market is flooded
with sure-fire bestsellers, such as celebrity cookbooks and miraculous dietary
regimens, established authors are supported at the expense of quirky newcomers, and literary culture generally suffers as a consequence (Ugresic 2003).
The situation, in truth, is not as bad as the naysayers suggest. As the
‘polarisation principle’ posits, developments at one pole of the corporate/
cultural spectrum are often counterbalanced by antithetical innovations at
the other (Brown 1987). Large grocery supermarkets create conditions
conducive for small convenience stores; high-price luxury brands call forth
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cut-price knock-offs; the canonisation of once shocking artistic movements
gives rise to new rounds of avant-garde affront. The same is true of publishing, where recent years have not only witnessed widespread consolidation
but also the emergence of tiny publishing houses such as Profile, Canongate,
Greywolf, The New Press, McSweeney’s and many more. True, these imprints
lack the clout of the multinationals and many are absorbed by the majors
once they reach a certain size (Fourth Estate is a famous example), but the
key point is that consolidation is not necessarily the Avian Flu of the book
business.
Channels of distribution
Although the polarisation principle primarily pertains to horizontal competition – large organisations beget small – it is no less relevant in the vertical
situation. That is to say, the rise of publishing conglomerates such as Pearson
and Hachette Livre is partly a reaction to, and partly the cause of, increasingly concentrated channels of distribution. The independent bookshop, that
much-loved local institution, is declining rapidly, both in terms of overall
numbers and market share (Gaisford 2005). Conversely, the chain bookstores
– Borders, Barnes & Noble, Waterstone’s, Ottakars, W.H. Smith, Books
Etc., etc. – are burgeoning like nobody’s business. In Britain, Waterstone’s
has 200 outlets, with eight more planned, Ottakars added 12 new stores in
2004 alone and Borders has announced massive UK expansion plans.
To be sure, this decline of the independent and rise of the chains is not a
recent phenomenon. Shop numbers generally have been falling for decades
(Dawson and Kirby 1979). However, the abolition of the Net Book Agreement in 1995 accelerated the process, since it allowed chain stores to undercut
the prices of independents and seize market share. The depth of stock, attractive store atmospherics, perennial promotional activities, and programmes of
high-profile events that chains typically offer, also add considerably to their
consumer lustre. Many literati, of course, deeply regret the decline of the
small store and deplore the purported impersonality, efficiency and moneymaking mindset of the multiples. Books, they say, are ‘different’ and should
be treated as something akin to a social service-cum-sacrosanct repository
of high culture. Such nostalgic yearnings – apotheosised in the saccharine
Hollywood movie You’ve Got Mail starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan –
conveniently overlook the fact that almost every aspect of the books business has improved immeasurably in the past half-century. As McCrum
(2004a, p. 18) contends:
The last 25 years have seen a revolution in book trade practices. If they are
honest, many readers will be able to remember an age when books were
badly printed, sloppily edited, horrible to look at and impossible to find.
In that not so distant time, bookshops were small, dark and overheated, imbued with the special aroma of stewing food. Authors were
6
Stephen Brown
isolated, impoverished souls, trapped behind typewriters. Periodically,
like children at half-term, they would be lunched, extravagantly, by
publishing grandees who would spend in three-star restaurants as much
on a three-course lunch as they would subsequently offer as an advance
against royalties.
Pace Mark Twain, moreover, rumours of the independent bookshop’s imminent death are grossly exaggerated. They may not be able to compete with
the chains on price or product range, but diverse differentiation strategies
are available to them – specialising in certain sectors, genres or market
segments (travel, sci-fi, children’s, rarities, remainders, university textbooks,
etc.), the provision of quality customer services (gift provision, expert book
search facilities, organising local reading groups et al.), taking the store to
time-poor customers (as exemplified by The Book People, which sells a wide
range of titles in workplaces and to those who wouldn’t normally darken the
doors of traditional bookshops), or indeed developing into ‘destination’ retail
outlets (such as Foyles in London, Hodges Figgis in Dublin and City Lights
in San Francisco). Doing a Borders and becoming a chain is yet another possibility – Borders began as a single-unit campus bookstore in Ann Arbor,
Michigan – though this is much easier said than done.
The difficulties facing ambitious independents are well known – lack of
capital, buying power, management expertise and so on – but they are
compounded by two additional channel developments. First, the major
grocery retailers, such as Tesco and Asda in the UK and Wal-Mart and Costco
in the US, are diversifying into books big time. Granted, their interest is
currently confined to blockbusting bestsellers, as well as genres that complement the companies’ core offer (cookery, gardening, health and beauty, etc.).
However, their buying power is such that they can circumvent wholesalers,
negotiate directly with publishers and offer prices that independents simply
can’t match. So rock-bottom are their prices that many independents bypass
book wholesalers and stock up on key titles at friendly neighbourhood grocery
superstores. As there is nothing to stop grocery retailers expanding their
ranges, what’s more, the pressure on wholesalers and independents can only
increase (Green 2003).
A second, and even more significant development, is the advent of on-line
bookselling, particularly the prodigious Amazon.com. Amazon, admittedly,
is something of a money pit. Its profitability is moot, to put it mildly, many
contend that its business model is fatally flawed, and its latter-day popularity is a triumph of cyber hope over e-expectation (Epstein 2002). Yet,
most would agree that Amazon has revolutionised the retailing of books.
The range, the prices, the personalisation software, the (accursed) one-click
function, the no-questions returns policy, the used books option, the Bezos
factor, the arrival of the package, like a gift from the gods, all contribute to
the unique experience that Amazon offers, the fierce customer loyalty it
engenders and its steadily rising market share. Even the most customer-
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oriented independents are hard pressed to compete with the battler from
Seattle, albeit the immediacy, tactile pleasure and sheer serendipity of instore book purchasing retains its attraction for many besotted bibliophiles
(Basbanes 1999; Baxter 2002; Fadiman 1998; Gurria-Quintana 2004).
Celebrity
The bookshop, in short, will never die completely, even if extant channels
are comprehensively reconfigured. The book trade has reinvented itself on
numerous previous occasions and it appears to be in the throes of yet another
makeover. Appropriately, then, perhaps the most striking development in
the contemporary book business is its celebration of celebrity. It has become
a fully fledged branch of the Entertainment Economy and, if not quite the
new rock ’n’ roll, let alone this season’s black, it is a lot cooler than it used
to be (Rosser 2004). Book festivals, book signings, book tours and all the
trappings of postmodern celebritisation are part and parcel of the bookselling
circus. Photogenic authors are glamorised, profiled and promoted like the
literary equivalent of Britney (Zadie Smith, come on down). Established
celebrities, ranging from David Beckham and Madonna to Jordan and Robbie
Williams, successfully turn their hands to the scribbling business (with a
little help from a ghost or several). Name-brand authors employ hard-nosed
agents to negotiate megabuck advances, the size of which are newsworthy
events in themselves and help concentrate the minds of publishers, who are
thus obliged to promote the title heavily in order to recoup their initial
outlay. The holy grail is a movie adaptation – or even an option, or the
option of an option – which can do wonders for the sales of all but the
stodgiest titles, as can TV tie-ins (Pesola 2003). Lord of the Rings, Bridget
Jones’s Diary, Pride and Prejudice, High Fidelity, Fight Club, Harry Potter,
Cold Mountain and countless others have benefited from the celebritude that
association with the cinema bestows.
Adaptations are one thing, daytime television is quite another. Perhaps
the single greatest boost to the transatlantic book business in recent years,
and the development that has done much to celebritise the sector, is the
advent of television book groups, most notably Oprah’s and Richard and
Judy’s (Farr 2004; Thorpe and Asthana 2004). Being featured on either of
the two shows is an instant passport to bestsellerdom, a favourable mention
is manna from marketplace heaven. Sales of Joseph O’Connor’s Star of the Sea
rose 20-fold when it got the nod from Richard and Judy; sales of Anna
Karenina, Leo Tolstoy’s romantic classic, surged by 910,000 copies when
Oprah recommended it as a summer read in 2004. Such is the power of
Oprah Winfrey that when Jonathan Franzen refused to have his high-brow
novel The Corrections featured on the show, the resultant shock-horrorungrateful-wretch publicity did even more for the tome, sales-wise, than
conventional coverage on the programme (Brown 2003). Oprah moves the
merchandise, even in absentia.
8
Stephen Brown
Another exemplary instance of television’s ability to shift product is the
BBC’s ‘Big Read’, which ran in stages between April and December 2003
( Jones 2004). This commenced with a much-publicised poll of the UK’s alltime favourite books. Approximately 140,000 enthusiasts responded via
telephone, email or text message, and 7,000 titles were initially nominated.
The top 100 were then featured in a series of prime-time television shows,
where various celebrities talked about their favourites, and viewers voted for
the leading contenders. The long list was reduced to a short list of 21 in
October and, after another round of celebrity pitching and viewer voting,
the top seven went head-to-head in a grand final. Lord of the Rings triumphed,
unsurprisingly, with Pride and Prejudice, His Dark Materials, Hitchhiker’s Guide
and Harry Potter not far behind. Although the Big Read attracted much
disparaging comment from affronted literati, who deemed it the height of
lower middle-brow vulgarity, the BBC’s take on celebrity-led reality television did wonders for bookstore footfall at every stage in the proceedings.
Sales of the short list increased by 540 per cent all told; sales of Captain
Corelli’s Mandolin, one of the 21 finalists, rose by 155 per cent (though the
DVD of the movie adaptation, interestingly enough, surged by a staggering
1,533 per cent); and even the competition’s tie-in book, which contained
potted plots of all 100 long-listed titles, as well as associated literary trivia,
found its way to the upper reaches of British bestseller lists (Munroe 2003).
Wildly successful though the Big Read was – and analogous events such
as World Book Day continue to be – the acme of today’s media-celebritybookbiz imbroglio is the Man Booker Prize. True, there are many literary
prizes that are much more prestigious and/or remunerative, such as the
Nobel, the Pulitzer, the Goncourt, the Whitbread (Rennison 2004), but the
Man Booker is the one that simultaneously epitomises bibliocelebrity and
sells titles to boot. As Todd’s (1996) longitudinal study of the 35-year-old
literary award reveals, inclusion in the Man Booker long or short-lists can
do wonders for the author, the publisher and the book trade as a whole. It
made Salman Rushdie a superstar, put tiny publisher Canongate on the map,
and, as often as not, additional print runs are announced on the strength of
a short-listing. The perennial controversies over who’s in, who’s out, who’s
been snubbed, who’s on the judging panel and so forth also add to the ‘sizzle’
that surrounds the event, as does the announcement of the winner on live
television (Rocco 2004). Recent brand extensions, such as the Booker of
Bookers (won by Rushdie) and the Lifetime Achievement Award (the first
of which will be announced in 2005) have turned the event into the literary
equivalent of the Oscars. Celebritude in excelsis.
Bringing books to book
To be sure, the twenty-first-century book business is buffeted by many other
noteworthy developments – the much-touted e-book, for example (Beard and
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Kirchgaessner 2003) – but the essential point for our present purposes is
that publishing provides rich pickings for marketing. The tools and techniques of marketing are ideally suited to a situation where supply exceeds
demand, inter- and intra-type competition is getting ever-fiercer, channels
of distribution are in a state of flux, innumerable identikit products vie for
consumers’ attention, buzz-building promotional tactics are par for the course
and the old rules of doing business, such as price controls and gentlemanly
carve-ups of territories, are going the way of MG Rover. Marketing may be
passé in certain sectors of the economy, or in the throes of a midlife crisis
at least (Brown 1995), but in publishing it is being embraced with evangelical fervour (Singh 2004). Brand building, niche marketing, own labels,
integrated communications, customer relationships, SWOT analyses, crossplatform synergy coordination and the rest of the marketing lexicon are on
the lips of literary types. Sales tracking software, category management
techniques, database mining methods, space allocation procedures, sales forecasting models, direct product profitability calculations and suchlike are
central to the contemporary publishing game (Green 2003). The sheer
number of ‘how to’ books about book marketing are testament to this seemingly unstoppable trend (e.g. Baverstock 2001; Cole 1999; Ortman 1998).
Traditionalists, admittedly, aren’t too happy about what’s happening. They
despair about books being sold like bacon or baked beans. They pour scorn,
à la Martin Amis, on that moronic marketing inferno, the airport bookstore.
They are as one with Norman Mailer (2003, p. 57) who memorably describes
today’s publishers as ‘pirates, cutthroats, racketeers, assassins, pimps, rape
artists and general finks’.
Having said that, however, it is necessary to acknowledge that marketing
is very long established in the book business. Far from being a new kid on
the block, it has been around since the inception of moveable type. William
Caxton, as Rassuli (1988) cogently shows, was one of the first modern
marketing men. He published popular, customer-oriented texts in English
(rather than Latin). He branded his books with a distinctive colophon, or
printer’s mark (which made them eminently collectable). He was a pioneer
of outsourcing (many of his volumes were published in Paris, on demand)
and vertical integration (he started off as a seller, not a producer). He targeted
the ‘aspiring classes’ of consumers, mainly merchants and bureaucrats. He
segmented his readership and adapted sales pitches accordingly. He sought
sponsors for his works, tested the market before publication, treated the title
pages as advertising inserts, and wasn’t averse to celebrity endorsement when
the opportunity arose. He also situated his retail premises in a prime, hightraffic location, between Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament.
Most importantly perhaps, he made a lot of money from the early English
book business and died a wealthy man.
Caxton, furthermore, was just the first among many. The history of the
book trade is replete with marketing-minded movers and shakers. In the
10 Stephen Brown
early nineteenth century, for instance, the American book business was barnstormed by Mason Locke Weems, a larger-than-life figure who peddled
Bibles throughout the rural south, developed a multimedia road-show that
combined lectures, music, stand-up comedy and knock-’em-dead sales pitches,
and published a series of scandalous parables which, you guessed it, sold like
proverbial hotcakes (Friedman 2004). Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, L. Frank
Baum and Edgar Rice Burroughs, to name but a few, were also superlative
marketing men. As Taliaferro (1999, p. 17) notes about the last of these:
well before Walt Disney ever hawked his first mouse ears or Ninja Turtle
‘action figures’ became film stars, Burroughs was already a grand master
of a concept that would one day be known as multimedia. He licensed
Tarzan statuettes, Tarzan bread, Tarzan ice cream, bubble gum, bathing
suits, and puzzles, and he founded a national network of Tarzan ‘clans’
to convert American youth to the Tarzan way.
The book business, in truth, has always been marketing oriented. Its
marketing orientation predates the emergence of the modern marketing
concept. It is not a Johnny-come-lately. Whether it be the Barnumesque
antics of Canadian publisher Jack McClelland in the 1960s (King 1999), the
ebullient Jazz Age bookman Harold Livemore (Dardis 1995), or the irrepressible advertising executive, Harry Scherman, who paved the way for the
Book of the Month Club by dispensing free copies of Shakespeare with
Whitman Company candy purchases (Radway 1997), the bookbiz has never
been lacking in marketing acumen. Indeed, one of the most striking things
about the book trade is that many contemporary concerns – the 4Cs previously noted – were just as pertinent to past generations of publishers
(Hamilton 2000). The flood of cheap books in the 1820s, a result of the
invention of the steam press, caused much consternation among gentlemen
booksellers. The celebrity autobiography was invented by P.T. Barnum in
the 1870s, when his life story sold more than any other title, bar The Bible.
Bestseller lists were first compiled in the 1890s and used for marketing
purposes not long after. In the 1920s, the rise of the radio and the attractions of picture palaces were regarded as the death knell for reading, as was
television in the 1950s. A series of publishing house mergers in the 1960s
precipitated front-page newspaper headlines, as well as widespread fears for
backlists, midlists and bookselling generally. The railway station bookstalls
of W.H. Smith and Easons reinvented the channels of literary distribution
in their day, as did Boots circulating library, as indeed did the opening of
the Erie Canal in 1825, which gave New York rapid access to the great
midwestern market and established the city as the premier US publishing
centre, a position it still holds (Friedman 2004). It is clear, then, what goes
around in the bookbiz, comes around before too long. As it was, so shall it
be. So shall it 4C.
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Consuming books
This same recycling tendency is true of consumption, our fifth and final C.
As Rowland (1996) shows in his in-depth study of the nineteenth-century
book trade, the relationship between the autonomous author and the ultimate consumer – then called ‘the general reader’ – has always intrigued
the industry. It is no exaggeration to state that the book business has been
characterised by wave after ever-widening wave of customer capture and
market expansion. Technological developments, such as linotype and photocomposition, and marketing innovations, such as Penguin paperbacks and
Amazon.com, have steadily built up the readership of books. Aided and
abetted by increases in literacy, population numbers, disposable incomes,
leisure time, tertiary education and so forth – and notwithstanding the
carping of critics who predicted literary apocalypse at each stage in the process
– there’s no doubt that ‘democratisation’ is one of the most significant longterm trends in the sector. The industry is more customer-centric than ever
before. The current wealth of titles, the gazillion-selling blockbusters, the
rock-bottom prices offered by supermarkets, et cetera are testament to the
steady progress of book culture (Radway 1997).
Market expansion is always welcome, is it not, and three contemporary
customer-centric developments are particularly noteworthy. The first of these
is what Moran (2000) calls ‘meet the author culture’. In other words, authors’
increased willingness to interact with ultimate consumers. Book tours,
readings, festivals, webcasts, chatrooms, workshops, residencies, retreats,
infomercials et al. are part and parcel of today’s publishing game. Granted,
name brand authors have always ‘met’ their customers, if only to the extent
of answering their fan mail, but the gap between producer and consumer is
considerably narrower than in the days when Dickens, Wilde and Twain,
toured Lyceum lecture theatres. Some say the gap is becoming dangerously
narrow, since today’s young authors are spending too much time on the book
promotion circuit and too little time developing their craft. Literary culture
suffers as a consequence, or so the story goes (McCrum 2004b).
The second secular trend is the emergence of consumer-producers.
Consumers, in effect, are becoming producers themselves. The rise of selfpublishing, the advent of weblogs, the proliferation of how-to-get-published
magazines and DIY handbooks attest to this ever-growing trend (McCrum
2003). Once again, admittedly, this is not a new development. The selfpublishing consumer-producer has a long and distinguished history in the
book industry. Walt Whitman published (and publicised) himself, as did
William Blake, William Cobbett, Charlotte Brontë, Beatrix Potter, J.M.
Barrie, Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf and, latterly, Roddy Doyle, whose
first book The Commitments, was published by his own imprint, King Farouk
Publishing, which he established with the aid of a bank loan (Malone 1999).
The trend is accelerating, nevertheless, thanks to the easy availability of
desktop publishing software and the happy-to-oblige services of on-line
12 Stephen Brown
imprints such as Xlibris, Lulu and, more recently, Macmillan’s New Writing
scheme (Higgins 2005a).4 So popular has self-publishing become that Zaid
(2003) maintains more people are writing books these days than reading
them. When not writing books, what’s more, they’re reviewing them, as a
fleeting visit to Amazon.com readily demonstrates. Every title, near enough,
is swaddled in one- to five-star reviews posted by enthusiastic amateur critics.
They are specifically encouraged to do so by Amazon, though the system is
open to abuse, since it’s easy for putative self-publicists to sing the praises
of their own opus anonymously and simultaneously diss the worthless hackwork of their lamentable rivals. Not that I would dream of indulging in
anything so underhand.
The third and perhaps most noteworthy trend is the advent of the book
group. Initially dismissed as a passing fad, book groups are proliferating like
never before. It is estimated that there are half-a-million book groups in the
US and 50,000 or so, in the UK. The typical group, according to Hartley
(2001), consists of 6–10 people, most of whom are female. It meets once per
month, on average, lasts a couple of hours, and concentrates on an eclectic
mix of titles – fiction, non-fiction, classics, current bestsellers and countless
more. Although the book group ‘phenomenon’ owes much to the imprimatur
of daytime television programmes, such as Oprah or Richard and Judy, and
although it is being perpetuated by newspapers, public libraries, local bookshops and, not least, canny publishing houses, there’s no denying the
grass-roots nature of this book club outbreak (Higgins 2005b). It represents
the authentic voice of the consumer. It represents the reclamation of reading
from self-appointed academic gatekeepers. It represents a books-led backlash
against today’s alienated, isolated, Bowling Alone society. Regardless of
the reasons for the upsurge, and irrespective of the fact that book groups –
yet again – have actually been around for a very long time, they typify
today’s ‘active’ consumer, the increasingly accepted idea that contemporary
consumers aren’t passive recipients of popular culture, as certain Critical
Theorists suggest, but engaged, participatory and, above all, eager co-creators
of twenty-first-century culture, be it literary, artistic, cinematic, musical
or whatever. We live in a karaoke society where consumers sing along
enthusiastically, occasionally in tune, oft-times seriously off-key.
Inevitably, this consumer-led counter-revolution has been co-opted-cumsubverted by the culture it critiques, often entertainingly it has to be said.
Books about book clubs are becoming increasingly popular and, naturally,
are being critiqued by book clubs in turn. Books about book clubs criticising books about book clubs can’t be far away. Equally entertaining are
the authorial ‘confessions’ sub-genre, where authors write about their experiences with the book-consuming public. Mortification, to pluck an example
at random, is a compilation of my-experience-was-worse-than-yours oneupmanship by leading literati including Carl Hiaasen, Edna O’Brien, Chuck
Palahniuk, Margaret Drabble, Michael Ondaatje and many more (Robertson
2003). Booker Prize winner Margaret Atwood, for instance, describes her
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13
first ever book-signing, in an Edmonton department store, in the depths of
a Canadian winter:
The signing was at a table set up in the Men’s Sock and Underwear
Department. I don’t know what the thinking was behind this. There I
sat, at lunch hour, smiling away, surrounded by piles of a novel called
The Edible Woman. Men in overcoats and galoshes and toe rubbers and
scarves and earmuffs passed by my table, intent on the purchase of boxer
shorts. They looked at me, then at the title of my novel. Subdued panic
broke out. There was the sound of a muffled stampede as dozens of
galoshes and toe rubbers shuffled rapidly in the other direction.
I sold two copies.
(in Robertson 2003, p. 2)
These creative responses to today’s customerarchy are hardly unexpected.
If literature reflects the world in which we live, at some level, then contemporary customer focus is likely to figure in writers’ reflections. The marketers
have inherited the earth, or publishing houses at least, and this state of affairs,
understandably enough, is a source of inspiration for latter-day literati. One
of the most interesting things about the contemporary literary scene is the
sheer number of novels that engage with consumerism.5 These engagements,
admittedly, haven’t advanced much beyond established stereotypes – capitalism is heinous, marketers are untrustworthy, shopping is frivolous, brands
are a rip-off, managers are bottom line-oriented brutes etc. – but there’s no
shortage of lightly fictionalised sermonising. Recent examples of this martlit genre include: Sophie Kinsella’s self-exculpatory Confessions of a Shopaholic;
Scarlett Thomas’s Popco, an everyday story of kiddie marketing strategies and
tweenage pester power; Fay Weldon’s The Bulgari Connection, which was sponsored by the eponymous upmarket jewellers; William Gibson’s Pattern
Recognition, an excursus on the wonderful world of guerrilla marketing; and
Don DeLillo’s Cosmopolis, a cogent commentary on today’s anti-globalisation
movement. No doubt there are many more to come. The bookcrossing
phenomenon, for example, seems eminently ripe for fictionalisation. Its
singularly serendipitous nature lends itself to romantic novelisation (book
cross-dressing, as it were) or Ludlumesque thrillers (book double-crossing,
so to speak). You read it here first.
Creative artists, it seems, are mining marketing with profit. But what is
marketing getting in return? Some old-school critics would say complaisant
authors who surrender to the machinations of multinational capital. Commerce has culture in a stranglehold. Art has succumbed to accountancy. The
heteronomous pole is trumping the autonomous pole of Pierre Bourdieu’s
habitus. However, the problem with this line of thinking is that it presupposes a pre-lapsarian era of aboriginal authenticity, when literary types
were unsullied by marketing imperatives. As Moran (2000) rightly observes,
this arcadian artistic pastoral never actually existed. The production of
literature has always been beholden to the marketplace. The myth of the
14 Stephen Brown
struggling artist in a garret is an artefact of the Romantic Movement of the
nineteenth century, many of whose leading lights made the most of their antimarketing marketing positioning. Upton Sinclair did exactly the same in the
1920s, as did Norman Mailer in the 1950s, as do Alex Shakar, Max Barry and
analogous anti-capitalist capitalists today, as indeed do brand-name nonfiction authors such as Naomi Klein, Noreena Hertz, Juliet Schor, etc. Setting
one’s face against selling unfailingly sells well.
The question, therefore, remains: what is marketing getting in return?
The aim of this book is to find out. It does so by interrogating the book
culture/consumer culture interface. Written by a mixture of book-minded
academics and book business professionals, it brings together a collection of
gifted writers, who engage with diverse aspects of book-consuming culture
in a variety of different ways, some empirical, some autobiographical, some
theoretical, some ironical. It engages with all of the issues identified above
and many more besides. It has, in that classic bookbiz formulation, something
for everyone.
In order to get the ball rolling, however, let me make one concluding
suggestion about marketing’s putative takeaway from works of literature.
In recent years, there has been much talk about experiential approaches to
marketing. The consultancy sector is awash with how-to tomes on emotional
branding, the attention economy, experiential marketing et al., all of
which argue that the way to connect with today’s sated, sybaritic, supersavvy consumers is to offer them an awesome, unforgettable, mind-blowing
experience, what Steve Jobs dubs ‘insanely great’ (Davenport and Beck
2001; Gobé 2001; Schmitt 1999). Theme parks, computer games, flagship
stores, boutique hotels, THX-equipped cinemas and iconic products such as
the Apple iPod, the Mini Cooper, and Virgin Atlantic Upper Class, epitomise this experiential emphasis. The aim is for consumers effectively to lose
themselves – immerse themselves, rather – in the brand and find themselves
transported to that paradise of marketing practice, the place called lifelong
customer loyalty.
It doesn’t take too much imagination, nevertheless, to see that marketers’
experiential aspiration is very similar to the reading experience. As countless commentators have observed, readers get caught up in, and carried away
by, works of literature. They are taken to a different place. They meet unforgettable characters. They lose track of time. They remember the reading
experience forever. Twenty-first-century marketing, it seems to me, aspires
to the condition of literature.
Notes
1
Before you say anything, I’m quoting Zaid (2003) here. Now, number crunching is
not my forte, as generations of enfeebled marketing students can attest, but even I
can see that Zaid has miscalculated a tad. One million books per year computes to
around 2,700 per day, not 4,000. Unless, of course, he means working days, which
is a bit closer to the mark.
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In Great Britain, for example, more than one third of adults never buy books
(Sutherland 2004).
See Schiffrin (2002) for a detailed discussion of the US publishing scene.
Introduced in April 2005, Macmillan’s New Writing initiative aims to improve
access for hitherto unpublished novelists. No advance is paid, contracts are nonnegotiable and the writers are responsible for copy editing costs. In return, Macmillan
provides distribution and marketing support, and pays approximately 20 per cent
on royalties. At present, the company is receiving 200 manuscripts per month. The
scheme, inevitably, has attracted the ire of affronted literati such as Hari Kunzru,
who memorably described it as ‘the Ryanair of publishing’ (see Higgins 2005a).
I’m using ‘consumerism’ in the sociological sense, where it refers to consumer society
generally. In marketing, the term has long carried connotations of consumer resistance.
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2
Selling God’s book
Russell Belk
It is important for Bible publishers to remember that what they are selling is
not only a sacred text but a commodity – like a microwave or a DVD player –
that should be marketed like the latest product.
(Rob Stone, Director of Bible Sales and Marketing,
Oxford University Press; quoted in Winston 2002)
The first book printed with movable type was the Gutenberg Bible and The
Book has topped the best-seller list ever since. Historically, the Bible’s success
has been sustained and multiplied through the often profane words of salespersons, advertisers, and marketing strategists. Techniques such as market
segmentation, product line extension, and cross-marketing (sorry), have
helped both economic profits and spiritual prophets.
Biblical marketing has not often been at the forefront of discussions of
great marketing campaigns, perhaps with good reason. In addition to the
possible indelicacy or even sacrilege of highlighting the conjunction of the
sacred Word and profane selling practices, until recently Bible marketing
has been neither particularly visible nor particularly exemplary. In 1997 a
large British university press hired a public relations firm to help promote
its new paperback “Authorized Version” of the King James Bible. In a
brochure printed to publicize the new series, the PR firm shied away from
the hyperbole of “The Greatest Story Ever Told” variety, in order to claim
somewhat more modestly that “The Bible will stand alongside other conical
[sic] classics such as Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Zola’s Germinal, and
Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women” (Daniell 2003, p. 1).
But not all Bible marketing is this bad. In 1993 the Canadian Bible Society
began a highly successful series of outdoor advertisements with pictures of
Bibles and witty headlines such as “Don’t play the game without reading
the rule book,” “Over a hundred thousand weeks on the best seller list,” and
“We’re committed to prophet sharing” (Woodard 1995). Whatever the
sophistication of Bible marketing, as the second headline suggests, the
product is enjoying a highly extended product life cycle. Even though it is
not possible fully to separate Bible marketing from related evangelical
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activity, in the following treatment I focus on the sale of Bibles and related
merchandise for profit.
Before Gutenberg
The Bible has not always been something promoted to the masses. In order
for the Hebrew Scriptures that Christians know as the Old Testament to
reach the European world from Jerusalem, they first had to be translated into
Greek. By the middle of the first century AD, the New Testament was also
written, using everyday Greek. Both Testaments were translated next into
Latin to be read by the Christian clergy that emerged during the late Roman
Empire. Although it might be expected that the next step would be to translate the Old and New Testaments into the more commonly spoken languages
of Europe, this did not happen for another thirteen hundred years. It was
formally proscribed by a Papal edict stipulating that only the Latin “Vulgate
Bible” translated by Eusebius Hieronymus (Saint Jerome) in 400 was permissible within the Christian Church (De Hamel 2001). Although common
people knew some of the more famous stories in the Bible such as those of
Adam and Eve, Noah’s ark, and the death and resurrection of Christ, the
rest of the Bible remained unknown and inaccessible. It was not that Latin
was unknown in Western Europe at the start of the thousand-year period in
which the Vulgate Bible reigned as the only Bible of Christendom. But even
if the hand-copied and highly sequestered books had been more widely
available, literacy was not widespread outside of the aristocracy and clergy.
Still, it was not the level of literacy that led the Church to restrict access
to the Bible. In fact, the clergy discouraged reading and literacy among common people in order to retain their control and enforce people’s dependency
on them to interpret the scriptures. They feared that people who read the
Bible would form their own interpretations and that these interpretations
might well differ from the official doctrines of the Church (Moore 1994).
By the end of the Middle Ages, Latin was a dead language known mostly
to scholars and the priesthood. But neither was it the decline of Latin that
led to the translation of the Bible into more vernacular languages. The first
English translation of the Bible is attributed to John Wycliffe in the early
1380s. Wycliffe, an Oxford theologian, had criticized the Papacy, prayers to
saints, religious pilgrimages, and belief in transubstantiation. This inspired
the “Lollard” movement (a term of abuse meaning mutterer), but alienated
him from the Church and University. Wycliffe was never excommunicated,
but his chief supporter at Oxford, Nicholas of Hereford, was excommunicated and imprisoned (Daniell 2003). Wycliffe died in 1384 when his Bible
was still tolerated by the Church. But in 1409 the Wycliffe Bible was
outlawed by the Archbishop of Canterbury and those caught with copies
were tried for heresy and burned to death (de Hamel 2001). The Lollards
were persecuted to such a degree that their movement died. Wycliffe was
posthumously condemned by the Church in 1425. His bones were dug up,
20 Russell Belk
burned, and tossed into a stream. Although copies of the Lollard Bible were
systematically burned, a surprisingly high number (more than 250) survived.
This is a greater number than any other surviving medieval text. Chaucer’s
Canterbury Tales is a distant second with 64 surviving copies (Daniell 2003).
But it was only with the development of printing and the Protestant
Reformation that Bibles became widely available.
Technological and religious change: Part I
The famous Gutenberg Bible printed by Johannes Gutenberg about 1453–6
was printed in two volumes in Latin. Approximately 180 copies were printed
of which 50 remain (de Hamel 2001). Gutenberg’s press was more prolific
in producing indulgence certificates for the late medieval Church. Gutenberg
and his colleagues were clearly entrepreneurial. They also had been involved
in an earlier (1439–40) venture to mass-produce convex mirrors to be
sold to pilgrims undertaking the pilgrimage to Aachen. The idea was that
when they were shown the relics of the city, including the nightgown
worn by the Virgin Mary when she gave birth to Jesus, and the Messiah’s
swaddling clothes, they would hold up their mirrors in order to capture
these relics’ radiant light. But due to a quarrel over the mirror stamping
equipment, the death of one partner, and misjudging the date of the
pilgrimage as 1440 instead of 1439, the venture failed (de Hammel 2001).
Bibles seemed a surer investment opportunity. Because of the poor condition of many Bibles in the churches and monasteries of Europe, Gutenberg
and his investors anticipated a strong market for a mass-produced version.
In addition, the high cost of handmade Bibles (as much as 500 gold florins)
suggested a profitable market for less expensive printed copies. It is not clear,
but it may be that Gutenberg’s vision of this market spurred his invention
of the movable type press rather than the reverse. De Hamel (2001) reports
that Gutenberg and his colleagues displayed specimen sheets at conferences
in Frankfurt in 1454 and 1455. There, they took orders from the noblemen
and princes who had gathered to plan a military campaign to retake
Constantinople from the Turks. As a result, all copies of Gutenberg’s Bible
were pre-sold before their printing was completed. One luxury option was
to have the book printed on parchment rather than paper. Thus promotion,
market segmentation, and price lining were marketing techniques employed
even at this early date.
The development of moveable type by Gutenberg was only one key to
mass-producing Bibles. It was not until the Protestant Reformation began
with Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses in 1517 that the religious climate
began to change to make a Bible for the masses a real possibility. And it
was not until William Tyndale’s 1526 English translation of the New
Testament that the Bible began actually to reach the masses. In 1536 Tyndale
was strangled and burned for this heresy, but with some 50,000 copies
printed, the Reformation gained momentum and the Bible began to become
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a part of English life (Anderson 1996). Henry VIII’s conversion to Protestantism in order to obtain a divorce and marry Anne Boleyn in 1533
signaled England’s break from the Church of Rome and facilitated the
adoption of English-language Bibles, including those of Tyndale’s former
assistant, Miles Coverdale (de Hamel 2001). Martin Luther later printed
100,000 copies of his own translation of the Bible in German and soon the
Bible was available in all the major spoken languages of Europe.
Daniell (2003) suggests that it is because of Tyndale that Christians pray
“Give us this day our daily bread” rather than: “We should be obliged for
Your attention in providing our nutritional needs and for so organizing
the distribution that our daily intake of cereal filler be not in short supply”
(p. 133).
The latter alternative was really from a parody by Brown of British civil
servant speech (1947, p. 6), but it gives a feel for the importance of language
in conveying memorable phrases. Tyndale translated directly from Hebrew
and Greek and he was a gifted writer. Since his time, there have been more
than 900 fresh translations of the Bible in the UK and the US as well as
more than 3,000 new editions (Daniell 2003). Of the subsequent translations, the 1611 King James version has had the greatest staying power
and remains the best-selling version today, with special popularity among
fundamentalist Protestants. For its adherents, the KJV is the most accurate
version of the Bible, and to criticize it is blasphemy (Daniell 2003). Even
though it is referred to as the “Authorized Version” it was never authorized
and this designation only appeared on KJV Bibles starting in the early
nineteenth century.
Spreading the Word
In terms of distributing the Bible, for-profit sales have been part of the
picture ever since Gutenberg. Non-profit distribution of the Bible has also
existed for nearly as long. Fifteenth-century Catholic missionaries from
Europe began distributing Catholic Bibles to many parts of the globe.
Protestant missionaries were not far behind. But translation of the Bible into
non-European languages didn’t begin until 1629 when portions of the New
Testament were translated into Malay (Wycliffe n.d.). By 1662 John Eliot
had translated the Bible into the language of the Massachusetts Indians in
America. Eliot’s Indian Bible, the Manusse Wunneetupanatamwe Up-Biblum
God, has been called “the most important unreadable book in the world”
(de Hamel 2001, p. 270), because it was the first Bible printed in the New
World. Islamic missionaries and traders did their own evangelizing and
spreading of the Word through the Qu’ran.
The Crusades of medieval Europe attempted to conquer Muslim nations
and claim their lands for Christendom. But later Christian missionary movements were the soft side of the colonialist expansion undertaken by European
and American nations. They aimed at winning “heathen” souls and left the
22 Russell Belk
occupation of the heathens’ lands to their home nations’ military and government. An indication of the zeal for evangelizing in the less economically
developed world is the explosion of Bible societies dedicated to spreading
the Word of God by translating and distributing Bibles. In 1792 the English
Baptist Society was established, followed by the London Missionary Society
in 1795, the Church Missionary Society in 1799, and the British and Foreign
Bible Society in 1804 (de Hamel 2001). The latter organization became
the model for other national Bible societies with international ambitions.
They were founded in the Netherlands in 1814, the United States in 1816,
and Russia in 1821, with members drawn from Anglican, Lutheran, and
Reformed Churches. In some countries members were also Orthodox and
Roman Catholic (Robertson 1996).
As de Hamel (2001) points out, many nineteenth- and twentieth-century
histories highlight the number of translations of the Bibles in a way suggesting this as evidence of the march of civilization. He further observes that:
“It is no longer so easy to judge whether European missionaries imported
more culture than they destroyed, or whether motives of colonialism and commercial advantage were scarcely concealed beneath the cover of pious philanthropy” (de Hamel 2001, p. 288). There is considerable evidence, especially
in Africa, that capitalism, colonialism, and Christianity were seen as highly
linked with one another (Belk 2000). David Livingstone helped popularize
the view that the “three Cs” of commerce, civilization, and Christianity
supported and depended upon one another (Saneh 1989, p. 105).
Bible societies also distribute Bibles domestically and with 136 national
Bible Societies this activity too covers much of the world (American Bible
Society 2005). As with missionaries, the Bible Societies also became enmeshed
in business considerations (Wosh 1994). In 2004, the American Bible Society
distributed 3.5 million Bibles and 35 million Scriptures (American Bible
Society 2005). Funded by contributions and endowments, their targets
include correctional facilities, youth groups, and churches. The Gideons,
founded in 1899, is another prominent non-profit Bible-distributing organization. It distributes more than 52 million Bibles annually in 179 countries
according to the organization’s website (www.gideonsinternational.com).
They are best known for placing Bibles in hotel rooms, but also distribute to
hospitals, prisons, schools, and the military. In Marriott hotels, the Latter-Day
Saint owners instead place the Book of Mormon. According to one estimate,
altogether such organizations give away more than half a billion Bibles or
portions of Bibles each year (www.biblesociety.org/wr_350/sdr_1999.htm).
Selling the Word
The distribution of so many free copies of the Bible, coupled with the fact
that the average bookstore customer already owns seven Bibles (Garrett
1999), might suggest that there would be little market left for Bible sellers.
Such a conclusion would be quite wrong. One of the early strategies to make
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the Bible more saleable was to include pictures, like those that seventeenthcentury English booksellers bought of German and Dutch biblical scenes and
then bound into English Bibles for resale (de Hamel 2001, p. 249). This
increased the attractiveness of the Bibles without violating the copyrights
that had been given to the university presses of Oxford and Cambridge.
Another tactic by the eighteenth century was also to attach commentary,
maps, and explanatory notes to the Authorized Version of the Bible. Still
others devised the idea of family Bibles and promoted them as being educational. Other tactics used to add value to the Bibles being sold were to
produce special bindings, overly large versions, and miniature versions.
In the US, Philadelphia printer, Mathew Carey, set out in 1789 to print
a Bible in 48 weekly parts to be purchased by subscription (Daniell 2003).
Although the plan fell apart, within two years he was producing whole Bibles
for as little as $3.50 apiece. In 1796 Carey hired a salesman to travel the US
selling his Bibles and stimulating interest in a planned folio edition. He
eventually produced more than 60 different editions over a 20-year period.
This made him a household name but failed to secure his fortune owing to
high distribution costs (Daniell 2003, p. 629). His success also prompted a
flood of competing Bibles and biblical material using such novelties as daily
quotations, miniatures, family Bibles, picture puzzle Bibles for children, and
slim decorated volumes. There were few distinct American translations in
this period, but one was completed by Noah Webster in 1833. The New
York publisher, Harper & Brothers, produced an innovative Bible in 1846
that included over 1,600 illustrations (de Hamel 2001, p. 262). They called
it an “Illuminated Pictorial Bible” in an effort (falsely) to invoke the elaborately illuminated manuscript Bibles of the Middle Ages. They also claimed
that the illustrations faithfully represented the authentic architecture,
costumes, people, and locales of biblical lands.
It was not until the American Civil War ended in 1865 that American
print culture began to flourish and introduce more non-biblical material into
American homes. Prior to this, with little else to read, the Bible was both
well diffused and frequently read by American families (Gutjahr 1999,
pp. 18–19). Although the Bible was subsequently less often read, it became
even more prominent in Victorian households, with special pulpit-like
pedestals to display the household copy as the centerpiece of the parlor. This
was tied to the sacralizing of the home as a haven in a heartless world, as a
counterpoint to the advancing Industrial Revolution and factory work. With
the increased visibility of Bibles within the home, the importance of size,
binding, color, paper quality, and illustrations all increased as well. As
choices proliferated, the Bible became an object of conspicuous consumption
and consumerism rather than a simple object of religious instruction and
devotion (Moore 1994). Not only were Bibles prominent in the Victorian
American home, so were all manner of religious objects (or kitsch), including
needlepoint biblical scenes, wax crosses, chromolithographs of scripture
verses, family hymn books, and cathedral clocks (McDannell 1986, 1992).
24 Russell Belk
It is hardly an exaggeration to say that homes became churches, whether
Protestant or Catholic. However, even in the supposedly sexually repressed
Victorian era, Bibles marketed in England had special bracketed sections “to
be omitted from family reading” and instead reserved for reading by the
“Master of the Family.” In contrast Bibles targeted to women featured
charming children, saintly women, and vignettes of family life (Carpenter
2003). Besides gender segmentation, the use of sex appeal (including ample
nude biblical scenes) indicates both development in Biblical marketing techniques (i.e. sex sells) and a further counter to the stereotype of prudish
Victorians (Stearns 1994).
At the same time, Bibles in the Victorian home were cherished as treasured
family possessions and heirlooms rather than mere commodities (McDannell
1995, pp. 86–7). It was a marker of family history, a repository of family
records, a constant in a changing world, and a symbolic representation of
household values. It was a vehicle through which Victorian mothers ideally
imparted these values to their children.
If there were few American translations of the Bible earlier, the twentieth
century brought numerous new Bibles. They include the American Standard
Version (1901), the Revised Standard Version (1952), the New Revised Standard
Version (1991), the Good News Bible (1976), the New Catholic Study Bible
(1985), the New International Version (1978), the Jerusalem Bible (1966), the
New Jerusalem Bible (1985), the Contemporary English Version (1985), the New
American Bible (1970), the Catholic Study Bible (1990), and others. As is
evident from the dates, the majority of these titles were published after World
War II during a period of rapidly escalating American affluence. Between
1952 and 1990, 55 million copies of the Revised Standard Version were sold
(Daniell 2003). But, as noted earlier, the King James Version continues to
be the most popular.
During the twentieth century there was also an explosion of Bible publishers and retailers in the US. Early in the century the dominant method of
Bible-selling continued to be door-to-door traveling salespeople, whose sometimes unscrupulous tactics are portrayed in the fictional film, Paper Moon
(Bogdanovich 1973), and whose decline is depicted in the documentary,
Salesman (Maysles et al. 1968). Traveling salespeople and Sunday schools
began to be displaced by bookstores as the key means of Bible retailing after
World War II. In 1950 the Christian Bookstores Association (CBA) was
founded with 25 member stores (Cusic 1990). By 1985, the CBA had 3,400
member stores and there were an estimated 5,200–5,500 Christian bookstores
in total (Cusic 1990). By the end of the 1970s the CBA reported that member stores did about $1 billion in sales (Brown 2001, p. 69). As of 1975, it
was estimated that only 40 percent of Bible sales were made by Christian
bookstores and less than 1 percent direct to consumers (Dessauer et al. 1987).
More recent trends have been for more sales of Bibles by mainline retailers,
including K-Mart, Wal-Mart, Target, Barnes & Noble, Borders, and Amazon.
com. Although large Christian chains of stores such as Family Christian
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Stores, Lifeway, and Logos have also become prominent in the market, more
Christian bookstore chains have been purchased by non-Christian corporations as the industry has consolidated (Brown 2001).
Similar trends can be seen among American publishers of Bibles.
Geographically there have been three main centers of Christian publishing.
Nashville Tennessee and Chicago Illinois became leading Bible-publishing
towns in the late nineteenth century, while Grand Rapids Michigan emerged
as a second center in the early twentieth century (Dessauer et al. 1987). The
“Big 5” of companies by 1975 were Thomas Nelson, Revell, Tyndale, Word,
and Zondevan (Brown 2001). Thomas Nelson subsequently acquired Word
and Harper & Row acquired Zondervan. As Brown (2001) notes, with large
companies such as Zondervan now owned by secular companies and other
large companies, including Thomas Nelson, now publicly traded, there is
increasing pressure to maintain high profit levels and to innovate in order
to tap new markets.
Technological and religious change: Part II
The drive toward profits, new markets, and innovation has been facilitated
by another wave of technological and religious change. Most of the publishing
houses in Nashville were previously associated with particular denominations
although this too is changing as the competition has shifted from interdenominational rivalries to liberal versus conservative rivalry (Wuthnow
1988) and as Americans themselves become a more eclectic nation of seekers
with less religious loyalty to a single religion, much less denomination (Miller
2004; Roof 1999). The Jesus Movement in the 1970s, the New Age
Movement starting about the same time (Apikos 1992), and televangelists
of the 1980s (O’Guinn and Belk 1989), and the “What Would Jesus Do?”
(WWJD) movement begun in the 1990s, were all big factors stimulating
religious sales and they too had a broad ecumenical base. In 2002 the
CBA estimated that Christian publishing was a $4.2 billion industry with
$2.5 billion of that sold through Christian retailers and $1 billion sold
through general retailers (see http://web.utk.edu/~wrobinso/561_lec_rel.
html).
A key result has been a broadening of Christian bookstores’ product lines
and a series of brand extensions for Bibles. In these stores sales of books,
Bibles, and Sunday school texts declined from 68 percent in 1978 to 49
percent in 1993 (McDannell 1995). Prominent among the merchandise categories that displaced printed material were music, gifts, cards, videos, toys,
crafts, jewelry, and art. An example of these new items is the video series of
animated Christian cartoons, “Veggie Tales,” whose videos had sold more
than 20 million copies by 2001 (www.bigidea.com/company/ourstory.htm).
The tales about talking vegetables, loosely based on Bible stories, are
designed to entertain children. The company’s product line now includes
story books, coloring books, music CDs, CD-ROM games, and plush toys.
26 Russell Belk
Theme park tie-ins, theatrical releases, and television syndication all confirm
that these low-key Bible tales have tapped a mainstream market. This success
supports Griffin’s (1986) observation that after years of ghettoizing itself by
selling only to evangelical Christians, religious publishing has begun to
target the general audience.
Besides a large variety of product line extensions including religious gifts,
music, clothing, jewelry, plaques, statuary, and toys, Bible spin-offs now
include religious fiction (e.g. Larsen 2000; Sanders 2004). There are even
biblical weight-loss books such as The Maker’s Diet and More of Jesus, Less of
Me. There have long been mainstream biblical story films such as The Ten
Commandments, The Robe, and Ben Hur. But more recently The Passion of the
Christ became (as of March, 2005) the ninth-largest grossing film of all time.
Predictably, there is a series of related film merchandise available, including
cups, jewelry in the form of nails from the cross, music, and a “Passion of
Christ Tear Bottle” of Swarovski crystal for $50.
And what of the Bible itself? Besides the Bible on audio tape, videotape,
CD-ROM, DVD, PDA-ware and the Internet, a variety of specialized and
niche Bibles have been developed in the past several years. They include the
Sports Devotional Bible, the Extreme Teen Bible, The Edge Devotional Bible
(including sidebar stories about five multi-ethnic characters who learn the
Bible along with the reader), the comic-based Lion Graphic Bible, Varsity
Color Bibles (done in school colors), and r father n hvn: up 2 d8 txts frm d Bible
– a translation of the Bible into text messaging language (Winston 2002).
The latter Bible includes beatitudes like “hpy ru por” and the Lord’s Prayer
beginning “dad@hvn, ur spshl”. There are also “collector’s editions” of The
Message Remix featuring such special packaging as a lunchbox with The Book
inside and a backpack containing The Book (Winston 2003). There is also
The Boys Bible (NIV) with an abundance of graphics and sidebars, including
tips from the Bible in developing the reader into someone who is “smarter,
stronger, deeper, and cooler.” It also includes spaces for doodling and
sketching (“Make It Stick”), interesting and humorous facts about the Bible
(“Get a Load of This”), and gross facts in the Bible (“Gross!”). Spin-off short
volumes directed to the same audience include Weird & Gross Bible Stuff,
Bible Heroes & Bad Guys, Creepy Creatures & Bizarre Beasts from the Bible, Bible
Fortresses, Temples & Tombs, and Bible Weapons & Wars.
Teen girls, besides having their own Young Women of Faith Bible, are
appealed to with a slick photo-laden Cosmopolitan-type magazine called
Resolve. It is actually the New Testament in serial form, together with beauty
secrets, fashion hints, stories about guys, and shopping tips (Blitzer 2003).
The first issue sold more than 160,000 copies. No wonder; there are few
other Bibles with headlines such as “Guys speak out on tons of important
issues,” “Beauty secrets you’ve never heard before,” and “How to get along
with your mom and other relationship notes.”
The “What Would Jesus Do?” movement has also spawned an array of
new biblical books with titles such as What Would Jesus Eat?, The What
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Would Jesus Eat Cookbook?, The Bible Cure for Irritable Bowel Syndrome, and The
Bible Cure for Candida and Yeast Infections. The WWJD movement also
offers an array of merchandise including bracelets, baseball caps, coffee mugs,
t-shirts, jewelry, pens, and music. The movement has also sparked discussion of what Jesus would drive, where Jesus would bank, and what Bible
Jesus would use today. A single WWJD items manufacturer sold more than
$9 million worth of such merchandise in 1998 (Haley et al. 2001).
In the race to compete in the newly vitalized Bible market, there is also
a gender neutral Bible (Robinson 2005) and others targeted to the AfricanAmerican and Latino markets (http://web.utk.edu/~wrobinso/561_lec_rel.
html). Advertising for Bibles has also become hip with one publisher using
a $7 million ad budget to launch its new Bible (Beatty 1999). Media personalities such as figure-skater Tara Lipinski and comedian and talk-show host
Sinbad pitch the new Bibles while musical backgrounds by Smokey Robinson
and other familiar singers are also featured in the ads. In order to compete
with such Bible-selling efforts, even the non-profit American Bible Society
has begun to use videos, Christian singing groups, CD-ROM Bibles, and
distributions at Olympics and World’s Fairs. Display is also important; one
study by the Christian Booksellers Association found that 43 percent of religious books sold are bought on impulse (Harrison 1996). If he had lived to
see it, no doubt Johannes Gutenberg would be pleased with the hot new
Bible market.
Conclusions
In reflecting on the new visual trajectory of the Bible, Daniell (2003) offers
the following caution: “There is no knowing . . . whether . . . ‘cartoon’ stories
about King David and his warriors performed by American vegetables will
lead to full personal experience of Christ through the Bible . . . faith may
move mountains, but that seems unlikely” (p. 770). His concern is less that
such treatment is sacrilegious than a fear that visual images are more
ephemeral and will lack the impact of the written Word. Moore (1994) sees
accommodation to such market trends as something Christian churches had
to do in order to be competitive with secular forms of entertainment. But
it is possible to see the more recent trends in Bible selling as more of a proactive rather than reactive strategy.
By utilizing contemporary media, advertising, distribution, and “packaging” to promote the Bible, these companies – Christian and non-Christian
alike – may be moving into a more complete integration of religion and
consumer culture. Rather than seeing God and Mammon or God and Caesar
as oppositional forces representing the sacred and the profane (Belk et al.
1989), contemporary marketing techniques may well be effacing the opposition between the commercial and the religious. As Miller (2004) and Roof
(1999) suggest, like politics, religion too can now be seen as an area of
consumer choice. Some have even suggested that a somber sacred reading
28 Russell Belk
of the Bible misses its inherent humor (Detweiler and Taylor 2003).
Regardless of whether the motives are to profit from entering the religious
market, to entertain, or to be more effective in winning souls, the means are
the same. By packaging the Bible and other aspects of religion in a more
attractive fashion, the marketing tactics of religious publishers, retailers,
Bible Societies, and Churches are, perhaps, less visible than those of the
missionaries and Bible salespeople of old. Rather than banging on doors with
a hard-sell message, they are learning to be both more subtle and seductive
in their messages; in other words, more like the many other messages that
surround consumers today. As the lines blur between sacred and secular
sellers, popular slogans such as WWJD become as normalized as Madonna’s
once shocking appropriation of a highly charged religious name as well as
the key Christian icon, the cross. Secular brands may still stop short of the
blasphemy of claiming that Jesus endorses their offering, but religion seems
very happy with having pop entertainment stars endorse their own products.
Further cross-over (my apologies) in both directions between secular and
religious selling seems increasingly likely, so long as it remains profitable.
And if times get bad, so much the better. Unlike most products, the Bible
sells especially well in tough economic times, during wars, and under the
uncertain conditions of terrorism (Kellner 2001; Miller 1992).
Although some Bibles are marketed with covers that hide the fact that
they are Bibles or in forms that look like fashion and beauty magazines, the
WWJD movement has also made it popular to display religion as a “brand.”
Displaying such items is a sign of belonging as well as a statement of conviction. As one of Haley et al.’s (2001) informants said, “I love wearing my
Jesus T-shirt. It says ‘hey, I am supporting the winning team’” (p. 279). On
the other hand, others of their Christian informants regarded the Biblerelated merchandise as an inappropriate commodification and exploitation of
their religion. The point is well taken, but it is an indictment of consumer
culture as much as of commercial Christianity. Furthermore, the argument
might be taken in the other direction since it could be charged, for example,
that fan cultures (Hills 2002) such as those surrounding sports teams (Price
2000), musicians (Doss 2004), or computers (Belk and Tumbat 2005; Muñiz
and Schau 2005) have become religions. As with these true believers, contemporary consumers of Bibles and other religious merchandise might well be
said to be shopping for a self (Lyon 2000). The search for meaning in life
has become less transcendent and more couched in terms of individual identity. It has become something we believe we can patch together from objects
purchased in the marketplace and made to stand for the self.
From a marketing perspective, one might think that the Bible is a rather
inflexible product to adapt to the variegated desires of consumers in a changing religious marketplace. However, as I have tried to show, there is a great
deal of innovation taking place in the way this singular text is marketed. As
Winston (2002) observes:
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The Good Book, Bible publishers point out, is also a very old book, full
of archaic references, outdated language, and ancient lineages and
conflicts too hard for today’s reader to follow. So if they want to keep
their share of this evergreen market – and they do – publishers must
revise, revise, revise.
(p. 53)
And as with different brands of cola or laundry detergent, the package may
be just as important as the product in creating meaning and sustaining a
cadre of loyal followers.
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www.gender-news.com/article.php?id=62.
Roof, W. (1999) Spiritual Marketplace: Babyboomers and the Remaking of American Religion,
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Saneh, L. (1989) Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture, Maryknoll, NY:
Orbis Books.
Sanders, K. (2004) ‘Religion as Mainstream Pop Culture: Bible-based Books, Films Now
Commercial Successes’, MSNBC News, 30 March, http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4632374/.
Selling God’s book 31
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Stearns, P. (1994) American Cool: Construction Twentieth-Century Emotional Style, New York:
New York University Press.
Winston, K. (2002) ‘Call It the Year of the Upgrade’, Publishers Weekly, 249 (41), 14
October, 53–7.
–––– (2003) ‘You Can Judge A (Good) Book By Its Cover’, Publishers Weekly, 240 (41),
32–6.
Woodard, J. (1995) ‘The Gospel According to Hype’, Alberta Report/Newsmagazine, 22
(25), 5 June, 32–3.
Wosh, P.J. (1994) Spreading the Word: The Bible Business in Nineteenth-Century America,
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Wuthnow, R. (1988) The Restructuring of American Religion: Society and Faith since World
War II, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Wycliffe Bible Translators, Inc. (n.d.) ‘A History of Bible Translation’, www.
wycliffe.org/history/BibleTranslation.htm.
3
The extraordinary tale of
an eight point eight million
dollar book
Michael Thomas
The place: Christie’s, New York. The date: Friday, 10 March 2000. The only
item up for auction that day was a book, The Birds of America, by John James
Audubon, offered for sale by ‘John C. Bute, 7th Marquis of Bute, of Mount
Stuart on the Isle of Bute’ (Christie’s 2000). Before this day the highest price
recorded for a copy of this nineteenth-century masterpiece was $4.1 million.
On this day the hammer finally came down at $8.8 million. The purchaser:
Sheik Khalifa Bin-Hamad Al-Thani. The four-volume work now resides in
a dedicated conservation centre in the Gulf State of Qatar.
John James Audubon (1785–1851) created The Birds of America. It
embodies the most extraordinary tale of grit, determination and artistic
ability. The central character of the story is a Frenchman, a self-invented
frontiersman, whose portrait now hangs in the White House, home of the
President of the United States. That the book exists, and now sells for the
price of an Old Master painting, is due in no small degree to two Scotsmen
and the Scottish Enlightenment.
Let us begin at the beginning – not at the book’s conception, but at its
author’s conception. Captain Jean Audubon, of Nantes, on a voyage to Santo
Domingo, now Haiti, took a fancy to one of his passengers, a housemaid of
Nantes named Jeanne Rabine. He set her up in the house on his plantation
at Les Cayes, and on 26 April 1785, a son was born, named Jacques Fougere
Audubon. His mother died within a few months of his birth and Jacques
was repatriated to Nantes, slave unrest threatening the peace, to be raised
by the good captain’s wife. Anne Moynet treated Jacques as if he were her
own child. Under French law, bastards were denied inheritance, so the son’s
origins were totally concealed. Anne Moynet educated Jacques, and instilled
in him a love of nature, a love that would profoundly influence the boy’s
entire life.
Jacques Audubon turned 18 at the beginning of the Napoleonic Wars.
Captain Audubon, anticipating the actions of many caring parents during a
subsequent war two centuries later, the Vietnam War, packed off his son to
America in order to avoid the draft. Landing in New York in August 1803,
Jacques registered his name as John James LeForest Audubon. This is where
our tale of the conception, execution and marketing of The Birds of America
Extraordinary tale of an $8.8 million book
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begins. John James Audubon
transformed the artistic rendering of birds, because he became
an excellent artist and because
he knew his subjects as a result
of hours spent in the field
studying them – before shooting them, mounting them and
painting them.
Audubon’s artistic excellence
may be compared with two of
his predecessors. Mark Catesby
(1683–1749), an Englishman,
had produced the first American
bird book containing coloured
plates. The Natural History of
Carolina (1731) included plates
engraved by the artist himself,
colours added by hand colourists
Figure 3.1 J.J. Audubon, self-portrait
copied from the original watercolours. Catesby pioneered the
Reproduced by kind permission of the University
of Liverpool Art Gallery and Collections.
promotion and marketing of
such a book, selling by subscription against forward delivery. The Natural History of Carolina was produced in
fascicles, buyers agreeing to pay in advance for each batch of pictures. The book
was made available in two issues, one coloured, one uncoloured, two guineas
and one guinea respectively, and was a considerable financial success.
Catesby’s book inspired an emigrant Scot, Alexander Wilson (1766–1813),
a native of Paisley, an admirer of Tom Paine, and an itinerant poet. In
Scotland, Wilson had to compete with Robert Burns in the poetry market,
and his radical ideas got him into trouble with the mill-owners of Paisley.
He emigrated and was to become known as ‘the father of American
ornithology’. Wilson, knowing of Catesby’s work, set out to complete a definitive work: Catesby covered 100 species; Wilson’s book, a five-volume work,
American Ornithology (1802–25), would cover 250 species. Wilson was an
excellent ornithologist and entirely self-taught as an artist. Comparing
Catesby’s pictures of birds with those of Wilson, one can easily observe a
progression. Catesby’s portraits are somewhat wooden, obviously painted
from skins. Wilson’s portraits are more animated, reflecting Wilson’s knowledge of the living bird – he worked with watercolour in the field. But it
was Audubon, a contemporary of Wilson, who was to excel, setting an
entirely new standard for the painting of birds.
Living initially at his father’s estate Mill Grove, near Philadelphia,
Audubon was also largely self-taught. His initial trials were graphically
described by the artist:
34 Michael Thomas
I labored in wood cork and Wires, and formed a grotesque figure which
I cannot describe in any other terms than by telling you that when sat
up it was a very tolerable looking ‘Dodo’! A friend present laughed
heartily and raised my blood by assuring me, that as far as I might wish
to represent a Tame Gander or bird of that sort my Model would do. –
I gave it a kick, demolished it to atoms, walked off and thought again.
(Irmscher 1999, p. 760)
He then shot two Blue Jays, brought them into his studio, and with the aid
of a wire armature, he posed his birds as he had seen them in the field. This
technique was used in all of Audubon’s subsequent work and gave his
portraits a lifelike quality that marked him apart from his predecessors.
He was also a better artist technically than Catesby or Wilson. He discovered this at a chance meeting with Wilson himself. Audubon had moved
west, his Mill Grove business having failed. In March 1810, he was living
with his new wife, Lucy Bakewell, formerly of Derbyshire, in the ‘Indian
Queen’, a hostelry in Louisville, Kentucky (Delatte 1982). Wilson was,
himself, on a promotional tour. The second volume of his American Ornithology
had already been published, and he was signing up subscribers in Pittsburgh
and points west, as well as observing and painting in a part of America which
at that time had only recently been settled, and where nature was relatively
abundant. On 17 March 1810 he found a room at the ‘Indian Queen’. Since
meals were taken communally, he found himself in the company of Mr and
Mrs Audubon. Audubon was a merchant in Louisville, and two days later,
Wilson called at the business to secure a subscription to his American
Ornithology. Audubon was interested in Wilson’s paintings, and was about
to sign up for a subscription, when his French partner, Rozier, speaking in
French, advised Audubon against so doing: ‘My dear Audubon, what induces
you to subscribe to this work? Your drawings are certainly better, and again,
you must know as much about the habits of American birds as this
gentleman’ (Souder 2004: 110). At this moment Wilson asked to see
Audubon’s paintings. Wilson was impressed. The die was cast. Audubon saw
that he was a better artist, that he could produce a better book. Wilson went
on to complete his American Ornithology, covering 250 species. When
Audubon’s The Birds of America was done, it covered 497 species. The book
was conceived on that day in Louisville.
The details of Audubon’s subsequent life need not be recited here. He has
many biographers (Herrick 1938; Rhodes 2004; Souder 2004). Once
embarked upon his plan to complete a definitive book of American bird illustrations – engraved copies of his paintings – his extraordinary dedication to
the task has an epic quality. Through failed business ventures, due largely
to his disinterest in business and preference for the outdoors, long periods
away from home, either finding new birds or promoting his (proposed) book,
living on the edge of poverty – his wife Lucy was the breadwinner for many
years – Audubon worked on. The threat of failure was never far off. He tried
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to gain subscribers in Philadelphia, then the cultural and scientific capital
of the US, but he failed to find even an engraver prepared to work for him.
Philadelphia had been Alexander Wilson’s base. Wilson had died in 1813,
at the age of 47, but his supporters, particularly George Ord, made sure that
Audubon would fail to find any real support in the city. Charles-Lucien
Bonaparte, nephew of Napoleon, was a well-regarded Philadelphia citizen,
with a serious interest in natural history. He was the first person who really
understood the nature of Audubon’s achievement as an artist. As a naturalist,
Bonaparte brought a discerning eye to Audubon’s work. The paintings were
beautiful, life-sized, and they captured the spirit of the living bird. Bonaparte
knew that no one had painted birds in this way before. But not even
Napoleon’s nephew could break into the Philadelphia establishment. Failure
in Philadelphia in 1824 drove Audubon to consider crossing the Atlantic
Ocean to secure support and subscribers in Great Britain, a country more
used to supporting artistic ventures. Audubon worked for over a year,
teaching French, music, dancing and drawing, in order to finance his trip.
Audubon said goodbye to his wife and son on 25 April 1826. He was to
be 41 the following day. At noon on his birthday, 18 May, accompanied by
his tin-lined wooden portfolios containing over 300 watercolour paintings,
he boarded the Delos in New Orleans harbour and his transatlantic passage
began. He landed in Liverpool on 21 July, 64 days later.
In Liverpool he stayed with a well-connected merchant family, the
Rathbones. Their connections led to an exhibition of his paintings at the
Liverpool Royal Institution, which over 400 people attended (Hart-Davis
2003: 59). His paintings drew plaudits and support from the 13th Earl of
Derby, Lord Edward Stanley, who said to Audubon, ‘I assure you that this
work of yours is unique, and deserves the patronage of the Crown’ (Rhodes
2004: 257). Doors began to open.
Audubon was a striking figure. A contemporary memoir records:
The man . . . was not a man to be seen and forgotten, or passed on the
pavement without glances of surprise and scrutiny. The tall and somewhat stooping form, the clothes not made by a West-end but a Far West
tailor, the steady, rapid, springing step, the long hair, the aquiline
features, and the glowing angry eyes – the expression of a handsome
man conscious of ceasing to be young, and an air and manner which told
you that whoever you might be he was John James Audubon – will never
be forgotten by anyone who knew or saw him.
(Herrick 1938, p. 77)
By the third week in October 1826, Audubon had reached Edinburgh –
via Manchester. It is said that Audubon was a great admirer of Sir Walter
Scott and was anxious to meet the man. Correspondence exists showing that
Scott responded to Audubon:
36 Michael Thomas
I can easily and truly say, that what I have had the pleasure of seeing,
touching your talents and manners, corresponds with all I have heard in
your favour; and I am a sincere believer in the extent of your scientific
attainments.
(Herrick 1938: 368)
Audubon no doubt found this helpful to his selling and promotional activities (an early example of celebrity endorsement perhaps?).
Edinburgh was the Athens of the North, the centre of the Scottish
Enlightenment, the centre of scientific enquiry. The presence of Professor
Robert Jameson, the doyen of Scottish natural historians, Robert Knox, the
anatomist, and Sir William Jardine, editor of The Naturalist’s Library, was
pivotal to Audubon’s reception into the heart of the Edinburgh establishment
(Chalmers 2003). Audubon knew that he had to ‘convert’ the Edinburghers
to his project:
When, as an unheralded figure just emerged from the backwoods of
America, he first showed his drawings in Europe . . . the immediate presence of both the man and his work was greeted with surprise and wonder.
When they were publicly exhibited at Edinburgh in 1826, one French
critic recalled that the drawings seemed more than brilliant ornithological studies executed on a brave new scale; they brought Europe a fresh
poetic vision of America in all its wild abundance. They fired the imagination, as did the man himself – this lithe and handsome woodsman
with his curly chestnut hair falling to his shoulders and his strange and
vivid tales.
(Davidson 1966, p. xii)
He wrote to Lucy on 21 December 1826:
I cannot yet say that I will ultimately succeed but at present all bears a
better prospect than I ever expected to see. I think this under the eyes of
the most discerning people in the world – I mean Edinburgh – if it takes
here it cannot fail anywhere it is not the naturalist that I wish to please
altogether I assure Thee it is the wealthy part of the community the first
can only speak well or ill of me but the latter will fill my pockets.
(Sanders 1986, p. 205)
Audubon held an exhibition of his paintings, and lectured to the Wernerian
Society and to the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He took five engravings of his
paintings to the Royal Society and noted that ‘the astonishment of everyone
was great and I saw with pleasure many eyes look from them to me’ (Rhodes
2004: 285). Soon thereafter he was unanimously admitted to Fellowship of
the Royal Society – after Benjamin Franklin only the second foreigner to be
admitted. John Syme, a society painter, did his portrait at the time, clearly
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showing what a striking figure he must have been. This portrait is now in
the Red Room of the White House, Washington. At the Royal Society he
met a distinguished lithographer and painter, William Home Lizars
(1788–1859), who quickly agreed to engrave, colour and publish his paintings. He had seen Audubon’s painting of the Great Footed Hawk (peregrine
falcon) and said, ‘I will engrave and publish this . . .’. The moment is caught
in a poem by Pamela Alexander:
EDINBURGH
This morning I opened a window onto yet a third city
and leaned out, hands on the sill, to look for persons
coming to see my work describing Birds those exponents
of magnificence, of wilderness unimaginable
in this smoky place – creatures who bind the sky
to the earth these sensible people walk upon, the earth
that feels them walking! – Well, I stood there
staring out, so long,
that Ladies and errand boys who passed below
must have marked me mad – that I slapped the sill
and bolted down the stairs straight to Mr Neill’s counting house
at Fish Market close, along the row of clerks
whose faces turned up as I passed, their paleness like foam sliding
along a wave top. I told their employer I was a simple person
of direct manner and who did not wish to offend,
But as he had not responded to my letter of introduction since two days
I begged him to tell me if I was not good enough to be considered
and I would be on my way. I would have said more
but he took both his hat and my arm
and propelled me to the business of Mr Lizars, Engraver,
who took my other arm, and so to my lodging.
My anxiety was great, overcoming my embarrassment
upon noticing I had worn slippers the whole event. (This business
of civilisation is fiddly – one must not walk out without a hat and key
and purse, I disprefer it.) Mr Lizars talked all the way of Selby1
had I seen his drawings? They were superb! None better! I must! Etc!
I showed Cock Turkey, Hawk pouncing on partridges, Mocking bird
with Rattlesnake. His chatter stopped
as though some agitated parrot, shot,
dropped from its branch. He said ‘My god I have never seen
the like.’ At Great Footed Hawk his arms fell to his side.
‘I will publish these.’ Dear friend we have done it.
(Alexander 1991, p. 34)
The first subject was the life-size Turkey Cock, the bird that Franklin had
wanted to be the national symbol of the US. The process, intaglio printing,
38 Michael Thomas
required hand application of each colour after the black and white plate had
been printed. The process of engraving was laborious, requiring the greatest
skill in etching the plate, a copy of the original watercolour painting
(Davidson 1966). The resulting prints were then hand-coloured. Lizars’ team
of hand-colourists did not like the going rate for their labours (they were all
competent artists) so they went on strike. Audubon, however, was unstoppable. He received news of the strike while he was soliciting subscriptions
in London. Lizars, himself, suggested he look for a London engraver. Someone
directed him to the shop of Robert Havell, the most distinguished London
engraver, living at 79 Newman Street, Marylebone. Robert Havell said he
was too old to commit himself to the work required and gave the work to
his son. Robert Jr. Lizars completed only two fascicles. The remainder of the
plates in The Birds of America are the work of Robert Havell Jr. Havell also
agreed to redo the ten Lizars plates.
In September 1826, while in Manchester, and following a conversation
with Samuel Brookes, the American consul in Manchester, Audubon
concluded ‘to have a book of subscriptions open to receive the names of all
persons inclined to have the best American illustrations of that country ever
yet transmitted to posterity. And I will do so’ (Rhodes 2004: 264). Not only
the best, but the biggest. Audubon wanted his book to contain life-size
images, hence he chose, against the advice of Brookes and other experts in
the sale of books, including Henry Bohn of London, to publish in double
elephant folio, 261⁄2 × 391⁄2 inches, pages large enough to accommodate lifesize images of the largest birds. The plan was to publish ‘numbers’ of five
prints each, each number priced at two guineas, the whole to consist of 400
plates in four volumes. The first number would contain pictures of the Wild
Turkey, the Yellow-billed Cuckoo, the Prothonotary Warbler, the Purple
Finch and the Canada Warbler. Audubon also planned to write and publish
a separate set of letterpress volumes of Bird Biographies.
The economics of the venture are of interest. Audubon committed himself
to producing five numbers annually, which represented 16 years of work
from the start of printing. Lizars was to charge £140 per number and to
print 100 copies of each number. Eighty numbers would cost £11,200. In
today’s prices that sum is about $500,000. Robert Havell Jr. did the work
for less than Lizars had quoted, but at the end Audubon’s own costing was
that over 14 years, publication had cost him $115,640, ‘not counting any
of my expenses’ (Fries 1973: 114).
The first plate, the Wild Turkey, was completed by William Lizars in
Edinburgh in February 1827. The 435th plate was completed by Robert
Havell Jr. in London in June 1838. It was a portrait of two American Dippers,
all birds drawn life-size. Thus, the first three volumes contain 100 plates
each and Volume IV, 135 plates. Four hundred and ninety-seven species are
portrayed, in 1,065 figures. Six species not recorded as American species are
included: the Great Crested Grebe (Plate 292), painted during one of
Audubon’s sojourns in Britain; the Columbia Jay, Mexican; the Mangrove
Extraordinary tale of an $8.8 million book
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Hummingbird, South American; the Thick-legged Partridge, South American; and the Little Owl, European. The American Dusky Albatross (Plate
407) is recorded as having been taken off the coast of Oregon. The species
breeds in South Georgia, in the southern ocean, and off New Zealand. It is
not officially recorded as an American bird.
The entire publishing venture was borne by the artist: no grants, no
advances, no legacies. The hard graft was done by Audubon, the observer,
artist, author, and chief promoter, selling subscriptions door to door. The
doors were rather splendid, however. The list of first subscribers contains,
among others, the following names:
Her Most Excellent Majesty Queen Adelaide
His Most Christian Majesty Charles X
His Majesty Phillipe King of France
Prince Massena of Paris
His Grace the Duke of Rutland
The Right Honourable the Countess of Ravenscraft
The Right Honourable the Earl of Derby
Visconte Simeon, for the Ministry of the Interior, six copies.
His Grace the Duke of Buccleuch, Dalkeith Palace
His Imperial Majesty and Right Honourable the Grand Duke of Tuscany
The University of Edinburgh
The College of Glasgow – Trustees for the Hunterian Museum
The Provost of King’s College, Cambridge
The Radcliffe Library, Oxford University
Birmingham Old Library
(Herrick 1938: app. III)
These subscribers, wealthy businessmen, heirs and heiresses, titled nobility,
a king (George IV) or would-be king, all had to be chased and serviced.
Many fell by the wayside, unable for whatever reason, to complete their
subscriptions to the 80 numbers.
The Prospectus for the book reads:
Under the Particular Patronage and Approbation
Of
His Most Gracious Majesty
THE BIRDS OF AMERICA
By
JOHN JAMES AUDUBON
40 Michael Thomas
A ‘blurb’, as it would be called today, states that the book:
consists in every specimen being in the full size of life, portrayed with
a degree of accuracy as to proportion and outline, the result of peculiar
means discovered and employed by the Author, and lately exhibited to
a meeting of the Wernerian Society . . . The author has not contented
himself with single profiles of the originals, but in very many instances
he has grouped them, as it were, at their natural avocations, in all sorts
of attitudes . . . Some are seen pursuing with avidity their prey through
the air, or searching diligently their food among the fragrant foliage;
whilst others of an aquatic nature swim, wade or glide over their allotted
element.
(Hart-Davis 2003, p. 111)
In a letter attributed to J. Prescott Hall, New York, dated 4 April 1844,
he writes, ‘Mr Audubon told me . . . the following received their copies [of
The Birds of America], but never paid for them: George IV, the Duchess of
Clarence, the Marquis of Londonderry, Princess of Hesse Hamburg’ (Herrick
1938: 205). Audubon had failed to understand that a king would never
expect to pay. His first successful sale in the US was to the Library of Congress
( January 1830).
The scale of the whole enterprise is hard to grasp. Some insight may be
obtained from reading Audubon’s autobiography, contained within his
Ornithological Biography (Audubon 1832–39), which is primarily a species
account. This five-volume work was published after the completion of The
Birds of America and given to subscribers, as well as being sold separately. It
is wholly informative, containing many acute observations. Its separate publication was because the British Copyright Act of 1801 required that copies
of books containing text must be deposited in 11 libraries in the UK.2
This would have been a very costly expense in the case of The Birds of America
(at $1,000 per copy). Audubon avoided the expense by publishing the text
separately.
The Ornithological Biography’s very existence is due to another Scot.
Audubon’s first language was French, and although he wrote frequently and
at length, his English was not good. He thus engaged the services of William
MacGillivray (1796–1852), who became his amanuensis, transcribing
Audubon’s notes into the excellent English (or Scottish?) in the published
text. MacGillivray, himself an excellent ornithologist and artist, published
a five-volume work, A History of British Birds (1837–52), though it is little
known and greatly undervalued today. MacGillivray became Professor of
Natural History at Marischal College in Aberdeen from 1841 until his death.
In the Introduction to the Ornithological Biography (I, xi) Audubon paints
this picture of himself:
For a period of nearly twenty years, my life was a succession of vicissitudes. I tried various branches of commerce, but they all proved
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unprofitable, doubtless because my whole mind was forever filled with
my passion for rambling and admiring those objects of nature from which
alone I received the purest gratification. I had to struggle against the
will of all who at the period called themselves my friends. I must here,
however, except my wife and children. The remarks of my other friends
irritated me beyond endurance, and, breaking through all bonds, I gave
myself entirely up to my pursuits . . . Years were spent away from my
family. Yet, reader, will you believe it, I had no other object in view
than simply to enjoy the sight of nature. Never for one moment did I
conceive the hope of becoming in any degree useful to my kind, until I
accidentally formed acquaintance with the Prince of Musigano at
Philadelphia.
(Rhodes 2004, p. 347)
That Prince was, of course, Charles-Lucien Bonaparte, his only supporter in
Philadelphia.
He did however express confidence in his own abilities. At the start of the
Ornithological Biography he says:
I know I am not a scholar . . . but meantime I am aware that no man
living knows better than I do about the habits of our birds; no man
living has studied them as much as I have done . . . . I can at least put
down home truths.
(Hughes 1997, pp. 154–5)
William Vogt, in his Introduction to the Macmillan edition of The Birds of
America, acutely observes that ‘his climb was aided, like that of thousands
of Americans before and since, by his very American cultivation of the
art of salesmanship’ (Vogt 1937 p. vi).
But he was a very unusual salesman. In May 1827 he met Thomas Bewick
(1753–1828) in Newcastle upon Tyne. Bewick, the doyen of wood engravers
and popularizer of ornithology, was nearing the end of his life. He greeted
Audubon hospitably, and in addition to giving him encouragement, led him
to eight additional subscribers. Bewick’s kindness was rewarded: Audubon
named a North American Wren after him, Thryomanes bewickii, Bewick’s
Wren, a name still current.3
Each subscriber had agreed to take five numbers a year, paying two guineas
apiece on delivery. This meant that Audubon had to make certain that each
number was received in good condition by the subscriber, the money
collected immediately and deposited with a commercial house on which he
could draw for funds, and the appropriate records kept. For every 100
subscriptions, therefore, he had to make 500 deliveries and collections a year.
To handle this business, he had established centres at Edinburgh, Newcastle,
York, Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool and London, appointing agents who were
sometimes friends, sometimes business acquaintances (Delatte 1982: 201).
42 Michael Thomas
Audubon’s letters are a remarkable record of his impressions of the places
where he tried to secure sales and subscriptions. He made a sales visit to
Glasgow on 4 November 1827 and recorded:
I am off tomorrow morning, and perhaps forever will say farewell to
Glasgow. I have been here four days and have obtained one subscriber.
One subscriber in a city of 150,000 souls, rich, handsome and with much
learning. Think of 1400 pupils in one college! Glasgow is a fine city.
(Chalmers 2003, p. 124)
A fine city, but not a good one for selling books in! It is paradoxical that
two copies of The Birds of America can be found in the City of Glasgow today
(2005), one in the library of the University of Glasgow, one in the Mitchell
Library. Another is in nearby Paisley Public Library. No copy may be found
today in the City of Edinburgh.
Audubon had a very hard time in Paris. At a promotional exhibition in
the Royal Academy of Sciences, September 1828, nobody made a move to
subscribe. Audubon noted only gasps of ‘Bien Beau! Quel ouvrage’ followed
by ‘Quel prix!’. Three weeks later he had solicited three subscriptions. He
noted: ‘Almost as bad as Glasgow’ (Hart-Davis 2003, p. 156).
His thoughts about London, which he visited on 7 May 1834:
The Town is now what is called ‘Empty’ that is the Grandees are off
shooting Partridges, grous [sic] hares and Pheasants – Parliament is
prorogued and there is in fact no more than a million and a half of People
in town . . . half of whom are Beggars, thiefs and Blaggards of all sort
– We have an unaccountably hot summer – indeed such a[s] I might
have expected in New York . . . The Queen of these Realms had returned
in perfect safety, she was hissed at her departure and groaned at on her
return – the Irish are fighting like devils and I hope their rows will open
the Eyes of their merciless Landlords.
(Chalmers 2003, p. 158)
Audubon’s marketing instincts are illustrated in a notice he published in
London in June 1834:
Birds of America
J.J. Audubon has returned from the United States and begs to inform
his Patrons, that since his arrival, he has made arrangements with Mr.
R. Havell, his Engraver, that will enable him to complete his Work on
the Birds of America in Four Years, although originally contemplated to
require Eight Years from this period.
It is now certain that the ‘BIRDS OF AMERICA’ will be a very scarce
Work; and the Author cannot bind himself to furnish copies to those
who may neglect to order them before the Work is finished. He will,
Extraordinary tale of an $8.8 million book
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therefore, consider it a favor of those persons desiring of possessing it,
if they will forward their Orders, as soon as convenient, to J.J. Audubon,
or to Mr. Robert Havell, Zoological Gallery, 77, Oxford Street, opposite the Pantheon, London.
(Hart-Davis 2003, p. 217)
A final subscription list for the book appears as an Appendix to the
Ornithological Biography (1839), showing 161 subscribers, 79 in Europe, and
82 in North America. Since 118 copies had already been delivered, Audubon
may have secured 279 subscribers, at $1,000 each. One hundred and twenty
copies of the original complete copies are thought to be in existence today
(Low 2002: 3). Given the relatively small number of copies produced, given
the illustrious names of many of the subscribers, and given Audubon’s rising
reputation, one can argue that a collectability quotient already existed upon
the book’s completion. The recent sales history (Hart-Davis 2003, p. 272)
of The Birds of America is as follows:
1951
1959
1966
1984
1989
1993
2000
In
In
In
In
In
In
In
London
London
New York
New York
New York
New York
New York
£7,000
£13,000
$60,000
$1,540,000
$3,096,000
$4,070,000
$8,800,000
These figures dramatically demonstrate the rise in value over the $1,000
‘cover price’.
Audubon was persuaded to produce another version of The Birds of America,
a royal octavo (61⁄2 × 103⁄4 inches) version, in eight volumes. The first edition,
dated 1840–44, was produced lithographically in New York and Philadelphia with a text prepared by Audubon. The octavo edition’s popularity
and reasonable price ($100) ensured that it quickly went through seven
editions, the last dated 1870–71. It contains 500 plates.
Audubon’s other magnum opus is The Viviparus Quadrupeds of North America.
It was published under the joint authorship of John James Audubon and
John Woodhouse Audubon (his younger son, born 1812) in elephant folio
size (22 × 28 inches) in Philadelphia in 1843–48, and contained 150 plates.
It was also produced by lithography and was hand-coloured. This volume
was issued also in an octavo edition, supervised by John Woodhouse Audubon
and Victor Gifford Audubon (his elder son, born 1809), and published in
Philadelphia 1849–54. It contained 155 plates. Both Quadruped books
contain an extensive text prepared by John James Audubon and John
Bachman (Shuler 1995).
Audubon died at his home, ‘Minnie’s Land’ (in what is now known as
Morningside Heights, at the northern tip of Manhattan) on 27 January 1851
at the age of 66 years, following several years of suffering from what we now
44 Michael Thomas
call Alzheimer’s disease. Lucy Audubon lived many years more. She died on
18 June 1874, aged 87 years, having devoted her widowhood to preserving
the reputation of her husband.
Sachaverell Sitwell wrote a splendid epitaph:
The Birds of America is a heroic undertaking; and that one man should
have endured the hardships and ardours of so many long and lonely journeys, painted the pictures, written the text, and contrived the publication
upon so gigantic a scale, puts his name among the immortals.
(Fries 1973, p. xxii)
Notes
1
2
3
Prideaux John Selby was working on his Illustrations of British Ornithology at the time
of Audubon’s visit.
The British Copyright Act of 1709 required that copies of published books should
be placed in nine British libraries – Low quotes this figure in her book (2002, p. 5).
The Copyright Act of 1801, however, which was still in effect in 1831 when Audubon
began publishing The Birds of America, raised the number of libraries to 11. The
Copyright Act of 1836 reduced the number of libraries to five, but by that time,
the publication of The Birds of America was well under way.
Bewick, until very recently, had a swan named after him – Bewick’s Swan. Alas for
Bewick, the swan has lost its status as a species, to be known hereafter as Tundra
Swan.
Acknowledgements
During the preparation of this chapter, the author had the opportunity to
examine two copies of The Birds of America: at the American Philosophical
Society in Philadelphia, through the courtesy of Valerie-Ann Lutz, Assistant
Manuscripts Librarian and Registrar, and Roy Goodman, Curator of Printed
Materials, the copy subscribed to by members of the Society and presented
to the Society by Audubon himself; and at Trinity College, Hartford,
Connecticut, courtesy of Jeffrey Kaimovitz, Curator, the Enders Ornithology
Collection, the Wilkinson Library, the copy taken to America by the book’s
engraver Robert Havell Jr, (said to be the finest copy extant, since Havell
had carefully selected the best prints) and donated to the University by Dr
W. Gordon Russell. I would like to thank my wife, Nancy Yeoman Thomas,
Mary-Jean and John Hayden (Philadelphia), Professor Pauline Maclaran (De
Montfort University) and Dr Robert Nuttall (Strathclyde University) for their
interest and support.
References
Alexander, P. (1991) Commonwealth of Wings: An Ornithological Biography Based on the Life
of John James Audubon, Hanover: Wesleyan University Press.
Audubon, J.J. (1831–9) The Birds of America, from Original Drawings by John James
Audubon, elephant folio edition, 4 vols, 435 plates, London: Audubon.
Extraordinary tale of an $8.8 million book
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–––– (1831–9) Ornithological Biography, or an Account of the Habits of Birds of the United
States of America, and Interspersed with Delineations of American Scenery and Manners,
Edinburgh: Adam Black.
–––– (1840–4) The Birds of America, Royal Octavo edn, 8 vols, 500 plates, Philadelphia:
Audubon and J.B. Chevalier.
Catesby, M. (1731–43) The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands,
2 vols, London: Catesby.
Chalmers, J. (2003) Audubon in Edinburgh and his Scottish Associates, Edinburgh: The
National Museum of Scotland.
Christie’s of New York (2000) Audubon’s Birds of America, auction catalogue, 10 March
2000, New York: Christie’s.
Davidson, M.B. (ed.) (1966) The Original Water Colour Paintings for The Birds of America,
Reproduced in Colour for the First Time from the Collection at the New York Historical Society,
2 vols, New York: American Heritage Publishing Co.
Delatte, C. (1982) Lucy Audubon: A Biography, Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State
University Press.
Elphick, R. (2004) Birds: The Art of Ornithology, London: Scriptum Editions in association with the Natural History Museum, London.
Fries, W. (1973) The Double Elephant Folio: The Story of Audubon’s Birds of America, Chicago,
IL: American Library Association.
Hart-Davis, D. (2003) Audubon’s Elephant, London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson.
Herrick, F.H. (1938) Audubon the Naturalist: A History of his Life and Time, 2 vols in 1,
New York: Appleton and Co.
Hughes, R. (1997) American Visions: The Epic History of Art in America, London: The
Harvill Press.
Irmscher, C. (ed.) (1999) John James Audubon: Writings and Drawings, New York: Library
Classics of the United States.
Low, S. (2002) A Guide to Audubon’s Birds of America, New York: Reese & Co.
MacGillivray, W. (1837–1852) A History of British Birds, Indigenous and Migratory,
5 vols, London: Scott, Webster & Geary.
Ord, G. (1825) American Ornithology; Or the Natural History of the Birds of the United States,
9th of 9 vols, Philadelphia: Bradford & Inskeep. (See Wilson, A.)
Ralph, R. (1999) William MacGillivray: Creatures of Air, Land and Sea, London: Michael
Holbertson and the Natural History Museum, London.
Rhodes, R. (2004) John James Audubon: The Making of an American, New York: Borzoi
Books.
Sanders, S.R. (1986) Audubon Reader: The Best Writings of John James Audubon,
Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Shuler, J. (1995) Had I the Wings: The Friendship of Bachman and Audubon, Athens, GA:
University of Georgia Press.
Souder, W. (2004) Under a Wild Sky: John James Audubon and the Making of the Birds of
America, New York: North Point Press.
Vogt, W. (1937) Introduction to John James Audubon, The Birds of America, New York:
Macmillan Co.
Wilson, A. (1808–1825) American Ornithology; Or, the Natural History of the Birds of the
United States, 1–8 of 9 vols, Philadelphia, PA: Bradford & Inskeep. (See Ord, G.)
4
The pleasures of the
used text
Revealing traces of consumption
Janet L. Borgerson and Jonathan E. Schroeder
Small, inexpensive, and well-designed, Peter Pauper Press books fit fetchingly into a suitcoat pocket or evening bag. With dependably colorful,
decorative dust jackets and entertaining, easily digestible content, few
books could be as cheering to give and receive. Perhaps this is why so many
found their way into US upper-middle class (and striving) den bookshelves
and kitchen cupboards in the 1950s and 1960s. Peter Pauper’s attractively
printed cookbooks, poetry volumes, and lifestyle hints now recirculate
through libraries, discerning used-book stores, and as collectibles on eBay.
Tantalizing traces of consumption linger in these used books – some apparently stored, tight, and unopened, in a bedside table, forlornly filed away in
an attic trunk, or boxed and forgotten in a basement bin, while others indicate heavy use, as cherished recipe book, favorite collection of poems, or
crucial guide to concocting cocktails. Via an examination of collective
collecting memory, this chapter explores the aesthetic dimensions of books
– given, received, coveted, and inscribed, then rediscovered and displayed as
cultural icons or nostalgic treasures.
We argue that the popular value of used goods – including books – contradicts the notion that “clean” and “new” determine the borders of consumer
desire. We analyze examples from a proliferating personal library in some
detail, describing and examining the material pleasures of these used texts,
including “inscriptions” such as previous owners’ marginalia – written annotations, highlights, and notes left in the pages. Opening these thin volumes
for the reader illuminates the gift-book genre, the used-book market, and
the collectibility of particular books.
What many consumers value, the efficient market often eliminates. We
point out a paradox of online booksellers’ focus on “clean” or “tight” books,
free from inscriptions and marks. Economist and philosopher, Georges
Bataille (1989), might recognize marginalia and inscriptions as excess value,
excluded by the unreflective operations of the mainstream market, yet
contributing to an overall productive environment in a mode that is wasted
(see Borgerson and Rehn 2004). Collectors often treasure marked-up pages;
researchers find these shadowy scribblings provide unobtrusive data about
past owners and previous eras (cf. Webb et al. 1981). Such qualities provide
The pleasures of the used text
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retro revelations, valued, often, in the wasteland beyond clear financial gains.
What are the marketing and value-creating implications of such a scenario?
Where are all the marked and personalized copies of Peter Pauper Press? –
not on eBay, apparently. What insights emerge from used books?
Our contributions engage four intersecting domains: (1) collecting books;
(2) books as consumer archives; (3) the material pleasures of a carefully assembled collection of Peter Pauper Press; and (4) online book marketing. Our
research into the used-book market includes data from eBay vendors – private
sellers as well as used-book dealers – who offered Peter Pauper Press items
to the world. Responses from our informants revealed that many knew little
about Peter Pauper Press, and they often pointed to the books’ marketable
features, such as known authors, interesting genres, and intriguing graphics.
In fact, some sellers stated simply that for these and other reasons, Peter
Pauper Press books “looked collectable.”
The Peter Pauper Press: a case study of collectibility
Peter Pauper Press helped popularize the gift-book market by marketing
petite, relatively inexpensive, and innocuous volumes – perfect solutions for
anniversaries, birthdays, or house-warming parties. Their 41⁄2 × 7 inch books,
with stylized collage, woodcut graphics, and craftily coordinated colors
emerged in early form from the Beilenson family’s press in 1948. After the
death of her husband, Peter, in 1962, Edna Beilenson took over publication.
Many Peter Pauper Press books were designed by her: “She felt that the style
and color of the cover were important selling points, and she had a flair for
choosing the most fitting design” (University of South Florida Library Link
1996). Having devoted her life to book publishing – beginning in the days
of hand-set type, she sums up her marketing philosophy this way: “I love
books and I love the books I make – which is a good combination when it
comes to selling” (University of South Florida Library Link 1996). Look in
any bookstore today and you will find a library of small offerings near the
checkout counter – some relatively trivial, such as Sonnets for Silly Sisters,
Chicken Soup for Birdbrains, or The Calico Cat who Slept Through Christmas, but
also miniature versions of Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations, Edith Wharton short
stories and Zen aphorisms – reinforcing Peter Pauper Press’s notion that size
does, indeed, matter. However, few can match the press’s ambitious author
list, wonderful illustrations, and satisfying designs.
Running the gamut from lauded literature to lascivious limericks, the
Mount Vernon publisher produced condensed editions of John Donne,
Francis Bacon, and Omar Khayyam; volumes of Japanese Haiku, Chinese
love lyrics, and Portuguese sonnets; as well as little puzzle books and quippy
quotes about love and women. Their “Simple” series – such as Simple Italian
Cookery and Simple Spanish Cookery – predated today’s “for Dummies” and “for
Beginners” guides by decades. An “ethnic” cookbook series introduced uncertain chefs to intriguing ingredients and dishes of Japanese, Italian, Spanish,
48 Janet L. Borgerson and Jonathan E. Schroeder
Hawaiian, and colonial American gastronomy. Recent Peter Pauper Press
offerings include – in a turn that reflects market conditions, perhaps – The
Little Black Book of Sex (2004), which was also available on eBay during our
research.
Our favorite examples are from the delightful “ABC” series, which includes
drink and dining recipes for all occasions (see Figure 4.1). These colorful
cookbooks, each in the same tidy size, and featuring similar, pleasing designs,
focus on specialized culinary themes, for example, “chafing dish cookery,”
“herb and spice cookery,” “wine cookery,” and “microwave cookery.” We are
not alone in valuing these minor manuscripts: several recent exhibitions
reveal the growing estimation and cultural cachet of Peter Pauper Press –
demonstrating how marginal publications often transform into culturally
notable artifacts, owing to their provenance, their publication history, or
their popularity. We invite the reader to join us as we dust off an expanding
archive of little literature, a unique retro window into an aesthetic economy
of books.
The growing market for used books
One need not endure dusty shelves or cranky sales help to acquire a cheap
used book, an out-of-print novel, or an antiquarian collectible these days.
With just a few clicks, that essential yet elusive edition can be on its way to
your home without a whiff of mold, must, or mouse droppings. The used
market has expanded tremendously in the wake of the World Wide Web –
strategic alliances of auction sites such as eBay and Amazon.com books with
independent retailers, used-book stores, and private sellers, and the collectible
craze, all contribute to a global exchange of previously owned books. Moreover, the humble used book has become a major revenue stream for charities
– Oxfam is now one of the largest book purveyors in the UK via its high
street retail shops. Furthermore, books form major gifts to libraries, archives,
and public collections; and auction houses such as Christies, Sotheby’s and
Swann routinely offer rare books at auction.
About book collecting
What makes books worth collecting? A hypertext of interests influences
acquiring, buying, or collecting used books. For example, our hankering for
Hawaiiana, as a general genre, prompted our purchase of Peter Pauper Press
Simple Hawaiian Cookery (see Borgerson and Schroeder 2003). Our fondness
for a specific era’s designs and colors – such as the fashion for combining
salmon pink, turquoise blue, and black – provoked us to pick up Festive
Salads and Molds (see Figure 4.2). The collecting craze commenced. We began
scouring used-book stores coast to coast – from Titcomb’s in Cape Cod to
Moe’s in Berkeley by way of John King’s in Detroit. Sometimes, we found
a separate Peter Pauper section, but the biggest rush came from spotting a
The pleasures of the used text
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Figure 4.1 The ABC of Cocktails,
frontispiece, 1953
Figure 4.2 Festive Salads and Molds,
1966
Source: From the authors’ collection.
Reproduced by kind permission of Peter
Pauper Press Inc., White Plains, New York
Source: From the authors’ collection.
Reproduced by kind permission of Peter
Pauper Press Inc., White Plains, New York
copy among aging cookbooks and poetry, flashing like gold flecks in our
prospector’s pan. Fortuitously, we found a few among our parents’ books,
another in a grandmother’s cabin, and, as we regaled our friends with tales
of the hunt, they humored us with used gifts of Peter Pauper Press to complement our enlarging collection. In over ten years of collecting Peter Pauper
Press, we find that searching for elusive examples, ruminating over what’s
worth collecting, bargaining over prices, and displaying precious purchases,
increase the pleasures of the used text. We love finding an obscure volume
at the back of a dimly lit used-book store, and continue to compete between
ourselves to discover the most desirable example, plucked from the shadows
of neglect, filling a previously unrevealed hole in our oeuvre.
Another pleasure of the used text involves public recognition of one’s
object of desire. Although not particularly valuable, Peter Pauper Press books
nevertheless have several distinguished library collections devoted to them.
For example, Georgetown University Library’s Special Collections highlights
the publisher as one of its strengths, with “600 examples beginning with
the first book of the press, Synge’s With Petrarch” (Georgetown University
50 Janet L. Borgerson and Jonathan E. Schroeder
Library Special Collections 2005). The Press’s potent combination of low
price and high-quality graphics drew this comment from a curator: “This
phenomenon of American publishing made possible the dissemination of
fine-press ideals to the public at large through its long list of beautifully
designed and carefully printed works sold, by and large, very inexpensively
indeed” (Georgetown University Library Special Collections 2005). Major
donors to the collection are mentioned, including Todd Haines and Patricia
G. England. A Library Associates Newsletter from 1986 noted that England
“has presented 33 Peter Pauper Press books superbly printed by the
Beilensons. Of particular interest are Lamb’s Select Essays; Housman’s A
Shropshire Lad; and Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, illustrated by John Stuart
Curry” (Georgetown University Library Newsletter 1986).
The University of San Francisco’s Donohue Rare Book room and Gleeson
Library held an exhibition of philanthropist Katheryn Fleming’s Peter Pauper
Press collection, given after her death. “The Peter Pauper Press of Mount
Vernon, New York is known for its
diminutive editions of distinctive
design. The books are embellished
by a range of distinguished illustrators, including Valenti Angelo
and Fritz Eichenberg,” reads the
press release (University of San
Francisco 2004). The University
of South Florida honors the Press
with its Peter Pauper collection
of over 100 items, gushing “the
major achievement of the Beilensons was the production of the
inexpensive Peter Pauper books at
one or two dollars a copy. These
little books are truly colorful, decorative and usually illustrated” (University of South Florida Library
1996). Another Peter Pauper Press
volume – the unforgettable The
ABC of Chafing Dish Cookery (see
Figure 4.3) – found its way into an
exhibition of ABC books at Connecticut’s Trinity College, which
also featured Dr Seuss’s On Beyond
Zebra, and, in a potentially tricky
trademark tangle, Peter Piper’s Figure 4.3 The ABC of Chafing Dish Cookery,
1956
Practical Principles of Plain & Perfect
Source: From the authors’ collection. Reproduced
Pronunciation (Watkinson Library by kind permission of Peter Pauper Press Inc.,
1998).
White Plains, New York
The pleasures of the used text
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Valuing inscriptions and marginalia
Unintimidating and intimate in scale, Peter Pauper Press volumes perhaps
invited small authorial interventions. Gift books, moreover, often call for
personal inscriptions to the recipient. This excess text often adds value to
the collected book. Yet a World Wide Web search suggests that “clean” and
“tight” copies – with no marks and uncreased or unbroken bindings – bring
in bids on eBay and other online selling sites. Vendors appear to believe that
a book must be as close to untouched as possible, that any distinguishing
feature, whether sudden reader revelations or judgments noted in margins,
are unwelcome and devaluing.
However, some book collectors (like us) value ephemeral notations – often
anonymous – made in distant places and times, rediscovered and puzzled
over years later. Margin marks personalize books, reminding the reader which
recipe went well or jogging the memory about what joke worked when. Gift
inscriptions mark meaningful moments and relationships. These marginalia
help transform the profane object into a sacred keepsake. Of course, an
author’s signature enhances a book’s collectibility. Furthermore, when someone famous graces a book with notes, then every detail and comment may
be of interest, and if a well-known artist marks a text, then every sketch and
scribble becomes significant.
For example, a bequest of Midwestern poet Lorine Niedecker’s library
brought together a mixed collection of books, including several Peter Pauper
Press editions. In addition to a general interest in how the volumes found
therein might give clues to the background and influences of her own poems,
researchers and fans expressed great enthusiasm for the comments constitutive of Niedecker’s marginalia (Montag 2004). Hours and hours were spent
searching for and documenting the handwritten notes, as well as exclamation and question marks. Such comments revealed her inner insights, and,
with luck, the genesis of her marvelous, magical brilliance.
Books themselves become scrapbooks for gathering related ephemera,
memories, and reflections. Box 2 of the Smithsonian Institute Archives’ Duke
Ellington Collection, 1927–88 includes Peter Pauper Press’s Aesop’s Fables
for Modern Readers, illustrated by Eric Carle (1965) and African Proverbs,
compiled by Charlotte and Wolf Leslau (1962). The brief introductory note
on “scope and content” of this container states:
Many books contain inscriptions to Ellington and Ellis from friends,
fans and family members. Of particular interest are the following . . . an
autographed letter from Booker T. Washington to A.I. Lathers, dated
24 October 1904, that has been glued inside the cover of Washington’s
Up From Slavery.
(Smithsonian Duke Ellington collection 2005)
We wonder if Ellington’s Peter Pauper Press dust cover flaps or margins
contain notes by the great composer. But what about the anonymous owners
52 Janet L. Borgerson and Jonathan E. Schroeder
of Peter Pauper Press books? What of their penned or penciled margin
marks? What spectral scraps emerge from their pages? We turn to a growing
collection to document what two passionate collectors treasure.
A passion for Peter Pauper Press
The pleasures of the used text often call us back into past eras, provoking
recollections of domestic, social, and cultural history. Peter Pauper Press, in
their own way, provide a window into the cold-war era of economic and
cultural expansion, as they offered American consumers a glimpse of the
wider world. For example, The Melting Pot: A Cookbook of All Nations (1958)
quaintly decorated in red, white, blue, and green contains French, Italian,
Viennese, Nordic, Oriental, and American sections, each with poems of
rhyming four lines to capture the region’s spirit: “A Waltz in Vienna is just
like a dream – and so is the pastry, dripping with cream!.” In our copy,
plucked from Cellar Stories in Providence, Rhode Island, a previous owner
filled the dust cover’s inside flap with carefully penciled cursive notes – page
numbers and recipe names such as Potatoes Dauphinois, Danish Apple Cake,
and Baked Chicken Maryland – a customized index, archival traces of a
reader’s thought and care.
Eye-catching graphics in The
Geisha Cookbook: Japanese Cookery
for Americans (1973) benefit from an
extended palette, including yellow,
plum, blue, and intense fuchsia
(see Figure 4.4). Each brilliant
image presents a stylized Geisha
gathering, preparing, or serving
food and tea. Long before the bestselling novel, My Life as a Geisha,
this decorative book described
Japanese traditions, language, and
cuisine. The Geisha Cookbook’s introduction begins with the author’s
story of a friend “who shipped a
Japanese Geisha from Japan to his
wife in the States” for a one-year
stay, and charts the ensuing fabu-
Figure 4.4 The Geisha Cookbook: Japanese
Cookery for Americans, 1973
Source: From the authors’ collection. Reproduced by kind permission of Peter Pauper
Press Inc., White Plains, New York
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lous food discoveries, enhanced aesthetics, and gratified dinner guests.
Although recipes have been “streamlined and adapted to American tastes,”
the effort here was to broaden notions of, and expand markets for, Japanese
seasonings, ingredients, and culture – in the wake of military and, later,
economic confrontation between the US and Japan. “So grab your kimono”
our author enthuses, “light the hibachi, and be the first instant Geisha on
your street.”
White, black, and rusty red drawings of potato thieves, vodka drinkers, and
untrustworthy country priests populate Russian Proverbs (1960). “Like every
people, the Russians have their own accumulation of proverbs,” begins the
short preface that offers an almost humanistic rationale for such a volume during a time when US and Soviet relations were hardly mutually appreciative.
The book served a strategic purpose:
Since our Russian diplomatic visitors have made a habit of flavoring their
speeches with such home grown wisdom, we now make this collection
available – for those who want to quote from the Russian in rebuttal,
or who just want to get the feeling of a nation from its deepest folk
sources.
(p. 3)
Was this little book a populist plea for recognizing shared folk values in the
midst of oppositional economic systems and political goals? A handbook for
cold war spies? Either way, such sayings as, “Oppression comes not from the
Czar but from his favorites” (p. 49), “If you ride in his cart, you must join
his song” (p. 59), and “You’ll never get a hangover from other people’s vodka”
(p. 21) sound suspiciously similar to those found in Benjamin Franklin’s Poor
Richard’s Almanack, also published by Peter Pauper Press (1980).
Not all Peter Pauper Press books invoked multilateral international relations. The iconic Festive Salads and Molds (1966) displays detailed salmon
pink, emerald green, and black graphic representations of molded salads,
green beans, olives, and the occasional smiling fish, as well as mustard jars
and wine bottles labeled “moutarde de Dijon” and “vin du pays” in curvy
black script (see Figure 4.2). A brief note “To the Reader” from “The
Publisher” declares that a salad “can be the main dish for a hot-weather meal,
or the tangy highlight of a full-course dinner.” As unappetizing as a pink
avocado may seem, the book’s illustration of two halves viewed from above,
nestled in curly lettuce leaves and filled with mandarin sections, green grapes,
and rosette radishes appeals aesthetically as a photograph could not. From
Crab Louis’s tomato, lemon wedge, and watercress garnish to Waldorf salad’s
particular combination of chopped celery, apples, walnuts, and mayonnaise,
Peter Pauper Press championed expanding the role of “the traditional dish
for a Ladies’ Luncheon Party” (Festive Salads and Molds 1966).
Book series often fuel a collector’s obsession. Peter Pauper Press published
several series, including the acclaimed “ABC of ” books – dangling the
54 Janet L. Borgerson and Jonathan E. Schroeder
promise of assembling a complete set. The ABC of Barbeque (1954), The ABC
of Gourmet Cookery (1956) – inside front cover notes, “Tag Sale, 9/11/76,
25¢” –, Wine Cookery (1957), Chafing Dish Cookery (1956), Herb and Spice
Cookery (1957) – with publisher’s acknowledgement to the Spice Islands
Company for their recipes – as well as The ABC of Cocktails (1953) all maintain a similar format (see Figures 4.1 and 4.3). Each letter – the A, B, and
Cs – features a cute little saying that sets the tone for the recipes to follow.
For example, The ABC of Chafing Dish Cookery offers this bit of wisdom for
its “E” entry: “Earthenware, copper, Silver or brass: Chafing dish glamor Will
always surpass!”
Throughout our copy of the ABC of Cocktails we found a running record
of dates, golf scores, and drink notes. Every few pages, “Bob” and “Grant”
document their rivalry and responses to post-game potions. Apparently, on
16 August after a particularly fine round – trouncing Grant in the process
– Bob mixed up a few “Rob Roys.” Occasionally a further “good” or “very
good” documents their judgment on post-game tipples. Interspersed among
the drink recipes are quaint little rhymes about libations. One of our favorites:
Alcohol’s a temptress
Alcohol’s a flirt
She’ll either raise you to the skies
Or drop you to the dirt.
Everyone loves
The drinking and laughter
And everyone hates
The sad morning after.
Oh lift me up gently
And don’t mind the clutter;
One gets a bit sloppy
Sprawled out in the gutter.
(From ABC of Cocktails, 1953)
An antidote to gutter sprawling could be found in our next Peter Pauper
example. A gift box snuggly fits around Holiday Punches: Party Bowls and Soft
Drinks (Beilenson 1953), encasing the slim volume – decorated in naive style,
reminiscent of folk art or rose-maling, with cheerful red, blue, and gold
dancing figures – and protecting it from the ravages of time, small children,
and unthoughtful bookstore clerks. Holiday Punches, compiled by publisher
Edna Beilenson, contains “decorative punches” (different colors resulting
from varying mixes of juices and soda); “hot drinks for frosty weather” (spiced
juices, mulled cider, and “Steeped Party Coffee – serves 40”); and “special
drinks for Children’s Parties.” Perusing “frosty drinks for hot weather,” Janet
was amazed to find 50-year-old, pre-Starbucks era references to iced café au
lait and frozen mint mochas. Another surprise from the past, three yellowed
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newspaper clippings dropped from the pages – recipes for Summer Sparkle,
Ruby Fruit, and 1-2-3 Easy Party punches, revealing a previous owner who
got into the spirit of these non-alcoholic, but celebratory drinks.
Peter Pauper Press complemented its “bread” books about food and drinks
with “circus” selections of great literature, proverbial wisdom, and light
prose. For instance, the Press’s Leaves of Grass: A Selection of the Poems by Walt
Whitman features a striking modernist cover of bright orange and green
figures (see Figure 4.5). Our copy came from Jonathan’s grandmother
Schroeder – one of the few secular books in her proper Presbyterian household. What did she think of Whitman’s expansive verse? Why had she kept
this small keepsake over the years? Did she read it with her husband, the
minister? Unfortunately, this copy is clean and tight – Whitman’s luminous
and a bit licentious “I sing the body electric” unread, unappreciated, or
perhaps quickly closed in a fit of Protestant piety. In any case, it remains a
prized member of our expanding Peter Pauper Press collection, for its virtuoso
verse and its ancestral echo.
The foreword to The Sayings of Buddha familiarizes the reader with all things
Buddha – his life and teachings, and the text’s sources (1957). The book
presents uncategorized aphorisms interspersed with black and orange woodcuts that juxtapose iconic designs, appearing, to us, a bit more South American
than Asian. Upon purchase, out
fluttered a small newspaper clipping announcing a “Miss Anderson’s narration of A Lincoln Portrait” and a “Poulenc duet by
Gold and Fizdale” to be held we
know not where. On the fragile
flip side, the “Café Pierre” – written in scrolly script – promises
“Stanley Worth’s Band and Ellen
Harwicke at the piano, 5 pm.” A
handy bookmark? An interesting
fusion of Eastern wisdom and
Western ensemble?
The Jade Flute: Chinese Poems in
Prose hones meditative, harmonious tones of grey-blue and greygreen providing backgrounds for
black ink drawings of fir, locust,
Figure 4.5 Leaves of Grass, Walt
Whitman, 1968
Source: From the authors’ collection. Reproduced by kind permission of Peter Pauper
Press Inc., White Plains, New York
56 Janet L. Borgerson and Jonathan E. Schroeder
and willow trees. Under bold type titles, each non-rhyming poem, with
author or source noted, offers a glimpse into unfamiliar landscapes, yet familiar human emotions. On the first blank page, a blue ballpoint ink cursive
inscription reads, “To Walter and Ruth on your 40th, with love, Carolyn and
Eubert, Monica, Lysbeth, and Rebecca.” Whether marked by Walter
or Ruth or somebody else, throughout the book light pencil check marks
follow “A Letter Home,” “Parting in Autumn,” “Let Us Drink Wine,”
“Chrysanthemums,” and a tiny star appears after Yuan Chen’s gorgeously
simple and moving “An Elegy” (pp. 60–1).
Marketing used books
Although we have not (yet) purchased any Peter Pauper Press books electronically – feeling this is somehow cheating, depriving us of the pleasure of
the hunt or the surprise of an unexpected find – we turned to the maturing
market for online books by contacting ten online booksellers. To avoid undue
expense, we carefully explained that we already owned the particular specimen they offered. Five eBay merchants responded to our questions regarding
the positioning of and interest in collecting Peter Pauper Press books: Why
are they collectible? Do they sell well? Some vendors established that they
themselves collect the books, and liked their artful illustrations and colorful
graphics. Several respondents claimed to know nothing about Peter Pauper
Press itself, indicating re-sale prices were not compellingly high, nor were
the books coveted rarities: rather, the Press seems to be secondarily recognized as a medium for the famous authors and brilliant illustrations, an incidental connection between otherwise unrelated pleasingly sized ephemera.
One informant – who was selling Lewis Carroll’s Hunting the Snark –
focused on the apparent collectibility of Peter Pauper Press books: “I purchased this book at an estate sale because I thought it looked like a book
someone might collect. I don’t even know the date it was printed.” She knew
little about the press, not even that it was based in the US. In a follow-up
question, we asked her to elaborate: “I was attracted to the book because it
was by Lewis Carroll, and thought the illustrations were interesting and
maybe the illustrator was famous and collectable.” Another informant, who
was flogging one of our favorites, the classic ABC of Herb and Spice Cookery,
thought their first edition status contributed to their collectibility: “I guess
people like them because they are 1st Editions (at least all I have come across),
small (41⁄2 × 71⁄2) hardcovers with dust jackets. They are mostly from original
authors and have great illustrations.” Another appreciatively acknowledges
the books’ great graphics: “with many people they are popular because of the
artwork.” Thus, author, illustrator, and collectibility – at least a collectible
appearance – all contribute to these booksellers’ opinions of consumers’
desires.
Size, edition, authors, and illustrations add up to – well, not quite early
retirement, as these books seem to sell for just a few dollars – but an active
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market in Peter Pauper Press books, with 50–100 books generally available
on eBay. Several informants lamented this liability, complaining: “If they do
sell on eBay, usually it is in the $10.00 or lower price range,” “For the most
part they are not scarce,” and “no one seems to admire or want them. I find
they are difficult to sell.” However, some sellers truly like the books: “They
are lovely little books with much to read and consume,” or are attracted
to topics, as a vendor of Cherry Blossoms: Japanese Haiku reports: “I began
collecting them because I like the subject matter – I lived in Japan for many
years and like the haiku and Eastern philosophy/religion books.”
Tracing consumption: recirculating the gift
Books recirculate as gifts. What once was presented as thoughtful token
returns, newly appreciated and assessed, re-consumed, given once again to
collector, heir, or library – whether a sterling single volume or carefully
composed collection. In a postmodern book market, we would expect to
witness the consumer as producer, forming a new relation with the object,
interacting to create a “new” text by augmenting, annotating, animating,
and archiving, not simply accepting the authorial version. Fans writing their
own Harry Potter fiction exemplify such movement (see Brown 2005). In
this way, consumers take the gift of little literature and make it personal, a
source of retro revelation.
Traces of consumption reveal humanity behind our objects of desire. An
unexpected aspect of our research sheds light into the intimate nature of
buying and selling, as one respondent’s poignant note made us want to buy
up her books and promise to cherish them forever: “love them, but we are
getting older and it’s time to part with things. Thanks again and God Bless.”
Collecting books and used-book buying may be influenced by profit-making
hopes, but here we have turned to the pleasures of the used text, the
ephemeral and eclectic, a respect, attachment, and connection to small practices, marginalia, gifts, intimate life experiences, and personalities from the
past, drawing unexpected insights from looking at little literature and paying
attention to the lessons beyond the text.
Conclusion
The pleasures of used texts invoke cultural norms and class-related social
practices – style, taste, and etiquette – packaged and presented to an
upwardly mobile market. Peter Pauper Press served as an accessible introduction to a wider world, creating cosmopolitan consumers quoting African
proverbs, Blake’s poetry, and Chinese love lyrics over chafing dish delights.
The Peter Pauper Press output might be termed “the ABC of cosmopolitanism” – guidebooks to a mobile, articulate, cultured life. These little books
made belle-lettres authors, exotic ingredients, and foreign figures available
to mainstream US consumers, much as hi-fi record albums brought faraway
58 Janet L. Borgerson and Jonathan E. Schroeder
sounds onto 1950s’ patios (see Schroeder and Borgerson 2002). Thus, Peter
Pauper Press’s attractive books contributed small signals of success in the
quest for adventurous dining, broader horizons, and cultural capital.
Used goods tell consumption stories and consumption stories sell used
goods. We have shown how material practices, such as collecting, gift giving,
and inscribing, create meaning. Consumption traces alter the text, marking
books with sacred, and, sometimes, economic value – as witnessed by the
attention that famous figures’ marginalia attracts. Marginalia – banished by
booksellers, expunged from electronic databases, and erased by efficient
indexing – animates consumption objects, offering nostalgic narratives of
everyday lives. This excess – gingerbread recipe notes preserved in The
Melting Pot Cookbook, a scholar’s scribbled comments on an influential tome,
ancestral names written in the family Bible – defies the assumption that
“clean” and “new” determine the borders of consumer desire. These traces of
consumption – largely absent from the emerging electronic marketplace –
offer unobtrusive insights into the pleasures of the used text, demonstrating
how consumers, collectors, and curators imbue books with meaning, how
books become part of everyday life, and why they carry so much potential
value for families, friends, and fanatical collectors within an aesthetic
economy of books.
Acknowledgments
Thank you to Peter Pauper Press, particularly Managing Editor, Nick
Beilenson, for assistance, to the Peter Pauper Press sellers on eBay for
responding to our questions, and to the press’s authors and graphic artists,
especially Ruth McCrea.
References
Anonymous (1953) The ABC of Cocktails, White Plains, NY: Peter Pauper Press.
Anonymous (1954) The ABC of Barbeque, White Plains, NY: Peter Pauper Press.
Anonymous (1956) The ABC of Chafing Dish Cookery, White Plains, NY: Peter Pauper.
Anonymous (1956) The ABC of Gourmet Cookery, White Plains, NY: Peter Pauper.
Anonymous (1957) The ABC of Herb and Spice Cookery, White Plains, NY: Peter Pauper
Press.
Anonymous (1957) The ABC of Wine Cookery, White Plains, NY: Peter Pauper Press.
Anonymous (1957) The Sayings of Buddha, White Plains, NY: Peter Pauper Press.
Anonymous (1958) The Melting Pot: A Cookbook of All Nations, White Plains, NY: Peter
Pauper Press.
Anonymous (1960) Russian Proverbs, White Plains, NY: Peter Pauper Press.
Anonymous (1960) The Jade Flute: Chinese Poems in Prose, White Plains, NY: Peter Pauper
Press.
Anonymous (1965) Aesop’s Fables for Modern Readers, White Plains, NY: Peter Pauper
Press.
Anonymous (2004) The Little Black Book of Sex, White Plains, NY: Peter Pauper Press.
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Bataille, G. (1989) The Accursed Share, Vol. 1: Consumption, New York: Zone Books.
Beilenson, E. (1953) Holiday Punches Party Bowls and Soft Drinks, White Plains, NY:
Peter Pauper Press.
Borgerson, J.L. and Rehn, A. (2004) ‘General Economy and Productive Dualisms’, Gender,
Work and Organization, 11, 455–74.
–––– and Schroeder, J.E. (2003) ‘The Lure of Paradise: Marketing the Retro-escape of
Hawaii’, in S. Brown and J.F. Sherry, Jr (eds), Time, Space and the Market: Retroscapes
Rising, New York: M.E. Sharpe, 219–37.
Brown, S. (2005) Wizard! Harry Potter’s Brand Magic, London: Cyan Books.
Franklin, B. (1980) Poor Richard’s Alamanack, White Plains, NY: Peter Pauper Press.
Georgetown University Library Newsletter (1986) online. Available www.library.
georgetown.edu/advancement/newsletter/19/prints19.htm (accessed 12 March 2005).
Georgetown University Library Special Collections website (2005) online. Available
www.library.georgetown.edu/dept/speccoll/bookarts.htm (accessed 12 March 2005).
Larson, J.P. (1973) The Geisha Cookbook: Japanese Cookery for Americans, White Plains, NY:
Peter Pauper Press.
Leslau, C. and Leslau, W. (1962) African Proverbs, White Plains, NY: Peter Pauper Press.
Loeb, E. (1966) Festive Salads & Molds, White Plains, NY: Peter Pauper Press.
Montag, T. (2004) ‘Lorine’s Library: Books & Marginalia in the Library of Lorine
Niedecker’, paper presented at the Wisconsin Writers Conference, Baraboo, Wisconsin,
4 June.
Schroeder, J.E. and Borgerson, J.L. (2002) ‘Music to Travel by: Listening your Way to
other Lands’, Cool and Strange Music, August/November, 24–7.
Smithsonian Institution website (2005) Duke Ellington Collection, 1927–1988, #301.
Online. Available http://americanhistory.si.edu/archives/d530115.htm (accessed 4
March 2005).
University of San Francisco Library website (2004), ‘Exhibitions: The Peter Pauper Press
Collection of Katheryn Fleming’. Online. Available www.usfca.edu/library/rarebook/
ppp/ (accessed 13 March 2005).
University of South Florida Library Link (1996) ‘Peter Pauper Press Enriches Library’.
Online. Available www.lib.usf.development/newslett/winter96/s12.html (accessed 27
August 2003).
Watkinson Library, Trinity College, Connecticut (1998) ‘From A to Z: An Exhibition
of ABC Books Selected from the John O. C. McCrillis Collection’. Online. Available
www.trincoll.edu/depts/library/watkinson/AtoZ.htm (accessed 4 March 2005).
Webb, E.J., Campbell, D.T., Schwartz, R.D., Sechrest, L., and Grove, J.B. (1981)
Nonreactive Measures in the Social Sciences, Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.
Whitman, W. (1968) Leaves of Grass: A Selection of the Poems, White Plains, NY: Peter
Pauper Press.
5
Culture club
Marketing and consuming
The Da Vinci Code
Kent Drummond
Now is the winter of our discontent
The book is everywhere. The distribution strategy has been absolutely exceptional
marketing, even at Catholic bookstores – and I’ve already complained about the
Catholic bookshops which, for profit motives, have stacks of this book. And then
there’s the strategy of persuasion – that one isn’t an adult Christian if you don’t
read this book. Thus my appeal is: Don’t read and don’t buy the book!
(29 March 2005)
That sharp admonishment notwithstanding, this savvy market analysis
belongs not to Philip Kotler, but to soccer-star-turned-Archbishop-turnedpapal-candidate Tarcisio Bertone, former Vatican official on doctrinal
orthodoxy.
The book in question is, of course, The Da Vinci Code. And while Cardinal
Bertone’s reaction to it is hardly surprising, his insights into what accounts
for the book’s success certainly are. The cloistered world of the Vatican
clergy, revealed teasingly to the world as the body of Pope John Paul II was
borne through its portals, apparently allows discussions of marketing and
consumption to penetrate its walls. Otherwise, one could not expect its
highest-ranking doctrinal official to use the phrase “distribution strategy”
so comfortably.
Or so accurately. For the present essay contends that Bertone’s assessment
of both the marketing and consumption of the book, The Da Vinci Code,
while vague, is correct: that market mechanisms on the one hand and conspicuous acts of consumption on the other have combined to catapult The Da
Vinci Code into a material state-of-confusion, in which readers – and the
culture at large – market the book even as they consume it.
This happy state of affairs was precipitated by an especially nice fit between
Doubleday’s marketing strategy and Dan Brown’s narrative style. Specifically,
how could The Da Vinci Code become an international bestseller can be
explained by Doubleday’s coordination of market forces. Why would it can
be explained by Brown’s pithy, engaging, and ultimately flawed use of
symbolic capital, which encourages readers to “trump” the author in further
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acts of consumption long after they’ve read the book, and in so doing, preserve
its shelf life. This essay enlists the help of Althusser’s writings on hailing
and interpellation to explain Brown’s unwitting narrative achievement.
Beware the ides of March
In the spring of 2002, Dan Brown strolled up and down the Grand Gallery
of the Louvre, trying to finish a novel. The culture of High Art in which
the book would be set – its history, its aesthetics, and its secrets – had
recently become familiar to him during the three years he spent studying
art history in Seville. Now he had married an art historian, and there was a
deadline to meet: Doubleday, part of Random House, was holding him to a
two-book, $400,000 contract. The book he was finishing in the Louvre would
be the first installment (Wyatt 2005).
Brown’s contract with Doubleday was considered generous, given that his
three previous books, Digital Fortress, Deception Point, and Angels and Demons,
had caused barely a ripple on the bestseller lists. The cash advance had allowed
him to travel frequently to Paris to research the book he was calling The Da
Vinci Code while living comfortably in a small town in New England, where
he had been raised and educated.
The novel Brown was so meticulously researching begins on a rainy night
in Paris, where Jacques Saunière, curator of the Louvre, has been fatally
wounded in the Grand Gallery. But rather than simply slump to the floor
from a bullet wound to his stomach, Saunière rips a Caravaggio off the wall
to sound the alarm system, strips naked, draws a pentacle on his chest with
his own blood, and arranges his body in the form of the Vitruvian Man –
one of Leonardo da Vinci’s most celebrated sketches – before dying. He also
leaves behind an anagram and the famous Fibonacci numerical sequence as
clues.
But clues to what, and for whom? Also in Paris is the famed Harvard
“symbologist” Robert Langdon, the protagonist of Brown’s earlier Angels and
Demons. Langdon, described as “Harrison Ford in Harris tweed,” understands
the power of signs: he wields symbolic tools to unlock a variety of religious,
political, and cultural conundrums, closely guarded by some secret societies
and earnestly sought by others. Langdon’s latest manuscript proposes a highly
controversial interpretation of accepted religious iconography, and he was
scheduled to meet with Saunière the following day to discuss it; these circumstances immediately establish him as the prime suspect in Saunière’s murder.
The novel’s narrative tension – established in the first 40 pages of this
450-page novel – relentlessly pits Langdon’s quest to solve the mystery of
Saunière’s murder against a handful of legal and religious authorities trying
to apprehend him. On a larger scale, the book sets Langdon’s semiotic virility
against the pall of Catholic doctrine. Witness Langdon’s first exegesis of a
symbol to the French police:
62 Kent Drummond
Symbols are very resilient, but the pentacle was altered by the early
Roman Catholic Church. As part of the Vatican’s campaign to eradicate
pagan religions and convert masses to Christianity, the Church launched
a smear campaign against the pagan gods and goddesses, recasting their
divine symbols as evil . . . In the battle between pagan symbols and
Christian symbols, the pagans lost.
(The Da Vinci Code, p. 37)
Langdon’s obsessive unpacking of all things symbolic leads readers on a
cook’s tour of religious conspiracy theory. From the Priory of Sion to the
Knights Templar, from opus Dei to the Divine Proportion, from Hieros
Gamos to the Holy Grail, Langdon explains it all for you in a way that would
send Sister Mary Ignatius screaming from the classroom. By page 50, he is
joined by the beautiful French cryptographer, Sophie Neveu, who turns out
to be Saunière’s granddaughter. As the two inch their way along the labyrinth
of clues left by Saunière, both romantic and narrative tensions build.
What is the Great Mystery they finally solve? Namely, that the Holy Grail
refers not to the cup used by Christ at the Last Supper, but to the sacred
womb of Mary Magdalene, who was:
pregnant at the time of the crucifixion. For the safety of Christ’s unborn
child, she had no choice but to flee the Holy Land. With the help of
Jesus’s trusted uncle, Joseph of Arimathea, Mary Magdalene secretly traveled to France, then known as Gaul. There she found safe refuge in the
Jewish community. It was here in France that she gave birth to a
daughter. Her name was Sarah.
(The Da Vinci Code, p. 255)
This Grand Explanation, taught like an anti-Nicene Creed to an astonished Neveu by both Langdon and villain-in-hiding, Sir Leigh Teabing,
occupies the central 40 pages of the book. Readers learn that the Grail in
its proper form consists of three elements: the remains of Mary Magdalene;
a collection of documents tracing the royal bloodline of Christ from the crucifixion to the present day; and the descendants of Jesus and Mary themselves
– the few royal Merovingians who have survived into modern times. This
was the secret Saunière, a modern-day Knight Templar, was guarding at the
time of his murder. What remains is for Langdon, Neveu, and now Teabing,
to find this new-historical Grail before the Vatican-sponsored opus Dei,
formidable foes of any nontraditional Grail reading, find the whereabouts of
those relics and destroy them.
And find them they do. But not before Teabing, unmasked as the villain
in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey, gets led away in handcuffs; nor before
Neveu, revealed as one of two remaining descendants of Christ (her brother
is the other), kisses Langdon on the lips; nor before Langdon, having returned
to the Louvre at dusk where the mystery began, deduces that Mary
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Magdalene’s remains lie underneath the museum’s inverted pyramid, itself a
kind of womb. In reverent reverie, Langdon falls to his knees as the novel concludes: “For a moment, he thought he heard a woman’s voice . . . the wisdom
of the ages . . . whispering up from the chasms of the earth”. (p. 454)
My words fly up, my thoughts remain below
By the time Brown’s manuscript reached Jason Kaufman’s desk in the early
spring of 2002, the new editor had several important decisions to make, all
pointing to the question: how should this book be marketed? Production
schedules were already well under way for the stable of books coming out
in the fall, some of which would be selected as Books-of-the-Month from
important readers’ clubs, guaranteeing strong sales into the Christmas rush.
And Brown’s book could not possibly be ready for the all-important kickoff to that season, the American Booksellers Association convention in June.
That would put it into production late in the fall of 2002, with a debut
sometime in the spring of 2003. There, it could be touted as a summer
thriller, in hopes of riding brisk sales into the fall.
But was The Da Vinci Code really a beach book? It was a murder-mystery
page-turner, to be sure, but not in the accessible traditions of Clancy,
Grisham, or Cornwell; the esoteric context in which it was set could turn
readers away in droves. Its wacky Grail theory – already played to great effect
in 1982’s Holy Blood, Holy Grail – could strike many readers as blasphemous
in these conservative post-9/11 times. And while Brown had a titillating
way of alluding to sex without really talking about it, the relationship
between Langdon and Neveu had lots of smoke but little fire – hardly the
kind of book readers would want to spill their suntan lotion over.
And then there was Brown’s prose style: strangely erudite in its terse explanation of obscure concepts from etymology, mathematics, and architecture, but
– like the main character himself – downright clunky in its apprehension of
basic character perception and interaction (“He gazed once again into the void
of night, feeling dwarfed by events he had put into motion” p. 31). In short,
Kaufman could not count on rave reviews to sell the book. All things considered, he hoped he could move between 20,000 and 50,000 copies (Grainger,
2004): highly respectable for this strange novel, and happily consistent with
Brown’s earlier works from Simon & Schuster.
But one outcome wasn’t consistent with Kaufman’s market analysis: he
had stayed up all night reading the manuscript. And when he gave it to
other editors at Doubleday, so had they. And when he passed along a copy
to Sessalee Hensley, fiction buyer at Barnes & Noble, so did she. This gutlevel early-reader affinity for a book hadn’t been felt since 1993’s The Bridges
of Madison County, the best-selling fiction work of all time. Was this a hint
to change the marketing plan?
Kaufman and Doubleday president, Steve Rubin, decided it was. At sizable
risk to the publishing house, they set in motion a series of marketing events
64 Kent Drummond
that significantly explain how Brown’s book could ascend to the status of
cultural phenomenon.
Their first tactic was to increase the number of advance reader copies
(ARCs) to 5,000: a huge number by reasonable standards, but one that had
paid huge dividends for Little Brown in 2002’s breakout book, The Lovely
Bones, and for Farrar Straus & Giroux in 2001’s The Corrections. Distributed
to reviewers and book buyers, ARCs help stimulate demand for a book well
in advance of its release date. If word-of-mouth for The Da Vinci Code would
be as strong among distributors as it had been in-house, Doubleday’s costs
for printing the ARCs would soon be recovered.
Second, Doubleday decided to court members of its supply chain in a way
it never had before, at a time when those members needed affection.
Specifically, retail giants Barnes & Noble and Borders had been losing market
share to mass merchants such as Costco and Sam’s Club, particularly on books
by brand-name authors (Grisham, Roberts) whose predictable product consumers could snap up at the warehouse for a basement price. But Costco
hadn’t “met” Dan Brown yet; he simply hadn’t been important enough. That
was Barnes & Noble’s business: to push new, relatively risky authors and
take the fall in case they didn’t work out.
Then it fell to Barnes & Noble to make sure Dan Brown did work out. With
all the ARCs flooding B&N – Doubleday had increased that number to 10,000,
the largest in publishing history – anticipation of the book had reached a fever
pitch, and the supply chain was in gear. “The Doubleday people came to us
and said ‘This is a great book’,” recalls buyer Hensley. “And we came back to
them and said ‘This is the greatest book’” (Grainger, 2004, p. 98).
Barnes & Noble increased its order for The Da Vinci Code from 15,000 to
30,000 to 80,000 books – unheard of for an unknown author, but seemingly
justified. The retailer also engaged the help of its intranet so that store
managers could post reactions to the book and share ideas about how to sell
it (Grainger, 2004). In the tradition of Wal-Mart, some Barnes & Noble
outlets even stationed greeters at the door whose job was to tell readers about
the book and where in the store they could inspect it.
Doubleday had given vendors who really do judge a book by its cover
reason to smile as well. In its packaging of The Da Vinci Code, Doubleday
had astutely avoided quoting the advance praise of critics; it wasn’t expecting
any. Instead, it quoted five suspense authors, from the well-known Nelson
DeMille and Clive Cussler to the lesser-known Robert Crais and Vince Flynn,
each with the epithet “New York Times bestselling author.” With 230,000
copies for its first printing, Doubleday was more interested in moving large
quantities of product than in garnering critical praise. The cover design,
awash in burnished gold and crimson reminiscent of a gentleman’s library,
suggested the rich subject matter within. And a jagged rip across mid-cover,
revealing the gauzy stare of the Mona Lisa and some backward writing, promised mystery and violence. On the inside back jacket, the closing
promotional prose attempted to position the book:
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Breaking the mold of traditional suspense novels, The Da Vinci Code is
simultaneously lightning-paced, intelligent, and intricately layered with
remarkable research and detail. From the opening pages to the unpredictable and stunning conclusion, Dan Brown proves himself a master
storyteller.
(The Da Vinci Code, 2003)
Beneath, a photo shows the author, dressed in black turtleneck and tan sports
coat, leaning against a wall. Hands in pockets, shoulders slightly askew,
Brown beckons readers with a slight smile; he suggests someone both shy
and urbane, distant and attractive.
Why, then the world’s mine oyster
With these marketing mechanisms in place, Doubleday released The Da Vinci
Code on 18 March, 2003. The day before, much to the company’s surprise,
film-critic-turned-book-cheerleader, Janet Maslin, had given the book a rave
review in The New York Times, declaring it “blockbuster perfection” (New
York Times Book Review, 2003, p. 1). No matter that her review was more
frothy effusion than insightful analysis; she seemed to have caught the fever
– or was it anxiety, given the risk the industry had taken? – and wanted to
pass it on.
As Doubleday held its breath, The Da Vinci Code debuted at No. 1 on the
New York Times bestseller list, where it has stayed on that list for over two
years, never dropping below No. 5 (as of this writing, it is No. 1 once again).
With 25 million copies in print in 44 languages around the world, the book
long ago eclipsed The Bridges of Madison County’s record of 4.3 million copies
sold. Demand for all things Brown has resurrected sales of his three previous
novels, which together have sold more than seven million copies. And with
sales of the hardcover edition still very strong, Doubleday has no incentive
to release a paperback version in the US yet, although it did release an illustrated hardcover edition in November of 2004, with 900,000 copies in print.
When it does launch the paperback edition, Doubleday will start a new
mass-market paperback house to do so, with The Da Vinci Code as its first
title. Profits at Random House, the parent company of Doubleday, are up
32 percent since the book’s publication.
Meanwhile, the retail giants who assumed as much risk as Doubleday –
and who displayed as much marketing moxie to diffuse it – have also reaped
much more than they sowed. Barnes & Noble and Borders both report that
the book has been their top fiction-seller for two years running, with no end
in sight. Not only do consumers come into the stores asking for the book
by name, but they’ll buy other books having anything to do with it: Cracking
The Da Vinci Code, Decoding The Da Vinci Code, and The Da Vinci Hoax have
all become bestsellers in their own right. Other encoded historical thrillers
have ridden the novel’s coat-tails and increased traffic to the retailers: The
66 Kent Drummond
Dante Club and The Rule of Four are two recent examples, with The Geographer,
Map of Bones, and The Historian due out soon.
As author of this literary leviathan, Dan Brown himself has gone from
comfortable to wealthy. Using conventional royalty rates, he has earned
$50 million from sales of his four books in the US alone (Wyatt, 2005).
Anonymity is a thing of the past; in airports, hotels, and certainly museums,
Brown is mobbed wherever he goes, hounded for autographs.
Ever the dutiful author, Brown played his part in marketing the book, in
both intentional and ingenuous ways. For six months after The Da Vinci Code
was released – when it became clear that the book was a phenomenon in the
publishing world, at least – Brown did his best to extend his product’s life
cycle, granting several high-profile interviews on Good Morning America, The
Today Show, Sixty Minutes, and an ABC special devoted to the book. Charming
but soft-spoken, pleasing but self-effacing, Brown was not the abrasive
conspiracist many readers may have anticipated. A self-described Christian,
but one who believed in the expanded, controversial Grail concept, he typically handled questions about the book’s possibly heretical stance in this way:
I wrote this book in order to explore certain aspects of Christian history
that interest me. The vast majority of devout Christians understand this
fact and consider The Da Vinci Code an entertaining story that promotes
spiritual discussion and debate . . . I should mention that priests, nuns
and clergy contact me all the time to thank me for writing the novel.
(www.danbrown.com)
Brown’s pleasing persona, accessible through so many portals in 2003,
could only help solidify The Da Vinci Code’s stance atop the bestseller lists
well into the fall of that year.
But in late 2003, Brown did something few marketing consultants would
ever advise: he disappeared, and stopped talking to the media – a stance he
has maintained up to the present time. In actuality, Brown is a reluctant
celebrity, and he secluded himself in his New Hampshire house to work on
his next novel, The Solomon Key. But for the past 16 months, the only significant contact he has made with the outside world has been with his agent,
Heide Lange – who is renegotiating his contract – and his editor, Jason
Kaufman – whom he calls at least once a day for advice on the new novel’s
plot twists (Wyatt, 2005).
Alarmingly, Brown’s code of silence hasn’t hurt sales of the book. In fact,
it may have helped. In the absence of any “official” word from the author
regarding meaning or intent, the debate rages on the book’s accuracy and
value. In perhaps history’s largest experiment in reader-response criticism,
the world long ago wrested textual authority away from Dan Brown and into
its own hands, where it has been playing with it – or fighting over it – ever
since.
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Once more unto the breach
The sustained success of The Da Vinci Code shows that millions of people the
world over have been called to read this book. Postmodern theorist Louis
Althusser’s work on hailing and interpellation (1977) best explains this “pull”
phenomenon.
For Althusser, hailing amounts to calling someone’s name in a symbolic
way. His famous example describes a police officer walking down the street
and, seeing someone suspicious, shouting, “Hey, YOU!” With remarkable
precision, Althusser asserts, the person who is supposed to look up actually
does: “Experience shows that the practical telecommunication of hailings is
such that they hardly ever miss their man: verbal call or whistle, the one
hailed always recognizes that it is really him who is being hailed” (p. 174).
Hailing works, Althusser maintains, because we recognize ourselves as the
subject of the call – an act he terms interpellation. Put in more contemporary terms, a consumer answers that call because she recognizes that call
as being for her, or more precisely, some subset of herself. This requires
that she always-already constitutes herself as a subject of that call. Wife,
Episcopalian, teacher, tennis player – competing ideologies interpellate us,
or ask us to recognize ourselves within a multitude of summoners. Once we
submit to one call – having constructed ourselves as free-willed subjects who
could have answered another call had we so desired – we then “willingly”
submit to a set of material practices required by its ideology: we live with
that man, attend that church, teach at that school, play tennis with that
racket, and engage in all other sets of practices expected of us in those roles.
The result, Eagleton notes (1991), is a slavish fractionalization of the self.
Althusser’s voice, then, is the one talking rudely in the background during
the playing of liberatory postmodernism’s finale (Firat and Venkatesh, 1995).
Take, for example, a recent issue of Conde Nast’s Vanity Fair – the one
with the trio of Russian beauties standing in the surf on its cover (April,
2005). Within the first 30 pages, the reader is hailed by a bevy of upscale
designers whose fashion statements are splashed loudly across its pages. Ralph
Lauren, Calvin Klein, Gucci, Prada – each designer calls out to her in a very
different voice. But which one does she answer? It depends on what kind of
subject she recognizes herself as. If the subject is “Elegant Aristocrat,” she
answers Lauren’s hailing; if it’s “Soiled Sensualist,” she answers Klein’s; if
it’s “PoMo Misfit,” she answers Prada’s; and if it’s “Disaffected Layabout,”
she answers Gucci’s. Each designer represents a choice of sorts for the reader;
but in the end, Althusser would call her nothing more – and nothing less
– than a slave to fashion.
In similar fashion, it could be argued that various subsets of readers have
been hailed by The Da Vinci Code in a profound way, with each group interpellating itself as the subject of its hailing. If this is the case, one might
reasonably ask, “Who is being hailed here?” And the answer might reasonably come from detective work beyond even Robert Langdon’s ability: by
68 Kent Drummond
examining the explicit and implicit themes, rhetorical stances, and serendipitous acts occasioned by the book, its author, and its characters; in short, by
catching them all when they’re not looking. To do so reveals three distinct
levels of hailing, each reflecting a different depth-charge of cohesion to, and
commitment by, its target audience.
Primary hailing: those who need to recover the sacred feminine
On the surface – which is to say, in a very explicit way promoted by the
book’s marketers, its characters, and by Dan Brown himself – The Da Vinci
Code is a celebration of all things feminine: a deliberate, repetitive, and selfcongratulatory act of resuscitating the venerability of women, which may
have been done a long time ago but which hasn’t been done for a while.
Readers aren’t exactly sure how to enact this revival until midway through
the book, but they hear plenty of women’s voices in the meantime. First
is the Muse-like quality of Dan Brown’s acknowledgments to the women in
this life: “For Blythe . . . again. More than ever,” reads the inside dedication, and in the Acknowledgments: to Brown’s mother, “fellow scribe,
nurturer, musician and role model” and again Blythe, “art historian, painter,
front-line editor, and without a doubt the most astonishingly talented woman
I have ever known.” Before the novel starts – but even as readers’ impressions are being formed – Brown establishes himself as a man willing to
worship women and learn from them.
Next is the similar attitude Robert Langdon strikes when, 50 pages into
the novel, he first meets Sophie Neveu:
She was moving down the corridor toward them with long, fluid strides
. . . a haunting certainty to her gait . . . Unlike the waifish, cookie-cutter
blondes that adorned Harvard dorm room walls, this woman was healthy
with an unembellished beauty and genuineness that radiated a striking
personal confidence.
(p. 50)
The book’s heroine is thus inspired by Dan Brown’s mother and wife, a
woman to be intrigued by, attracted to, invested in, and enamored of for the
remainder of the novel.
Finally, of course, is the revelation of the Grail Secret to an astonished
Sophie, in which readers learn that Mary Magdalene was not a prostitute but
the wife of Jesus and the mother of His child. This annunciation not only
humanizes Jesus, but extends an unheard-of empowerment to women beyond
the saint–sinner dichotomy usually accorded them by western society. The
paradigm shift resonates deeply among the many women who have felt disenfranchised by organized religion for thousands of years (Van Biema and
McLaughlin, 2003). As they rise to the rank of bishop in some traditional
denominations, or simply criticize the late Pope John Paul II for his conser-
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vative interpretation of women’s roles within the Church, women display
their willingness to be hailed by Brown’s Grail summons. In consuming the
book, they announce their support for it: actively, explicitly, and politically.
Secondary hailing: those who need to inscribe those who need to
recover the sacred feminine
Many readers of The Da Vinci Code remark how tired they are by the book’s
conclusion; this is because most of them stayed up all night to finish it. But
what they may not realize is that their protagonist, Robert Langdon, hasn’t
gotten much sleep either. Over the course of three days, Langdon neither
sleeps nor drinks nor acts upon his palpable desire for Sophie: he appears to
be a bundle of repressed desire. Only when there’s a code to be cracked, a
riddle to be solved, or an arcane piece of knowledge to be explained does
Langdon become fully aroused. Then, the collective energy from all his withered appetites swells into a mystery-solving organon, a virile culture-club
used to drub others with its rigidity or penetrate them with its acumen.
And what is all this phallic force in the service of, ultimately? In pursuing,
protecting, instructing, and gazing at women: the active male manipulating
the passive female 30 years on (Mulvey, 1975). The Greatest Story Never
Told now co-stars a woman, but the story is still told by a man. Like George
Balanchine, the neo-Classical choreographer who described himself as a
“gardener to women” even as he was starving, confusing, musing, and
marrying them, Brown-as-Langdon celebrates women, but he alone specifies
the terms under which they will be celebrated. Louvre curator Jacques
Saunière arranges himself as the Vitruvian Man – the balance of the male
form encompassed by the female womb – but even as he lies dying, he gets
to draw the circle.
Such a mean-spirited reading provides little comfort to some women
(Dowd, 2005) but it may constitute a profound hailing for tradition-bound
men, who read The Da Vinci Code more for entertainment value than political statement. As Dale, a typical male blogger, writes, “I could enjoy the
book and chuckle at the ‘authentication’ and strengthen my faith – all in
one stroke” (Customerevangelists.com, 2005). This eye toward enjoymentwith-efficiency is classic male-gaze behavior; it suggests that Brown is hailing
a sizable portion of male readers based on their identification with Langdon,
the man who wields the tool and gets the girl.
Tertiary hailing: those who enjoy accumulating and displaying
symbolic capital
Paris street, rainy day: at the Place Vendome on a cold March morning, a
dozen tourists wait for a tour guide in the middle of a thoroughfare that
once carried Princess Diana to her death. The guide appears – a woman –
and for three hours she retraces the major Parisian sites Robert Langdon visits
70 Kent Drummond
in The Da Vinci Code: from the Ritz, where Langdon is awakened by the news
of Saunière’s murder; to the Louvre, where he and Sophie elude the police
by pretending to jump out a men’s room window; and finally to the Church
at St-Sulpice, where the albino Silas searches vainly for the Grail and murders
a nun. As the group warms up, the talk flows freely: no one understands the
entire book, and some haven’t read it. Others are upset that Tom Hanks has
been cast as Langdon; everyone wants to know when filming will begin at
the Louvre. The guide answers all these questions with calm assurance. Then,
after collecting 25 euros from each visitor, she tells the group where to find
the best crepes in Paris and sends them back out to the streets.
The next day, in warmer weather, a single tourist waits for a guide at the
Arc du Carrousel, in front of the Louvre’s main entrance. The guide appears
– a woman – and the two walk for three hours, this time entirely within the
Louvre. The point of the tour, explains the guide (who trained at the Courtauld
Institute in London), is to examine four themes less-than-successfully developed by The Da Vinci Code: the sacred feminine, paganism, the iconography
of Mary Magdalene, and the major paintings of Leonardo da Vinci. In other
words, Brown’s incomplete understanding of history and artistic tradition
occasion this tour. The examples begin with pre-Christian art at one end of
the museum and end with the Mona Lisa at the other. After collecting
95 euros, the guide thanks the visitor for his time and encourages him to
remain in the Louvre to revisit the objets d’art just discussed.
The unwitting achievement of The Da Vinci Code is that it can accommodate both types of tour and their patrons: a connect-the-dots journey that
makes sense of an intimidating, foreign city to first-timers; and a deconstructive thesis-walk that allows more worldly visitors to “trump” the author
in his use and misuse of symbolic capital (Bourdieu, 1984).
In fact, by researching The Da Vinci Code as meticulously as he did – and
by situating it within the symbol-rich world of High Art – Dan Brown
erected a giant funhouse of symbolic capital in which lots of adults enjoy
playing. This is the third and most labor-intensive level at which Brown
hails many readers: the opportunity to spend a lot of time in that funhouse,
either accepting the slanted floors and distorted images at face value (the
first tour), or trying to penetrate to a deeper truth behind their illusions (the
second); but in either case, spending lots of money to get there, then buying
the t-shirt and telling your friends where you got it. Heeding this hailing
enables readers to join a high-stakes Culture Club: swapping stories at the
Hemingway Bar after a long day at the Louvre, not only have they consumed
Dan Brown, they’ve conquered Paris and all its trappings of High Culture.
Let every eye negotiate for itself
By the time the film version of The Da Vinci Code has run its course, the
total revenue generated by the book is expected to exceed $1 billion (Adams,
2004). While market forces – some richly conceived, others happily provi-
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dential – have conspired to make this so, only a profound and multivoiced
summons from the text to several Subjects can explain its achievement as an
abiding cultural phenomenon. In its primary, most explicit hailing, the book
calls to millions of women who have felt disenfranchised by the organization of the Church and the consequence of its teachings. Just as Titanic
director, James Cameron, studied Reviving Ophelia before making the most
successful movie of all time, Dan Brown quite deliberately left himself
vulnerable to the feminine voice.
Yet, even as he was being influenced by the feminine, Brown created a
protagonist who was, in thought and action, deeply masculine. This enabled
primarily male readers to identify fully with the novel’s symbolically potent
hero, who not only tells a woman’s story but, in so doing, captures the woman
of his dreams.
Finally, in his use and misuse of symbolic capital, Brown hails those who
recognize themselves as cultural capitalists: some rising to, others rising
above, the author’s flawed command of esoteric material. In recognizing his
call as their own, they engage in a set of practices that markets the novel
even as they consume it: by going to Paris to take the tours; by purchasing
merchandise related to the book; by sharing these experiences with friends;
by keeping abreast of the latest Code developments – all the while extending
the life cycle of the original product.
Two years after its publication, the cultural impact of The Da Vinci Code
is significant enough that any further injunctions against its consumption
also constitute further marketing. Cardinal Bertone’s disapproval of the book
thus becomes a promotion for it, as do these words, framed and under glass,
in an obscure corner of St-Sulpice Church:
Contrary to fanciful allegations in a recent bestselling novel, this is not
a vestige of a pagan temple. No such temple ever existed in this place.
It was never called a “Rose Line.” No mystical notion can be derived
from this instrument of astronomy except to acknowledge that God the
Creator is the master of time.
All of which may be true. But Dan Brown remains the master of this cultural
Moment.
References
Adams, S. (2004) ‘Da Vinci Inc.’, Forbes, 173, 24 May, 59.
Althusser, L. (1977) ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an
Investigation)’, in Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, London: New Left.
Baigent, M., Leigh, R. and Lincoln, H. (1982) Holy Blood, Holy Grail, New York: Dell.
Bertone, Cardinal T. (2005) ‘Don’t Buy The Da Vinci Code’, Vatican Radio Interview,
29 March 2005.
Bourdieu, P. (1984) Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
72 Kent Drummond
Brown, D. (2003) The Da Vinci Code, New York: Doubleday.
Dowd, M. (2005) ‘The Vatican Code’, New York Times syndicated column, 27 March.
Drummond, K. (forthcoming) ‘Climbing a Stairway to Heaven: Led Zeppelin’s Celtic
Embrace’, Journal of Strategic Marketing.
Eagleton, T. (1991) Ideology: An Introduction, London: Verso.
Firat, A.F. and Venkatesh, A. (1995) ‘Liberatory Postmodernism and the Reenchantment
of Consumption’, Journal of Consumer Research, 22 (December), 239–67.
Grainger, D. (2004) ‘The Passion of The Da Vinci Reader’, Fortune, 8 March 2004.
Maslin, J. (2003) ‘Spinning a Thriller from a Gallery at the Louvre’, New York Times
Book Review, 17 March, 1.
Mulvey, L. (1975) ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, Screen, 16 (3), 6–18.
Van Biema, D. and McLaughlin, L. (2003) ‘Mary Magdalene: Saint or Sinner?’, Time,
162 (18 March), 37–45.
Wyatt, E. (2005) ‘For Code Author, 24 Months in a Circus’, New York Times, 18 March,
2–4.
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Martin Amis on marketing
Daragh O’Reilly
A work of art is a gift, not a commodity . . . Every modern artist who has chosen
to labour with a gift must sooner or later wonder how he or she is to survive in
a society dominated by market exchange. And if the fruits of a gift are gifts
themselves, how is the artist to nourish himself, spiritually as well as materially, in an age whose values are market values and whose commerce consists
almost exclusively in the purchase and sale of commodities?
(Hyde 1983)
Introduction
Using the example of Martin Amis (1949– ) and his novel, Money: A Suicide
Note (1985), this chapter reflects on the role of the literary novelist as cultural
producer, marketing communicator, brand, and social commentator. Amis
is regarded by many as one of the most accomplished novelists writing in
the English language (Massie 1990; McRae and Carter 2004; Thomson
1998), and Money has been hailed as his best novel. Its potential interest to
a marketing audience resides, among other things, in what Diedrick (1995)
calls its “critique of late capitalism,” and its portrayal of John Self, a successful
advertising director who is trying to make a critical career jump to porn
movie-making in the US.
Literary fiction as a business
Any literary novelist is confronted with the commercial realities of the
publishing industry which shape the mediation of novels from writer to
reader. Publishing can be read as part of the entertainment economy (Wolf
2003) or indeed the experience economy (Pine and Gilmore 1999; Schmitt
1999), and a sector of the creative and cultural industries (Hesmondhalgh
2002). Publishing is a venture capital business supported by the licensing
by authors to publishers of monopoly rights in copyrighted ‘properties’.
Literary imprints share broadly the same economic basis as other genres of
publishing output. Owing to monopoly rights ownership and the increasing
economies of scale accruing from longer print runs, there are potentially
74 Daragh O’Reilly
significant profits to be made from just one single title. However, in order
to produce these ‘hit’ titles, it is necessary for imprints to speculate by developing a wide range of books. In this way, a publishing house operates just
like a venture capitalist operation, spreading the business risk by building
a portfolio. Authors are a variable cost managed through the royalties system,
unless the publisher gives away an advance, which technically should be
earned back in royalties. The legal rights in the title enable the property to
be transformed across a multitude of platforms, with authors’ “content” being
distributed by means of a variety of delivery systems, e.g. film, drama, newspaper serialization, translation, and so on. Within the UK, the past 20 years
has seen a concentration of economic power among both publishers and
booksellers. Major retailers now include, of course, e-organisations such as
Amazon. There are very few independent publishers or booksellers. While
some books can be designed and produced for a targeted segment (e.g. The
Queen Mum’s Book on how to Microwave your Cat), literary fiction tends not to
be of this formulaic, market-driven kind. Instead, novelists tend to work
on their books without the benefit of market research, in a product- and
process-driven way. Although novelists receive considerable recognition as
individuals, literary publishing is an exercise in the social production and
distribution of art, involving editors, production people, agents, copy-editors,
publicity people, booksellers, and distributors. In this social system of
production, the editors occupy a key role, functioning as cool hunters in
search of the next hot style or author. Their commissioning criteria include
potential size of market, of course, but also how photogenic and articulate
the author is, his age and likely productive life cycle, the fashionability and/or
substance of the themes dealt with in books being pitched, the possibility
of media tie-ins or product placement deals, the existing degree of celebrity
of the author, rights sales, the reliability of his agent, and so on.
The novelist as cultural producer
In their case study of the Sony Walkman – and in later elaborations (Du Gay
1997; Du Gay et al. 2000; Hall 1997) – Hall and du Gay (1997) introduce
a model known as the circuit of culture. This is a model whose central elements date back to at least the early 1980s (Barker 2000, p. 28). The circuit
of culture is made up of five processes all of which contribute to making culture: production, consumption, representation, regulation, and identity.
Production and consumption are seen as mutually constitutive. Using this
model, the literary author can be read as a cultural producer situated within
the circuit of culture (akin to a ‘content provider’ located in a creativecultural value chain). Literary fiction publicists are persons of symbolic
expertise who articulate, i.e. link, production (authors) and consumption
(the readers) through signifiying practices such as constructing ideal identities or subject positions for consumers or prospects to occupy or negotiate.
Literary novelists, themselves, by means of the promotional activities
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mentioned below, also articulate the production and consumption of fiction.
Indeed, at the level of ‘product’ innovation, through the invention of thirdor first-person point-of-view narrators, they construct subject positions from
which to comment on the world – the novelist as social commentator. These
subject positions can also function as opportunities for projective identification by consumers with fictional protagonists – the psychological dimension
of literature consumption (Culler 2000). And, of course, cultural producers
are politically implicated by their decision to offer a text for publication. They
license their work to multinationals for ten percent of the publisher’s selling price to the trade. Their work then contributes to multinational shareholder wealth as well as to their own. Cultural producers, whatever their
political sensitivities, become directly involved or implicated in the marketing practices which publicize their work. Readers, in this scenario, are cultural consumers who interpret the symbolic offerings presented in the novels
they read.
The novelist as marketing communicator
In today’s celebrity-riddled media culture, it is difficult for literary fiction
authors to construct a distinctive brand identity. There is a lot of competition for ‘airtime’. In the UK, over the past ten years or so, most of the artsrelated media attention has arguably been claimed by visual “artrepreneurs”
such as Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst, the Chapman brothers, and Gunther von
Hagens, who employ strategies of scandal (Schroeder 2000), shock, spectacle,
hype, and hustle. Their combination of questionable ‘product’ quality and
intensive self-promotion (aka “schlock and yawn”) is a strategy well understood by marketers. However, Amis is no slouch when it comes to marketing communications, gaining a high level of awareness and discussion in both
the specialist literary and broadsheet press. Compared to the visual-art-sharks,
the “Amis” brand, as well as being able to command a share of magazine covers and radio and tv interviews, carries considerably more gravitas than its
more strident contemporaries. He is an articulate exponent of the thinking
behind his own work. Some years back, there was a sustained period of mostly
negative publicity for Amis which focused on his remarriage, change of agent,
and spending on dental treatment (French 1999). More recently, he has been
attacked by Fischer (2003) in rather tasteless terms in a review of his novel
Yellow Dog (2003), or e.g. Pilger (2002). But basically, his position as an
accomplished literary novelist is well assured.
Apart from originating the literary “product” from his creative imagination, a novelist will routinely become involved in the marketing communications that accompany publication. The strategy for more established
authors typically includes authors’ book promotion tours (including personal
appearances, readings, and book-signings), as well as media advertising (sometimes also done by the bookseller), and media relations (soliciting reviews
and interviews). The trade strategy includes primarily sales representatives
76 Daragh O’Reilly
calling on chain store and independent retail buyers, as well as in-store dump
bins, and endorsements by retail staff. Other promotional actions include the
development of imprint, book, and author web-sites; jacket design; price
promotions, blurb writing; front- and back-list catalogs; and author information packs. The sponsored Booker, Whitbread, Orange, and other book
awards help to promote the book business as a whole, as well as driving
publicity and sales for winning authors and imprints.
Marketing is the myopia
Marketing claims for itself a key role in the critique of exchange relationships, but as Morgan (1997) points out, there is an opportunity cost to any
perspective. Smart marketers used to chuckle along with Levitt (1960) at the
marketing myopia of those ineffectual businesspeople, those losers, who
took their eyes off their customers, focused instead on their products, and
lost their way. But, insofar as it obscures the field for other perspectives of
a less uncritical persuasion, marketing functions as an ideological opiate;
in fact, marketing is itself the myopia. Key features of this blindness are
the beliefs that (1) human beings are consumers; and (2) consumers exist.
Marketing achieves this blinding through the naturalization of its discourse,
principally through the agency of branding. Branding is the principal cultural
practice of the marketing imagination, and brands have become the culture.
Brands are money-signs, and branding is the corporacy’s attempt not so much
to engage with cultural meaning-making as to engineer it and to co-opt it
for capital. This is achieved through “brandspeak.” Brandspeak has played a
key role in the marketization of culture through the four separate but related
processes of corporatization, commodification, co-optation, and consumerization. Marketing and branding operate a rhetoric of seduction. Marketing is
the pole dancer in the Spearmint Rhino club of real businessmen. But
branding has a cool and revolutionary allure. Branding rocks (Blackwell and
Stephan 2004). Brandspeak is kick-ass discourse, boardroom street-talk,
winners’ lingo. It has the crotch-grabbing, pelvic thrustin’, stuff-struttin’,
dry-humpin’, muthafuckin’, bling-totin’, in-yer-face, swivel on that, gotda-moxie, up-yer-jaxie, money-savvy, jive-talkin’, if-you’re-so-fcukin’-cleverwhy-aren’t-you-a-fcukin’-millionaire sass of real commerce.
Brandspeak, too, like literary discourse, is a maker of fictions, a storyteller
(Twitchell 2004). The path to corporate storytelling is clearly laid out in
Van Riel (2000), and the success of corporate stories as powerful myths that
have been planted within culture has been analysed by Holt (2004). As Du
Gay puts it (2000, p. 17), “the battle for market share becomes a struggle
for the imagination of the consumer.” Those who succumb can be recognized from the way they walk down the street carrying bottles of Dasani
and wearing T-shirts with brandfcuked on the front, symbolizing their very
own neo-brandtribe. Their favourite band is (or will be, if it’s not yet been
invented) a nu-noize-grunge-urban-trip-hop-metal-art-necro-narco-techno-
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porno-crapno-repro-garage-nouveau band from the arsehole of LA called The
Fckued. McEnally and de Chernatony (1999) can even contemplate a stage of
branding development where “consumers ‘vote’ on issues through companies,” a novel alternative to the ballot-box. Who knows? – there may even
come a time when the branding revolution has gone so far that we call each
other “consommateur” and not “citoyen.”
The novelist as brand
The litfic (literary fiction) business is a sign economy. Fiction publishing is
an industry in which there are strong brand identities, both of imprints and
authors. Literary fiction authors may be regarded as talent brands, or entertainer brands. Of course, to conceive of an author as a brand is to de-humanize
them, to restrict them to the economic dimension. Rather than discussing
Martin Amis as a brand, I prefer to talk about “Martin Amis.” Clearly “Martin
Amis” is a function of Martin Amis, but this function is indeterminable,
thankfully lost forever in an endless chain of signifiers, there being no such
thing as brand “essence.” If one wants to know what Martin Amis’s brand
really means (his core brand DNA in its pure essence), one can of course call
a branding agency for the definitive reading – but make sure to have your
credit card handy. From the culturalist point of view, if production and
consumption are “mutually constitutive,” it follows that brands, whether
commercial or cultural/artistic, are socially constructed, and not simply determined by what a group of marketing managers and their comms people
decide. Consumers, by their practices and discourse, co-construct brand
meanings. “Martin Amis” is therefore a text, a web of textual meanings, a
contested site, a sign constructed socially, by himself, his publisher, and his
readers, through talk and social interaction. Author-brands can be read as
commodified texts that mediate meanings between and among readers and
writers. They function as symbolic articulators of writing and reading, and
can be used by consumers discursively to elaborate markers of their own
distinction from, and identification with, others. A relatively recent construct
developed to characterize groups of consumers is the notion of “brand
community” (Muniz and O’Guinn 2001). This leads to the possibility that
readers may find themselves characterized as members of e.g. Will Self’s
“brand community.”
The novelist as social commentator – Martin Amis on
marketing
One of the social values of the literary novel is that it can be used by the
author to comment on the society in which he finds himself. Amis’s novel,
Money, has been described as a critique of late capitalism (Diedrick 1995).
Most people, given a course in statistics, could generalize from a sample;
however, it takes a story-telling talent to particularize from the general so
78 Daragh O’Reilly
as to offer a social critique with wide resonance. Before looking at wider
social issues, however, let us take a look at Amis’s views of a particular kind
of book marketing. His novel, The Information (1995), is the story of Richard
Tull, a book reviewer consumed with envy by the success of another writer.
During a trip to the US, he muses on the airport novel:
Clearly there was a spiritual bond – a covenant, a solemn sympathy –
between airports and junk novels . . . Junk novels were sold in airports.
People in airports bought and read junk novels. Junk novels were about
people in airports . . . Airports, junk novels: they were taking your mind
off mortal fear.
On an earlier flight, Tull passes up the cabin from economy to first class,
describing the different reader ‘segments’ as he goes, and offering us at the
same time a view of social hierarchy and taste:
[he] found that his progress through the pane described a diagonal of
shocking decline. In Coach, the laptop literature was pluralistic, liberal
and humane . . . As for Business World . . . the business men and businesswomen . . . were reading trex: outright junk . . . And . . . in First
Class, among all its drugged tycoons . . . nobody was reading anything.
Another of Amis’s novels, Money, was written in the 1980s when Britain
was in the grip of Thatcherite political economics, when there was “no such
thing as society” (perhaps Thatcher was a social constructionist at heart?).
Its protagonist is John Self, a successful London-based advertising director
who is offered a chance to direct a pornographic film in the US. He, like
Martin Amis, is a worker in the cultural and creative industries, a cultural
producer, a marketing communicator, and an artist, though of a different
kind. Diedrick (1995) sees him as a
naive literary modernist clinging to the fiction that he can protect his
art from the influence of the marketplace. When Self learns that Amis
[a writer named Martin Amis is a character in the book] makes “enough”
yet doesn’t own a video player, he becomes indignant. “You haven’t got
shit, have you, and how much do you earn? It’s immoral. Push out some
cash. Buy stuff. Consume, for Christ’s sake.” Amis’s response: “I suppose
I’ll have to start one day,” he said. “But I really don’t want to join it,
the whole money conspiracy.”
Self is addicted to junk food, sweet drinks, strong cigarettes, advertising,
all-day television, pornography, and fighting; he says he is, in fact, “addicted
to the twentieth century.” His dream in life is to make lots of money. He
is on the dark side of cultural production and also the dark side of consumption. Nearly all of Self’s relationships are marketized and involve money and
deal-making.
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Self is an advertising man made good; he has made good use of his
marketing imagination. He reflects on how his work has helped to change
the face of food retailing:
There used to be a third-generation Italian restaurant across the road
. . . It’s now a Burger Den. There is already a Burger Hutch on the street.
There is a Burger Shack, too, and a Burger Bower. Fast food equals fast
money. I know: I helped . . . My way is coming up in the world.
Self is an adept exponent of the marketing imagination, which works in
the service of capital to build us more exciting shopping malls and “consumption experiences.” But, as a capitalist-marketer, Self is a mere apprentice to
Fielding Goodney, the producer of the porn film, a human Mephisto to Self’s
Faust. Goodney appears to be a genius at making money. His marketing
imagination conceives of consumption in terms of addiction:
Always endeavour, Slick, to keep a fix on the addiction industries: you
can’t lose. The addicts can’t win. Dope, liquor, gambling, anything video
– these have to be the deepmoney veins. Nowadays the responsible
businessman keeps a finger on the pulse of dependence.
Goodney can even see a market in human warmth – clearly he has potential
as a marketing manager:
“Want to know my hunch for the next growth area in the addiction
line? Want to make a million? Shall I let you in?”
“Do it,” I said.
“Cuddles,” said Fielding Goodney. “Cuddling up. Two people lying
down and generating warmth and safety. Now how do we market this?
A how-to book? A video? Nightshirts? A cuddle studio, with cuddle
hostesses? Think about it, Slick. There are millions and millions of
dollars out there somewhere in cuddles.”
Despite his success in contributing to the branding of the High Street,
Self is not entirely at ease with all of this. He comments ruefully:
But my life is also my private culture – that’s what I’m showing you,
after all, that’s what I’m letting you into, my private culture. And I
mean look at my private culture. Look at the state of it. It really isn’t
very nice in here.
Self’s own relationship with brands and money are not working smoothly
enough to deliver him the money he craves. His car, for example, a Fiasco,
often lets him down, both as a status symbol and as a functioning automobile,
and reminds him of some of the has-been actors he’s working with:
80 Daragh O’Reilly
I drove home in my Fiasco, which, apart from the faulty cooling system,
the recurring malfunction with the brakes and power-steering, and a
tendency to list violently to the left, seems to be running fairly reliably
at present. At least it starts more often than not, on the whole.
Like all filmstars Lorne was about two foot nine . . . like the fucking
Fiasco – way past his best, giving everyone grief, and burning up money
and rubber and oil.
As a film director, Self is attempting to weave together a workable script;
he is, therefore, like Martin Amis, a cultural producer, a content provider,
a brand, an auteur, but of quite a different character. Even the screenwriting
process in Money is marketized – the actors are continually seeking to negotiate their roles, using every trick at their disposal. Screenwriters, including
one “Martin Amis,” have to be hired in to reconcile the increasingly wild
and conflicting demands of the stars. Self fails to pull together the story, and
so fails to pull together his own life-story. In the end, Self is betrayed by
almost everybody, including his own daemons. His Self-actualization project
is serially invalidated; the film never gets to principal photography; his life
fragments, and with it his social identity. He is set up by Fielding, the
producer, in a phoney financing deal. He is betrayed by his family, his friend,
and his lover Selina, who also causes his own betrayal of Martina, another
lover who might have been his redemption. He has to leave the US and flee
to the UK. He attempts suicide, but fails. At the end of the novel, he is
broken by his own consumption and production practices.
Money is a tarot, the story of a fool, a non-hero’s journey through (development) hell. Self’s career is in ruins, but at the end of the book, he has
found a kind of at-one-ment. He is forced to forego material impoverishment in return for the spiritual gift of being able to see himself and his
relationships in a truer perspective. The book can be read as a story of a
marketized ego being disabused of its addictive projections through a systematic process of dis-illusionment, de-market-ization, and débrouillage. In this
sense, Money answers the question posed by Hyde (1983) at the beginning
of this chapter. It is a comic satire that offers a deconstruction of Advertising
Man and therefore of the marketing imagination. It “illustrates the cost of
investing in a falsely constructed self” (Edmondson 2001, p. 145), and the
perils of trying to make art for money. The marketing imagination is in
the service of capital. The novelistic imagination, however, should be in the
service of soul, writing critically reflexive stories about the state of society
and psyche, as Martin Amis does in Money.
References
Amis, M. (1985) Money: A Suicide Note, London: Penguin.
–––– (1995) The Information, London: Flamingo.
–––– (2003) Yellow Dog, London: Jonathan Cape.
Martin Amis on marketing 81
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Barker, C. (2000) Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice, London: Sage.
Blackwell, R. and Stephan, T. (2004) Brands That Rock, London: Wiley.
Culler, J. (2000) Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford: Oxford Paperbacks.
Diedrick, J. (1995) Understanding Martin Amis, Columbia, SC: University of South
Carolina Press.
Du Gay, P. (ed.) (1997) Production of Culture/Cultures of Production, London: Open
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Du Gay, P. (2000) ‘Markets and Meanings: Re-Imagining Organizational Life’, in M.
Schultz, M.J. Hatch and M. Holten Larsen (eds), The Expressive Organisation: Linking
Identity, Reputation and the Corporate Brand, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Du Gay, P., Evans, J. and Redman, P. (eds) (2000) Identity: A Reader, London: Sage.
Edmondson, E. (2001) ‘Martin Amis Writes Postmodern Man’, Critique, 42 (2), 145.
Fischer, T. (2003) ‘Better Than Amis?’, The Observer, Sunday 31 August. (Retrieved 28
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French, S. (1999) ‘Why are People More Interested in Norman Mailer’s Penis or Martin
Amis’s Teeth Than in Their Books?’, New Statesman, 11 October.
Hall, S. (ed.) (1997) Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices, London:
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Hall, S. and Du Gay, P. (1997) Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman,
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Hesmondhalgh, D. (2002) The Cultural Industries, London: Sage.
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Hyde, L. (1983) The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property, New York: Vintage
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Levitt, T. (1960) ‘Marketing Myopia’, Harvard Business Review, 38 (4), 45–56.
McEnally, M. and De Chernatony, L. (1999) ‘The Evolving Nature of Branding: Consumer
and Managerial Considerations’, Academy of Science Marketing Review, 2, 1–25.
McRae, J. and Carter, R. (2004) The Routledge Guide to Modern English Writing: Britain
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Massie, A. (1990) The Novel Today: A Critical Guide to the British Novel 1970–1989,
London: Longman.
Morgan, G. (1997) Images of Organization, London: Sage.
Muniz, A. and O’Guinn, T. (2001) ‘Brand Community’, Journal of Consumer Research, 27
(4), 412–32.
Pilger, J. (2002) ‘Martin Amis Represents a Problem: That Some of the Most Acclaimed
and Privileged Writers in the English Language Fail to Engage with the Most Urgent
Issues of our Time’, New Statesman, 17 June.
Pine, B.J. and Gilmore, J. (1999) The Experience Economy: Work is Theatre and Every Business
a Stage, Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
Schmitt, B. (1999) Experiential Marketing: How to get Customers to Sense, Feel, Think, Act,
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Schroeder, J. (2000) ‘Édouard Manet, Calvin Klein and the Strategic Use of Scandal’, in
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82 Daragh O’Reilly
Twitchell, J. (2004) ‘An English Teacher Looks at Branding’, Journal of Consumer Research,
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7
Paperback mother . . .
Lisa O’Malley, Maurice Patterson and
Caoilfhionn Ní Bheacháin
Repertoire
Twenty-four: I have twenty-four books on mothers, motherhood and mothering. Lately, worried that my children are suffering as a result of my avid
consumption of motherhood guides, I’ve taken to power-reading paragraphs
between the nappy change and the next feed. By the way I have two children. My six-year-old daughter uses my books to mug up on motherhood
for herself. Scrutinising the pictures, she has become an expert in stretch
marks, vaginal delivery, and episiotomies: an expertise she’s all too willing
to share with complete strangers. My son, who weighed ten pounds at birth,
and who, 12 months later, has taken on the demeanour of a rugby prop
forward, is living testament to the fact that reading aids in the production
of healthy children. Twenty-four books to advise on the delivery, care and
nurturing of two children. The numbers don’t surprise me all that much
though for, after all, Mommy Lit is big business:
Walk down the baby-and-child-care aisle in any bookshop and you will
notice the shelves groaning under the weight of countless books on how
to care for babies, how to make them smarter, how to make them sleep
through the night, how to teach them party tricks like drinking from
a cup or using the potty and how to keep them from blaming you to
their psychiatrists when they grow up.
(Iovine 1999, p. xiii)
Although parenting books have been one of publishing’s most robust
genres for decades, in recent years, sales have gone into overdrive with the
category experiencing a growth spurt the envy of parents everywhere
(Frederick 1998). Indeed, the popularity of Mommy Lit has rocketed with
shops such as Borders and Books Etc. reporting a 30 per cent rise in both
sales and the number of titles on offer (Hill 2003). Half a million parenting
books were sold in the UK in the last two years. The top ten best-selling
pregnancy and childcare titles suggest the plethora of rhetorical tactics
employed by authors to curry favour with their audience (see Table 7.1).
84 Lisa O’Malley, Maurice Patterson, Caoilfhionn Ní Bheacháin
Table 7.1 Top ten pregnancy and childcare titles
Number
Title
Author
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
The New Contented Little Baby Book
New Pregnancy and Birth Book
Toddler Taming
Conception, Pregnancy and Birth
Raising Boys: Why Boys Are Different
What To Expect the First Year
The Best Friends’ Guide to Pregnancy
From Contented Baby to Confident Child
Complete Baby and Child Care
New Parent
Gina Ford
Miriam Stoppard
Christopher Green
Miriam Stoppard
Steve Biddulph
Eisenberg et al.
Vicki Iovine
Gina Ford
Miriam Stoppard
Miriam Stoppard
Source: Bookseller (2002)
The appetite for information, competition for shelf space, and the multitude of mothering experiences have combined to deliver upon the parenting
public ever more tightly-defined subject matter. Help is at hand if, for
example, you have the misfortune to be an elderly primigravida (first-time
mother over 30!). Succour is available if you’re the mother of boys who selfcombust on being exposed to broccoli. Salvation is only a chapter away if
you want to master the difficult art of lovemaking while your toddler sleeps
in the cot next to your bed. There is a book for every problem, for every
audience, and to take you through every stage of the process. Most books
start with conception; for others, it is their sole preoccupation: ‘Forget it
taking a village to raise a child – these days it often takes a village . . . just
to have one’ (Danford 2005, p. 33).
So, if you need help getting the most out of your eggs you can pick up a
copy of The Fastest Way to Get Pregnant Naturally (Williams 2001) or Fertility
and Conception: The Complete Guide to Getting Pregnant (West 2003). If pain is
not your thing then bear down with Lieberman and Rosenberg’s (1992) Easing
Labour Pain: The Complete Guide To a More Comfortable and Rewarding Birth or
Wesson’s (1999) Coping with Labour Pain: A Comprehensive Guide to the Best
Ways to Alleviate It. If you’ve been badgered into giving breastfeeding a try
why not consult Tamaro’s (1998) So That’s What They’re For! Or, if your
nipples just can’t take any more punishment, have a look at Bengson’s (1999)
How Weaning Happens. If you’re one of the millions of mums juggling children and a career, you might want to read Maternal Desire: On Children, Love
and the Inner Life (De Marneffe 2005), or The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of
Motherhood and How It Has Undermined Women (Douglas and Michaels 2004).
One advocates the right to stay at home and be happy, the other the right to
go to work and be happy (Kolbert 2004). The result, depending on your
personal preference, is either paroxysms of pleasure or apoplectic rage.
My personal favourite is Vicki Iovine’s (1999) The Best Friends’ Guide to
Surviving the First Year of Motherhood. Iovine identified exactly for whom she
was writing the book and she was writing it for me!
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This is the book for those of us who weep when we hold our baby, but
we’re not always sure whether it’s because we’re overcome by adoration
or terror. It’s for those of us who secretly suspect we may not be up to
this job, but don’t want to give the baby back. It’s for those of us who
cherish breastfeeding our babies in bed and falling asleep together, but
who yearn to talk to real grown-ups who read newspapers and have seen
at least one of the films nominated for this year’s Academy Awards. It’s
for those of us who wouldn’t have missed parenting for all the world,
but who wonder if while we’re parenting we’re missing the rest of the
world. It’s for those of us who rush past a mirror and think for a moment
that we just saw our mother, and spend the rest of the day in tears.
(Iovine 1999, p. xii)
Of course, compulsive book buying is just one aspect of the unbridled
consumerism that marks our journey to motherhood. In order to appear to
be doing the best for our children, we routinely seek out consumer goods as
markers of ‘good motherhood’. Our books fuel this desire for baby-centred
consumption and any decent guide will lead you through a whistle-stop tour
of arcades, shopping centres and back-street baby boutiques.
Readers
Since the very birth of parenting guides, mothers like me have been helping
to determine the style of the genre. At any given point in time, the context
in which we find ourselves determines the questions we are likely to ask and
the solutions we are likely to seek: ‘The popularity of . . . particular manuals,
rather than others, indicates that they have struck a chord with readers and
evidently supply what many parents perceive as the necessary and appropriate
information and guidance’ (Hays 1996, p. 52).
As readers, we also often fail to consider that authors are themselves prone
to picking up the odd tome or two. Indeed, Darnton argues that ‘by reading
and associating with other readers and writers, [authors] form notions of
genre and style and a general sense of literary enterprise, which affects their
texts’ (2002, p. 11). Indeed, it is the general acceptance of what constitutes
the ‘childcare genre’ that determines what is included and what is excluded
in popular texts. The genre has norms that inevitably shape the look, style
and format of current and future parenting books.
Pregnancy has always been an unsettling time for me: a time of intense
hormonal swings, a time when my body takes on a life of its own. It reacts
to commonplace events, such as waking up, in violent and unpredictable
ways. My verbal and mental abilities deteriorate to such an extent that it
becomes impossible to manufacture a complete coherent sentence. I never
know what to feel, and when I do feel something I worry about it. I know
about morning sickness, but what if I’m throwing up in the evening? I
understand that unusual cravings are de rigueur, but does that extend to
86 Lisa O’Malley, Maurice Patterson, Caoilfhionn Ní Bheacháin
eggs smothered in ice cream? I love my husband more than anyone else in
the world but is it okay to want to kill him, slowly and painfully? Questions
like these keep me awake long after the indigestion has stopped providing
the same service. What I need is a reliable source of information; one that
(unlike my caring, sharing husband) doesn’t answer back and is available
at three o’clock in the morning. Books fill this information gap in the
same way that being pregnant fills the ‘biological gap’ experienced weeks or
months earlier.
I know that mothering and motherhood are supposed to be instinctive
practices. As soon as I even think of getting pregnant, millennia of social
imprinting are supposed to kick in and I will be transformed into some kind
of übermom. Mothers are bombarded with the dogma of naturalness. We are
assured that ‘parents are programmed with a whole set of reflex responses
. . . Geared to lavish affection on the child’ (Brazelton 1983). Indeed, ‘whatever your mind and the deeply entrenched habits of your previous life may
be telling you, your body is ready and waiting for him [the baby]. His small
frame fits perfectly against your belly, breast and shoulder’ (Leach 1986, p.
14). The ‘natural’ and taken-for-granted nature of motherhood (Woodward
1997) is then reinforced in literature, film and other cultural forms (Kaplan
1992). Celebrity mums fuel and sustain such ideologies (Kolbert 2004).
Nigella Lawson (author of How to Be a Domestic Goddess) is the current number
one role model for UK mums, with Cherie Booth and Victoria Beckham as
runners-up (Summerskill 2003). The fact that these celebrity mums don’t,
by definition, stay at home, doesn’t prevent them from setting a standard
of motherhood that we mundane mums find almost impossible to meet
(Douglas and Michaels 2004). As such, we are left with little choice but to
buy the books, consult the experts, follow the guidelines, and fulfil our ‘feminine destiny’. For if we fail to experience the intensive and fulfilling reality
of ‘natural’ motherhood, we are marked as deviant. Then again, some mothers
embrace their perceived deviance: ‘My postnatal depression was longer than
most. I went into it seven months before the baby came and it lasted until
the kid was 17. Then it began to taper off’ (Bombeck 1996, p. 23).
You’d think that after my second child I wouldn’t need to seek counsel
as routinely as I do from the ‘experts’ who populate my bookshelves. Maybe
it’s because I come from a long line of pale-complexioned, daylight-avoiding
bibliophiles. My family have always put great store by the knowledge
contained between dust jackets; so much so that the most trivial query (e.g.
what are my chances of an amniotomy?) still generates a flurry of bookish
behaviour. As such, one reason behind my interest in these guides is that
they contain information that I may, at some time, have an urgent need to
acquire. It is the ‘information age’ for God’s sake!
On the other hand, maybe I read these guides because, just like Naomi
Wolf, I want to be reassured that my passage through motherhood lies within
the bounds of what might be described as ‘normal’. Failure to be normal is
indicative of the inadequacy of the self and symbolic of poor consumption;
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it suggests laziness and a lack of motivation. After all, the tools and techniques required for normal, good mothering are readily available between
the pages of parenting manuals:
Faced with something new and unclear, I turned to the experts: I went
to the bookstore and began to read. Like pregnant women all over the
country, and 80 million women worldwide, I reached first for Arlene
Eisenberg et al.’s What to Expect When You’re Expecting. I quickly developed a love–hate relationship with that book . . . the reason it annoyed
me was the same reason that, when in physical distress, I returned to it
again and again . . . Because beyond the studies, science, statistics and
probabilities, it reassures.
(Wolf 2002, p. 19)
Despite such reassurances, and regardless of the number of bookish experts
currently peddling their wares, many of us mums remain unfulfilled, stressed
and insecure. According to research carried out for Momsnet in 2003, one
in four British women thinks being a parent is much harder than it was for
their own mothers. Sixty per cent feel guilty because of the amount of time
they spend away from their children. Forty per cent agonise because they
shout at the children and twenty five per cent worry that they don’t stimulate their children enough (Summerskill 2003). Indeed, one mother in the
survey said: ‘Guilt is a big bag that the midwives deliver along with the
placenta!’. It appears that such anxieties are a defining characteristic of
the contemporary human condition:
Worry is so endemic to the human condition that most adults are eager
for expert knowledge to help them cope with this disquieting state . . .
[the] middle-class . . . worry about their money, their health, their daily
mood and – most intensely – their children.
(Kagan 1994, p. 42)
Maybe I read, not for information, and not because I’m insecure, but
because, like many other mums, I live a pretty isolated existence, devoid of
the extended kinship ties that previous generations could call upon. Who’s
going to illuminate for me the dangers of soft cheese? Who’s going to help
me distinguish Braxton Hicks from ‘real’ labour pains? Who’s going to explain
the most efficient method for removing Lego from a child’s ear? Even if we do
have lots of empathetic friends and relatives, we often turn to books in the
early stages of pregnancy because societal conventions suggest that the pregnancy is kept secret until after the first trimester. The huge pressure to get it
right means that we need to be tooled up, ready to go, and in control. As a
result, many of these books follow the same formula in providing a blow-byblow account of what is happening to the growing foetus, how you are likely
to feel, and what you should/shouldn’t be doing and eating (see Table 7.2).
88 Lisa O’Malley, Maurice Patterson, Caoilfhionn Ní Bheacháin
Table 7.2 A blow-by-blow account
The first month
The second month
The third month
The fourth month
The fifth month
The sixth month
The seventh month
The eighth month
The ninth month
The fertilised egg travels Jules Verne style down the Fallopian
tube and implants itself in the uterine wall. Your travels take
you only as far as the toilet.
The embryo grows rapidly developing a nervous system. You are
also a bundle of nerves.
The baby’s human characteristics are now obvious, yours are less
so.
The baby’s neck is now long enough to lift the head from the
body. Your head, neck and body have become one amorphous
whole.
Baby begins to move. Your bowel stops moving.
Baby’s organs begin to grow. Some of your organs (for example,
the bladder) appear to have shrunk.
Baby weighs in at about 2 lb. You weigh in at about 200 lb.
The baby’s brain is now developing rapidly. Your brain has
turned to porridge.
Movements decrease as the baby gets too large to manoeuvre
easily. You are also too large to manoeuvre easily.
My books also function to presage my parenting prowess, signifying, as
they do, learning, reason and knowledge. In an environment where informed
mothering is an intrinsic part of the dominant ideology, the consumption
of childcare manuals is a major factor in allowing me to fake it! Now, it’s
difficult to fake pregnancy, and you sure as hell can’t fake childbirth, but
you can and must fake motherhood. Many of us fake our talent for it and
some of us mums even fake our love for it. Indeed, Maushart says that ‘faking
it in our public behaviour and our public discourse has become a way of life’
(1997, p. 3). All we need are our books to provide us with clues as to befitting ensembles (Laura Ashley dresses and Alice bands), furnish us with
apposite idioms (‘Tarquin is getting his DPT shot tomorrow’), and counsel
us on pertinent props (Baby Einstein DVDs). The result is that most of us
now read our way through pregnancy, birth and child-rearing. A 1981 study
found that 97 per cent of American mothers read at least one child-rearing
manual, and nearly three-quarters consult two or more (Geboy 1981).
Writers
You may feel a burning sensation, similar to what is felt when you stretch the
corners of your mouth with your fingers . . . The actual birth may be a mixture
of intense agony as the tissues of the vagina stretch to their limit and a tremendous orgasmic release as the baby’s body slips out and is born.
(Balaskas and Gordon 1992, p. 158)
There is no doubt that my body is fighting a losing battle to recover from
the trauma inflicted upon it by childbirth. Sure, I’m suffering the kind of
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sleep deprivation they teach in torture training school. But it’s the constantly
shifting ground of ideas, the chameleonic ideals of motherhood that do the
most damage. Here, books and their ‘expert’ authors play a central role in
the composition of our ideas about what might represent ‘normal’ and
‘deviant’ motherhood. As I have already suggested, in terms of content,
today’s books promote the view that good mothering is intensive mothering
(time and effort); that it should be innate and that new mothers should exist
on a higher plane of contentment (Hays 1996). Should I stray from this
norm, either in terms of efforts, experience or desire I obviously require guidance. My mother, my sister, my husband and my neighbours may all offer
advice but theirs is not to be trusted, based as it is on old wives’ tales rather
than scientific knowledge (Bourne 1979). Books are different though. Breaking into the market for childcare manuals demands, after all, a certain
expertise when it comes to children, an understanding of the genre itself,
and the support of a strong publishing house (Miller 1998, cited in Croteau
and Hoynes 2000). In terms of expertise, developments in science, technology and medicine have come to dominate how-tos of pregnancy, birthing
and child rearing. This really precludes mothers themselves from writing
guides; in any case, from an early age most of us have learned not to listen
to our mums (Cusk 2004). Thus, for the last hundred years or so, there has
been a demand for authors who are medical professionals. These include
paediatricians (Luther E. Holt and Benjamin Spock); psychologists (G.
Stanley Hall and Penelope Leach) and, more recently, midwives (Gina Ford
and Tracy Hogg).
The leading child-rearing adviser at the turn of the twentieth century was
Dr Luther Emmett Holt (1894) with The Care and Feeding of Children. Holt
was a hardliner who wasn’t too big on maternal affection, or tenderness of
any kind for that matter. He cautioned against cuddling children for fear of
overstimulation and germs (Acocella 2003):
There are many serious objections [to kissing infants]. Tuberculosis,
diphtheria, and many other grave diseases may be communicated in this
way. The kissing of infants upon the mouth by other children, by nurses,
or by people generally, should under no circumstances be permitted.
Infants should be kissed, if at all, upon the cheek or forehead, but the
less even of this the better.
(Holt 1894)
In an effort to get children on the road to adulthood as quickly as possible
Holt championed strict daily schedules, toilet-training at three months, and
bottle over breast. In 1928 Dr John B. Watson released Psychological Care of
Infant and Child, extending Holt’s ‘sensitive’ approach. The move to a psychological approach was predicated on declining infant mortality and a more
developed understanding of the workings of the mind (Arnold 2003). Watson
pioneered behaviourism and had a penchant for exposing children to rewards
90 Lisa O’Malley, Maurice Patterson, Caoilfhionn Ní Bheacháin
and punishments in an effort to condition their behaviour. In fact, his
favourite, ‘Little Albert’, was routinely traumatised by clanging steel bars
and getting dogs to bark (Low 2004). The purpose, of course, was to produce
a self-assured, independent little angel that adults could relate to:
[A happy child is one] who never cries unless actually struck by a pin
– who loses himself in work and play – who quickly learns to overcome
the small difficulties in his environment without running to mother,
father, nurse or other adult – who soon builds up a wealth of habits that
tides him over dark and rainy days – who puts on such habits of politeness and neatness and cleanliness that adults are willing to be around
him at least part of the day.
(Watson 1928, p. 9)
Later discredited (for having an affair with his research assistant rather
than for his ‘progressive’ views), he became an advertising executive for
J. Walter Thompson where his talents were put to more effective use
(Acocella 2003). Indeed, if Watson left a legacy it was that kids were relatively easy targets; so much so that you can now get parenting guides that
help protect your kids from the unscrupulous activities of people like Watson
(see Acuff and Reiher 2005).
Perhaps the best known of the parenting manuals that emerged in the
mid-twentieth century was Dr Spock’s (1946) Baby and Child Care. Dr
Spock’s tome outsold just about everything but the Bible (Hays 1996): 50
million copies in 42 languages (Gray 1998). A mid-1950s’ study claimed
that two-thirds of American mothers had a copy and 80 per cent sought his
advice twice a month (Lewkonia 1998, p. 825). The success of Spock’s manual
can be attributed partly to the marketing support it enjoyed relative to its
competition. The first edition began with the words: ‘Trust Yourself. You
know more than you think you do’. Here at last was a guide that told mums
they didn’t need a guide. Spock introduced Freudian concepts to childcare,
stressing the emotional health of the child. He understood that repression
in early life could lead to neuroses later, but correctly gauged that parents
probably weren’t ready to hear about their infants’ oral, anal and genital
stages. So, if your child was being weird his advice was to bide your time
(Gray 1998). He departed from his predecessors by introducing a more gentle
approach to childcare; he was keen to stress parental love, he recommended
feeding on demand, and he suggested that toilet-training should be noncoercive (Acocella 2003).
By the mid-1980s, Spock’s success was being threatened by a new breed
of experts who stressed the importance of bonds of attachment between parent
and child. It was argued that children who don’t form such bonds early in
life have a predisposition towards crime, laziness and a whole host of other
problems. The key, therefore, is an unending stream of love directed at your
child. Out with the playpen and in with peekaboo. The queen of this
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approach is Penelope Leach who, no stranger to the word processor, has
weighed in with such epics as Your Baby and Child (1986), Babyhood: Infant
Development from Birth (1991) and Children First (1995) among others. Leach
follows Spock’s lead in terms of advancing a flexible, ‘every-child-is-different’
style of parenting. She posits that good mothers mother not ‘by the book’,
but ‘by the child’. To understand how to do this, however, you need to buy
the book!
However carefully she is fed, washed and protected, and however many
mobiles are hung for her, a baby’s overall care is not good enough to
ensure her optimal development unless she is constantly with people
who know her as an individual and who always have the time (and usually
the inclination) to listen to and answer her; to cuddle and play, show
and share. These are the people she will attach herself to and that attachment matters.
(Leach 1995)
Leach’s model of ‘intensive parenting’ is in stark contrast to more recent
treatments. For example, many contemporary mums have opted for the
popular and quite benign sounding The New Contented Little Baby Book (Ford
2002). Sixty thousand copies were sold in the two years after its publication
(Observer 2003). This runaway success story offers, according to the blurb on
the cover, ‘reassuring and practical advice from Britain’s No.1 childcare
expert’. Ford’s book exemplifies a return to the industrialisation of motherhood where managerial principles are applied to the business of mothering.
Aimed particularly at first-time mothers, Ford reintroduces strict time
schedules, feeding regimes and the modification of child behaviour reminiscent of Drs Holt and Watson. Such an approach is designed to help today’s
time-poor mothers manage the inevitable chaos that a new birth introduces
to family life. These methods are not intended to create time away from the
mothering role. Rather, new mothers must continue to devote all their energy
to child-rearing but must do so in a logical, managerial fashion (Hays 1996).
Described by Amazon.co.uk as a kind of ‘strict and loving old nanny from
yesteryear’, Ford produces in her audience love, hate, fear and admiration in
almost equal measure. On the positive side, reviewers are thankful for the
structure that Ford’s ideas bring to their mothering lives: ‘Gina’s book gives
you sense and structure for what is potentially a chaotic time and, for us,
made those vital first stages manageable, and dare I say it enjoyable’ (Harriet
Graves from Surrey). However, many reviewers, possibly more accustomed
to attending to the every whim and desire of their children, are negative and
unable to comprehend the strictness advocated by Ford:
This is horrible stuff, don’t understand the popularity of this book at
all. All those obsessive sleeping and feeding routines. How has womankind managed all these thousands of years bringing up babies – without
92 Lisa O’Malley, Maurice Patterson, Caoilfhionn Ní Bheacháin
clocks – and without busybody midwife dictators like G. Ford telling
women what they should be doing at any given moment in the day
. . . This book belongs firmly in the dark ages of child factory workers,
where children were seen and not heard and babies were here to be
disciplined and subjugated at birth.
(A reader from London)
While Ford’s book is the most popular of its generation and is ably
supported by brand extensions (Potty Training in One Week 2003; The Complete
Sleep Guide for Contented Babies and Toddlers 2003; Good Mother, Bad Mother
2006), hers are not the only advice manuals taking this industrial approach.
Books such as The Sixty Minute Mother (Parsons 2000) and Mom Inc. (MacGregor
2005) appeal to many mothers because they address the very real pressures
faced by these women in contemporary society. Whether you’re the traditional
mother who, ‘when she’s not cleaning, cooking, sewing, shopping, doing the
laundry, or comforting her mate, is focused on attending to the children and
ensuring their proper development’, or the supermom ‘effortlessly juggling
home and work, [able to] push a stroller with one hand and carry a briefcase
in the other’, (Hays 1996, p. 132), these books provide a welcome acknowledgement of your time-poor existence. Of course, where you find the time in
your strict schedule to read these books is anybody’s guess.
Resolution
[Children] are human nature in essence, without conscience, without pity,
without love, without a trace of consideration for others – just one seething
cauldron of primitive appetites.
(Porter, in Handley and Samelson 1988, p. 44)
There is an important and implicit contradiction that readers and writers of
Mommy Lit must face: despite the widely promoted ‘instinctive’ nature of
motherhood, a successful genre of books has emerged to teach it. This genre
has been in the making for well over a hundred years and promotes a model
of intensive mothering, expert-guided, and scientifically structured:
The model of intensive mothering tells us that children are innocent and
priceless, that their rearing should be carried out by individual mothers
and that it should be centred on children’s needs, with methods that are
informed by experts, labour-intensive and costly. This, we are told, is
the best model, largely because it is what children need and deserve.
(Hays 1996, p. 21)
Since the beginning of the twentieth century there has been an increasing
emphasis on women as mothers. Previously, ideologies about women tended
to stress their role as wives. As the century progressed there emerged a shift
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from a focus on the physical health of the child to a concern with the child’s
emotional and psychological well-being. Throughout, there has been a
concern for the child’s, and not the mother’s, physical or mental health.
While there was some recognition of the necessary contribution women make
as mothers, the increasing scientisation of childcare devalued maternal knowledge. Over the years child-rearing has been commercialised, producing not
only books and magazines, but also shops, advisory services, television and
radio programmes, and courses in parentcraft. This advice industry has
created a relationship of dependency where mothers are turned into supplicants, awaiting instruction on how to behave even before they conceive.
How any woman can live up to this model or hold onto a shred of selfconfidence beggars belief. My theory is that many of us satisfy ourselves with
reading the advice without ever really putting it into practice. Indeed,
Mechling (1975), in a now classic article, cautioned that parenting manuals
should not be read as descriptions of parental practice but that their anxietyinducing advice may only represent a form of market development (Macleod
2004). So, I’m happy to read, but how can I ever trust a genre that tells
blatant lies:
In the section on Labour and Delivery in What to Expect When You’re
Expecting . . . pain is hinted at exactly twice. It is called ‘increasing
discomfort with contractions’ during the active phase of labour. The
transition phase is referred to as ‘exhausting and demanding’. What to
Expect also tells a woman that her ‘self-pity’ may make her ‘perception
of pain’ worse. Instead of feeling this self pity – and thus the pain of
labour – they inform us that the pregnant woman should be ‘Thinking
about how lucky you are and about the wonderful reward ahead.’
(Arnold 2003, p. 5)
With two children behind me – a full quota as far as I’m concerned – I’m
looking forward to the next phase: grandparenting. By the time I get there,
there’s likely to be a booming manual market waiting. It’s already under
way with Kathryn and Allan Zullo’s (1998) The Nanas and the Papas and
Eleanor Berman’s (1998) Grandparenting: A Beginner’s Handbook. Aimed at
baby boomers with grandchildren, these books turn the anxieties they have
fostered for decades into yet another marketing opportunity (Frederick 1998).
References
Acocella, J. (2003) ‘Mother’s Helpers’, The New Yorker, 5 May, www.newyorker.com/
printables/critics/030505crbo_books, 12 April 1005.
Acuff, D.S. and Reiher, R.H. (2005) Kidnapped: How Irresponsible Marketers are Stealing
the Minds of Your Children, Chicago, IL: Dearborn Trade Publishing.
Arnold, A. (2003) ‘The Rhetoric of Motherhood’, The Mothers’ Movement Online, available
at www.mothersmovement.org/features/Copy/rhetoric-motherhood.pdf, 10 November
2004.
94 Lisa O’Malley, Maurice Patterson, Caoilfhionn Ní Bheacháin
Balaskas, J. and Gordon, Y. (1992) The Encyclopaedia of Pregnancy and Birth, London:
Little, Brown & Co.
Bengson, D. (1999) How Weaning Happens, Schaumburgh, IL: La Leche League International.
Berman, E. (1998) Grandparenting: A Beginner’s Handbook, New York: Perigree.
Biddulph, S. (1998) Raising Boys: Why Boys Are Different, New York: HarperCollins.
Bombeck, E. (1996) Forever Erma, Kansas City, KS: Andrews & McMeel.
Bookseller (2002) ‘Top 15 Pregnancy and Childcare Titles’, Bookseller, 5029, 6 July, 19.
Bourne, G. (1979) Pregnancy, London: Pan.
Brazelton, T.B. (1983) Infants and Mothers, New York: Delacorte.
Croteau, D. and Hoynes, W. (2000) Media/Society: Industries, Images and Audiences,
Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press.
Cusk, R. (2004) ‘Mum’s the Word’, New Statesman, 23 August, 34–5.
Danford, N. (2005) ‘Raising ’Em By The Book’, Publishers Weekly, 28 February, 28–36.
Darnton, J. (2002) Writers on Writing: Collected Essays from The New York Times, New
York: Henry Holt & Co.
De Marneffe, D. (2005) Maternal Desire: On Children, Love, and the Inner Life, Boston,
MA: Back Bay Books.
Douglas, S.J. and Michaels, M.W. (2004) The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood
and How It Has Undermined Women, New York: Free Press.
Eisenberg, A., Murkoff, H.E. and Hathaway, S.E. (1993) What to Expect the First Year,
London: Simon & Schuster.
Ford, G. (2000) From Contented Baby to Confident Child, London: Vermilion.
–––– (2002) The New Contented Little Baby Book, London: Vermilion.
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–––– (2003) The Complete Sleep Guide for Contented Babies and Toddlers, London: Vermilion.
–––– (forthcoming 2006) Good Mother, Bad Mother, London: Vermilion.
Frederick, H.V. (1998) ‘Bringing Up Baby’, Publishers Weekly, 8 June, 30–8.
Geboy, M.J. (1981) ‘Who is Listening to the “Experts”? The Use of Child Care Materials
by Parents’, Family Relations, 30, 205–10.
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Green, C. (1985) Toddler Taming, London: Ebury Press.
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Penguin.
Hays, S. (1996) The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood, New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press.
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Paperback mother . . .
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Kolbert, E. (2004) ‘Mother Courage’, The New Yorker, http://newyorker.com/critics/
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Lewkonia, R. (1998) ‘Benjamin Spock: The Public Paediatrician’, The Lancet, 5
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McMeel.
8
On the commercial exaltation
of artistic mediocrity
Books, bread, postmodern statistics,
surprising success stories, and the
doomed magnificence of way too many
big words
Morris B. Holbrook
The highest efforts of genius, in every walk of art, can never be understood by
the generality of mankind.
(William Hazlitt, quoted by Lowenthal 1961, p. 33)
Capitalist culture inevitably produces a minimum of art and a maximum of trash
and kitsch.
(Huyssen 1986, p. 152)
Introduction
Yesterday
Yes, yesterday, through the bitter cold via a soggy succession of floodproportion ponds swamping the intersections between Riverside Drive at
87th Street and Broadway at 117th, I dragged myself from our apartment
up to Columbia University where I delivered a sparsely attended lecture on
a dubiously fascinating aspect of consumer research involving the spatial
representation of memory structure. One key illustration focused on an old
paper of ours in which we had mapped associations among product categories based on the reasons considered by British housewives in making
purchasing decisions (Holbrook et al. 1986). As I droned on and on about
this study and its significance for the topic at hand, I noticed for the
umpteenth time the curious anomaly whereby – in our multidimensional
map containing car batteries, tyres, tennis rackets, bicycles, pet food, detergent, face cream, sunglasses, dress shoes, perfume, and 43 other product
categories – novels occupy a position directly adjacent to coffee, bread, cereal,
and cigarettes.
On the surface, it might seem strange that English women would employ
reasons for purchasing works of literature closely similar to those relevant to
choices among brands of coffee and cigarettes or, in other words, that deciding
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which book to read would resemble the selection of raisin bran over corn
flakes and pumpernickel over rye. But such seeming strangeness depends on
our old-fashioned habit of thinking about books as if they had something to
do with high culture – which, of course, they don’t when it comes to the
consumption experiences of the primarily middle- and working-class women
included in our sample. Our respondents’ answers referred to the romance
novels that they routinely snatched at the cash registers on their way out of
the supermarkets where they shopped for their weekly groceries. They
referred not to the consumption of literary masterpieces by Thomas Hardy
or Virginia Woolf but to guilty pleasures in reading the latest sagas by
Barbara Cartland or Eloisa James (aka Mary Bly).
In this, as in other aspects of the literary scene, a clear lesson for marketers
shines forth with great clarity – namely, that what “sells” (in terms of its
potential for commercial success) bears no necessary relation to what is “good”
(as judged by professional critics) or “aesthetically excellent” (as evaluated
by our more refined sensibilities) or “worthwhile” (as determined by the test
of time). Hey, face it, most people prefer schlock, and there’s an awful lot
of it out there for them to choose from. This topic will concern me in the
present essay, wherein I attempt to make a little bit of sense out of an essentially nonsensical situation in which very few, if any, readers wish to curl up
with a good book any more – if, indeed, they ever did.
Me Morris
I can speak with some authority on this topic because I learned to my surprise
a few months ago that, by at least one commonly deployed measure, I am
a demonstrably greater writer than the otherwise exceptional F. Scott
Fitzgerald. Specifically – according to a PBS documentary entitled Winter
Dreams that describes the life of the celebrated author of The Great Gatsby
and other masterpieces – in 1940, the last year of his life, Fitzgerald earned
a total of $13.13 in royalties. I did better than that last year. Even if we
allow for inflation, Fitzgerald’s $13.13 in 1940 amounts to about $168.33
in current dollars. And, with all due modesty, I did just slightly better than
that, too, though not by much. So – according to the logic of the marketplace – I’ve got F. Scott beat by a comfortable margin.
Now, Dear Reader, I do not expect you to believe what I have just told
you – namely, that Morris B. Holbrook is a greater writer than F. Scott
Fitzgerald. So the theme that motivates the present essay hinges on exactly
this delicate question: Why isn’t Holbrook greater than Fitzgerald? The
obvious answer – I hope you’ll agree – is that literary greatness or even
literary adequacy is not measured by market success. Even if F. Scott had
not sold a single book in 1940 and even if Morris had sold a million copies
of his latest subjective personal introspective effusions, Fitzgerald would still
beat Holbrook by light years on the grounds that the former was a genius
and the latter, I am sorry to report, is not.
98 Morris B. Holbrook
On arguing about tastes
An ancient aphorism holds that “de gustibus non est disputandum” or “there is
no arguing about tastes”; but this familiar slogan has certainly not prevented
sages, scholars, and social scientists from doing exactly that, repeatedly and
sometimes cantankerously, ever since the dawn of western civilization. In
particular, for centuries, writers and researchers concerned with various
aspects of cultural consumption have disputed – always vociferously and often
vituperatively – about the nature and determinants of tastes in such areas as
entertainment and the arts. Often, such debates about cultural tastes and
their sources have hinged on two key assumptions held implicitly or even
explicitly by at least some of the participants and therefore central to the
arguments involved.
Assumption 1
First, many commentators have posited the existence of a cultural hierarchy
that extends between two poles variously labeled as “highbrow” vs. “lowbrow”
(Lynes 1955); “high culture” vs. “mass culture” (Macdonald 1953); “genuine
art” vs. “popular culture” (Lowenthal 1961); “superior” vs. “brutal” culture
( Jones 1991; Shils 1972); “high culture” vs. “popular culture” (DiMaggio
1987; Gans 1974); “legitimate taste” vs. “popular taste” (Bourdieu 1984);
“high art” vs. “mass culture” (Huyssen 1986); “class” vs. “mass” (Blau 1989;
Dimaggio 1987); “fine art” vs. “popular art” (Zolberg 1990); or, less politely,
“snob” vs. “slob” (Peterson 1992). Here, a common but potentially normative or value-laden conclusion holds that certain cultural tastes (say, for the
fine arts or classical music) are somehow elevated above others (say, for television or rock ’n’ roll). By implication (though seldom spelled out in as much
detail as one might wish), the standards for evaluating cultural objects differ
between “higher” and “lower” levels of this cultural hierarchy in such a way
that those who pursue the former display more refined sensibilities than do
those who follow the latter (for reviews, see Blau 1989; Halle 1993; Huyssen
1986; Levine 1988; Lowenthal 1961; Ross 1989; Zolberg 1990).
Assumption 2
Second, many cultural commentators – especially those with a hostile position toward the capitalist system – have asserted that the commercialism
associated with a market-driven economy tends to drag the aesthetic and
intellectual level of the arts and entertainment toward the lower end of the
cultural hierarchy just described. Implicitly assuming that popular appeal is
negatively correlated with artistic excellence or intellectual integrity, these
commentators contend that – in an effort to achieve greater market success
by attracting larger audiences – the producers of popular culture tend to
aim their offerings at the lowest common denominator of mass acceptance.
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By implication, such producers commodify art and commercialize entertainment by catering to the relatively untutored or uncultivated tastes of
ordinary consumers – in short, by dumbing down their offerings to seek a
larger audience (Brantlinger 1983; Strinati 1995; Twitchell 1992; Washburn
and Thornton (eds) 1996).
Plus ça change . . .
The twin argument just described can be traced back at least as far as Greek
antiquity. Thus, Plato – no friend of the common people in general or of
democracy in particular – worried that attempts to please the audience would
degrade the quality of theatrical productions (Brantlinger 1983, p. 66). More
recently and somewhat paradoxically, comparable viewpoints have characterized thinkers from otherwise divergent positions on both the political left
and the ideological right as well as smack dab in the middle of the intellectual spectrum (Bigsby 1976, p. 12; Huyssen 1986, p. 197; Modleski
1986a, p. ix; Strinati 1995, Ch. 1).
Right, left, and center
The ideological right
On the ideological right, conservatives anxious to preserve the integrity of
the conventional canon of literary classics and other artistic masterpieces have
argued for an essentially elitist position. Such right-leaning guardians of “The
Tradition” as T. S. Eliot, F. R. Leavis, or (in his way) Harold Bloom have
harked back to the anti-democratic philosophy of Plato to prize a “canon”
of acknowledged great works that reflect what Matthew Arnold famously
called “the best that has been thought and said in the world” and have
expressed a patrician mistrust of popular taste that reached its culmination
in the ill-disguised anti-populist sentiments of José Ortega y Gasset (1932)
whose venomous attacks on the low-brow tastes of the mass audience stand
as the eidolon of elitism. Reflecting such sensibilities, Brantlinger (1983)
summarizes the conclusions of conservative thinkers such as T. S. Eliot and
Ortega y Gasset as preoccupied with the distinction between “that which
meets the standards of the cultivated few and that which pleases the ignorant
many” (p. 59).
The political left
Meanwhile, somewhat paradoxically, thinkers on the political left such as the
Marxists associated with the Frankfurt School (Theodor Adorno, Max
Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, Leo Lowenthal, and so on) have drawn on their
socialist roots to attack popular culture as an embodiment of the evils found
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Morris B. Holbrook
in capitalist mass-production – that is, repetitive, formulaic, stereotyped,
standardized, cliché-ridden, oversimplified, easily accessible entertainment
that tends to infantilize its audience members by lulling them into a false
consciousness based on a commodity fetishism reflecting the dominant ideology of the capitalist masters (Adorno 1954). According to Adorno (1984):
“Entertainment . . . has become vulgar ever since the mechanism of exchange
has sunk its fangs into artistic production, turning art into a commodity”
(p. 434). Key to this attack on mass culture by Adorno and other members
of the Frankfurt School was a deep antipathy toward the twin hallmarks of
capitalist enterprise – standardization and mass-production – which they
accused of insuring a repetitive, formulaic, banal, vacuous, conformist, and
enervating sort of popular entertainment as typified by the movies, radio
broadcasts, pop music, and pulp fiction of the day. A similar viewpoint
on commodification, but in a less politicized context, inspires an almost
epigrammatic statement by Van Den Haag (1957):
With the invention of mass media, a mass market for culture became
possible. The economies yielded by the mass production of automobiles
became available in the mass production of entertainment. Producers of
popular culture supply this new mass market . . . The product must meet
an average of tastes and it loses in spontaneity and individuality what
it gains in accessibility and cheapness.
(p. 519)
For those who like slogans, Viereck (1976) encapsulates such arguments
under the rubric of what he calls “our age of the three impersonal M’s: masses,
machines, and mediocrity” (p. 147).
The intellectual mainstream
Both the rightist and leftist currents of thought just summarized tended to
converge in the influential work at mid-century by such mainstream
American intellectuals as Dwight Macdonald (1953, 1962). Macdonald
(1953) attacked mass culture (television, popular novels, book-of-the-month
clubs, mass-circulation magazines) as synonymous with the degradation of
taste, proposing a sort of Gresham’s Law of Culture wherein “bad stuff drives
out the good, since it is more easily understood and enjoyed” (p. 61); wherein
mass culture flatters and panders to the “least common denominator . . .
of taste” (p. 70); and wherein the resulting products of commercial communication become a “spreading ooze of Mass Culture” (p. 73). Essentially,
Macdonald’s argument boils down to the following chain of logic: (1)
commercial communication strives for market success; (2) market success
requires mass acceptance; (3) but the masses have bad taste; (4) therefore,
the quality of entertainment and art is dragged down to the level of the
lowest common denominator (cf. Strinati 1995, p. 8). Notice that, in the
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scenario formulated by Macdonald (1962), the role of villain is played by
businesses in search of commercial success with the help of marketing or
consumer researchers:
Masscult . . . is fabricated by technicians hired by businessmen. They try
this and try that and if something clicks at the box office, they try to
cash in with similar products, like consumer-researchers with a new cereal
[p. 14] [. . .] Today, in the United States, the demands of the audience,
which has changed from a small body of connoisseurs into a large body
of ignoramuses, have become the chief criteria of success [p. 18].
The middlebrow
Further refinements in analyzing the cultural hierarchy have been introduced
by those, such as Rubin (1992) and Radway (1990), who have followed
Macdonald (1953, 1962) by including a third broad cultural category –
namely, “middlebrow” – located somewhere between highbrow and lowbrow
on the cultural continuum and incorporating aspects of both. Rubin (1992)
cites an essay by Virginia Woolf published in 1942 as a key source for the
“association of ‘middlebrow’ with the corruption of taste by commercial interests” (p. xiii). Similarly, Radway (1990) links “the content of middlebrow
culture” with criticisms of “the cultural miscegenation produced when high
cultural products [are] offered using low cultural methods” (p. 708) – in other
words, when commercialism intrudes into the realm of art: “What was
troubling was its failure to maintain the fences cordoning off culture from
commerce, the sacred from the profane, and the low from the high” (p. 729).
To this theme, Rubin (1992) brings an ambivalent critical stance based on
a qualified mistrust of market-driven aesthetics somewhat reminiscent of
Macdonald: “As middlebrow popularizers accommodated consumer priorities,
worthwhile aesthetic commitments were also lost in the bargain” (p. xix).
The case of literature
In one way or another, the cultural commentators that we have reviewed
thus far have all clung to the two major assumptions with which we began,
concerning: (1) the existence of a cultural hierarchy; and (2) the problematic
tendency for commercialization or commodification to lead toward the degradation of entertainment or the arts. The case of literature vividly illustrates
this prominent role of the cultural hierarchy in critiques focusing on the problem
of commercialization. In this connection, Llosa (1986) finds a key contrast in
contemporary literary offerings:
Fiction today has a more and more disquieting tendency to branch off
in two different directions: a literature for popular consumption . . . on
the one hand, and on the other a literature . . . that has given up before
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Morris B. Holbrook
the fact any attempt to win a hearing for itself from the public . . . and
instead meets self-imposed demands of artistic excellence.
(p. 34)
Indeed, this contrast between works designed for “popular consumption”
and those aimed at “artistic excellence” underlies the concern for literary
quality that arises when profit-oriented corporate giants acquire erstwhile
elite book publishers – raising the question, “will takeovers be bad for
books?” to which the inevitable answer is that “publishing purists say quality
and a bottom line orientation don’t mix” (Glaberson 1987):
With most of the old American publishing companies being gobbled
up by huge corporations, people are asking such questions often lately.
The issue took on added urgency . . . when Rupert Murdoch announced
plans to buy Harper & Row for $300 million . . . Industry insiders saw
the Harper’s sell-out as a watershed . . . They worry that a wave of
publishing takeovers and buyouts is turning the custodians of the
country’s ideas into business machines that may overlook quality writing
and important books to focus on the bottom line.
(p. 1)
This very issue held sway in Jon Robin Baitz’s (1992) play (later made
into a movie) about the publishing business entitled The Substance of Fire. In
this work, an elderly protagonist’s “bigotry toward MBA’s” opposes the
“blood lust for profitmaking” of his Wharton-educated son (p. 13) by fighting
a losing battle on behalf of “a literary standpoint, not a commercial one”
(p. 20). The play vividly suggests that, when economic imperatives govern
the publication of ideas, this market-driven commercialism will drag culture
down to the level characteristic of the lowest common denominator in mass
tastes.
The basic principle at stake in such a play is one that has been well understood for hundreds if not thousands of years. For example, Toll (1982) traces
the birth of “American show business” to “the rapidly growing cities of the
Northeast in the 1840s when P. T. Barnum and other promoters discovered
that they could make a great deal of money producing inexpensive, crowdpleasing entertainment” (p. 4): “The principal concern of popular entertainers
was not innovation, experimentation, or originality, but pleasing audiences
. . . to find out what people want and then give them that thing” (p. 7).
One response by dedicated artists faced with such a situation is to succumb
to despair, as in the case of the painter, Benjamin Haydon. When Haydon’s
exhibition at London’s Egyptian Hall was ignored by crowds flocking to see
P. T. Barnum’s side-show oddity, Tom Thumb, the artist responded by
committing suicide (Cunningham 1982, p. 68).
At bottom, the key concern among commentators concerned with the
integrity of the cultural hierarchy involves the various dangers of commer-
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cialism or what Strinati (1995, Ch. 7) calls “cultural populism” – that is,
the Costs of Living (Schwartz 1994); The Tyranny of the Market (Shorris 1994);
or Marketing Madness ( Jacobson and Mazur 1995). For example, in a volume
dedicated to the analysis of such issues and entitled The Authority of the
Consumer (Keat et al. (eds) 1994), various authors address the problem of commercialism as it applies to entertainment and the arts. Thus, Whiteley (1994)
expresses the conservative position that “the whole tendency of art . . .
eschews commerce and the ideology of consumerism, and frequently invents
strategies which oppose commodification of the object” (p. 128), “whereas
the new consumerism, based on the model of shopping, has to make everything immediately available and accessible” (p. 135). Similarly, Lury (1994)
suggests that “marketization of the arts” (p. 139) creates a situation in which
“the values of artistic integrity are being sacrificed to the market” (p. 150).
Anecdotal evidence: scent sells
By way of anecdotal evidence in support of such concerns over the strategy
of “giving people what they want” in the service of “consumer sovereignty”
(Strinati 1995, p. 257), I might cite my own lamentable experiences a few
years ago with a textbook publisher run by a market-driven enterprise whose
corporate philosophy apparently instantiates the aforementioned prophesies
of doom.
The acquiring editor for this prosperous publisher – Marey Jones, a rather
dumpy-frumpy-chunky forty-something, who insisted on the “e” in the
spelling of her first name because she did not want to appear “ordinary” –
pursued my participation in a book-writing project with an inexplicably
intensive energy that bordered on simpering sycophancy. Foolishly seduced
by her flattery and a misplaced trust based on our mutual friendship with
an old school chum, I agreed to assemble an intentionally unconventional
collection of introspective essays on consumer research. For over a year,
feverish work on this project proceeded apace – including extensive revisions
at the suggestion of a high-paid copy editor who expressed great enthusiasm
for the project at every turn.
Despite the existence of a written contract and despite my investment of
two years in creating exactly the type of work that I had promised, the maleficent Marey-with-an-E Jones eventually decided that the finished product
would not capture the attention of the semiliterate audience of college
sophomores that gradually emerged as her true target market and that –
according to a 20-year-old coed whom she had hired recently to mirror the
tastes of her primary customer segment – would not understand, like, or
(most importantly) purchase my overly abstruse literary efforts. With no
legal scruples and no moral compunctions, she ruthlessly terminated the
project – providing a flagrant example to validate the fears of those who
dread commercialism and commodification. It later turned out that this
weasely woman had used my ill-advised participation in her nefarious scheme
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Morris B. Holbrook
to persuade several of my friends to sign similar contracts to write comparable books – thereby creating a sort of sinister skein of doomed projects
(only one of which ever appeared in print, to the best of my knowledge).
The good news is that this cold-blooded child of capitalism, this unctuously ungrateful satanic sister worthy of Lear-like despair, later pursued her
misbegotten editorial career in a direction leading toward the abandonment
of my own field of endeavor – marketing and consumer behavior. The bad
news is that Marey Jones moved to a new area in which she could potentially
do even greater damage – English Literature. O, woe betide the future of the
written word when this illiterate lady gets her rapacious paws on the printed
pages of genuine poetry and prose. If college textbooks begin to feature selections by Edgar Guest and Rod McKuen, you’ll know why. These authors reek
of commercialism and stink of commodification. And, hey, scent sells.
Sum be zombies
In sum, pursuing the two key assumptions with which this essay began,
various cultural commentators have struggled to develop the implications
of: (1) the cultural hierarchy; and (2) the problem of commercialization. These
commentators have consistently seen the tension between artistic integrity
and commodification as central to the dangers of commercializing the arts
and entertainment. Those reviewed have generally sought to uphold the
former (Art with a capital “A”) at the expense of the latter (entertainment
with a small “e”).
Thus, Modleski (1986b) comments on “the tendency of critics and theorists to make mass culture into the ‘other’ of whatever, at any given moment,
they happen to be championing – and, moreover, to denigrate that other
primarily because it allegedly provides pleasure to the consumer” (p. 157).
This impetus theorizes mass culture as “the realm of cheap and easy pleasure” or “pleasure in the pejorative sense” (p. 163). For example, Modleski
(1986b) reads a movie such as Dawn of the Dead as a parable on this theme
in which “zombies taking over a shopping center [provide] a scenario
depicting the worst fears of the culture critics who have long envisioned the
will-less, soul-less masses as zombie-like beings possessed by the alienating
imperative to consume” (p. 159).
But if Dawn of the Dead presents a frightening prospect to many cultural
commentators, others will respond to such criticisms with a profound dread
of appearing to look down on something that they derogate because of their
own personal aesthetic values. Face it: most intellectuals honor a deep
commitment to the ideals of egalitarianism – to the principles of freedom,
justice, and equality that suffuse our democratic society. Most of us recoil
in horror at the thought of questioning the right of somebody else to like
some artistic or pleasurable offering that we ourselves happen to detest – a
painting by Norman Rockwell, say, or a performance by Yanni or a poem
by Edgar Guest. Most of us wish, at all costs, to avoid any implication of
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snobbism or any taint of an illiberal opposition to egalitarianism. So we come
to terms with the nagging realization that some people actually happen to
like this stuff. Do we dare to say that we are right and they are wrong? Not
without assuming the unbearable mantle of superciliousness, we don’t.
Hence, when we read the insulting diatribes of the right-, left-, and
middle-leaning critics discussed earlier, we cannot help but feel uncomfortable, nervous, or even guilty (especially if, heaven help us, we happen to
agree with some of their criticisms). The question, of course, is: “How are
we to respond to this discomfort?” Such responses have taken a variety of
forms. Of these, in my endless quest for scientific rigor, I am particularly
impressed by those who have ventured to address the issue by means of
collecting pertinent data. Toward the end of pursuing this kind of empirical precision, I wish to apply a relatively unconventional approach that I
shall refer to affectionately as “PoMoStat.”
The new statistics
Recently, one of my more imaginative colleagues and I attended a recruiting
meeting where approximately 12 members of my school’s marketing division sat around and reviewed applications from candidates for our doctoral
program. One aspiring Ph.D. student had submitted a grade transcript that
caused concern. He had received a “C” in Algebra. Because our program
involves a great deal of quantitative work, some thought that this mediocre
grade in a foundational discipline did not augur well. But this student had
a couple of champions in our midst – one of whom pointed out that subsequently he had also taken Modern Algebra and, in that more advanced
subject, had received a “B.” At this point, my exasperated but jovial colleague
muttered under his breath, “Yes, and I suppose he later received an ‘A’ in
Postmodern Algebra.”
Little did this clever fellow suppose that, at that very moment, he sat next
to someone hard at work on the cutting edge of postmodern quantitative
analysis in general and postmodern statistics or PoMoStat in particular.
Specifically, I wish to take an unconventional, idiosyncratic, playful, paradoxical, self-parodic, ironic, and – in these and other ways – quintessentially
postmodern look at some empirical data that might otherwise suffer from a
routine analysis by means of modern statistics. Despite its panoply of t-tests
and ANOVA tables and regression coefficients, modern statistics suffers from
the intrinsic limitations of DIDO (data in, data out). But everybody knows
that – like mud pies and hangnails – data are no fun unless you play with
them. So let’s get down to some serious playfulness, please.
Reinterpreting the Feldman Report
In a recent ambitious report, Gayle Feldman (2003) – an author and editor
intimately familiar with the publishing industry – has undertaken the
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daunting task of addressing exactly the issue that motivates the present essay.
Specifically – while pursuing a National Arts Fellowship at Columbia
University’s Graduate School of Journalism – Feldman scoured the libraries,
conducted interviews, attended editorial and marketing meetings at major
publishing houses, and compiled a large data set intended to address The
Changing Business of Trade Books in the years 1975–2002. To anticipate her
conclusions, in support of various observations encountered earlier in this
essay, Feldman finds that:
Beginning in the 1970s, the marketing function, as opposed to the editorial function, became the driving force in book publishing as the
potential for mass sales grew [p. 4] . . . Book publishing has increasingly become part of the entertainment business, with a concomitant
change in the role of the author, who has had to learn to cultivate
celebrity [p. 5].
Before turning to an analysis of her data set, Feldman (2003) provides an
excellent account of how the book-publishing business has evolved toward
a deification of the bestseller. She carefully points out that “bestseller” refers
to “rapidity not longevity” (p. 13) – that is, to the velocity of a book’s sales
during a short time frame (e.g. Tom Clancy) rather than to its durability as
a classic via cumulative sales over an extended period (e.g. the Holy Bible).
In this connection, Feldman (2003) reviews the work of Mott (1947),
whose book on Golden Multitudes confused the issue of literary merit in bestsellers somewhat by looking at books that have sold large quantities over a
long period of time and finding many of these to be noteworthy classics. As
Feldman (2003) implies, this Mottly approach blurs the issue of whether
short-run popularity in the form of (say) blockbuster performance on the
bestseller list in any way reflects excellence in the form of (say) awards for
literary merit. According to Feldman (2003), Miller (1949):
warned of “the growing importance of the mass market, with its concentration upon bestsellers, and its close affiliation with book clubs, cheap
reprints, and the movies.” . . . mass market growth . . . would make it
possible to sell millions of copies of schlock.
(p. 16)
Feldman (2003) finds that, in this climate of mass-market hysteria, the
role of an editor has changed from that of nurturing talent to that of making
deals and marketing (p. 18). In short, “books and authors have to a considerable degree been co-opted into the entertainment business” (p. 20).
But despite all this – rather surprisingly in light of her motivating concerns
– Feldman (2003) reaches some rather ambiguous conclusions concerning
the relationship or lack thereof between popularity and excellence, between
quantity of sales and quality of execution, or between bestsellers and best-
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books lists. Specifically, while she recognizes the ubiquity of bestsellers
without literary merit, her data lead her to conclude that the market does
sometimes recognize excellence so that, overall, no strong relationship exists
between quality and sales:
A surprising number of books of real literary merit appear on the
bestseller lists throughout the year [p. 6]. [. . .] a surprisingly strong
intersection of sales, quality and longevity . . . counters the theory that
bestseller inevitably means lowest common denominator [p. 41]. [. . .]
Think of the numbers of best books that have spent some time on the
bestseller list. . . . fine novels still find their way onto the weekly lists
[p. 74].
As these elided passages intimate, Feldman (2003) proceeds largely by
analyzing her data via a book-by-book examination. This approach makes
for interesting reading, provocative insights, and occasional idiographic
profundities. But it does harbor the danger of basing a sweeping conclusion
on a single case example, as when Feldman points to the commercial success
of the much-praised Humboldt’s Gift by Saul Bellow and finds this “an
endorsement of Frank Mott’s faith in vox pop’s occasional ability to recognize and reward an extraordinary book” – adding that “The same holds true
for E. L. Doctorow’s Ragtime” (p. 34). The truth, however, is that – in
Feldman’s sample of 350 books over 25 years – Humboldt’s Gift and Ragtime
were two of only four award-winning books that made the annual bestseller
lists. Hence, her conclusion reflects the selection of some scarce counterexamples rather than the expression of a statistical tendency.
With respect to the matter of statistical tendencies, we find that – in a
manner as refreshing as it is rare among such studies – Feldman (2003)
presents her full set of data in a generous and helpful 12-page appendix. Our
job – as you might have feared, Dear Reader – is to provide the statistical
analysis that Feldman’s own interpretation so conspicuously lacks. Only such
a quantitative analysis can establish what her data truly implies about the
connection between excellence and popularity in the field of book publishing.
Overall, the data presented by Feldman (2003) represents a sample of
350 books released during the years 1975, 1980, 1985, 1990, or 2000 and
included by virtue of: (1) their appearance on “the Publishers Weekly [PW]
lists of annual fiction and nonfiction hardcover bestsellers”; or (2) their identification as “best books” by the New York Times Book Review (NYT), the
National Book Awards, or the Pulitzer Prizes (p. 12). Specific data contained
in Feldman’s extensive charts for each book include: (1) its ranking on the
annual PW list (if any) and its number of weeks on the PW list (often across
multiple years); and (2) whether it was selected by the NYT, was nominated/chosen by the NBA, or was nominated/chosen for a Pulitzer Prize.
Because (1) involves missing data for any book not in the annual PW bestseller rankings, we shall take ‘Weeks’ on the PW list as our primary measure
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of Popularity. (With missing ranks coded to produce an optimal fit, the
correlation between rank and weeks is r = .626, p = .000). Meanwhile, we
shall treat (2) as our key measure of Excellence, as represented by Best – that
is, the sum of five dummy-coded zero-one variables that reflect being selected,
nominated, and/or chosen by the NYT, the NBA, and/or the Pulitzer.
Given the sample of data just described, the correlation between Popularity
(Weeks) and Excellence (Best) is r = –.426 (N = 350, p = .000). On the
surface, this relatively strong negative association suggests a notable dissociation between literary merit and market acceptance. At first blush, we are
tempted to proclaim this result as a vindication of those critical commentators who have embraced the cultural hierarchy and who have bemoaned the
dangers of commercialism in the service of the lowest common denominator
of bad tastes.
However, such a conclusion – based on a conscientious statistical analysis
of the data collected by Feldman (2003) on her sample of 350 books – would
be . . . Dear Reader, hold your breath . . . quite wrong. On closer inspection,
we notice that Feldman’s ostensibly reasonable manner of selecting books for
her sample includes only those with positive scores for Popularity or established Excellence or both. This sample-selection procedure thereby exerts a
strong bias toward the inclusion of books with high/low scores on Excellence
together with low/high scores on Popularity. Hence, when Feldman conducts
her own book-by-book interpretation, she focuses on a very nonrepresentative
sample of books with resulting biases that remain inherently incalculable.
And when we conduct the aforementioned conventional statistical analysis,
we produce results colored by a methods artifact that encourages the finding
of a spurious negative correlation. Either way, the apparent negative association between Excellence and Popularity that seems to emerge from the data
provided by Feldman (2003) is nugatory at best.
So what would happen – you must surely find yourself wondering, Dear
Reader – if we applied a superior form of postmodern statistics by taking
pains to correct for the omission of books that do not win best-book prizes
and that do not show up among the annual top-ranking bestsellers? Based
on the data provided by Feldman (2003), the number of such omitted books
looms rather large – namely, 360,250 over the six specific years included
in the 2.5-decade time span of her study (p. 9). To estimate the effects of
including these missing books, pursuing a best-practices approach to
PoMoStat, I coded their scores for Weeks at the overall average of 0.003 and
included their Best scores of 0.0. When including these 360,250 books, the
correlation between Excellence (Best) and Popularity (Weeks) falls in absolute
value and changes sign as the sample becomes increasingly representative –
from rBest,Weeks = –.426 (p = .000) at N = 350 to rBest,Weeks = .058 (p = .000)
at N = 360,600.
Thus, a PoMoStat analysis of the data provided by Feldman (2003) suggests
that conclusions concerning the relationship between Excellence and
Popularity reached when focusing on “best” books in terms of bestsellers
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(annual rankings) and best-book awards (from three leading sources) do not
accurately reflect phenomena representative of the market as a whole.
Specifically, the 350 “best” books show a moderately strong negative correlation between Excellence and Popularity (rBest,Weeks = –.426). But this
apparent vindication of the cultural hierarchists – who bemoan a dumbingdown of artistic quality or literary merit via commercialized appeals to the
lowest common denominator of bad tastes – actually reflects nothing more
dangerous, threatening, or sinister than a statistical artifact that exerts a
powerful bias in the direction of a misleading result. When the full set of
books is included so as to create a census sample of 360,600 books, the relationship between Excellence and Popularity reverses in direction but, in
effect, disappears (rBest,Weeks = .058). With an r2 = .0034, the latter relationship with Best accounts for only one-third of one percent of the variance
in Weeks – in other words, it shows a trivially small impact of Excellence on
Popularity. For all practical purposes, in our findings based on a PoMoStat
extension of Feldman (2003), the link between Excellence and Popularity in
the market for hardcover books is nonexistent.
Conclusion
Remember the old saying that – just because you’re paranoid – it doesn’t
follow that everybody doesn’t really hate you? In a similar spirit, it turns
out both logically and empirically that my most paranoid fears – namely,
that better books generate lower sales – do not possess universal validity. In
particular, my own book – correctly deemed unlikely to attract a large audience – did not fail because it was a masterpiece. Rather, whether it is or is
not a masterpiece turns out to be irrelevant to its commercial success or
failure. Excellence is simply unrelated to popularity. One could conceivably
write a superb book that would do very well in the bookstores. Or not. One
could create a spectacular piece of trash that would not zoom to the top of
the bestseller charts. Or would. In the words of today’s increasingly jaded
audiences, but surely not in those of a committed scholar such as yourself,
Dear Reader: whatever.
Epilog
I shall close with a true story that seems, in part, to encapsulate the epiphany
just vouchsafed. Many years ago, during the late 1960s or early 1970s, a
close friend in New York City – a highly accomplished though not exactly
a bestselling author in her own right – ran a small business that employed
an assistant whom we shall call Gwen. Our friend spoke of Gwen frequently
without ever mentioning her last name, which somehow never seemed to
matter. Apparently, Gwen came across in the workplace as being rather
fanciful, dreamy, or spaced-out (depending on the accuracy and politeness of
the language that we choose to use). Gwen told long and amazing stories
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that never quite seemed to come to the point and that contained some
material of dubious credibility. Her narratives seemed – to side with accuracy at the expense of politeness – a bit loopy, a little bizarre, maybe slightly
ditsy, but definitely indicative of a febrile imagination that would not quit
on even those occasions when her work in the office demanded periods of
devotion to what might otherwise have been the business at hand. On
numerous occasions, our friend regaled us with vivid tales about Gwen and
her exaggerated-bordering-on-weird flights of fancy. All this continued for
a few years. And then our friend stopped talking about Gwen. We inferred
that Gwen had moved on to other endeavors.
Several years later, we attended a large cocktail party at the same friend’s
apartment. Standing amid a crushing crowd in the living-room, I found
myself elbow-to-elbow with an attractive thirty-something brunette. She
courteously extended a hand and said, “Hello, I used to work for the hostess;
my name is Gwendolyn Irons.” Or words to that effect.
I almost dropped my drink on the floor. At the time, Gwendolyn Irons
was one of the two or three best-selling authors in the world, and she has
since gone on to do even better than that. As one index of her commercial
success, in the six years covered in the 2.5-decade span of data reported by
Feldman (2003), Gwendolyn Irons released eight top-15 bestsellers with
annual ranks of 6, 9, 5, 3, 5, 6, 10, and 11, respectively. Sales-wise, Dear
Reader, they don’t come much bigger than that. Overall, at last count, Ms
Irons has written 56 blockbuster novels. Collectively, they have sold over
500 million copies. She is described in one recent short biography as “the
most popular author writing today.” And her history of cranking out bestsellers has been listed in the Guinness Book of World Records. At this writing,
the latest novel by Ms Irons is ranked number 432 on the Amazon.com list
– even though it has not yet been released. The last Irons book covered in
the study by Feldman (2003) – described in one review as “a novel full of
fame, fashion, and modest passion” with “no pretensions of being anything
other than what it is” – currently, after three years on the market, still holds
an Amazon sales rank of 3,044. By contrast, my own book – mentioned early
in this essay – ranks at 844,030. On the brighter side, the cheapest used
copy of my own book sells for $37.67, whereas you can buy a new copy
of the higher-ranking book by Irons for $0.01 (yes, that’s one cent – plus
shipping and handling, of course, at $3.49).
All this strongly suggests that you do not have to be gifted with supreme
intelligence, profound insight, shining vision, immaculate wisdom, or unsurpassed creativity to hit the bestseller charts with explosive force. Conversely,
as demonstrated by my own woeful example as a worst-selling author, a
disappointing lack of market success does not in any way indicate that you
are intelligent, insightful, visionary, wise, or creative. Rather, truth be told,
the PoMoStat analysis reported in the present essay shows that there is close
to a zero relationship – namely, an explained variance of 0.0034 – between
Excellence and Popularity. Literary merit is just plain irrelevant to book sales.
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So – robbed of the claim that market failure signals high literary quality
– I guess I’ll have to trade in my conspicuous lack of book royalties for some
new badge of honor. Hmm, let me see. Perhaps my inadequate income or
terrible teacher ratings might serve as a suitable substitute. Surely, Dear
Reader, we can find a Business Week poll that will provide pertinent answers.
I’ll get back to you on that.
Acknowledgment
The author gratefully acknowledges the support of the Columbia Business
School’s Faculty Research Fund.
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9
Book-reading groups
A ‘male outsider’ perspective
Avi Shankar
Nice work
I have a confession to make. I reviewed this book’s proposal for the publisher.
Not wishing to appear too toady towards the proposal’s pre-eminent writer,
I made a couple of observations that I thought might improve the final book.
One of them was, ‘I’d have thought that the whole book group phenomenon
would be worthy of a chapter in an edited volume about the marketing
and consumption of books.’ I didn’t foresee that the editor would agree and
ask me to contribute said chapter. ‘But I don’t know anything about book
groups’, I pleaded, in the hope of stemming the Celtic charm offensive.
‘That’s never stopped you in the past’, came the editor’s reply.
I was, in fact, being rather economical with the truth when I said that I
didn’t know anything about book groups. It’s true that I’ve never attended
or been a member of a book-reading group but neither was I totally unaware
of their existence. For starters, my ex has been a member of a book group
for over six years, and my current partner is a member of one too. I’m familiar
therefore with the fundamental premise of a book-reading group; a group of
people – who in my experience are women – agree on a book, read it, then
they meet at one of their homes to discuss, chat or argue over the particular
book in question. As a male outsider I was, and still am, a great fan of the
concept. It means that once a month I can either have a legitimate evening
in the pub if the group is meeting at home, or I can have unfettered access
to Champions League Football if the group is meeting at someone else’s
home. I’m not particularly a great novel reader myself, reading perhaps less
than ten non-academic books per year. Book-reading groups are therefore
fascinating as they are something that I have never participated in myself,
while, concurrently, people close to me do.
The Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood
The two groups that I’ve been exposed to most share some structural characteristics. Both are the same size, between six and eight people regularly
attend; the groups are female only; all members are in their forties; all have
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families; their discussions are usually accompanied by a bottle or two of
Chardonnay and some nice looking nibbles; all group members are from professional/middle-class backgrounds; and the groups were instigated by two
central figures with friends of friends being asked to make up the group. The
only apparent difference between the groups is their geographical location:
one is urban and the other rural. And by and large their reading is similar
too, a mixture of contemporary novels, from A Curious Incident of the Dog in
the Night-time, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin and A Girl with a Pearl Earring
through to classics by Jane Austen and George Eliot. The women in these
two groups are archetypical jugglers – juggling their twin responsibilities
towards family and career. Reading alone, and then getting together as a
group to chat about their reading, represents an important time and space for
themselves, an increasingly scarce commodity as more and more demands are
made on their time. The book group is an escape from the daily grind of
juggling and satisfies their need for social and intellectual stimulation:
I regard these evenings as very special, removed from work, children and
men, structured around a good book, which itself takes us beyond the
narrow limits of our lives as well as allowing us to explore our inner
feelings. It is an inspired combination.
(Respondent in Hartley 2002, p. xiv)
It was a surprise to me that these two groups are actually quite typical of
book groups in general. A comprehensive survey of book groups (Hartley
2002) reveals that of those surveyed: 57 per cent consist of between six
and ten members; 69 per cent meet monthly; 80 per cent meet in one
of their members’ homes; 66 per cent of members are aged 40 and above;
69 per cent are all female; 88 per cent of members have been through higher
education; 67 per cent are in paid work; and 82 per cent of books read are
fiction.
Enduring Love
While the actual reading of a book, any book, tends to be a solitary affair
now, it has not always been the case. Actually reading a book as a group is
not something we’ve done probably since our schooldays, no doubt cringing
and blushing when it was our turn to read aloud. Reading in groups, though,
is an activity with a long history; supposedly whilst simultaneously conquering the known world, the Romans were at it. Of course, this was before
the advent of the widespread availability of the printed book. More recently,
the last ten years or so, book-reading – mainly, but not exclusively, the
reading of novels – and increasingly book-selling and marketing, is being
revolutionised by the book-reading group phenomenon: ‘Reading’, as one of
Hartley’s respondents announces, ‘is no longer a solitary affair’. The sheer
scope and variety of book-reading groups is astounding and this makes any
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generalisation about them futile, and so, in this chapter, my focus is very
much on the 70 per cent female-only type of book group. It would not be
an exaggeration to suggest though, in case you’re interested in joining a book
group, that one exists no matter what your particular reading proclivities
happen to be. Although statistics are hard to come by, it is estimated that
in the UK there are upwards of 50,000 book groups while in the US there
may be as many as 500,000. As well as adult book groups there are book
groups for children, book groups that take particular authors as their focus,
others that focus on different book genres (novels, crime fiction, biographies,
historical fiction, romance, sci-fi, etc.), book groups for particular geographic
locations, Internet-based book groups and religious-based book groups.
Unsurprisingly, the book-group phenomenon has not gone unnoticed by
the book industry, with book-group activities increasingly being encouraged
and mediated by the publishers, retailers and book lenders such as libraries.
The popular media has also capitalised on the phenomenon with daytime
TV shows such as Oprah Winfrey in the US, Richard and Judy in the UK,
BBC Radio 4’s The Book Club and The Mail on Sunday’s YOU magazine all
featuring their ‘Book of the Month’. At the height of its influence and popularity, Oprah’s monthly book recommendation literally guaranteed its author
sales in excess of 1 million copies. Such was her power and influence as a
cultural intermediary – someone who mediates between producers and
consumers in any given marketplace – that in 1999 she was awarded the
National Book Foundation’s 50th anniversary gold medal for her services to
books and authors. Just as J. K. Rowling, Harry, Hermione and Ron have
been credited with prising boys away from their Play Stations and Game
Boys and getting them reading again, Oprah has been credited with getting
swathes of Middle America reading again too – if only she’d got them all
reading Stupid White Men.
In the UK the popular cultural significance of book groups has been firmly
cemented. We have had Channel 4’s critically acclaimed comedy, The Book
Group, and now some of the characters in the UK’s most popular television
soap opera, Coronation Street, have formed their own book group. The latest
American TV export, Desperate Housewives, also has the leading characters
attending a book group, although none of them appear actually to read the
book in question – Madame Bovary in case you’re wondering. Book-group
participants have also become the focus of novels themselves: The Reading
Group by Elizabeth Nobel and The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler,
to name but two of an increasing genre. No doubt somewhere and sometime soon, people will be reading a book about people who go to book groups
that they will then discuss at their book groups.
My Idea of Fun
What sense can we make of the book-group phenomenon? I’m not so much
interested in the business of book groups; rather I’m more interested in trying
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to understand what it is about the nature of the book-group experience that
gets upwards of half-a-million people (and that’s just in the UK), the vast
majority of whom are women, meeting up every month for a chat, a glass
of wine, an argument, a serious debate about plot and character development
or just a good old-fashioned gossip – one book-group member confided that
they spend only about half of the meeting actually discussing the book.
A useful starting point to aid our understanding of book groups is to use
a social uses and gratifications perspective. While predominantly a technique
that has been used to understand an individual’s use of the media (TV, newspapers and advertising are the most common examples), the method can be
adapted to emphasise the social context of the book group. Reading, after
all, is a motivated, goal-directed activity, and reading for a book group, even
more so. Two of the main criticisms of a traditional uses and gratifications
perspective in media research are that we don’t always choose – in an active
sense – what we watch and it decontextualises media reception, treating it
as an individual psychological act rather than a social act. Reading for a book
group is both personal and social – it’s ‘the subjective in the collective’ to
borrow an elegant phrase from Simon Frith (1996). The choice of book tends
to be agreed upon by the group. There exist all manner of complicated ways
of choosing books, ranging from a strict rotation method whereby an individual group member chooses a book (often then sanctioned by the group),
through to various types of group voting systems. Choosing which book to
read can therefore be a difficult process often necessitating compromise
between group members and, as we shall see, this is often the only time
when the group reaches a consensus, mainly because they have to. The book
is then read individually, but the act of reading for the group imposes a
different reading strategy upon the individual:
When I’m reading for book group there’s a slight sense of implicit expectation that I must find a given book interesting, whereas when I’m
reading on my own I have less bias towards thinking of it in one way
or another – I’m a bit more open minded. On the occasions when I have
chosen the book group title, my reading experience is definitely different
because I’m trying to imagine the range of various opinions that people
could have of the book.
(Female respondent, Exeter)
Finally, the act of meaning-making from the book is both an individual
and social process as, often, an individual’s initial interpretation is challenged
in discussion with other group members. What doesn’t seem to happen is
mutual consensus: the book group doesn’t inevitably strive for a shared understanding of the book in question; rather, there exists equality of each
member’s interpretation that may be different. This equality of opinion can
be challenged with the arrival of a new group member. One book-group
participant I talked to delighted in telling me how a group member was
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expelled from her group because the interloper felt her opinions were more
important, valid or authoritative than others in the group, primarily because
she was an author.
It would still be fair to assume that when we read, we must be ‘getting
something from it’ otherwise we wouldn’t carry on doing it. A social uses
and gratifications perspective asks: Why do people read? What pleasures do
people attain from reading? And – this is where the social bit comes in –
how does reading a book for a book group and the book-group interaction
contribute, shape, influence or change the reading experience?
First, and perhaps foremost, reading is simply a source of pleasurable entertainment; it’s relaxing; it’s escapism; it can be deeply emotional – making
us laugh or cry; it can even be erotic – depending on the novel, of course;
and in some instances reading a book can literally take over our being as we
are swept away by plot and characterisation. Reading for a book group seems
to legitimise the process of reading, allowing people to take time out for
their reading pleasure and not feel guilty about it, especially if they are
jugglers. Typical comments are (respondents in Hartley 2002, p. 126): ‘A
valid excuse for actually sitting down and reading.’ ‘We love having to read
so don’t feel guilty.’ ‘Allows me a legitimate few hours to myself away from
the kids.’
The idea that reading is a guilty pleasure puts books on the same plane
as chocolates or cream cakes – naughty but nice, indulgent not essential. But
feelings of guilt are common, if not endemic, among juggling women. The
psychoanalytically informed Nancy Chodorow (1978) suggests people’s identities are fundamentally gendered – men, it seems, really are from Mars and
women from Venus. Women are socialised to be more caring, connected to
others, relational, communal, so guilt emerges when women prioritise themselves over others and, for book-group members, these others tend to be their
children and their family commitments.
Reading has a strong informational aspect to it. Reading, regardless of the
genre, allows us to imagine The Other; other people, other lives, other experiences, other times or other cultures, however similar or different they may
be from our own. In this sense, reading can be educational, satisfying our
curiosity. Certainly for many, if not all that I talked to, reading for a book
group has encouraged them to read a book, or a genre of books, that they
would not normally read. For some it has even rekindled their prior-butthen-lost-and-now-found-again love of reading:
I’m 46 years old and live with my two teenage sons . . . and I have always
been interested in reading – from a small child I loved to read . . . I
wouldn’t have read the first [ Joseph O’Connor’s Star of the Sea] or the
third [Zoë Heller’s Notes on a Scandal ] books if I wasn’t in the reading
group, as I had got lazy about reading good books. I am very glad I’m
being stretched in this way.
(Female respondent, Exeter)
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We learnt a lot of history from Birdsong and Captain Corelli’s Mandolin.
Memoirs of a Geisha and The God of Small Things introduced us to worlds
we knew nothing about.
(Respondent in Hartley 2002, p. 68)
Reading also performs the Aristotelian function of mimesis. By reading
stories, and the majority of books read at book groups are novels, we learn
about life in general. Moreover, we find aspects of our own life-experiences
reflected back to us in the books that we read. To paraphrase the protoexistentialist Kierkegaard: life can only be understood backwards but it must
be lived forwards; life only attains meaning when its story is told. Reading
about the lives of others, however different they may be, can facilitate the
construction of meaning – the creation of our own story – from our own life
experiences. Reading can ground our personal identity, reinforce or challenge
our own values and even introduce us to new ways of being and living. For
the social philosopher, Hannah Arendt (1958), material objects or the ‘things
of the world’, in other words any objects that are produced by people, such
as books, represent and stabilise human life; they are symbolically produced
and then consumed symbolically too. It is our interactions with these objects
that enables us to retrieve our identity.
The mimetic qualities of reading are usually reflected in book-group
members’ attitudes towards the main characters in a novel, known as
reader–character empathy. Indeed, Professor Hartley goes as far as to suggest
that empathy is the prime feature of book groups – reader–character empathy,
reader–author empathy and reader–reader empathy. The literary, academic
or intellectual merit of a book is of little consequence to a book group without
empathy towards the characters. Many classics, aside from Jane Austen’s
perennial favourite Pride and Prejudice among others, simply do not hit the
mark any more (respondents in Hartley 2002, p. 75): ‘too long and heavy’,
‘inaccessible’, ‘flopped a bit’, ‘complicated sentence structure made it a bore
to read’, are common reactions to many classics, making reader–character
and thus reader–author empathy difficult. In rejecting the classic books,
group members are resisting Elizabeth Long’s notion of the cultural authority
of the literary establishment (the academic, literary and media communities
primarily). A good example of a more contemporary novel suffering the same
fate is Zadie Smith’s White Teeth. At the time of the release of this novel she
was the darling of the literary establishment – or at least its PR machine –
with rave reviews all-round for her first novel. She topped Hartley’s survey
of reading groups as the most read book in 2001, but to very mixed responses:
‘Universally hated, very over-hyped, we all felt conned into reading this uninteresting and mediocre book’ (respondent in Hartley 2002 p. 156).
However, when the reader–character and thus reader–author empathy is
high (Margaret Forster, it seems, scores highly on this) the book inevitably
goes down well with the group – reader–reader empathy is high too:
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We’ve just read Anne Tyler’s A Patchwork Planet and all thought it
wonderful. Tried to decide what makes it so good – it’s all so real – you
can visualise each scene, the dialogue’s superb, the characters live. Above
all she cares – Barnaby’s life has real value – ordinary people count.
(Respondent in Hartley 2002, p. 134)
The prime function of reading for book groups is the facilitation of social
interaction. Simon Frith, one of the world’s foremost sociologists of rock,
argues that it is through and around shared social practices that groups
coalesce. Rather than doing things together because we are friends, for
example, we become friends because we do things together: ‘Genuine friendships amongst members (who didn’t know each other before) have been a
substantial bonus’, commented one of Hartley’s respondents. This elegantly
simple observation is very much descriptive of the book groups that I have
encountered, whereby group members often start out as the friend of a friend
of a friend. For jugglers, many of whom are university-educated career
women, joining a book group is also part of reclaiming their sense of who
they once were prior to having children (respondents in Hartley 2002,
p. 29): ‘I started the group to use my brain and talk about something other
than babies.’ ‘After I’d had my baby and left work, I decided I must do
something to prevent brain death.’ And because they share the experience of
the book group and are all in a similar life stage, friendships develop.
Most, if not all, book group members read anyway. But the experience of
reading for the group is different from the experience of reading alone. As
we have already seen, it encourages people to broaden their reading horizons:
Being in a book group means that I am exposed to a wider range of
titles and genres than would be the case if I was left to my own devices.
(Female respondent, Exeter)
What I get from group membership is the fantasy of ‘belonging’ to a
group where people understand me and are interested in me and we
share dreams and goals. The group, when it works for me, acts like a
family of supporting, validating people – in fact, better than a family.
(Female respondent, Bristol)
Although book-group members read alone, the other members of the group
still influence how the book is read and interpreted by the individual – the
‘other’ is omnipresent, and this enhances and complicates the reading
experience:
There is a difference between reading a book for yourself as opposed to
a group beyond just the social interaction element . . . We consider
ourselves to be part of a collective and membership of this collective is
important . . . reading books in that context is different precisely because
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it is bound up with the experience of shared meaning and interdependence that group life provides.
(Female respondent, Exeter)
When I am reading, I am thinking about what the characters’ experiences might mean to the different members of the group. For example,
if one member of the group has had a bad experience with her father, I
will be particularly sensitive to that sort of plot coming up in the novel
we are reading. I might think carefully about how I would discuss it at
the next meeting, how it might be sensitive for other members of the
group. I get the feeling that the books we choose are unconsciously selfcensored within the group: for example, one member of the group is
facing a difficult health scare and we are certainly avoiding books about
cancer – though nobody says as much. In this way, you can see that the
reading of this particular book ceases to be a private act at all, but exists
somewhere between a private/community activity.
(Female respondent, Bristol)
Thinking about the other members of the group when reading and
respecting other members’ views and interpretations of a book when in
discussion, are important characteristics of book groups. Books that are unanimously liked tend not to provoke much discussion – there’s nothing much
to argue about as one of Hartley’s (2002, p. 79) respondent’s noted: ‘When
everyone loves a book, discussion peters out early.’ On the other hand a lively
discussion is guaranteed when different opinions and interpretations are
offered (respondents in Hartley 2002, pp. 79–80): ‘What is interesting is
that we rarely all agree about the book.’ ‘People’s thoughts on a book are
never predictable, even after fourteen years.’ ‘Elizabeth Knox’s The Vintner’s
Luck went badly. Half the group didn’t like the fantasy aspect of the novel
and couldn’t be bothered finishing it. The other half thought it was an
amazing book and couldn’t understand why the others didn’t like it.’
Given the similarity of group members in terms of their life stage, life
experiences, shared history and sociocultural backgrounds, I expected that
they would form a Fishian interpretive community and produce similar
understandings or at least moves towards a consensual, shared understanding
or interpretation of the book in question during their discussions. This,
however, seems rarely to be the case with the book groups I encountered and
there often exists a sharp divide between the ‘loved it’ or ‘hated it’ camps,
making for a lively and interesting meeting. Hartley (2002, p. 79) identifies difference of opinion among book-group members as a key ingredient of
book-group dynamics and she comments: ‘Heated arguments are recalled
fondly, the hotter the better. Respondents seem to enjoy the fireworks:
“I have to contradict or explode”. Occasionally, camps which are totally
polarized can fail to make any common cause at all.’
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The lifeblood of a book group appears, then, to revolve around disagreement and dispute, conflict and contradiction (Hartley 2002, p. 98): ‘They talk
not to coerce each other into a common reading of the text, but rather to
enjoy the diversity, the jolt of looking through another’s eye.’ However, this
is made possible partly because the book-group members feel able and
comfortable in freely expressing their opinions in the first place. The atmosphere of a book group is marked by mutual support and trust: ‘It’s nonjudgmental and non-competitive, so there’s no fear of ridicule’, commented
one of Hartley’s (2002, p. 83) respondents.
I talked to some book-group members about this observation and they
agreed that their book groups exhibited these tendencies too – not all did,
but those that did were all-women groups. Of the many interpretations we
came up with to try and understand this feature of book groups, this one
made most sense to us. The book group represents just one of the many
groups that people belong to in the course of their lives. And from a female
perspective, what characterises many of these other groups’ intra-group
behaviour is the need to forge some consensus, from the trivial ‘what shall
we have for dinner tonight?’ to the more important ‘does my bum really
look big in this?’. Paradoxically, then, the book group represents an island
of confrontation in a sea of compromise. A characteristic of many of the other
groups to which book-group members belong is that there exists, implicitly
or explicitly, some sort of hierarchy – at work the boss, at home the children
– that take precedence over individual action. Within a book group no hierarchy tends to exist and, as we have seen, anyone attempting to be ‘the leader’
can be quickly drummed out of the group. In this sense this type of book
group is a mini democracy, where members’ rights to free speech, without
fear of retribution or recrimination, are constitutive of the group’s ethos.
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Now that we have begun to sketch out and understand the importance of
book groups and the relationships they foster for the lives of their members,
what can we learn from the book-group phenomenon? What is their significance? I will use the book-group’s ‘group-ness’ to support the move away
from the ideology of the individual endemic to mainstream social science
theorising per se. That society has always been composed of a multiplicity
of social groupings is not the issue here, rather the manner in which these
groups have been conceptualised in the first place and then seen to interact.
In effect, the social groups of everyday life – such as book groups – haven’t
been visible because we’ve been wearing the wrong sort of glasses.
Despite the centuries of postulating by The Atomists, kept alive by the
hegemony of methodological individualism in so many branches of the social
sciences, and emphasised more recently by some of the more pessimistic,
sceptical postmodern commentators, phenomena such as book groups
cogently remind us that human life is essentially social. Of course, accepting
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this could lead us to an alternative of methodological holism that is far from
ideal either, as it tends toward structural determinism. Attempts to capture
the space in between these two poles have been advanced by many sociologists; social life cannot be reduced to the activity of individuals alone and
social structures don’t determine individual activity either.
Michel Maffesoli is rather scornful of abstract sociological structures that
are the bread and butter of most sociologists – class, race, gender, etc. –
that are reproduced through individual action. Maffesoli rejects the very
foundations of modern sociology in favour of what might be called a postmodern sociology. This entails a rejection of the very bases – the intellectual
heritage so to speak – of most, if not all, sociological writings and, in keeping
with a postmodern sensibility, he draws from a variety of sources, from the
academic to the artistic and literary, to reinterpret contemporary society.
Central to Maffesoli is a rejection of the Promethean/Apolline values of
modernity – progress towards a better future through rationality – to be
replaced by the Dionysian, to convey the sensual, emotional and communal
life of the here and now. One way of understanding this difference is to see
it as a rejection of modernistic meta-narratives, in favour of a micro-sociology
of everyday life.
For Maffesoli the postmodern requires a different set of conceptual tools
and not the extension or development of modern constructs and concepts;
in other words, the lenses of analysis have to be reconceptualised. Key to
this reconceptualisation is his construct of sociality. However, he still clings
to one age-old modernist trick of dualisms: sociality is opposed to the social.
The social are abstract groupings, part of what Maffesoli calls the mechanical structure of modernity and its institutions – politics and economics in
the main – and these groupings are constitutive of what he calls the ‘massification’ of society. Sociality, on the other hand, refers to the emergent, fluid
and organic nature of the masses, which has been systematically eroded by
the disciplinary mechanisms and power of modernity. This sociality, or being
together, for Maffesoli is a contemporary phenomenon that reacts against the
alienating individualism of modernity. Being together has always been a vital
characteristic of human life but its relative importance has been lost and
usurped by the ideology of the individual promulgated by the institutions
of modernity.
The building blocks of human social life are not to be found in abstract
categories applied to the analysis of social life, but in the multiplicity of
social groupings that we all participate in, knowingly or not, through the
course of our everyday lives. Maffesoli’s is thus a bottom-up as opposed to a
top-down sociology. These tribus or little masses (popularised as neo-tribes)
are fundamental to our experience of life in general. They differ from traditional tribes in an anthropological sense in one important way; we belong
to many little tribes and not one tribe.
Book groups are an example of one of these little tribes. The ritual of attending monthly book-group meetings facilitates two important Maffesolian
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tribal characteristics, the aesthetic and the ethic (Maffesoli 1996, p. 18): ‘the
collective sensibility which issues from the aesthetic form results in an ethical connection.’ The aesthetic refers to the shared sentiments of the group and
the ethic the collective bond of the group. We have already discovered that
empathy and shared emotional expression are fundamental to the book group.
One of my respondents asked her book group one of the questions that I had
asked of her – ‘what do you “get” from being a member of your book group?’
– and her/their response neatly captures this aesthetic/ethic dimension:
We have a shared history (we have been meeting for nearly 16 years)
offering companionship, understanding, distraction and support through
difficult times (we have been through births, separations, house moves,
retirements, job changes, severe illness etc. etc.). It’s a place to connect
the personal with the cultural – to discuss and consider our personal and
public values; it introduces us to cultures outside our own; it offers
greater understanding of one another through reflecting on why we
choose/recommend particular books, why we respond in the way we do;
it’s a discipline for reading, an introduction to books we might not otherwise read offering greater understanding of literature, and especially
poetry; it’s fun and laughter.
(Female respondent, Exeter)
Another key tribal characteristic that Maffesoli discusses is puissance – the
energy and vital force of a mass of people. There’s something about being
in a group that makes our experience of whatever it is we are experiencing
different – sometimes more pleasurable, sometime less so, but always
emotional. Why is this? From Hegel through to Mead and on to Sartre and
Wittgenstein, who we are is an inherently social phenomenon, and recognition by others is a fundamental aspect of self-consciousness. This leads to a
dynamic view of identity – of who we are – that renders any notion of a
fixed, essential self an illusion of modernity. As we engage with different
little tribes, our identity becomes a transient, temporal and contingent
moment of identification – Maffesoli, echoing Goffman, uses the term ‘role’.
We can experience the feeling of centrality in our identity, as a parent for
example, because the social interactions that constitute our experience of
everyday life and that validate our identity are dominated by this particular
relationship. For those who have accepted the role of primary carer – normatively women – their identity as a mother feels central to their existence,
while concurrently their partners are probably spending the majority of their
time in work tribes, hence work-based identities become foundational to
their sense of self – normatively men.
We need others in order to be ourselves; moreover, others are actually
already a part of ourselves in the first place: the being of one’s self and the
being of another are interrelated. We only start recognising ourselves as
conscious beings when we become aware of other conscious beings being
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conscious of us. In other words, we become aware of our own subjectivity
and all that this entails, when we are the object of another’s consciousness.
And in becoming an object of another’s consciousness, we become aware that
we are an object for ourselves. ‘I’ only come into being because ‘I’ am aware
that ‘I’ am an ‘I’ for another. What it is to be a knowing, feeling person is
therefore an essentially social process. As we have seen, reading a book for
the book group changes the nature of the book-reading experience with
empathy, trust and passion (for one’s opinion), among and between members,
emerging as a manifestation of puissance. For me to be me, for my experiences, feelings and thoughts to be meaningful, you have to recognise me.
And in you recognising me I come to recognise myself (Sartre 2000).
For juggling women, the elective sociality of book groups enables them
to reconcile the contradictions they experience as they traverse their
competing trajectories of identification across their daily tribal affiliations –
mother, worker, partner, etc. Moreover, the relational picture of identification – i.e. ‘I need others to be me’ – that has been painted would suggest
that the caring, supportive, empathetic atmosphere engendered by the book
group can help us to understand why it is that 70 per cent of all book groups
are female only. Moreover, female spaces of sociality are rare in society and
perhaps the book group represents an example of such a space. Finally, as
Bernard Cova (1997) has elaborated, book groups are an example of when
the value of the social relations facilitated through consumption contributes
to any value inherent in the object of consumption. Books will still be read
alone but the experience of reading is more pleasurable with the presence of
others.
References
Arendt, H. (1958) The Human Condition, Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press.
Chodorow, N. (1978) The Reproduction of Mothering, Berkeley, CA: University of California
Press.
Cova, B. (1997) ‘Community and Consumption: Towards a Definition of the “Linking
Value” of Product or Services’, European Journal of Marketing, 31 (3/4), 297–316.
Frith, S. (1996) ‘Music and Identity’, in S. Hall and P. du Gay (eds), Questions of Cultural
Identity, London: Sage.
Hartley, J. (2002) The Reading Groups Book, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Maffesoli, M. (1996) The Time of the Tribes; The Decline of Individualism in Mass Society,
London: Sage.
Sartre, J.-P. (2000 [1943]) Being and Nothingness, London: Routledge.
10 You can’t tell a book by
its cover
Bookworms, bookcases and
bookcrossing
Pauline Maclaran and Rosalind Masterson
A good book is always so much more than its cover. A passionate romance
can create an inner glow on cold winter nights; an intriguing mystery can
enliven and divert a tired and stressed mind; nothing can make our hearts
race like a spine-chilling, well-written thriller; and an inspirational biography can act as a guiding vision for a lifetime. Books have the potential to
arouse the emotions, offer insights, teach, excite or relax. And, in the end,
whether they’re a good or a bad read, they can provoke lively discussion and
debate with friends and colleagues. With a book by your side, you are quite
literally never lost for words.
Both avid book browsers and collectors ourselves, in this chapter we illustrate some of the diverse relationships between readers and their books. We
do so by drawing on our own and other readers’ experiences of a new phenomenon, bookcrossing, which is sweeping the globe. Bookcrossing books are
marked with a unique identity number that is registered on a website
(Bookcrossing.com) and left behind (or “released into the wild”) in cafés,
pubs, trains, phone boxes or anywhere, indeed, that they might be discovered. To avoid any misconceptions, they carry enticing messages such as
“Look Inside,” “Read Me,” “Take Me Home” or “Free Book.” The idea is
that when someone finds one, they track and update its journey on the website
that unites a worldwide community of book lovers.
This chapter tells one book’s life story through the eyes of its various
readers who each tell their own tale around their discovery and subsequent
release of the book. We use each reader’s tale to highlight and comment on
important aspects of book distribution, selling and consumption. First,
however, we set the scene for our series of book-lover vignettes, by describing
in more detail this community of BookCrossers.
A book is not only a friend . . .
‘It makes friends for you’
Henry Miller famously opined in The Books in My Life (1974). These and his
other words of book-lover wisdom:
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When you have possessed a book with mind and spirit, you are enriched.
But when you pass it on you are enriched threefold.
are often quoted on the bookcrossing website. They sum up an ethos where
a love of books attempts to turn the world into one big library, an ethos
that promotes sharing, caring and giving across borders; a type of karma that
transcends time zones and the frustrations of international mail systems.
BookCrossers, who now number nearly 350,000, come from over 150 countries, including Antarctica and Zimbabwe. Although the phenomenon
started in America, it has quickly spread through Europe and Australia.
Media coverage has been prolific since its inception on 17 April 2001, and
most recently it was featured in the popular Australian soap opera series,
Neighbours. Indeed, it has gained such widespread acclaim that it is now
defined in the Concise Oxford English Dictionary as: “Bookcrossing: the practice of leaving a book in a public place to be picked up and read by others,
who then do likewise.”
BookCrossers realise their childhood dreams of sending, or finding, a
message in a bottle through contemporary Internet technology. Members
communicate online through email, journal entries and message boards. They
announce book releases, form reading circles and swap stories about their
bookcrossing experiences and their love of books in general. In keeping with
the literature on other cyber communities (Livia 1999; Turkle 1995), they
have their own idiosyncratic ways of speaking about their activities. Before
they can be assimilated into the community, new members must learn a
large number of new terms and get to grips with a range of bookcrossing
activities. BookCrossers “free” or “release” books into the “wild.” They form
‘rings’ where they send a book to someone who then sends it on to someone
else, and so on until it returns to the original BookCrosser; and ‘rays’ where
the book goes to a number of people but does not return home. They give
away books as a ‘Random Act of Bookcrossing Kindness’, commonly referred
to as ‘RABCK’. They talk of the piles of book they have yet to read, or Mt
TBR (to be read). They “go hunting” at “crossing zones” for books that are
“in the wild” or “travelling” and sometimes, though surprisingly infrequently, they “catch” one.
Bookcrossing members cite many reasons for joining: the thrill of tracking
down a new release; the satisfaction of giving; the excitement of leaving a
book in a public place; the discovery of other, like-minded souls; the relief
of de-cluttering a home; and last, but not least, a way to make new friends
and feel part of a larger community. Relationships between members often
extend well beyond cyberspace and BookCrossers frequently meet up offline
to participate in communal, themed book releases at prearranged locations,
or simply to discuss their latest read with other bookcrossing friends. For
many, bookcrossing has become a way of being, a crucial part of their
everyday activities.
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In the vignettes that follow we try to bring some of these aspects to life.
This piece is both about becoming and being a BookCrosser and, more generally, about being a book lover. Following Hill (2001), these portraits are
both research-driven and fictional accounts. In accordance with netnographic
practices (Kozinets 1998, 2002), the background for our tales comes from
an extended period of observation and participant observation in the
bookcrossing community. We have released books ourselves, monitored their
progress with excitement, talked with other BookCrossers, and pored through
hundreds of their stories posted on the bookcrossing website. However,
following the premise that ethnography revolves around storytelling (Van
Mannen 1995), the representational style of our findings is to use impressionist tales where we bring the lived experience of many into a few,
composite portrayals incorporating the major themes and characteristics that
emerged from our research. It is also important to note that these insights
into book consumption are not necessarily exclusive to the fictional portrait
we have used to illustrate them, the same book lover may incorporate characteristics from all these portraits at particular times in their lives, or, indeed,
simultaneously. Our vignettes are simply intended to bring to life the wide
range of facets of book consumption. In this respect they take inspiration
from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales where the same action (i.e. pilgrimage, or
in this case, reading), viewed from a different perspective, becomes a potentially different experience. In the following tales we portray some of the deep
relationships that may exist between reader and book from a series of different
lenses:
The
The
The
The
The
Addict’s Tale (book as addictive passion);
Historian’s Tale (book as connection to the past);
Loner’s Tale (book as community);
Traveller’s Tale (book as companion);
Seeker’s Tale (book as insight to the author’s world).
The Addict’s Tale
It’s a perfect, summer day and Sarah is taking a lunchtime stroll through
the park on her way to browse in the local bookstore. As she passes a deserted
bench, her eyes light up. There’s a book lying on the arm of the bench, its
yellow sticker proclaiming boldly:
‘I’m FREE! I’m not lost! Please pick me up, read me, and help me with
my journey!’
The sun seems to get even brighter as Sarah, thrilled with such a curious
and serendipitous find, sits down on the bench and is lost. It’s not so much
the book itself, Small Island by Andrea Levy, that captivates her; after all,
it’s a book that she already has at home among a stack of other titles waiting
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to be read. No, what excites her most is the world of book lovers that beckons
to her from the BookCrosser’s notes inside the cover, the possibility of a
connection with others that share her life’s passion. She will give this book
pride of place, top-of-the-stack priority, just so that she can enter this new
world of books. By the time her lunch hour draws to an end, Sarah has
already finished the first three chapters. With loving care and a face that
gleams with anticipatory consumption, she tucks the book into her shoulder
bag to take home to what she thinks of as her house of books.
Yes, albeit only on a temporary basis, this new read will shortly be fighting for its own space alongside many, many other books. Heaped in islands
all around her house, stacked high on wall-to-wall bookshelves, Sarah’s books
are everywhere. They make her feel cocooned in a warm web of continual wonderment. Silently, leaning together haphazardly in their colourful rows, they
represent knowledge captured and stories to unfold. They offer her the reassurance of endless explorations without ever having to leave her comfort zone.
Sarah cannot stop buying books. She is an addict, a self-confessed bookoholic
or book junkie. Some people collect postcards or CDs; Sarah collects books.
This addiction caught her young. As a small child, her imagination was
fuelled by that endless supply of books that was the local library. During
these early years she grew accustomed to the security of large piles of books
waiting to be read. She hated it when the pile diminished. Her favourite
childhood pastime was keeping the pile replenished. Fresh books had to be
continually substituted for those that had been read and returned.
Now an adult, she spends most of her income on this passion for books.
She passes large amounts of her leisure time in assorted bookshops: discount
outlets, bargain basements, chains and independents. She is addicted to the
smell, feel and look of books. Each shopping spree adds four or five books
to the TBR (to be read) pile. The three shelves of her bedside table wobble,
each containing fifteen or more books patiently waiting their turn.
As well as reading the books, Sarah uses them as a way to decorate her
home, and she greatly prefers them to ornaments. They are the central element of her domestic design. Books are everywhere, in living rooms and
bedrooms, in bathrooms, in the kitchen, on the landing and even on the
stairs where they inhabit even the smallest nook and cranny. When life overwhelms her, when she feels down in the dumps, a stop at Barnes and Noble
will help her forget her problems. Perhaps their coffee shop is the Crossing
Zone where she will leave Small Island when she has finished reading it but
she has not decided yet. Maybe she should think of somewhere really unusual.
Tomorrow, however, she will register her find so that she can start meeting
other BookCrossers.
The Historian’s Tale
Brenda believes that some things are better when they’re older; in particular, books. For her, the true value of a book lies in the historical record it
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provides, its own unique personal history that reveals itself as you leaf
through the pages. Sometimes it’s the bookshop stamps or owners’ signatures that bear testimony to its past. At other times it’s more unusual finds,
such as makeshift bookmarks. Among Brenda’s bookmark finds have been
hand-written notes, receipts, recipes, greeting cards, postcards, confectionery
papers, photographs and assorted news clippings. Once, as she leafed through
the roughly-cut, brown speckled pages of a Victorian novel, she found a beautiful hand-painted card with a tender poem. The card was dated 1916 and
from the poem, Brenda had surmised that the book owner’s lover was a young
man heading off to the war. Did he ever return? Did she wait for him? The
poem now has pride of place in an ornate frame that sits beside its erstwhile
protector on one of her many bookshelves.
The sense of the personal that comes with a used book is what Brenda
really treasures. She has books that have been signed by the author, books
that were given as gifts, books that have been annotated by their readers.
Like a detective, she loves pondering over the trail of clues to the book’s past
history and she often speculates on the tortuous route the book may have
taken on its way to her.
Her friends find her a puzzle. They are amused when she spends £20 on
scruffy hardbacks that have been sitting around in the shop so long that they
are cobweb covered. They throw up their hands in horror when she spends
much more than that on just one, very special item, for example her signed,
Douglas Adams first edition. She just loves to scour markets, antique shops,
car boot sales, house sales, library sales, charity shops and used bookshops,
avoiding the big book chains where all the stock seems too new, too the
same. She savours that distinctive, sweet, musty aroma of old book and she
homes in on it. She’s always looking for first editions of old favourites, special
editions, limited editions, that one elusive book that will complete a set, but
the greatest thrill of all comes from the discovery of something personal
inside the covers, that’s what makes even the most mundane of books unique.
Today she’s had a very special find. She was having a coffee in Barnes and
Noble (nice atmosphere) when her eye was drawn to the table next to her.
A woman had just left and, oh horror, she’d forgotten her book. Brenda
grabbed it, thinking to rush after the poor woman. She knew how she would
feel herself if she’d lost something so precious. But there was an odd thing.
The book, Small Island, had a bright yellow post-it note on the outside.
Brenda read the note incredulously. Then she hugged her find to her chest
and sat back down smiling.
The Loner’s Tale
Tom lives in a remote area of Australia. His nearest neighbours are five miles
away and they do not share his interests. Tom loves the wild beauty and the
quiet of his outback home – it’s just the perfect place to indulge his only
real passion: reading. From the moment he discovered bookcrossing – a fit
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of boredom having prompted him to do a Google search on “book lovers +
community” – he has developed his new hobby avidly. Now he gets emails
every day that are not just spam, they are from his new-found friends in the
bookcrossing community. Only last week he opened his inbox to find, much
to his surprise, birthday messages from around the world. Some had sent
him traditional greetings in their native language while others had created
their own birthday rhymes especially for him. He had heard from PollyMac
Two Bells, TigerTale, Catkin, Silver Bird and so many others. Tom loves
the imaginative pseudonyms that BookCrossers adopt. He spent many hours
deliberating over his own before deciding to take the name of one of his
favourite singers, Howling Wolf.
Today he is hoping that his next read will be in his mail when he collects it from the nearest settlement. The Greyhound bus usually drops it
around 10 a.m. The book was sent to him by a UK BookCrosser a couple
of weeks ago and he has been eagerly anticipating its arrival. He has wanted
to read Small Island ever since he read the rave reviews it got from fellow
BookCrossers.
Tom really feels that he has been adopted into a loving family of kindred
spirits. Because he lives in such a rural area, he cannot often get involved in
book releases: who apart from sheep and cows are around to retrieve them?
On the odd occasion that a friend from the city visits, he usually manages
to persuade him to become a surrogate releaser. He got the idea from chatting to a housebound BookCrosser for whom this was a common ploy.
Although he misses out on the thrill of wild releases, he joins enthusiastically in many book rings and rays. This is how he meets most of his new
friends. Sometimes he also scans through notifications of book captures and
puts in a request to have the book mailed to him. He finds that most
BookCrossers have such generous and open natures that they are frequently
happy to mail the book free of charge on the basis of “what goes around,
comes around.” This is the spirit behind the volume he is off to collect today.
Tom’s life has totally changed since he joined the bookcrossing community. Now every day is filled with anticipation and surprises, every night
is made snug with a good read. He no longer feels alone and this has helped
him cope with the many stresses and strains that his isolated life throws at
him. Last year, bookcrossing kept him sane during Hurricane Charlie, a
category 4 hurricane with 140 mph head winds that had wreaked havoc in
Northern Australia. Although he only had time to take a few possessions
with him to the local shelter, he just could not leave his pile of bookcrossing
books behind. He was their temporary guardian and he felt a deep sense of
responsibility to his fellow BookCrossers and to their books. He could not
risk something calamitous happening to them. While the whole region where
he lived was battered with 100 mph+ winds and blinding, horizontal sheets
of rain, he spent three days in the shelter alternating between reading and
planning his reviews ready to post to the website when he got home. Those
books made him the most popular man in the shelter as, by day three, even
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those who had teased him about his portable library were clamoring to borrow
the books. Now he hopes that he may have inspired some new BookCrossers
nearer to hand. When the hurricane was over, he was amazed to find that so
little damage had been done to his home. He feels that bookcrossing brings
him good karma.
His friend, Bill, who lives in Adelaide, is coming next week. If Small Island
arrives in time, he’ll read it quickly and persuade Bill to release at that
literary festival that he’s been talking about . . .
The Traveller’s Tale
For many years, Johnny had taken his holidays in the sun. His idea of bliss
was to be stretched out on a lounger, waves swishing in and out, cold drink
by his side, cigarette in one hand and book in the other. Books made him
relax and carried him far away from the everyday world of work. They took
his mind off the trials and tribulations of running a small business. At night,
he would sit on a balcony, waves still swishing, the cold drink laced with a
little alcohol and a more serious tome in hand: paperbacks for the beach
(lighter to read and to hold), hardbacks for the balcony (out of danger from
suntan oil).
A number of his friends suggested that this was antisocial, so he took to
the bars and cards – but he still had the books. They said it was dull and
that there was no point in going abroad, he was lost in a book world anyway,
he could be anywhere. Girlfriends had never been able to cope with his lack
of attention or the fact that their main rival was a book.
Then, a dreadful thing happened. On a tiny Greek island, miles from
anywhere, Johnny ran out of books. He found himself reading anything and
everything: ingredients on drinks bottles, T-shirts on the beach, hotel signs,
he even tried to puzzle out Greek place names. He read and re-read his Greek
phrase book. Eventually, he headed for the one and only hotel on the island
and begged for cast-off books. He was surprised by how friendly the residents were. He wandered around the pool, accosting complete strangers, yet
any initial reserve they displayed disappeared once he started talking about
books. He found a whole range of books and readers there. There were lots
of airport-bought bestsellers but also non-fiction and literary classics. One
couple who shared his book passion invited him to stay for lunch to prolong
the discussion. Many people only ever read books on holiday and were eager
for his recommendations. He managed to swap six books and found he had
a number of things that he would never have chosen; however he read them
all and thus uncovered a previously undreamt of fondness for crime novels.
After that near-disastrous holiday, he decided never again to risk his
precious relationship with his books. Shaking off his friends and abandoning
his sun worship, he replanned holidays for maximum relaxation; that meant
holidays with his most precious companions: books. All his holidays are now
taken in English-speaking countries so that he cannot run out of books again.
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He has considered learning another language in order to increase his scope,
but does not want to invest all that reading time in language study, knowing
he might never be good enough to appreciate the literary nuances of another
language anyway. He bases the holiday around a literary festival; the smaller
and more obscure, the better. The festival is only a device though, a reason
for taking the journey. Johnny likes a slow drive through the countryside
with plenty of time to indulge himself. He’s on a quest. Seeking out-of-theway bookshops in the small villages he passes through, his heart races when
he comes across unheard-of authors who have won awards or gained the accolade “best seller,” unheard-of books by well-loved authors, unlikely crosspollinations of authors, or authors with seemingly unsuitable subjects. He
is particular though; some things are absolute turn-offs: Richard and Judy’s,
or Oprah’s, recommendation; romances; anything abridged. These are unworthy. They are media fabrications given unearned status by association
with celebrity, or they are travesties that miss the author’s point, or they are
just not to his taste.
Johnny has new friends now – and not just his books. He meets likeminded book lovers at the festivals and en route. At his next festival, he’s
looking forward to meeting an Australian BookCrosser, rooroo, (aka Bill), in
person for the first time. These book lovers share meals and the gleam in the
eye that a new find can provoke. They sit up late into the night discussing
anything and everything. They are well versed on a massive range of topics;
after all, they are all remarkably well read.
The Seeker’s Tale
‘Now, where was I? Oh yes, training with the RAF.’
Annabel tucked her feet up under her and snuggled deep into her favourite
chair; book open and tea to hand. Now she was ready to take on racism
during the Second World War. Lately she seemed to have read a lot of books
about black and Asian cultures and how they fitted (or didn’t) into Britain.
This was a new take, though, set at such a turbulent time and the Jamaicans
invited, if not begged, to join up to defend the mother country.
In her head she could feel them lining up for their new, scratchy winter
clothes, weighed down by them, shivering. She wondered what she would
have done if she’d been alive and there at the time. Who would she have
been? How would she have coped?
There was a moment of confusion as she wondered what happened to the
dog – but that was in one of the other books she was reading. Annabel loved
to read. She kept books strategically placed throughout her life: by the bed,
in her desk, in the car, in her handbag, at her mother’s house and here, by
her favourite chair. The trouble was that she just couldn’t resist buying books.
The choosing of the book was almost as much fun as the reading of it, sometimes more. She would browse for hours, in bookshops or online, reading
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dust jackets, dipping in at random, trying to catch the essence of the book
before she committed to it. She found online bookshops convenient, and she
could shop away her occasional insomnia, but buying in a real shop was
better. That higgledy-piggledy shop around the back of the shopping centre
had a soul. Walking in was like the start of an adventure, never knowing
what, or who, you would find. Waterstone’s, Barnes and Noble – well they
had charisma and coffee. As far as Annabel was concerned, it was all good.
She was always reading at least four books; she tried to make sure they
were different enough to avoid confusion, so often she chose from different
genres. That worked really well as the different authors sparked new trains
of thought in her mind. She loved that. She would let her mind wander off
down the newly created avenues, meandering through ideas and philosophies, building passageways, backing away from dead ends. Her mother
found her exasperating, too much the dreamer, never getting enough done.
But Annabel travelled the world through her books – and not just the
geographical world – she travelled through time as well as space, discoursing
with the living, the dead and the only dreamt-of. She was invited into
authors’ minds, they shared their experiences, fears and theories with her.
They eagerly sought her opinion, challenged her preconceptions, showed up
her ignorance and they taught her, oh they taught her so much.
It wasn’t that she didn’t have flesh-and-blood companions too; she did.
Just looking around the room provided evidence of that. There were the
bookends made from periscope lenses that Danny had given her. On the shelf
between them was her most treasured possession, a Stephen Spender signed,
first edition given to her by her father when she graduated. Her eye lingered
on it lovingly, then she frowned; treasured it might be but it was covered
in dust. That was one of the snags with hoarding books. You usually only
read them once but they were dust traps for ever.
Next to the Spender was the thriller sent to her by PollyMac from Idaho.
She had met PollyMac through the bookcrossing site, (well, she’d never actually met her, only virtually), and that was how she’d been introduced to
thrillers, a genre that had never held any appeal before. She might not have
read the book even then, except that PollyMac raved about it so and kept
asking where she’d got up to. They chatted about it a lot and formed quite
a bond. Annabel had invited PollyMac into a book ring that was otherwise
all Brits and so yet more thrillers travelled back and forth across the Atlantic.
Annabel got a lot of books from rings and rays and always prioritized these
– so the stacks of bought, unread, pleasures to come kept growing.
The book she was reading now had been recommended by another virtual
friend, JohnOh, and the flowers were brought by the weekend’s dinner guests.
Occasionally she swapped her novels, histories and biographies for cookery
books. Annabel had different rules for cookery books. Most of her books were
kept pristine. People had been known to think they were unread (even the
ones she’d been reading in the bath), but her cookery books were distinctly
tatty. Souvenirs of meals clung to them and there were scribbled comments
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and tips for future use. Some were festooned with coloured post-its, others
just had scraps of paper, (mostly newspaper cuttings, shopping lists and old
phone messages), tucked inside. Some of the marked places were favourite
recipes, some were just good ideas. Annabel was hoping to write a cookery
book someday.
She was also hoping to write a novel; had started several in fact. Starting
was so much easier than finishing. She liked the sparking of ideas rather more
than the chore of actual writing. She’d promise herself a treat; write five thousand words and then you can read a while. Then she’d be lost again, arguing
with Dickens, crying over Alice Sebold, smiling at Carol Shields or laughing
out loud with Terry Pratchett. It was just so hard to fit everything in.
Endnotes
A book is so much more than paper and ink. The original manuscript is the
much-loved creation of an inspired author (and hard-working editor), but
each printed volume is an individual living its own life. The portraits above
illustrate how a book’s value far exceeds its cover price or even the knowledge, or entertainment, that it contains. A book is a friend, a guide, a conduit
to other lives and places, a discovery, sometimes a surprise, always a companion, maybe even a secret vice. There is an addictive strand running
through all our tales, sometimes explicitly, as in the Addict’s Tale, sometimes more subtly, as with the Seeker. Admit it, most of us book lovers are
word junkies. We love to buy books, discover new authors, have books all
around us. Like compulsive shoppers, we are thrilled at the prospect of a
book-buying trip and we gloat over our purchases afterwards. Not for us the
subsequent guilt that converts other addictive consumers’ prepurchase highs
into postpurchase lows (Elliott et al. 1996; O’Guinn and Faber 1989), we
can usually maintain that high. Whereas the shopping addict may secrete
purchases, often unwrapped, in cupboards and wardrobes, we proudly display
the signs of our excessive cultural capital even if they remain unread. In this
respect, the addictive and compulsive aspects of book consumption are more
akin to those that pervade collecting behaviour (Belk et al. 1988). Just as
other collections (stamps, antiques, model cars, miniatures and so forth) can
evoke a magical world where objects become endowed with sacred qualities
(Belk 1995), so it is with book collecting. The hunt, the discovery, the links
with the past: these are all facets of the sacrilization processes that set the
contents of a collection apart from the ordinary (Belk et al. 1991). In similar
ways our book collections become precious to us.
Another highly significant aspect of books, however, lies in their communicative powers; not just author to reader, but reader to reader and reader to
self as well. Books help us to make friends and make us part of a larger
community of readers, most notably through specific groups such as book
clubs and, of course, bookcrossing. Perhaps the most significant aspect of the
bookcrossing phenomenon is that, along with the Burning Man Festival
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Pauline Maclaren and Rosalind Masterson
(Kozinets 2002) and the music file-sharing service, Napster (Giesler and
Pohlmann 2003), it is best understood in terms of the gift economy rather
than a commodity or exchange economy. Whereas the latter economy accords
status to those who have the most, a gift economy accords status to those
who give the most (Hyde 1983). Gifts are related to play, enchantment and
art, and, as such, they emphasize connection and fantasy, rather than division and rationality (Kozinets 2002). In a “culture consumed by the rhetoric
of self-interest, by a superficial ‘globalisation’” (Osteen 2002, p. 3), Burning
Man, Napster and Bookcrossing represent counter-cultural trends that seek
a larger community-driven sense of self. Additionally, they harness contemporary Internet technology (itself an example of the gift economy – see
Rheingold 1993) to enhance their communicative powers and, particularly
in the case of Napster and Bookcrossing, their sharing abilities. As Hyde
(1983) has demonstrated through the analysis of myth, the culture of the
gift is that if a recipient does not pass it on, its value will disappear. If freely
passed on, however, the gift will reap rewards for its giver many times over.
In other words, to give is to receive, to help others is to be helped, and what
goes around comes around. As the newly released book says: ‘I’m free! . . .
Help me on my journey!’
References
Belk, R.W. (1995) Collecting in a Consumer Society, London: Routledge.
––––, Wallendorf, M., Sherry, J.F. and Holbrook, M.B. (1991) ‘Collecting in a Consumer
Culture’, in R.W. Belk (ed.), Highways and Buyways: Naturalistic Research from the
Consumer Behaviour Odyssey, Provo, UT: Association for Consumer Research.
––––, ––––, ––––, –––– and Scotts, R. (1988) ‘Collectors and Collecting’, in M. Houston
(ed.), Advances in Consumer Research Vol. 15, Provo, UT: Association for Consumer
Research.
Elliott, R., Eccles, S. and Gournay, K. (1996) ‘Revenge, Existential Choice, and Addictive
Consumption’, Psychology & Marketing, 13 (8), 753–68.
Giesler, M. and Pohlmann, M. (2003) ‘The Anthropology of File Sharing: Consuming
Napster as a Gift’, in P. Keller and D.W. Rook (eds), Advances in Consumer Research
Vol. 30, Provo, UT: Association for Consumer Research, 94–100.
Hill, R.P. (2001) Surviving in a Material World, Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre
Dame Press.
Hyde, L. (1983) The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property, New York: Vintage.
Kozinets, R.V. (1998) ‘On Netnography: Initial Reflections on Consumer Research
Investigations of Cyberculture’, Advances in Consumer Research, 25, 366–71.
–––– (2001) ‘The Field Behind the Screen: Using the Method of Netnography to Research
Market-Oriented Virtual Communities’, Journal of Marketing Research, 39 (1), 61–72.
–––– (2002) ‘Can Consumers Escape the Market? Emancipatory Illuminations from
Burning Man’, Journal of Consumer Research, 29 ( June), 20–38.
Livia, A. (1999) ‘Doing Sociolinguistic Research on the French Minitel’, American
Behavioral Scientist, 43 (3), 422–35.
Miller, H. (1974) The Books in My Life. London: Village Press.
You can’t tell a book by its cover
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O’Guinn, T.C. and Faber, R.J. (1989) ‘Compulsive Buying: A Phenomenological
Exploration’, Journal of Consumer Research, 16, 147–57.
Osteen, M. (2002) ‘Questions of the Gift’, in M. Osteen (ed.), The Question of the Gift:
Essays Across Disciplines, London: Routledge, 1–8.
Rheingold, H. (1993) Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier, New York:
Addison-Wesley.
Turkle, S. (1995) Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet, New York: Simon &
Schuster.
Van Mannen, J. (1995) ‘An End to Innocence: The Ethnography of Ethnography’, in
J. Van Mannen (ed.), Representation in Ethnography, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1–35.
11 Consuming literature
Hope Jensen Schau
My mother died today. Or maybe it was yesterday.
(Albert Camus 1954)
When I read the first line of Camus’ The Stranger, I was hooked. Such complete apathy I find excruciatingly charming. It’s a proclivity that has haunted
me my whole life. It may come from growing up in Southern California, in
a surf town known for breeding folks with a narrow bandwidth of emotions.
It may be a genetic trait passed down to me from my well-meaning
Midwestern Protestant parents and their Scandinavian heritage. In any case,
the tendency has manifested itself in many facets of my life: the men I choose,
the social interactions I seek, the distance I impose in my personal and professional relationships, and the tactics I employ when confronted with uncomfortable situations. The result is a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, that feeds
into a Scarlet O’Hara “I’ll think about that tomorrow” psychological state. I
am the self-proclaimed queen of conflict avoidance and a great believer in the
Rodney King, “Why can’t we all just get along?” philosophy.
I came to Camus’ The Stranger several years ago through a guy I knew,
Dave, who told me about the story. Dave said it was “about this pitiful guy
who killed an Arab, was tried and convicted and ended up beating off in jail
until he died.” On the basis of that synopsis and his endorsement, I trotted
over to my local Barnes and Noble with Dave to purchase a copy.
We walked into the store and read the signs on the dark wood bookcases
that filled the high walls from ceiling to floor. We weaved in and around
the dizzying maze of crowded shelf space. We found the classic fiction section
and searched by author’s last name until we located Camus and The Stranger.
There were multiple copies with different jackets. Some covers had an
Algerian feel to them, while others were avant-garde artsy. I wasn’t sure
which one to buy. How could the same story inspire such wildly different
packaging? Dave pulled out one of each jacket, inspected the first page, and
read aloud. The opening line in each version varied slightly. We agreed on
the translation with the most apathetic first line. I liked Dave better by the
moment. Dave’s smile spread as he admitted he was “especially fond of this
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version.” I was thoroughly impressed; he must be really into Camus to have
a favorite translation. We walked to the counter. Before I could reach for
my wallet, he dug deep into his baggy board shorts’ pocket and paid the
cashier with a wadded-up bill. I thought he was unusually gallant, but I
tried not to hold that against him. We left the store and headed our separate
ways. He had to go to work, and I felt compelled to read my new selection.
I went home and dug right in.
A few days later, Dave called me up, “Hey, did you finish The Stranger?”
“Yes, just a couple of hours ago,” I answered, glancing over at the book
on the table in the atrium, its cover shimmying gently in the breeze.
“Sweet. Wanna go to the beach tonight and talk about it?” he suggested.
“Sounds great,” I agreed.
“I’ll drop by around 7 p.m. and we can walk over,” the statement ended
with an upswing more like a question than a statement.
“Perfect,” I replied, to solidify the plan. A book-club meeting at the beach,
what could be more pleasant? I set the phone back in its cradle and packed
my backpack with the evening beach essentials: firewood, a blanket, a sweatshirt, a knit beanie, and a thermos of cocoa in case we got cold. I slipped
the book into the outer flap.
True to his word, he came by my house a few minutes after 7 p.m.
“Hey, ready?” he said. He smiled easily.
“Yep,” I noted he had a backpack too. I imagined we were set to stay until
city curfew.
“Let’s walk down Magnolia. Nice sidewalk most of the way.” Again his
voice indicated it was more of a question than a firm proposal.
“Sure,” I said in case an answer was required. We walked along the street
past the power plant toward the beach. We smelled the oil being pumped
out of the ground and the salty ocean breeze. It was a quiet, pleasant walk
through the neighborhood I had known all my life. Dave was calm and easy
to be with.
The night was cool. The wind was up. There were only a few people on
the beach. The boardwalk was unusually clear. We had no trouble finding
a ring and Dave started a fire with wood he brought. I took the blanket out
of my backpack, unrolled it and sat down. He sat down next to me. I decided
he was better-looking than I had previously estimated. I figured if he was
even remotely interesting, he may be datable. We watched the sun set and
slowly began to talk. He pulled out his own dog-eared copy of The Stranger
and I was favorably inclined. I thought his initial synopsis was likely a clever
commentary on the anti-story, or possibly a minimalist interpretation. Given
his translation preference, I thought the discussion was going to be quite
fascinating. I geared up for a heady conversation. He set the book on his lap
and rubbed his hands together over the ring, brushing the sand off.
He said, “It was a good story, eh? I really felt like I was there, experiencing it firsthand. Camus has a way of gripping the reader from the onset
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and inserting them into the text.” He spoke with an unhurried Keanu Reaves
breathy style. “So what did you think of The Stranger?” He reached for my
hand. I gave it to him. He seemed genuinely interested in what I had to say,
but not overly emotional. I was flattered and pleased.
“Right away we feel Meursault’s ambivalence about his mother’s death.
Two paragraphs into the story and we know he is far from home and emotionally distant. We feel his disconnection from society and his inability to
navigate the social terrain. We know he can neither understand the social
expectations, nor comply with them.” I felt a little disadvantaged since I had
only just read it.
He laughed and nodded his head, “Dude is whack. That’s a fact.”
Emboldened by his agreement, I spoke honestly about my interpretation
of the story, “I think it is similar to Kafka’s The Trial in the way it portrays
incomprehensible oppression suffered by disenfranchised people at the hands
of the dominant regime. The Stranger is the story of a man who would not
capitulate even if it cost him his life. It is an expression of dispassionate
rebellion, and the knowledge that a life spared by compromise was doomed
to be wrought with more uncomfortable compromise. I think Meursault was
really convicted for not crying at his mother’s funeral and sentenced to death
for not accepting Christ even at a superficial level. This is a story of profound
alienation due to a fissure between the performed behavior and the social
expectations. It is about a man who threatened the society he lived in by the
independent manner in which he thought. It is definitely a dialogue with
Sartre. It is about reforming a delinquent citizen and ultimately being forced
to destroy him because he could not buy the party line. It is also a story of
racial politics, as the Arab was dispensable, nameless, and utterly negated
by the society seeking justice on his behalf. No one cared that the Arab had
died, except that the killing gave the judicial system an excuse to dispose
of Meursault too. The story leaves you thinking about the inequity of the
laws of man and the irrational social contracts that bind people. Camus was
a genius.”
Dave breathed audibly, “Yeah, maybe. I can see that.” He let my hand
go. He fished a thermos and a volleyball hat out of his backpack. He gathered his hair with one hand and put the hat on backwards with the brim
low against his neck. I watched as he poured beer out of his olive green
thermos into the cup/cap and crossed his legs. He took my hand again and
drank. The beer looked a little flat, but he didn’t appear to mind.
“I did really feel as if I was there,” I paused. There was a moment of
silence. I tried to fill the void, “It was a sad story. Tragic.” I felt a twinge
self-conscious after sharing my interpretation so boldly. After all, I had read
the text only once; Dave had a translation preference.
He agreed, “Uh-huh. I kept wondering would I have made that choice
. . .” His voice was even and unsentimental. His words trailed off without a
conclusion.
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I felt the wind against my cheeks, “It was difficult to read.” The air was
cold and my hair whipped around me. I found my sweatshirt and my knit
beanie and put them on. I took Dave’s hand again.
“I guess I’d jack off if I had to stay in a prison cell. It beats randomly
bending over.” He was looking into the fire.
I didn’t remember that being the choice for Meursault. I struggled to
remember the text set in the jail. Did I miss something? I said, “Do you
know that for sure?”
“You’re right. I don’t. That’s a good point. It may only be my conceptual
impression that one option is clearly superior to the other. I hadn’t thought
of it that way. Sometimes you just need to talk about it to really understand.” He nodded slowly, as if he was piecing together an argument.
I bit my lip in confusion. I had referred to Meursault’s choice as Dave had
stated it, but Dave appeared to answer from a personal perspective. I couldn’t
believe that this last comment was the most meaningful to him. Had we
read the same story? I went over the book in my head during the lull in our
conversation. I wasn’t sure where he was going with this. I waited awhile.
A few moments went by, “Dave, is that what bothered you most about
Meursault’s tragedy?” My voice was tentative.
“No, I guess I just understood the other stuff more,” Dave looked very
serious. “If the guy felt strongly about not compromising his agnostic belief
system, why would he want to compromise on sex? Jerking off is a poor
substitute for the real thing. You know what I mean?”
I didn’t know what he meant. Which real thing? I said, “No, actually empirically I don’t and conceptually I never thought it out. I guess I got distracted
by the other aspects of the plot.” I thought it was very curious that Dave took
great pains to purchase the very same translation of the text so we could discuss the identical document and still we had vastly divergent interpretations.
I honestly could not read him. I thought about the way people consume literature as prosthesis of their own intellectual musings. I wondered what Dave’s
interpretation said about Dave. The meanings he attributed to Meursault and
the hierarchy of issues he arranged from the ones Camus presented were
undoubtedly indicative of his own intangible cognitive structures, or schemas,
and definitely something that warranted scholarly pursuit. It was fascinating.
Dave was definitely a guy less ordinary than I originally suspected.
I know literary theorists deal with reader interpretation and privatized
meaning through reader response theory. I had a good friend who wrote his
dissertation on Toni Morrison’s fiction using reader response; his research
turned out to be quite insightful and compelling. He was able to shed light
on contemporary perspectives on racial identity, prejudice and discrimination. I made a mental note to consult him about Dave and The Stranger.
Perhaps he would be able to explicate the underlying complexity.
Meanwhile, I attempted to frame the phenomenon in terms of consumption. I considered the fact that we had purchased the identical product (the
same translation of the book) and consumed it in the same semiotic manner
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(deciphering written characters through reading) and yet, the meanings and
valences we attached to segments of the text were quite dissimilar. Although
we shared many demographic designations, such as region, social class, education and age, we approached the text very differently. Fascinating! Since
1954 multiple generations have read Camus with myriad cultural lenses and
various language orientations and religious affiliations. The same text is quite
literally alive with interpretation that depends on each reader’s idiosyncrasies.
To paraphrase the Talmud: we do not see things as they are, we see them as
we are.
How was my consumption of The Stranger different from Dave’s? What
made us react as we did to the story? How, beyond simply reading words
did we make sense of the text at hand? Was a book, as a system of symbols,
more prone to diverse interpretation than another product? Is Camus’ brand
of fiction more flexible than other authors’? To investigate this last question
would require a huge sample of authors and their respective texts and a host
of readers and their detailed interpretations. I would probably also have to
develop a scale to capture the variability of interpretations. It was beyond
an evening on the beach. I decided that honing down my project would yield
better success: how could two seemingly similar people arrive at such
disparate interpretations? Since I had Dave in front of me, I decided to slither
through his mind and locate the nexus of our discord.
“Hey, you seem most intrigued with Meursault’s prison experience, do
you know somebody who did time?” I thought I could start with the obvious
correlate.
“No, I come from a pretty law abiding crowd,” he laughed. He moved a
little closer and put his arm around me.
Not willing to give up, “Do you ever worry about your personal liberty?
About being wrongly accused or convicted of something? About being
misunderstood or alienated generally?” I was on a quest to solve this puzzle.
“Nope, I’m not that complex. I actually don’t worry much about anything.” His smile was genuine and illuminated by the warm yellow fire
glow. He rubbed my arm gently, “I’m really glad we decided to discuss
books together. I think it makes the text experience more fulfilling. It’s
always nice to find someone you can talk to.” He put a small stick into the
fire with his free hand.
Hmmm, he was comforted by our discussion and I was troubled. Another
dissimilar interpretation! My tummy rumbled. I opened my backpack and
brought out my thermos of cocoa. Chocolate is always soothing. “Yes, it
certainly is good to share ideas. I am especially interested in your take on
this text. Why do you think Meursault shot the Arab?” His arm felt nice
around me. The warm cocoa slid down my throat and splashed into my
stomach, settling it down.
“I guess he was bewildered by the heat and frustrated with his life.” He
played with the fire he had on the end of the stick, waving it like an enchanted
wand. My eyes followed the leaping orange flame.
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“So you think he was motivated by frustration? It wasn’t simply a crime
of chance? An unhappy happenstance?” I asked. He quietly pondered my
questions, rhythmically making figure eights in the air with the fiery stick.
It was mesmerizing. “The killing may be construed as self-defense. Meursault
was intimidated by the Arab because of his involvement with the fate of the
Arab’s sister.” I offered this as a possibility. I stared at Dave’s profile. He
looked unconvinced or completely engrossed in the flame. It was too hard
to call.
“Well, if that was the case, why didn’t the defense present that at
Meursault’s trial?” Dave’s eyes stayed fixed on the dancing flame. “I think
he had some latent issues to deal with. I think he was caught up in the
power of the gun and his own insignificance.” He dropped the stick into
the fire and made a gun with his thumb and forefinger pointing toward the
fire ring.
“So you think the gun was used as a phallic device? Maybe. Perhaps
Meursault was wielding the gun to compensate for his inability to perform
his socially contracted masculine identities as a son or a lover. Interesting!
It may play into your concern over his later sexual compromise.” I swore we
were not interpreting the same book, but rather a text that had the same
basic facts. Dave shot imaginary bullets into the fire with his middle finger.
He pulled his hand back with a jerk after each trigger pull in simulation of
the gun’s force. He blew staccato air currents through pursed lips in an effort
to recreate the sound of gunfire.
“Sure. Maybe he brandished the gun out of some suppressed need to assert
his vitality against a man who had emasculated him. That is an angle I didn’t
initially consider, but sounds fairly reasonable.” Dave stopped shooting and
looked into my eyes. He nibbled his thumbnail absently.
“Huh. So you think he was emasculated by the Arab? That is a rather
common issue that motivates racializing others and rendering them socially
inferior. I guess I can see that.” This appeared to be an offshoot of the racial
political reading that resonated with me. I was starting to understand Dave
and this made me a little uncomfortable. If the story was actually about an
emasculated murderer and the choice of masturbation versus homosexual
sexual participation in a racialized detention center, than I had misread it
completely. I began to doubt myself.
“Yeah, the more I think of it, the more I wonder if Meursault wasn’t trying
to come to terms with himself. Maybe he couldn’t relate to his mother because
he feared she would not accept his sexuality. It would account for why he
was such an indifferent lover to Marie and couldn’t emotionally commit to
her. It may also explain why he couldn’t be saved: guilt. He thought himself
unworthy.” He paused. “Or maybe he didn’t want to be a part of a society
that did not recognize his perspective on masculinity.” He brushed my hair
off my shoulder and let it fall on my back. He looked directly at me. Under
his scrutiny I lost my tenuous grasp on confidence. I longed for him to turn
his attention back to the stick or to his finger gun.
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Dave baffled me. Didn’t he suggest moments ago that Meursault was
homophobic? Now he’s saying that Meursault is gay? Those two things can
easily fit together in a case of denial and self-loathing, but I didn’t see either
in Meursault. Whoa, I missed that completely. Now Dave was conjuring up
a Meursault I could not visualize. Hadn’t Meursault in an effort to be true
to his agnostic self refused God on penalty of death. Now, he was in denial
about his sexuality? I wanted to get my hands on Dave’s weathered copy of
The Stranger. He must be relating to a whole different document. I was sure
we were dealing with two disparate products. I thought out loud, “OK, but
what about the central issue you defined as why he chose to masturbate in
his cell. If he were a homosexual and had a sanctioned opportunity to pursue
this behavior, why choose self manipulation?”
“Maybe the other guys in prison weren’t his type.” Dave spoke very matterof-factly. No hint of sarcasm laced his tone. He was absolutely, completely,
certifiably serious.
“There is that.” I said the words hesitantly, as I tried to piece together
Dave’s analysis. I struggled to comprehend him. His thinking was entirely
foreign to me. His quiet, bizarre musings were perplexing, but the impact
was stunning. Dave was either brilliant or terribly deluded. In either case,
he was attractive, interesting and growing irresistible. I reached for his text
to examine it closely. Dave misread the intent of my action and we fell into
an embrace, which merged into a kiss. Very nice. When the moment passed,
I captured Dave’s copy of the book and flipped through it. Much to my
surprise, I found it identical to mine; the very same words appeared in the
very same order. I was captivated. I decided Dave was datable.
I said, “Dave, tell me more about your reading of this story.” I offered
him my cocoa. My heart beat faster.
He declined and hit his own thermos again. Dave drank with slow precision the remaining contents straight out of his canister. He recapped his
analysis.
“Gee, pretty standard fare. I just saw Camus dealing with a sexually
ambivalent, latent homosexual guy unable to come to terms with his internal
desires, who cannot face his mother even in death. Looking for a ready outlet
for his desire, he falls in with Marie because she makes the first and most
subsequent moves. He attempts half-heartedly and rather unsuccessfully to
enact his socially acceptable masculinity with Marie. Eventually, frustrated
by his inability to conform to the social expectations, he resorts to murder
and wanton unilateral sexual fulfillment as the means to reaffirm his mastery
over his own desire and his external environment. In the end, he chooses to
die as an ultimate release from his predicament. It’s the only argument that
makes sense to me.” He concluded and shrugged his shoulders. I was willing
to bet Dave’s pulse never crept above 60. Very sexy.
“I guess I can see that,” I conceded. Although I found little support for
his argument in the actual document, I was intrigued with his dispassionate
assertions. Maybe it is the open text nature of literature that gives the
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consumption of it depth and enduring appeal. Each reader can experience the
text intimately and with their own interpretative lens, so the consumption
experience is richer and more vivid than it would be if the text were closed
and static. Because the readers are actively involved in the consumption of
literature by deciphering, analyzing and laying the text over their own life
experiences, the story is alive. I pulled him close and kissed him briefly.
I stopped.
“Do you get along well with your mother?”
12 Riddikulus!
Consumer reflections on the
Harry Potter phenomenon
Al Terego and Sue Denim
Harry Potter and the wizard wheeze
Harry Potter is one of the most amazing consumer crazes of recent years
(Blake 2002). So much so, that there can’t be a single person anywhere who
hasn’t heard of ‘the boy who lived’ and the best-selling books that bear his
name (Rowling 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2003). To date, five books in the
seven-book series have been published and approximately 250 million copies
have been sold worldwide (Brown 2002). This places the boy wizard third
on the all-time bestsellers list, after The Bible (2.5 billion copies sold) and
The Thoughts of Chairman Mao (800 million). Rowling’s books, what is more,
have been translated into 61 different languages, including Icelandic, SerboCroat, Vietnamese, Hebrew, Swahili, Ukrainian and Afrikaans. They have
been published in numerous forms – audio, Braille, large-type, illustrated,
cloth-bound, adult cover, download, box set, etc. – and such is their popularity that special commemorative editions to mark 100 million sales have
even been issued. It is entirely appropriate, is it not, that a staggering
marketing phenomenon should mark its staggering marketing achievements.
In addition to the books themselves, the first three Harry Potter adventures have been made into live-action movies by Warner Brothers, earning
some $1.6 billion at the global box office and a further $750 million in
DVD, video and broadcasting rights sales (Shone 2004). More than 400 items
of ancillary merchandise are also available, everything from candy and key
rings to computer games and glow-in-the-dark glasses (Beahm 2004). It is
estimated that the HP brand is worth $4 billion, or thereabouts, and that
J.K. Rowling is a dollar billionaire (Brown 2005). She is 6th on Forbes’ rollcall of female business leaders, 5th on Entertainment Weekly’s inventory of
movers and shakers, and was runner-up to George W. Bush as Time’s ‘Person
of the Year, 2000’. Not bad for someone who was a poverty-stricken single
parent, living on state benefits in an unheated Edinburgh apartment, less
than a decade ago (Gupta 2003).
Staggering as the sales figures are, the Harry Potter ‘effect’ goes way, way
beyond the bottom line. The entire children’s book sector has been invigorated by the achievements of the teenage wizard, as the subsequent
outpouring of me-too novels bears witness. Innumerable parsings, parodies
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and pastiches of Harry Potter have also been published, including two pseudonymous books by J.K. Rowling herself (Scamander 2001; Whisp 2001).
Applications to boarding schools have rocketed in the wake of the HP
phenomenon; National Health-style glasses are back in fashion, thanks to
the teenage mage; EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teachers claim that
the texts are ideal workbooks for those wishing to improve their grasp
of the mother tongue, as do parents of children with learning difficulties;
owls are proving increasingly popular as household pets, much to the dismay
of Animal Rights activists who have triggered a to-whit to-do about
consumers’ inability to care for the often-irascible creatures; the locations
used in the movies are proving popular with tourists, though some sites have
been chastised by Warner Brothers’ legal department for advertising the
connection; and the Potter vocabulary of ‘Quidditch’, ‘Muggles’, ‘Gryffindor’,
‘Slytherin’, ‘Hogwarts’ et al., is now part of the vernacular (Brown 2002).
Pottermania, in short, has reached epidemic proportions. The boy wizard
is Britain’s biggest cultural export since The Beatles and James Bond.
Rowling’s teenage familiar may be small for his age, but few would deny
that he is a giant of contemporary consumer culture. The whole world is
wild about Harry, near enough, though this wildness comes in diverse forms,
both pro- and anti-.
Harry Potter and the fan fare
It almost goes without saying that consumers consume Harry Potter in all
sorts of different ways. Apart from officially sanctioned forms of consumption – reading the books, watching the movies, buying the merchandise and
so forth – the stories are unofficially staged as school plays; the movie music
is played by amateur orchestras; the memorabilia is traded enthusiastically
at swap meets, garage sales and on eBay; HP theme parties are held when
new book or movie launches are imminent; Hallowe’en revellers increasingly
dress up as characters from the wonderful wizarding world of Hogwarts; and
fundamentalist opponents of the phenomenon – those who are offended by
the books’ allegedly blasphemous message – are not averse to torching the
supposedly satanic texts (see, for example, Heilman 2003; Whited 2002).
Perhaps the most conventional consumer response to Harry Potter is good
old-fashioned fan mail. According to her literary agents, Christopher Little
& Co., J.K. Rowling is inundated, day and daily, with missives from enthusiasts. So voluminous is the correspondence that a full-time member of staff
has been hired to handle the Potterpost, only a small proportion of which is
brought to the author’s attention. This situation, ironically, is not unlike the
scene in Philosopher’s Stone, the first book, when letters from Hogwarts School
flood into Harry’s guardians’ household. However, this plethora of lifeimitating-art letters has not gone to waste. In a stroke of marketing genius,
the endpapers of the second book, Chamber of Secrets, are filled with endorsements from satisfied kiddie customers, reproduced in their own handwriting:
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Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone is the best book I have ever
read. I gave it to all my friends for Christmas.
(Thomas New)
I really enjoyed your book Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. I
know it all off by heart as I am reading it for the fourth time now.
(Daniel Hougham)
I really like the book Harry Potter. My class and I are reading it as a
novel. I think all the class are enjoying it to (sic) but the only thing
wrong with it is that you can’t put it down.
(Fiona Chadwick)
Furthermore, two anthologies of fan mail, We Love Harry Potter! (Moore
2001) and Kids’ Letters to Harry Potter (Adler 2001), have been published so
far. These expatiate at length on aficionados’ likes and dislikes, their favourite
scenes and characters, their expectations concerning the overall plot and what
it is about the books that makes them so readable (scary, exciting, humorous,
pleasantly puzzling, Hagrid, Hermione, Ron and so on). They also reveal
how fans actively engage in HP world creation. They make Harry Potter
costumes, concoct spells and incantations, invent games based on the books,
identify with individual characters, draw sustenance from certain situations,
and generally integrate the texts into their everyday lives:
Dear Harry, My Muggle name is Ann, but in the wizarding world, my
name is Arabella Arithmancy. I am an American 12-year-old. I am
Muggle-born, like Hermione. In fact, I’m a lot like her. I am at the top
of my classes, I dislike ‘fads’ and the ‘popular’ or ‘boy crazy’ girls, and
I’m often misunderstood, even by those close to me.
(A. Arithmancy)
Dear Harry, When I am at home, my parents always seem to bug me
and make unfair decisions when it comes to what my rules are. I feel
that I can relate to your situation with the Dursleys.
(Kathleen)
Dear Harry, Meet me at 3.00 p.m. at the edge of the forbidden forest
close to the Quidditch field.
(Samantha)
It doesn’t stop with fan mail, moreover. We live in a digital world and,
unsurprisingly, cyberspace is chock-a-block with Potterania. Hundreds
of tribute websites exist, including mugglenet.com, hpana.com and hplexicon.org, which serve different segments of the icon’s consumer constituency. The amount of Potter Art out there is legion, including lots with
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Harry and Hermione in compromising positions (don’t go there, gentle
reader). Amateur video-makers, what’s more, are having a field day with the
boy wonder, spoofs of imagined movie trailers being especially popular. As if
that weren’t enough, every titbit of Harry Potter trivia is webcast to the digitudes who respond instantly with postings, parsings and opinions. When
Booker prize-winner A.S. Byatt (2003) threw her infamous anti-Potter hissy
fit in the New York Times, for example, a veritable tornado of antagonistic
commentary tore through cyberspace, flattening every jerry-built weblog and
gimcrack chatroom in its path.
Without doubt, however, the fullest expression of contemporary consumers’ preoccupation with Rowling’s remarkable creation comes in the form
of fanfictions. These are entire HP novels, near enough, written by fans using
Rowling’s characters and posted on dedicated websites. According to fanfiction.net, the foremost clearinghouse for this kind of thing, approximately
64,000 – yes, sixty-four thousand – additions to the Harry Potter corpus
currently exist. The same website, by contrast, lists 600 additions to the
Artemis Fowl series, some 350 contributions to His Dark Materials, less than
200 addenda to Stephen King’s ample oeuvre (most of which he probably
wrote himself) and seven extrapolations of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code.
Even Star Trek and Lord of the Rings, with 3,000 and 14,000 offerings respectively, don’t come close to HP, the lord of the ring binders.
Most of the fan fiction is fairly innocuous, as far as we can make out, but
many stories are more ambitious. With the Harry Potter characters and
Hogwarts setting as a starting point, these launch off in all sorts of creative
directions. Some interact with other forms of fanfiction – written by Star
Wars or Dr Who or Star Trek or Sherlock Holmes enthusiasts, for instance –
where they date, breed and spawn many and varied literary miscegenations.
This is a subliterary wonderland where Chewbacca and Hagrid finally meet
and greet, where Yoda recognises Dudley Dursley as his long-lost son, where
Albus Dumbledore is outed as a Time Lord, where Beam-me-up-Scabbers
is the order of the day and where Sherlock meets Hermione and seizes his
opportunity to milk the immortal line, ‘Elementary my dear Watson’.
It’s also a wonderland where Harry Potter gets up to the sorts of things
that aren’t really suitable for adult audiences, let alone adolescents. Known
as ‘slash fiction’, this puts the perv into Impervious, the dung into
Mundungus, the butt into Butterbeer, the arse into Parselmouth and does
things with Engorgement Charms that you don’t want to know about,
compadres.
Harry Potter and the consumer researchers
Be that as it may, the latter-day Potterquake has attracted the attention of
numerous marketing and consumer researchers. The book-tracking consultants, NDP Group, regularly publish opinion polls on the phenomenon. A
2001 questionnaire survey of 1,511 respondents, for example, revealed that
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60 per cent of American teenagers are favourably disposed toward Harry
Potter, with 25 per cent of adults feeling the same way (see Gupta 2003). In
Britain, there is a much-cited statistic to the effect that 50 per cent of UK
households own at least one Harry Potter novel (Blake 2002). The rest of the
world is equally besotted, according to the Guardian newspaper, which compiled a ‘Potter Potty Index’ of the boy wizard’s global impact. Apparently,
Australia, Germany, Japan and China are most entranced by Harry’s adventures, with Mexico, India and Indonesia not far behind (Guardian 2002).
In addition to the quantitative facts and figures, the qualitative side of
the Harry Potter craze has also been explored. Rebecca Borah (2002) has
surfed the highways and byways of the World Wide Web, conversing with
Potterphiles, Weasleymanes and Graingerphagites. From her analysis of
message-board postings, she calculates that 2⁄3 of Potter posters are under the
age of 18, with most falling between 12 and 16. Of the 12–16 subgroup,
approximately 2⁄3 are female, though male participation is much greater in
movie-related message boards. Borah followed up with email interviews of
20 teenage consumers and found that most had been introduced to Harry
by a friend or relative, many had participated in school activities pertaining
to Potter, around half had made objects inspired by the books, such as
wands, artwork or costumes, and the majority are keen to acquire official
Warner Brothers merchandise. However, her interviewees are by no means
Pottermonogamous, since Pokemon cards, favourite TV characters, and pop
band fandom also figured prominently in the discussions. Far from being
brand loyal, teenage consumers are quite profligate with their preferences.
Harry Potter may be the crack cocaine of kiddie culture, but it seems that
the boy wizard is only one among many brand-name intoxicants.
Above and beyond her analyses of adolescents, Borah (2002) interviewed
ten adult Potterites. Although most are unabashed about their enthusiasm
for products targeted primarily at teenagers, their fanaticism is more
subdued. They only attend fan activities – theme parties, Potter bees,
collector fayres, book launch events, etc. – when accompanied by a child, or
several. They wouldn’t dream of wearing a Harry Potter T-shirt, which is
too uncool for words, and they worry about Warner’s meretricious merchandising of J.K. Rowling’s well-told tales. That said, they love chatting to
fellow adult initiates of the Harry Potter ‘club’.
Fascinating though her findings are, Borah’s research predates the deluge
of movie tie-in merchandise, as well as the three-year hiatus between books
four and five. It fails to give a complete picture, furthermore. The problem
with studies of Harry Potter fan communities, or any self-selected enthusiasts, is that they are decidedly atypical. As only the most obsessive
Harryheads are prepared to write entire novels about his ongoing adventures,
let alone build and maintain dedicated websites, their views hardly reflect
those of the average HP consumer.
In order, therefore, to deepen our understanding of the Harry Potter
phenomenon – and fads in general – a three-stage programme of qualitative
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research is being undertaken by the authors. These stages comprise analyses
of adults’, schoolchildren’s and contemporaries’ feelings about brand Harry
Potter, the first phase of which is considered herein. Twenty-one adults –
seven male, 14 female, some fans, some phobes, ranging in age from 20 to
45 – were asked to write individual introspective essays on the craze for all
things Potter. No restrictions were placed on essay length or what was considered an acceptable or unacceptable response. They were simply required to
reflect on and write about their feelings (positive, negative or otherwise)
concerning the Harry Potter brand in its manifold manifestations (books,
movies, merchandise, websites, whatever). Although introspective approaches
have been debated at length in the consumer research literature (e.g.
Holbrook 1995; Mick 2005; Wallendorf and Brucks 1993), the evidence
suggests that, once their initial apprehensions are overcome, informants find
the introspective essay-writing experience quite enjoyable. Revelatory even.
The results, certainly, seem to bear this out, inasmuch as the individual introspective essays ranged from 1,000 to 6,000 words (average 2,500), which
compares well with analogous consumer research techniques (Brown and Reid
1997). While no one would claim that consumer introspection is better than
established qualitative procedures, such as focus groups, depth interviews,
ethnography and so forth, it is a methodology that is well suited to storybased brands such as Harry Potter (Haig 2004).
Harry Potter and the introspective essayists
As might be expected, almost all of our essayists have heard of Harry Potter
and have some familiarity with the ‘fanomenon’. Interestingly, however, the
widespread idolisation of Harry Potter is very off-putting for many
consumers. His popularity with some makes him unpopular with others, who
are determined to resist the boy wizard’s bewitching blandishments at all
costs. They pride themselves on not being taken in:
The crazy over-the-top media frenzy surrounding the whole phenomenon acts as a barrier preventing me from taking the bold step of reading
a Harry Potter book or watching any of the films . . . Even if I was to
sit down and watch one of the movies any enjoyment would be tarnished
by the continual feeling that this is a box-office hit, adored by millions
and a regular feature in The Sun newspaper . . . I think I have this attitude simply because I’m generally a person who doesn’t like to conform
with popular opinion. It’s more fun to be different.
(David B.)
They also hate Harry Potter devotees, with their knowing smiles, secret
language and embarrassing enthusiasm:
It’s just gone Halloween and the number of fake Harry Potters and
Hermiones I saw on a night out was crazy. Big fat women trying to fool
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themselves that they look good dressed as Hermione when all they look
like is a man in drag, bad drag at that! I don’t know who they are trying
to kid but the only guys that seemed to be attracted to them were Harry
Potter wannabes. Where did all these people come from? All these people
who think dressing up as school kids is a turn-on! Surely this is verging
on perversion.
(Kim P.)
Embarrassment, in truth, is an emotion that figures prominently in the
stories told by consumers. As often as not, it’s the embarrassment of buying,
or borrowing, or being seen reading a children’s book. Or, alternatively,
being caught attending a kid’s movie that has none of the multi-level appeal
of, say, Shrek or Toy Story or Shark Tale, with their in-jokes-for-adults aspect.
However, it’s also the adolescent antics of adult Harry Potter fans that many
non-devotees find bizarre at best and bananas at worst:
One of the most fascinating aspects of Harry Potter mania is that many
of the fans appear to be adults. From someone who hasn’t read any of
the books, watched an entire film or bought any merchandise, maybe
I’m not the best person to pass judgment. However, Harry Potter strikes
me as something that’s written for kids – as evidenced by the various
merchandise available aimed at young people. Despite this, I’ve found
that a number of people my own age are big fans of the movies and to
a slightly lesser extent the books. Only the other day, I saw a young
woman, in her early twenties, wearing a Harry Potter T-shirt. What is
wrong with these people?
(David B.)
At the same time, people are occasionally embarrassed into Potter participation, as in the following anecdote:
Let me set the scene: it was the summer of 2003, a long hot summer
where I was bored out of my head. [My boyfriend’s] sister had just bought
the fifth book and we were all talking about it over dinner one Sunday.
I tried to keep out of the conversation as much as possible as I didn’t
know a thing about the books and these people were obviously avid fans,
to the point of arguing about it over Christmas. No matter how much
I tried to keep quiet I was uncovered as a Harry Potter virgin when I
was asked who my favourite character was. The only character I knew
was Harry Potter and I think they were looking for some more in-depth
answer than that. So I had to confess that I had not read even one page
out of the Harry Potter books, never mind have a favourite character!!
Oh the look of shame!
(Kim P.)
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Being browbeaten into reading Harry Potter isn’t the only point of entry,
it must be emphasised. Our findings show that people get sucked into
Potter’s parallel universe in a number of different ways. The idea that
consumers follow a preordained HP progression – what economists term path
dependency – which starts with the books, continues with the movies and
culminates with the merchandise is completely at odds with reality. Some
are drawn in by the films, others by watching the videos, others by catching
a trailer, others by encounters with the tie-ins (buying a gift for someone),
others by a family connection (reading bedtime stories to a nephew), others
by gifts or prizes or sales promotions (free tickets to the premiere, courtesy
of Coca-Cola), others by the phenomenon itself (what’s all the fuss about?)
and yet others by default (there’s nothing else to read). Harry Potter is a
brand smorgasbord. People pick and mix. Some pile their plates high; others
are content to nibble. Many suck it and see.
Yet, regardless of how individuals get suckered into Potterphilia, the fact
remains that when people do fall for Harry Potter they fall big. Once curiosity
gets the better of them and they dip into the books – or the movies – their
capitulation is instantaneous, magical almost:
As soon as the music began and the first scene started I was mesmerized. I was unaware of all around me and even the smell of the sweet
popcorn on my knee didn’t entice me. I was truly under the magical
spell of Harry Potter. I was staring in awe at the screen just like a young
child does when meeting Santa Claus in the shopping centre for the first
time. I sat there with eyes as big as yoyos and mouth wide open – my
mum always shouted at me for this when I was young; said I was catching
flies! Before I knew it the lights were on, the film was over and I was
back to reality. My popcorn and drink remained untouched. I had a smile
on my face any clown would be proud of. I had that hyper and energized feeling you get when you get off a roller coaster! I was completely
immersed in the fantasy world of magic and mystery. I now understood
why there was so much hype about the Harry Potter phenomenon.
( Jennifer L.)
Indeed, it is almost impossible to exaggerate Harry’s ability to captivate
consumers. So enraptured are they that many refuse to let minor inconveniences, such as being on honeymoon, get in the way of their obsession:
In April this year, my girlfriend had just become my wife and we were
about to set off on honeymoon. We had an hour or two to kill in
Gatwick and I did some last minute panic buying for some holiday
reading . . . I decided to buy the first two Harry Potter books, The
Philosopher’s Stone and The Chamber of Secrets. I have got to say I was
something of a Harry Potter virgin, that is to say I had never read anything by J.K. Rowling, hadn’t seen the films or knowingly bought any
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affiliated wands or broomsticks. I was however only too aware of the
publicity surrounding the books and who the author was, as well as
some of the characters . . . When I got down to reading, I felt the books
were brilliant. I could really see how the books appealed to adults and
children alike. Needless to say that my new page turning obsession did
not go down too well with my new life partner. When on our first night
in the Maldives, and expecting some form of conjugal rites, she found
herself in second place to a fictional 11-year-old trainee wizard and something called the Sorting Hat.
(Keith T.)
Even those who hate Harry Potter with a vengeance find that their temper
is tempered when they are required to read the books or watch the movies.
They may not like the boy wizard – and admire his admirers even less – but
at least they understand why fans feel the way they do:
Watching the film provided me with a glimpse of why so many older
people worship Harry Potter. On one hand it may be the idea that takes
them back to their childhood days. I can relate to this theory. On the
other hand it may be that it takes them away from the mundane reality
of their own lives. As you get older it gets increasingly harder to have
fun. Worries about the mortgage, worries about the kids, worries about
the kids having kids, and so on. So for those few brief moments I realized that perhaps it wasn’t just a stupid childish fad, it had a real offering
for the older generation too.
(Richard H.)
Now, all of the above doesn’t mean that once consumers take a hit of
Hogwarts they are hopelessly addicted and thereafter hang on Rowling’s
every word. On the contrary, most consumers are self-conscious about their
fixation – especially those who have been Pottermanes from day one – and
are actually quite relieved to discover that there are people who are not only
more obsessed than them, but less able to resist obvious Pottermarketing
gimmicks:
Although I would be loath to admit it in polite company, I am a Harry
Potter fan, and probably always will be. I’m not sure what it is about
the books, but I have a feeling that I will eventually get round to
collecting all the hardbacks, like I had originally planned. By the time
the last book came out, maybe I had gotten wise to the marketing ploys
of the publishers. Even though the hype was at fever pitch, it didn’t
really get through to me at all. I did buy it, and I have read and enjoyed
it as much as the others, but I certainly didn’t queue outside Waterstone’s
from 12 midnight.
(Eleanor McC.)
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Other enthusiasts adopt a kind of wry detachment from the whole thing.
Yes, they love the books. Yes, they rush out and see the movies. Yes, they
buy the DVDs and some other bits and pieces. But let’s not get carried away.
It’s only a bit of fun, after all:
I’ve become a Harry Potter junkie. I need my fixes to keep me spellbound. Aaarrrggghhh!!! There are a few things that annoy me though
– the names of the characters, a lot of them end in ‘ius’ or similar, such
as Cornelius, Albus, Lucius, Sirius (seriously now, come on), Serverus
(cut me some slack), Bartimus (Simpsonus) and so on . . . There’s another
thing that annoys me, the not naming of people and things, it’s like
The Village, the ‘you-know-what’ and ‘those-we-don’t-speak-of’ and ‘theplace-we-don’t-go’. Crap, crap, crap. Name them – Voldemort – it is a
bit hard to say and I admit it took ME several times to get it right. But
now I’m a wizard at it.
(Daria C.)
Some customers, similarly, appropriate the product and take it to places
that Warner Brothers didn’t anticipate:
All the Harry Potter novels have provided many a laugh for me but some
have spilled over into my social life. After a crowd of my mates and I
went to watch the first movie it is not uncommon for the following
phrase to be shouted out randomly on a night out. ‘You’re a wizard,
Harry!’ may seem a bit strange to onlookers but believe me it is bound
to have us in stitches. And of course it is a lot funnier when you are
drunk!
(Kim P.)
Many consumers, in sum, are quite proprietorial about Harry Potter. They
feel a very strong sense of ownership. Personal friendship, near enough. As
such, they are contemptuously dismissive about certain parts of the movie
adaptations:
The saying goes that the books are much better than the films and in
my view this is certainly true. I can’t believe [Chamber of Secrets] left out
the hilarious picture of the Weasleys degnoming their garden. The film
does not match the vivid and detailed descriptions that I have conjured
up when reading the book. I imagine Gilderoy Lockheart [sic] with long
blonde flowing locks that he is constantly flicking back. As orange as
Dale Winton and just as camp. The book leads me to think he is much
more pompous and exaggerated than in the film. The film was a great
let down of the character I had built up.
(Gemma A.)
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The books aren’t immune, either. Quite a few feel that the fifth volume
wasn’t up to scratch (a view, incidentally, shared by lots in the fanfiction
community, who aren’t reluctant to excise Phoenix from ‘the canon’) and
worry whether Rowling will continue to do justice to her creation now that
the series is reaching its climax and the whole world is wild about Harry:
The build up to the fifth book was immense, it was the longest book
but in my opinion very disappointing . . . How could this woman who
has written four such wonderful books ruin it all with her latest release?
I was looking forward to continuing the Harry Potter ‘experience’ but
for me the fifth book ruined it . . . I just hope that the sixth book proves
me wrong. Could Rowling really start to go downhill? Did she reach
her peak? I hope not.
(Susan McK.)
Ex-enthusiasts, furthermore, feel that the phenomenon is rapidly running
out of steam, that it has become too popular for its own good, that it is
being milked dry and merchandised to death. Thus, when Rowling
announces that another character’s about to die – yawn – the news is interpreted not as an important narrative twist but as a pathetic publicity stunt,
a sure sign that the series is on the skids. Sensationalist sales tactics are a
cry for help, don’t you know:
When I was driving into town the other week the news came on and
hey guess what? Yes, that’s right, one of the articles of news was about
how J.K. Rowling had stated that she was going to kill off a character
in her new book. This got me thinking. My initial reaction was not one
of excitement or who will it be, but a very negative ‘this is just a publicity
stunt’. I thought ‘Is Harry slowly dying and was this just a clever PR
stunt to help revive Harry Potter?’ I think so. I suppose if I was a true
Harry Potter fan (which I can assure you I never will be) I would be
ecstatic. But I think this is because I have watched as the media and
companies drown Harry Potter out and have made me sick to the back
teeth of Harry Potter . . . I simply do not give a gryffindor about Harry
Potter in my everyday life. My life is too busy to care about Harry Potter
and what J.K. Rowling wants to do next. I simply have no interest. My
Harry Potterness has been well and truly sucked out by the soul sucking
dementors.
(Laura O’K.)
Harry Potter and the Russian Formalists
Consumer reflections on the HP phenomenon are undeniably idiosyncratic,
as the above excerpts illustrate. But what do they actually amount to? What
do the foregoing findings mean, if anything? What are their implications,
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either in practical or theoretical terms? Well, pragmatically speaking, our
Potter introspections provide some insight into the character of consumer
crazes. Fads, fashions, crazes and the like are an extremely important element
of consumer culture (Thorne 1993), albeit an element that is unloved by the
marketing research community, largely because they are unpredictable,
uncontrollable and infuriatingly short-lived (e.g. Kotler 2000; Solomon
2002). Be that as it may, our introspective essays indicate that fads are inherently dialectical, in so far as the existence of a fad calls forth resistance to the
fad. Fads repel as well as attract. For every curious consumer who wonders
what all the fuss is about, many more seem determined to stand aloof by
refusing to get dragged in. The bigger the fad, we suspect, the more virulent the resistance and the more virulent the resistance the more convinced
true believers become. Certainly, the copious attacks on Harry Potter from
concerned parents, Christian fundamentalists and condescending literary
critics have helped further the phenomenon (Wiener 2003). Fads, as Gladwell
(2000) notes, need fans, enthusiasts who are willing to spread the word.
However, our HP evidence suggests that fads need phobes as well, people
determined to resist the herd mentality and who aren’t afraid to say so.
Another consumer craze issue concerns the final phase of the fad life cycle.
Conventional wisdom maintains that popularity kills a fad (Gladwell 2000).
Once everyone is into it – sporting the hairstyle, singing the song, using
the catchphrase, reading the book – the early adopters move on to something newer, cooler, obscurer, whatever. The $64,000 question, however, is
how do we know when this all-important point of departure is reached? Our
Harry Potter study suggests that marketing itself is the signal. When brand
enthusiasts start complaining about too much marketing, excessive exploitation, undue commercialisation and so forth, the writing is on the wall for
the fad or fashion concerned. Crazes come wrapped in an authentic, grassroots, word-of-mouth-acquired aura and once this aura is damaged through
immoderate marketer intervention, commodification can’t be far away,
collapse is imminent, the end is nigh.
Theoretically, too, the Potter project has interesting implications. One of
the most striking things about our adults’ introspective essays is their
frequent reference to otherworldliness. The essayists often allude to Harry
Potter’s ability to transport readers to another world, a world that exists
alongside the conventional world, a world that is strange yet intelligible, a
world where the impossible happens and dreams come true, a world peopled
by amiable and much loved ghosts of all the wonderful books and stories
they read as children. These escapist ruminations are strongly reminiscent
of Viktor Shklovsky’s (1990) notion of ostranenie, or estrangement. For
Shklovsky and his fellow Russian Formalists, the thing that differentiates
literary from non-literary discourse is strangeness. It is an ability to make
the familiar strange – and the strange familiar – that is the hallmark of
literary endeavour. To this end, Shklovsky and his colleagues identified
the devices, or priemy, that precipitate ostranenie. These include alliteration,
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Al Terego and Sue Denim
assonance, parallelism, repetition and retardation. More pertinently, the
Russian Formalists noted that estrangement as a literary device is ephemeral
in its effects. What starts as strange, or unfamiliar, quickly becomes clichéd,
commonplace, canonised, and ceases to have an impact (cf. the modernist
literary experiments of Joyce, Woolf, etc.). This necessitates a further round
of estrangement, which leads in turn to a ‘tradition of breaking with tradition’ (Davis and Womak 2002, p. 42).
When the Harry Potter phenomenon is examined, this break-withtradition tendency is very strongly marked. In the mid-1990s, before the
boy wizard burst on to the scene, children’s literature was a backwater. Books
were short, realist tales ruled the roost and the very notion of a boarding
school story was so unfashionable that it made flared trousers look cool. Cue
Harry Potter. Rowling’s was a very long book, comparatively speaking. It
eschewed social realism for enchantment and witchcraft. And it reinvented
the boarding school story just as flares were, miraculously, coming back into
fashion. Bingo! Boffo!! Ka-Ching!!!
The problem that the HP brand now faces, as the doubts of our exenthusiasts indicate, is that it has become overly familiar, somewhat
formulaic and, not least, increasingly beset by innumerable near-identical
competitors, by me-too books about witchcraft and wizardry, by off-puttingly
excessive, here-we-go-again marketing hoopla. Harry needs to be reestranged, without alienating his aficionados. This is easier said than done,
however. It is the classic dilemma that faces all successful brands. It could
be his biggest challenge yet. The boy wizard has battled basilisks, tackled
trolls, dodged dragons, confronted centaurs, grappled grindylows, stiffed
nifflers, whacked arachnids and creamed Cornish pixies. But can he defeat
the malevolent marketing monster? Estranger things have happened.
References
Adler, B. (2001) Kids’ Letters to Harry Potter from Around the World, New York: Carroll
& Graf.
Beahm, G. (2004) Muggles and Magic: J.K. Rowling and the Harry Potter Phenomenon,
Charlottesville, VA: Hampton Roads Publishing.
Blake, A. (2002) The Irresistible Rise of Harry Potter, London: Verso.
Borah, R.S. (2002) ‘Apprentice Wizards Welcome: Fan Communities and the Culture
of Harry Potter’, in L.A. Whited (ed.), The Ivory Tower and Harry Potter, Columbia,
MO: University of Missouri Press, 343–64.
Brown, S. (2002) ‘Marketing for Muggles: The Harry Potter Way to Higher Profits’,
Business Horizons, 45 (1), 6–14.
–––– (2005) Wizard! Harry Potter’s Brand Magic, London: Cyan.
–––– and Reid, R. (1997) ‘Shoppers on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown’, in S. Brown
and D. Turley (eds), Consumer Research: Postcards from the Edge, London: Routledge,
79–149.
Byatt, A.S. (2003) ‘Harry Potter and the Childish Adult’, New York Times, 7 July,
www.nytimes.com.
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Davis, T.F. and Womack, K. (2002) Formalist Criticism and Reader-Response Theory,
Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Gladwell, M. (2000) The Tipping Point: How Little Things can make a Big Difference, Boston,
MA: Little, Brown.
Guardian (2002) ‘World Wide Wizard’, 8 November, 14–15.
Gupta, S. (2003) Re-reading Harry Potter, Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Haig, M. (2004) Brand Royalty: How the World’s Top 100 Brands Thrive & Survive, London:
Kogan Page.
Heilman, E.E. (ed.) (2003) Harry Potter’s World: Multidisciplinary Critical Perspectives, New
York: RoutledgeFalmer.
Holbrook, M.B. (1995) Consumer Research: Introspective Essays on the Study of Consumption,
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Kotler, P. (2000) Marketing Management, Millennium Edition, Upper Saddle River, NJ:
Prentice Hall.
Mick, D.G. (2005) ‘I Like to Watch’, Presidential Column, ACR News, www.acrwebsite.org.
Moore, S. (2001) We Love Harry Potter! We’ll Tell You Why, New York: St Martin’s
Griffin.
Rowling, J.K. (1997) Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, London: Bloomsbury.
–––– (1998) Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, London: Bloomsbury.
–––– (1999) Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, London: Bloomsbury.
–––– (2000) Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, London: Bloomsbury.
–––– (2003) Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, London: Bloomsbury.
Scamander, N. (2001) Fantastic Beasts & Where to Find Them, London: Obscurus Books.
Shklovsky, V. (1990 [1929]) Theory of Prose, trans. B. Sher, Elmwood Park, IL: Dalkey
Archive Press.
Shone, T. (2004) Blockbuster: How Hollywood Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Summer,
London: Simon & Schuster.
Solomon, M. (2002) Consumer Behavior: Buying, Having and Being, Upper Saddle River,
NJ: Prentice Hall.
Thorne, T. (1993) Fads, Fashions and Cults, London: Bloomsbury.
Wallendorf, M. and Brucks, M. (1993) ‘Introspection in Consumer Research:
Implementation and Implications’, Journal of Consumer Research, 20 (December),
339–59.
Whisp, K. (2001) Quidditch Through the Ages, London: Whizz Hard Books.
Whited, L.A. (ed.) (2002) The Ivory Tower and Harry Potter: Perspectives on a Literary
Phenomenon, Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press.
Wiener, G. (2003) Readings on J.K. Rowling, Farmington Mills, MI: Greenhaven.
13 Telling tales of Virago Press
Lorna Stevens
It was a small, cream-coloured postcard with a sepia print photograph of a
woman author I had never heard of called Violet Trefusis. In the corner was
a logo that had become familiar to me over the past number of years, a bright
green apple with several bites out of it. On the back of the postcard was a
handwritten message from the editorial director of Virago Press in London,
thanking me for my enquiry and curriculum vitae. She asked me to telephone her, as there were two vacancies at Virago Press, one in the editorial
department and the other in production. I was delighted. Virago was the
premier ‘woman’s press’ in the UK, a publishing house that was renowned
for its beautifully designed and very glamorous looking, dark-green cover
designs, as much as for its impressive list of fiction and non-fiction titles by
women writers.
Its Virago Modern Classics list of fiction by neglected, eclipsed and
forgotten women writers from the eighteenth century onwards, had brought
to the fore writers that most of us hadn’t heard of, yet all had been admired
and successful writers of their day. Each of these rediscovered literary treasures had appropriate paintings on their covers, often by artists of the time,
and forewords written by distinguished literary critics and writers: Hunt the
Slipper by Violet Trefusis, foreword by Lorna Sage, Life and Death of Harriett
Frean by May Sinclair, foreword by Jean Radford, Frost in May by Antonia
White, foreword by Elizabeth Bowen. Such tantalising titles, authors, forewords, art works; they were books to be cherished, lovingly arranged on
bookshelves in all their aesthetic splendour, treasure troves of the forgotten
fruits of silenced women writers who had been written out by patriarchy and
who were now being brought into the light of day once more, thanks to
Virago Press. The Virago Modern Classics series was a catalogue of women’s
forgotten literary history, and the Virago project was one to which I, in my
own humble way, was about to contribute.
Virago was formed by Carmen Callil in 1972, and by the end of 1984 it
had a turnover of £1 million a year, employed 13 women, and was the largest
and most successful women’s imprint in the world, making a commercial
success of what few in the book business would have regarded was a sure-fire
thing, namely feminism.
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But I’m jumping ahead of my story. It was January 1983, and I was about
to embark on my second job in book publishing, leaving a small press in
Dublin where I had served my apprenticeship, for the excitement of London
and a publishing house that had recently merged with a distinguished group
of publishers which included Chatto & Windus, Jonathan Cape and Bodley
Head. Virago’s offices were located on the top floor of 41 William IV Street,
just off Fleet Street, and near to Trafalgar Square and Covent Garden.
Virago was the acceptable, and very successful face of feminist book
publishing in the 1970s and 1980s, and its list managed to combine feminist commitment and ideology with commercial sense and marketing knowhow. Its founder, Carmen Callil, was a flamboyant, formidable and clearly
very entrepreneurial Australian. Her intention was to be the first mass-market
publisher for women, and her background in PR, combined with her feminism, made her ideally placed to be Virago’s chief warrior. The name Virago
was ‘le mot juste’, a word that bore testimony to patriarchy’s tendency to
corrupt the ‘feminine’ element. In the Renaissance a learned woman was
called a Virago, namely a woman of courage, understanding and attainments.
It was also the name given by Adam to Eve in Genesis 2:23 (www.virago.
co.uk/virago/virago/history). Of course its meaning acquired negative connotations over time. Clearly, a female warrior was to be feared and perhaps
despised for her ability to unsettle the status quo and challenge the existing
social order. By the fourteenth century, ‘virago’ came to be synonymous with
words such as shrew, vixen, dragon, scold, spitfire and fury, as is clear from
my Roget’s Thesaurus. Essentially a ‘virago’ is now understood to be a scolding,
noisy woman. My 1995 edition of the Oxford English Dictionary defines
a ‘virago’ as ‘a fierce or abusive woman’ or ‘a woman of masculine strength
or spirit’. Virago, Eve, the Tree of Knowledge, Forbidden Fruit, Women
Behaving Badly, Nagging Women. What a perfect name for a feminist
publishing house.
On the day of my arrival I was shown into the ‘office’ of Carmen Callil,
the embodiment of Virago. I say office, but it was more like a boudoir or a
luxurious nineteenth-century drawing room, all dark furniture, soft drapes,
table lamps and easy chairs. Carmen Callil called everyone ‘dahling’, I suppose
the book publishing equivalent of ‘lovey’ in London’s acting circles, and she
had an imperious manner, yet her personal charisma was undeniable. At the
many book functions Virago hosted in the two years I spent there, she would
hiss at us all to ‘mix and mingle’ with the literati glitterati, an excruciating
order for a clutch of shy 20-somethings who knew that none of these literary
luminaries would be in the slightest bit interested in talking to us. The plus
side, however, was that we got to be in the same room as outstanding writers:
one of my own personal highlights was exchanging a few indifferent remarks
with the English writer Angela Carter whom I greatly admired – well, she
was indifferent; I was quivering with excitement. The best we could do on
such occasions was ensure that everyone’s glass was full, that we minded our
Ps and Qs (i.e. didn’t get drunk and disorderly), and that if Carmen Callil
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was nearby, that we looked as if we were ‘mixing and mingling’, rather than
huddling together in quiet corners, chain-smoking roll-ups or Silk Cut King
Size, and downing the free wine with too much abandon.
At the time of my arrival, Virago had long since abandoned the clarion
call that had initially heralded each title – ‘Virago is a feminist company’,
and instead had shifted its focus to ‘women’s writing’, ‘highlighting and illuminating all aspects of women’s lives’. This mission statement clearly had
many advantages, from a marketing perspective. After all, in theory, Virago’s
market was 52 per cent of the adult population. Its somewhat diluted feminist message appealed to me. Like many feminists, I wasn’t comfortable with
too much militancy, and nor did I possess dungarees, big boots or have short
hair, which at the time was how the feminist stereotype was perceived. I was
a wishy, watery, liberal, heterosexual feminist, with long hair, a taste for
vintage, charity-shop clothing (including a moth-eaten and fusty musquash
fur coat which was like a second skin to me – very politically incorrect by
today’s standards but just about tolerated in London in the 1980s). I had a
degree in English literature and somewhat eclectic reading tastes, but I reckoned I’d feel right at home, even with my strong Northern Irish accent (the
Irish were not well liked in London in the 1980s, for obvious reasons which
I won’t go into here, but suffice to say that I was once asked in a grocer’s
shop by a drunken English man who heard my Northern Irish accent, if I
had a bomb in my handbag).
London in the early 1980s was a wonderful time and place to be a feminist activist in. Thatcherism and neo-conservatism were in full spate, and
protests from the left were commonplace. There was the miners’ strike, and
the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) was growing apace. A sense
of panic and urgency hung in the air, and we were caught up in the mood.
Virago made its presence felt at CND protest marches in London. I remember
the beautiful and talented English actress, Julie Christie, marching alongside us in sisterly solidarity as we rallied around Trafalgar Square. We took
ourselves off in a convoy of buses to Greenham Common, along with many
other women, to protest about Nuclear deterrence, observing our sex, from
young children to grey-haired old women, camping out to try to turn back
the nuclear tide that threatened to engulf all of us. The highlight of these
halcyon days was undoubtedly the huge event organised by Virago Press in
April 1983 at Central Hall, Westminster. Two thousand people attended
the event, which coincided with the launch of the book Over Our Dead Bodies:
Women Against the Bomb, by Dorothy Thompson, and all proceeds went to
the peace movement. Other protest marches included ones such as Women
Reclaim the Night, where once again Virago showed its solidarity with feminist causes and made its presence felt.
Alongside Virago’s political activities was its commercial agenda. The
company was branching out (many saw its association with Chatto & Windus
as a sell-out), and its list was rapidly expanding. It developed numerous new
series – Virago Women Travellers series, Virago Poets series, Virago Non-
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fiction, Virago New Fiction, and so on. The latter enabled it to attempt to
break into the mass-market mainstream, and it was fortunate to have excellent writers on its list, such as Angela Carter and Margaret Atwood. I recall
the marketing director showed us Virago’s first dump-bin, for Bodily Harm
by Margaret Atwood, our first bite at the mass-market cherry.
Virago’s commercial success did, however, create certain ideological
tensions for the company. It was hard to be alternative when the big boys
of Random House succeeded in buying a slice of the Virago action during
this period, and indeed Virago has been possessed and released, possessed
and released, on numerous occasions in its 30-year history. I suppose this is
the price of success, and Virago Press was nothing if not pragmatic, realising that its success depended on it jumping on board the roller-coaster ride
of book publishing for profit.
During the early 1980s Virago was also to branch out in terms of retailing,
with the opening of its own bookshop, in Covent Garden, complete with
stained, dark green woodwork and bright green apple logos on the shop front
windows. I came across some photographs of the launch when I was revisiting this time in my past. The bookshop displayed Virago titles but also those
of other feminist presses, so it was a very sisterly venture. The wine (I helped
serve it out, as did the other ‘juniors’ at Virago), and cigarettes flowed, as
did the big hair, big patterns and big collars. The shop was visually resplendent, with posters and displays of long-dead women writers as well as new
women writers of fiction and non-fiction. It was an elegant, sophisticated,
yet comfortable space. It is now closed, I gather, but I don’t know when it
was decided that this was one commercial step too far. Had it also offered
coffee it might have survived the next 20 years, witness Waterstone’s recent
decision to offer coffee in its bookshops, a nod towards its transatlantic
friends, who have long since recognised that reading and buying books coexist
very happily with conversation and good coffee.
I must confess, however, that I was not particularly involved in Virago’s
commercial thrust. In my capacity as a junior editor I was more often to be
found dealing with the editorial director’s secretarial requirements in those
first few months. In the spirit of sisterhood, I presume, secretaries were not
employed by Virago, but in a company which comprised five directors there
were clearly menial tasks to be performed by the remaining nine of us, and
those of us serving our apprenticeships often found that it fell to us to endure
the ‘secretarial trap’, as a necessary vocational evil. However, at other times
I was dispatched to the British Library or the London Library to forage among
dusty, dimly lit shelves for long-forgotten and often obscure women travellers’ accounts of, usually, nineteenth-century travels in China or Tibet or
Arabia, and on other good days I got to practise my proof-reading, copywriting and copy-editing skills, and read and review some of the many
unsolicited manuscripts that came to Virago’s door. For me at that time the
editorial side of book publishing was the creative and glamorous side; I
understood that marketing, promotions, publicity and sales were necessary
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Lorna Stevens
activities, but I took little interest in the usually frenetic activities that were
conducted by the three women in the office beside me, although I always
enjoyed seeing the fruits of their labours, be it a new catalogue, book cover
design, poster, successful book launch, or a rave review. It didn’t really strike
me at that time that marketing had a key part to play in the company in
terms of which titles were chosen for publication; I naively assumed such
decisions were editorial ones that were based on intrinsic merit, and that
marketing only commenced once these important, editorial decisions had
been made.
Just as Virago had diluted its feminist agenda to be more inclusive of all
women’s literary endeavours, a sensible move from a marketing perspective,
so it also diluted its feminist agenda in terms of how the company was structured and run. In short, its feminism was not reflected in the internal
structure of the organisation. Contrary to my admittedly naive expectations,
Virago conducted itself on strictly conventional, hierarchical lines, a twotiered structure that resulted in an ‘us and them’ culture in the company.
Our ‘mother of the chapel’ did everything in her power to try to secure
sisterly parity for all of us, for example, but she was unsuccessful. In this
respect Virago marked itself out as different from other key feminist
publishers at the time, notably Spare Rib and The Woman’s Press, both of
which were organised on alternative, feminist, socialist lines.
The perceived lack of democracy in the workplace caused considerable
rancour and tension within the company. Everyone had a place, and that
place was rigidly defined and determined by tried and tested (masculine)
notions of how organisations should be set up and run. Important decisions
were made by the five directors, without the rest of us being involved or
consulted at any stage in the process. Perhaps surprisingly, none of us had
expected this: we had all imagined a vocational, communicative, sisterly
environment of mutual support and trust, an alternative, ‘feminine’ environment that was markedly different from the organisational world that men
inhabited, one that was imbued with feminist values, externally and internally. We had imagined a true sisterhood of devotion to a single cause, where
we happily endured paltry wages because this was not a job; it was a vocation. I think we perceived ourselves almost as if we belonged to a religious
order; we had a higher mission and purpose.
This mind-set is not unusual in publishing circles, especially in publishing
houses that have high cultural capital, as Virago did. A Dublin poetry
publisher I talked to during this time realised that ‘marketing’ (i.e. ‘sales’
in publishing parlance) had its place, but commercial success was not his
motivation; he had higher, more worthy aims, namely bringing poetry to an
(admittedly small) audience, and this was his primary focus; breaking even
was the icing on the cake; not his raison d’être by any means.
When I left Virago two years later, I expressed my disenchantment with
Virago’s organisational structure in an article I wrote for a women’s glossy
magazine in Dublin. They somewhat sensationally called the article ‘The
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Women’s Pogrom’, and the article was illustrated with an image, à la Disney,
of a wide-eyed Snow White being offered a poisoned apple by a horrible,
wicked witch. The editorial copy ran: ‘Utopia became a distant dot on the
horizon as she asked herself were they angels of liberation or shrews of the
status quo?’ Oh dear. The headline on the front cover didn’t help either:
‘Viragoes Off: How Women’s Lit became a Publishing Pogrom.’ Needless
to say, my Virago sisters were none too pleased with the adverse publicity,
and what they perceived as my betrayal. In my defence, I would say the
article was as much an attack on my own naivety at expecting Virago to be
run differently from other companies, as it was an attack on what I perceived
as a lack of integrity in the company because this was not the case.
Twenty years on I can appreciate that Virago’s true value lies in what it
has produced over the past 30 years. As a publishing house it resurrected, rediscovered, marketed and published, with commendable aplomb, ‘women’s
writing’, both past and present, and in so doing it has made a significant
contribution to women’s rich yet often obscured literary and intellectual
heritage. It put into the bookshops and onto the shelves books that we
could admire and treasure. Virago encapsulated the notion that feminism
could be hard-hitting and political, but also quite glamorous too, that there
were cunning ways to sweeten the apple in order to make the feminist agenda
of publishing women’s writing more palatable and more accessible, and this
has to be a good thing. These cunning ways could perhaps be summed up
with one word, ‘marketing’, and while I had some difficulty at the time
getting my head around the notion that Virago was a commercial enterprise
as well as an ideological vocation, and that the one did not necessarily exclude
the other, my career development over the next two decades enabled me to
temper my idealism with a bit of commercial sense.
I came to enjoy the business of books and to acknowledge the importance
of marketing within it. I have spent the last ten years exploring, alongside
other like-minded marketing and consumer behaviour academics, the intersection of marketing and feminism in all its complexities, contradictions,
conundrums and commonalities, and with my friends and colleagues Pauline
Maclaran and Miriam Catterall, put together an edited book on the subject,
Marketing and Feminism. So I carry my idealistic, younger self with me into
my middle age, as do many of us, I’m sure. It is there in my feminism; in
my stubborn idealism; in my interest in the ‘feminine’ side of marketing,
internal marketing and marketing cultures; in my critical attitude towards
marketing generally, which means that I enjoy debating issues such as ethics,
corporate social responsibility and environmental issues with my students.
At the end of the day, books and marketing can live together quite harmoniously, but it can be an uneasy relationship at times, as Virago demonstrated
in terms of its internal culture and publishing activities. In some respects,
I suppose, Virago chose to sleep with the enemy, and in so doing it ensured
its continued survival. One cannot deny that this was a pretty sound and
sensible marketing strategy. For me the important issue, however, is that for
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a significant period of time (and perhaps throughout its vicissitudes) Virago
held on to its ideals; it was stubbornly independent, driven by its ideology,
and it only bent to the will of the wider marketing environment when it
was required to do so in order to survive, or expand its market, or influence,
or, I suppose, increase its profitability.
I retain several truisms from my working career over the past 20 years.
One is that books are different; and book marketing is not like baked-bean
marketing; the marketing of the arts is different (and vive la différence!); sometimes there are more important things than making a profit; and sometimes
(quelle horreur!) feminist worthiness and principles can coexist with masculine pragmatism and the bottom line. Virago adopted the masculine values
of the workplace and the marketplace to great effect, and from muddying
their feminist boots, the Virago Press women gave us all something valuable,
a literary heritage that we would otherwise not have received.
As a publishing house, Virago Press made a vast contribution to the
cultural landscape in the 1980s and 1990s, and it was able to do so because
it acknowledged the power of the market and of marketing. As I dust my
collection of Virago titles (and believe me, they need dusting after 20 years
on my bookshelves), I know that I belong to a vast sisterhood of women;
women who give pride of place to their collection of Virago books; books
with ravishing titles, dark green spines, and logos of half-eaten, tart green
apples.
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14 No experience necessary
(or, how I learned to stop
worrying and love marketing)
Charles Chandler
If you are reading this book, then the concept of marketing is not toxic to
the point of paralysis. That’s good news. Whatever your reservations, you’ve
heard at least once that you’ve got to learn marketing or, God forbid, that
you’ve got to market yourself. You may still be reluctant to sign on, and I
understand. You may be marketing-averse, and – along with many writers,
academics, and at least one professor of marketing – so am I.
I would also be the first to say that I am not qualified to offer a definition of marketing. But I have had to rehabilitate the concept of marketing
in my own mind in order to do my job, so I think my experience is instructive. For almost five years, I acquired, edited, and marketed books about
marketing to marketers for the American Marketing Association (AMA), so
I have had occasion to think about marketing. However, I’ve had no formal
training in marketing. I would never say that marketing is completely intuitive, or obvious, or not worth studying. However, like a language, you can
learn marketing without cracking a book if you’re immersed in it. Day-in
and day-out, my job was to figure out who my customers were, what they
needed, and whether they were getting it. Therefore, I was a marketer, though
my former colleagues at AMA might be surprised to learn that.
More specifically, my job was to read and evaluate book proposals for a
line of marketing books. As absurd as it seemed to me at the time, many of
my fellow English majors would say that I was working in my field. And
perhaps they were right. While at AMA, I did take professional development classes (in editing, not marketing). When I described the disconnect
between my background as a student of literature and the type of books I
helped acquire, my instructor – a respected managing editor at a respected
scholarly journal – didn’t even blink. “Isn’t it funny how we can do that?
We can just tell if someone knows what they’re talking about.”
There’s a little more to it, but that’s the essence: the rhetorical is the
primary level on which an editor reads a proposal. The ability to parse other
people’s words may not win an editor many friends at a cocktail party, but
it does come in handy on the job. An author who submits a proposal usually
knows what she is talking about, but the value of her writing is lost on an
editor if she doesn’t sound as if she does.
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Editors love a good story. Why else would many of us drive ourselves to
the brink of financial ruin just to study them? Regardless of the subject or
form of the book, a successful book proposal must tell a story. Even if the
proposed book is a reference book, the proposal should tell the story of the
reader. If a reader encounters the term “ineluctable modality of the visible,”
doesn’t understand it, and should, and a reference book can explain it, that’s
a persuasive story about why the book should be published – despite being
only implied, rather than spelled out, in the actual text of the book. If editors
choose to champion the proposal, this is the story they will tell their
colleagues in an editorial meeting, and the story they eventually tell
marketers and/or salespeople, and the story that the marketers will tell the
buyer.
These are the phases through which a book is marketed. At least one, the
proposal process, is invisible to the reader. Long before a publisher agrees to
publish and market a book, the author must market the book to the
publisher. Often this is done through an agent, but the vast majority of my
experience is with authors who do it themselves. The AMA and many other
publishers offer rough guidelines for writing a book proposal, but the process
is deceptively difficult. By the time an author tries to publish a book, she is
thoroughly convinced of the importance of her material. Paradoxically, she
is often too close to the material to articulate why it is important in concise
and forthright terms – which is precisely what the proposal must do.
The scope of the proposal is, as the name of a useful Copyright Clearance
Center conference suggests, beyond the book. So that scope is, to the writer’s
mind, relatively unimportant. But it is of utmost importance to the publisher. What has become vitally compelling to the author must be spelled
out in lay terms for the publisher. This is difficult enough when the book
has been completed, and even more difficult while it is still in progress,
which was usually the case for the book proposals I’ve read. The task is to
describe, in detail, the book’s contents, the book’s importance, who would
buy the book and why, and how the book compares to other books already
on the market – all before the book is completed. In some ways, writing a
book is probably easier than writing a successful book proposal.
Authors who struggle with the proposal simply are not thinking about
their books, in the words of Andrew Card, “from a marketing standpoint.”
I don’t say that lightly. I am well aware of the frequent abuse of the term
“marketing” and that it has made many averse to the concept. Nevertheless,
marketing – as I now understand it – has a real value. The following are my
thoughts on what marketing might mean for writing.
While at AMA, I was struck by how much of a business’s success is attributed to marketing by marketers. Obviously this is no coincidence, but it’s
also not purely self-aggrandizing or hubristic. They make a persuasive case.
Marketing is how a company, or any entity, represents itself. If a company
markets itself well, and if its marketing accurately reflects its practices, the
company will be successful. If a company markets itself poorly, or if its
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marketing does not accurately reflect its practices (favorably or not), the
company will not be successful. This leads to the (albeit unscientific) assumption that good marketing equals good business. This assumption is widespread among marketers and, though it can be taken too far, it is accurate
enough.
What exactly marketing is depends greatly on who you talk to. Stereotypically, “marketing” is merely a stand-in for “promotion.” But what is
known as the marketing concept has been broadened to include any number
of other business practices, sometimes including all of them. Some even
believe, following a quote often attributed to Bill Packard that “marketing
is too important to leave to the marketing department,” that you should get
rid of the marketing department altogether. Marketing consists of all the
promises a business makes to its customers, and most business practices
comprise the fulfillment of these promises. So it’s easy to see how one could
arrive at marketing = business.
For my purposes, a more general definition will do. Marketing is persuasion. Phrased in such a way, few people will object to it. For that matter,
by its less offensive name, marketing is what all writers do. If a writer doesn’t
want to persuade – that her story is in some sense true; or, in the case of
business authors, that she has a solution to the reader’s problem – why is
she writing? It cannot be persuasion alone to which the marketing-averse
object. It must be persuasion with a commercial intent. Call it “sales” for
short. The assumption is that the commercial intention taints any other
intention the writer may have, turning her into a sellout. I suspect this
assumption underlies marketing aversion to a great extent. Anyone – even
a professor of marketing – is susceptible to it. I’ll illustrate with a story.
My case in point is Professor Peterson, which is a name I made up for a
nevertheless real marketing professor who is famous in the field. We corresponded by email before a conference, at which I was to exhibit and sell
AMA books and Peterson was to give a presentation. Peterson had written
to one of my colleagues at AMA to ask whether we could offer copies of his
latest books for sale to conference attendees. My colleague forwarded the
email to me and I replied to all to the effect that, because AMA was not
the publisher and because we did not have a distribution relationship
with the publisher, I would not be able to obtain copies of the book at a
viable discount. Then I asked if Peterson could. To my mind, it was clear
that I would be happy to exhibit the books and that Peterson had merely to
deliver them. However, Peterson replied to the effect of, thanks but no
thanks, I refuse to hock my own books.
Clearly, there was a misunderstanding, but this anecdote nevertheless
reveals a lot. Even with a distinguished career of writing and lecturing about
marketing, Peterson is marketing-averse. People are emotional beings and,
even with an extraordinary ability to think rationally, acting rationally is
not always in the cards. Everyone draws a line, whether or not it’s ever
crossed, beyond which they feel they have sold out.
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For Professor Peterson, thinking about, writing about, and even inventing
concepts in marketing are acceptable. It’s acceptable to lecture and teach
about marketing and to help marketers market better. It’s acceptable to write
a book proposal (marketing) and a manuscript (about marketing) and turn
it over to a publisher, who will write descriptive copy (marketing), design
a cover (marketing), display the book in retail and online stores (marketing),
offer sales through catalogs (marketing), and exhibit the book at conferences
(marketing). But offering this product (of countless hours of thinking,
research, writing, and revision) to another person, face to face, in exchange
for money is where the Professor draws the line.
Why is that? I suspect it’s because, for Peterson, the moment money
changes hands, what was a labor of love splits, and it becomes paid labor
and the love of money. When Peterson makes a sale, personally, the book
was written for money. Professor Peterson has sold out. Could Peterson so
distrust any commercial motive, to the point of not being able to afford even
the appearance of having written a book for money? Even when, in all likelihood, Peterson already receives some form of recompense for each sale?
To follow Peterson’s way of thinking, a writer who does something she
hates (waiting tables, for example) for money for eight hours a day every day
of her life while writing her first novel is acceptable – she is not a sellout.
But a writer who sells the movie rights to, or allows an Oprah Book Club
sticker to be placed on, her first novel, which was written in all sincerity, is
a sellout. This marketing-averse argument is coherent enough, but it relies
completely on biography. What can aversion to marketing say about the
actual writing? For that, it must rely on the sales figures, and here the waters
get muddy.
To follow Peterson’s way of thinking, there are two sure signs of a sellout.
The first is that the book she produces is a flop. In this case, the marketingaverse could claim that the commercial intention is somehow discernible in
the writing itself. Readers could smell the sellout from a mile away and, of
course – as if there were ever any doubt – they weren’t buying it. After all,
people aren’t stupid.
The second sure sign of a sellout is that the book she produces is a bestseller. The writer pandered to the lowest common denominator and, of course
– as if there were ever any doubt – they bought it. Readers don’t actually
want good writing. They just want to hear what they want to hear. After
all, people are stupid.
I feel confident rehearsing these arguments because they used to be my
own. For any number of reasons – foremost among them, I suspect, that I
now have to make a living – I have reconsidered. Now this line of thinking
seems completely incoherent. Furthermore, I’ve grown tired of changing my
story to fit the sales figures. Who am I to say that some piece of writing
that touched me was not written for money? Or that I did not unfairly
dismiss as a sellout a piece of writing that was written in all sincerity? I’ve
stopped pretending to know the difference. Besides, I believe that, without
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Theory as an interlocutor, ultimately, a book gets through to us or it doesn’t.
So, again, marketing aversion could be a matter of intent. Why would
someone want to persuade me, one way or the other, on a particular position?
Just to make a buck?
Is it possible to have commercial intentions that are removed from your
intentions as a writer? At least one professor of marketing isn’t so sure.
However, if you can prove that a writer’s commercial intentions somehow
taint her other intentions, you are smarter than me. Although I would
concede that money is a poor reason to write a book (though I don’t begrudge
Dostoyevsky The Gambler, or Dickens many of his novels), it seems an equally
poor basis on which to judge one. If you let your worries about which authors
are sellouts get in the way of enjoying a book, then your tastes are every bit
as tied to the bottom line (or more) as that supposedly ruthless capitalist
publisher across the desk from you.
It’s far more honest, productive, and (albeit) difficult to find another reason
to like or dislike a piece of writing. And I suspect this goes for most theories about writing. If you enjoy the books you read, you will bend your
theories, which otherwise seem rigid, to accommodate them. Or else you
will never admit that you enjoy those books to people with whom you share
those theories. Then, the books you enjoy become guilty pleasures. Any time
you feel guilt, there is something wrong, but in this case the problem is not
your choice of books but your relationship to them. Then, there’s the possibility that you do not enjoy the books you read. In that case, why do you
read them?
When it comes to their own books, authors should by all means be honest
and examine their own intentions. But they shouldn’t let petty worries about
selling out prevent them from marketing and publishing a book – and, most
importantly, sharing their ideas with the world. After all, ultimately, nothing
is more persuasive than the truth.
Marketing is merely a type of promise. To favor some promises over others,
to be persuaded by some and not others, is to be discerning. To distrust or
dismiss promises of any kind out of hand, to feel that the very act of making
a promise is dishonest or deceitful, is to be cynical. Promises are necessary
– they serve a real purpose.
Unfortunately, when it comes to actually existing marketing, there is no
shortage of bad promises, and they can make cynicism seem like an appropriate response to the world. In a now famous quotation, President Bush’s
Chief of Staff, Andrew Card – in response to a reporter’s question about the
timing of the already inevitable invasion of Iraq – explained that, “from a
marketing standpoint, you don’t roll out a new product in August” (King
2002). The use of the term “marketing” in this context could only be
condoned by the marketing-averse, who might see their worldview affirmed
by it. Card’s metaphor employed “marketing” in only the most cynical
sense of the word. It was a metaphor for those who inhabit the civilization
envisioned in the novel Amsterdam:
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[I]t was easy for Clive to think of civilization as the sum of all the arts,
along with design, cuisine, good wine, and the like. But now it appeared
that this was what it really was – square miles of meager modern houses
whose principle purpose was the support of TV aerials and dishes; factories producing worthless junk to be advertised on their televisions and,
in dismal lots, lorries queuing to distribute it . . . No one would have
wished it this way, but no one had been asked. Nobody planned it,
nobody wanted it, but most people had to live in it.
(McEwan 1998, p. 68)
Regardless of how you feel about the war, if you are marketing-averse, you
might feel a little admiration for Card, despite yourself. You might think,
“This is what marketing was all along – he’s just being honest about it.”
The metaphor – war as a product – holds up all too well as an extension of
other potentially offensive metaphors: consumer capitalism as democracy
with dollars and democracy as a beneficent export. When bombing campaigns
follow marketing campaigns – when “rolling out a product” means rolling
out tanks – it may be that a certain amount of cynicism is an appropriate
response to the world. However, having spent most of my life unreflectively
marketing-averse, I was most surprised at myself, not for taking offense at
Card’s metaphor, but for feeling that it is marketers who are most slighted
by it.
Leaving aside how tasteless it may be to equate pre-emptive war with
“rolling out a product,” marketers are well within their rights to cringe.
Marketing is persuasion, and persuasion implies choice. Therefore, marketingaversion could be a matter of degree. Persuasion, which presupposes freedom
of choice, can give way to manipulation and even force, which involves no
choice at all. Marketing-aversion could simply be an uneasiness about how
much choice people truly have. For my purposes, I hope I can simply reiterate: marketing is persuasion. If there is no choice involved – as in Card’s
metaphor – then it is not marketing.
Conversely, at times, marketing is what we talk about when we talk about
something else. When John Kerry advocated a “global test” in matters of
national defense during a presidential debate, President Bush pounced. Bush
said that defense decisions are his and, unlike his opponent, he would not
take a poll. Kerry tried to clarify his position in a subsequent debate, saying
that what we need is a “truth standard.” If I understand him correctly, Kerry
was right both times. In the case of Iraq, our promises had failed to persuade
most of our traditional allies – for good reason, it turns out. We needed to
make more truthful promises, and live up to them, to bring our allies back
to our side. All in the world, Kerry was trying to say, is that America needs
better marketing.
I suspect that marketing merely magnifies what it promotes. Years ago,
the AMA’s slogan was “Marketing makes a good life better.” The AMA never
claimed that marketing makes a bad life better. And, indeed, in some cases
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– as in the concentration of malt-liquor marketing in poor, disenfranchised
communities – it seems to have made a bad life worse.
Marketing is simply a medium, and the medium is not the message. At its
best, marketing does nothing to alter the substance of its message – it only
clarifies, simplifies, and amplifies it. In lit crit terms, marketing is the form,
not the content. As such, marketing is a form of discourse. On the surface,
it seems to compete with other forms (e.g. literary, scholarly). But, in its
context, nothing can replace it, and it can complement other forms.
In other words, a book will ultimately stand on its own merits, and
marketing will not somehow degrade it, any more than a cover letter will
degrade a job candidate. I phrase it this way because, after working at AMA,
I now think in marketing terms about the job search that led me there.
In 1998, I moved from Texas to Chicago to complete an MA in the humanities with no scholarships. When I jumped from the frying-pan into the
freezer, a job wasn’t any more a consideration than it was when I decided
(at birth, for all I know) to major in English as an undergraduate. But, after
I was denied admission to doctoral programs twice, my loans were coming
due and it was time to go to work.
The AMA was the first to offer me a job and, after eight months of
searching, I took it. After I became familiar with the form of book proposals,
which isn’t a genre that widely circulates, I understood that the book proposal
is the literary equivalent of a cover letter. And after I understood how difficult it is to publish a book without a proposal, I realized how lucky I was
to have been hired without a cover letter.
Considering my current position – of which writing letters is a large part
– this is no small confession: during my first job search, I refused to write
a cover letter. Furthermore, I limited the jobs to which I applied to those
that didn’t specifically request one. I’m sure now that even those employers
probably expected a cover letter but merely didn’t bother asking for one.
After all, what kind of idiot wouldn’t write a cover letter? Namely, me.
Because I am marketing-averse, it makes sense that I was averse to the
cover letter. I was, however, comfortable with the résumé. I rationalized the
difference between the two thus: a résumé is merely an inventory of my
education, accomplishments, and experience. It’s a straightforward representation of me, with little to suggest a particular judgment, one way or the
other. The only evidence that I might find something significant in this
inventory or that I am trying to position myself in a particular way – or,
just to come out with it, to market myself – is subtle: I have placed the
items in order from most to least impressive, and I have sent this inventory
to a person who just happens to be hiring for a job. All well and good. The
inventory speaks for itself.
The problem is, the inventory doesn’t always speak for itself. The résumé
gives the reader little or no instruction on how to read it. The employer has
questions: Why am I looking at this résumé? Why should I hire this person
for this position? To the applicant, the résumé makes the answers painfully
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Charles Chandler
clear, but they’re not always clear to the employer. The cover letter explains
how to read the résumé.
The same principle applies to the book and the book proposal. The editor
has questions: Why am I looking at this book? Why should I publish it?
The book proposal must answer these questions, even if the author thinks
the book has answered them.
I felt about my résumé the way writers often feel about their writing: it
speaks for itself. Therefore, it should contain its own means of persuasion –
it should market itself. So, all manner of claims that authors make in book
proposals – “there’s no other book like this,” “this is the best book in its
field” – should be immediately apparent to the reader. Once in a while, this
is actually the case; like Augie March, a book broadcasts its own importance
– Look at me! It markets itself – it needs no introduction. Most of us are
no Bellow, however, and therefore we need to employ marketing to tell the
reader why she should be persuaded.
The fact that I think about my first job search in marketing terms is an
illustration of the extent to which the AMA, without even trying, has
changed my perspective. Another is that I now think that marketers bear a
disturbing resemblance to actual human beings. Dare I say, they are human
beings? As such, they make promises, and they want other people to trust
in those promises. Think about it. You may be a marketer after all.
References
King, M. (2002) ‘Smells Like Victory’, Austin Chronicle, 22, 5 (4–10 October). Also available at www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2002-10-04/pols_capitol.html.
McEwan, I. (1998) Amsterdam, New York: Anchor Books.
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15 I write marketing textbooks
but I’m really a swill guy
Chris Hackley
If advertising is little more than ‘the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket’
(Orwell 1936 p.55, in Brown 2006) then are people who write textbooks
about advertising sucking the last drips of swill off the stick? With this
appetising thought I’ll introduce you to the fuzzy, fudgey world of my professional integrity. You see, it’s like this. I am given to occasional high-minded
outbursts on the literary and intellectual standards of marketing texts. To
be precise, I’ve named names, in a leading research journal to boot (Hackley
2003). Titans of the European scene in marketing textbooks such as Kotler
(1988), Baker (2000), Jobber, (1998) Dibb et al. (1994) Hooley et al. (1998),
MacDonald (in Cranfield School of Management 2000), Mercer (1996), Piercy
(2002) and quite a few more of my academic marketing colleagues were
taken to task for their cliché-ridden, unreflexive, under-argued, downright
anti-intellectual prose. The reckless, hypocritical, misguided arrogance of my
tub-thumping tirade seems all-too-evident now my very own swill-sucking
snout is poised over the bucket. I’ve written a text on advertising (Hackley
2005) and now I’m embarking on a marketing text.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not contrite about my tilt at the genre of the
marketing textbook, even though much of my critique was cast in the very
same rhetorical strategies I was so self-righteously criticising in others
(pleading irony doesn’t cut it really, does it?). Besides, things needed to be
said. The UK Chartered Institute of Marketing has estimated that, at any
one time, about 600,000 students across the globe are studying courses with
marketing in them. If you include people studying marketing phenomena
from a cultural, sociological and media studies perspective, not to mention
the management trainee ‘how-to’ market, you’re talking about a very big
trough indeed (Hackley 2001). The staccato rhythms and eyeball-to-eyeball
avuncularism of the popular marketing genre have become taken-for-granted
as a normal part of university education. Sample a set of student marketing
essays and in many you’ll get the same bulging-eyed dogmatism. These texts
have an osmotic effect on otherwise perfectly rebellious young people. By
the second week of term, undergraduates notorious in their own family for
their knee-jerk objection to anything with the merest whiff of conventionality are already applying for internships with Unilever, sincerely convinced
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that all the world needs is marketing orientation. It amazes me how quickly
marketing texts seek and find the inner corporate man lurking inside us.
It’s true, my critique was a bit sweeping. I tried to tease out an epidemiology of marketing ideology, as it were, as this ideology is preserved and
perpetuated through particular rhetorical strategies. I argued that these
strategies run right through marketing’s complex of consulting, education,
publishing and academic research. But I do concede that there is more literary
heterogeneity in the field than you might have guessed from my analysis.
Nevertheless, it can hardly be denied that marketing writing is more than
a little influenced by a New World Puritan ethos that conceives of words as
bricks, plain and solid. Prose that smacks of conditionality, equivocation or
paradox is seen as the work of Lucifer. Well, it’s seen as a bit self-indulgent
and pretentious anyway (Brown 2004). No surprise, then, that marketing
scholarship is considered oxymoronic by the uninformed.
So just why did I decide to excoriate the exemplary exegesis of marketing
texts, implying to boot that their authors are a shoal of shifty shoe-shine
merchants? These are, after all, good texts of their kind that I was slating,
models of clarity, peremptory, practical and factual. The sentences are short.
The royalty statements aren’t. They are the suet pudding of the business of
business and management education, essential reading on countless university courses. What worthwhile motive could there possibly be for making
myself a pariah among my more accomplished peers by dissing their works
of marketing sagacity?
Well, money, obviously. You can’t get promoted without a few published
articles and I had a hunch that one of the top general management journals
was ready for a hatchet job on marketing texts, if it focused on their ideological undercurrents. A lot of authors had accused the academic marketingfield of being a Trojan Horse of managerial ideology, dumbing down
universities and helping to propagate the dreaded market-speak throughout
civil and public life (Brownlie et al. 1999; Firat 1985; Morgan 1992). A
few have traced the route by which management-consulting gurus popularise
and propagate their panaceas through networks of academic, consulting and
publishing interests (Case 1999; Furusten 1999). No one had followed this
line of argument through to a detailed examination of the rhetorical strategies that allow such ideas to appear current and self-evident years after their
initial consulting edge has worn very blunt indeed. And no one had focused
on marketing texts as a particularly influential conduit for popular
management ideas.
It wasn’t an easy brief. If I thought that targeting a journal without
‘marketing’ in the title would mean my efforts were met with a warm hug
of intellectual approval, I was mistaken. In fact, the most interesting ideological sparring occurred not in the course of the research itself but in my
exchanges with no less than five reviewers, each of whom offered several
rounds of admirably detailed analysis of the shortcomings of my paper, often
defending their critique of my critique by invoking the very ideological
I write marketing textbooks but I’m really a swill guy
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rhetoric I was writing about. To be sure, I wasn’t exactly networking my
way to the top by writing a piece that was bound to be interpreted as a
personal attack on the work of the authors, in spite of my disclaimers. But
as Brown (1995) has pointed out, a soupçon of print-based antagonism isn’t
necessarily lethal to an academic career, though this article and the book that
preceded it put mine on a saline drip for a few years. Neither the book nor
the slapstick routine in print between myself and a hostile reviewer in the
Journal of Marketing Management ( JMM) (Hackley 2002) will be remembered
as high watermarks of scholarship. Good fun though. And I had the last
laugh. The book that so irked JMM’s normally congenial in-house reviewer
recently came into net profit with a royalty cheque for £6.44. I’m going to
buy something really special with that.
Marketing texts might be sitting ducks for a critical literary deconstruction, but moving ducks are harder to hit. I know my limitations. Nevertheless, my decision to turn tail and write my own story of marketing did not
come easily. For a start, writing a textbook is hard work. But if you feel so
strongly that something’s amiss, haven’t you got to try to see if you can
do any better yourself? What use are high-minded ideals if they’re secreted
in esoteric journals beyond the consciousness of the sweating ranks of
marketing students? So I decided that my angst about textbook standards
should fuel a more popular revolution. So far, so worthy. Trouble is, lofty
motives are all very well, but if you think you can get down and dirty with
the publishing wise guys and still keep your halo clean, you’d better think
again.
Of course, the conventional state of the marketing-textbook scene is not
a reason why my own texts must pander to populism. Isn’t it a bit lame to
imply that academics are enslaved by the tyranny of popular ideas? We are,
after all, in a profession in which we are allowed, indeed obliged, to challenge convention, shy at shibboleths, and generally stir up trouble. It’s true,
though, that finding a publisher for academic work is never easy, and flouting
convention makes it all the harder. The textbook market is hardly known
for its radicalism. It’s a me-too market. But the best of intentions can become
corrupted by the sheer weight of expectation on the part of publishers,
students and academic colleagues. Earlier in my own career I abandoned textbook recommendations altogether, insisting that students look at the academic journal articles instead. These days, as I write my own texts, I can
feel the sentences getting shorter. Can’t I cut a few multisyllabic words to
gain a few sales? What can a humble academic do to preserve precious intellectual values in the chicken-in-a-basket, no trainers please, plastic beer mugs
textbook market of marketing books? Well, quite a lot, perhaps.
Step forward, the academic self-publishing entrepreneur
I cannot cavil at the treatment given to my own books by their publishers.
Excellently produced, diligently sold, their sales failings are mine alone.
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Of course, publishers could always do more, but with hundreds of books
coming out each year, you have to accept that you’re in a long queue for
special attention. Dag Smith of the publishers’ marketing training centre,
Book House Training Centre, suggests that book publishing is still productrather than marketing-led but argues that this is rapidly changing, at least
in the UK industry (in Forsyth 1997). In spite of the criticisms of such as
George Bernard Shaw, who thought publishers ‘rascals’ and ‘parasites’, some
have had the native marketing wit to transform the industry. Walsh (2005)
reports that in 1935 Allen Lane brought out the first ten Penguin paperbacks, mixing classic highbrow with newer, more popular topics in wellproduced binding and at sixpence a copy. Their established outlets were
chary of shelving the new imprints but an order for 63,000 from Woolworths
turned the tide and 3,000,000 were sold by the end of the year. Lane had
hit on an unimagined market for serious books in a popular guise. While
reading as a pastime is now probably declining rather than rising as it was
then, there remains a big market for serious topics if they’re well-written.
Bill Bryson’s biographical account of scientific progress, A Short History of
Nearly Everything, rides high in the best sellers as I write. Sadly, such public
profile seems improbable for the work of marketing scholars.
Parts of the scholarly book industry remain hung up on the notion of the
hardback as an elite product and the only proper outlet for serious topics, a
notion that Penguin blew apart. The scholarly monograph is probably the
most product-oriented end of the academic publishing game. You sell overpriced hardback editions to library lists on a 400 print run. Exceptionally,
the less stodgily written ones might make it to paperback but with little
more than word-of-mouth inertia to power the sales. Hardback monographs
are bought by academic libraries for other academics to borrow. Sales in the
thousands are very unusual. If you produce a book you can sell to ready
buyers for £70 a pop, that’s £28,000 gross sales revenue of safe money.
Marketing effort has a diminishing return in such circumstances; there are
only so many monograph readers out there. At least that seems to be the
marketing logic of the monograph business.
If you were prepared to forego the prestige of having a top brand publisher
produce your book, you could just publish it yourself by getting an ISBN
number for it. It then appears magically on Amazon.com. I got an ISBN for
a conference proceedings volume I edited once and it actually sold at £40 a
copy (payable to my university). I made 20 copies at the photocopying
machine with those plastic spiral binders and added a colour cover. Some
university working papers turn up on Amazon at £5 each, just because they’ve
got an ISBN. But accessibility to the market is one thing; actually selling
in meaningful numbers is another. That usually needs a bit more marketing
oomph.
Direct-to-market publishing is getting ever more direct. For £700,
Waterstone’s will now1 not only print and publish your book: they’ll put it
on sale in their Oxford Street Store. Seven hundred pounds isn’t much more
I write marketing textbooks but I’m really a swill guy
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than an academic publisher will charge the author for commissioning an
indexer to run their software through your book. The fairly horrible results
that usually come from these freelance indexers are a small price to pay for
the relief of not having to do yet another read-through. Will academics, tired
of the nit-picking pedantry of peer reviewers, self-publish their texts and
frogmarch their students to their local bookstore? Or are we still too dependent on the marketing infrastructure publishers provide?
If academics try to self-publish their books, we miss out on the direct
marketing and personal selling that drives books adoptions for major courses.
Personal selling is a big part of publishing since relationships have to be
built with all manner of buyers in libraries, bookstores, professional associations and universities. The smiley management trainees who come knocking
on academics’ doors to discuss book needs and possible projects usually have
an air of wry defeat about them, so often have they found campus offices
deserted when they call, in spite of copious emails announcing their coming.
Forsyth (1997) carries a careful exposition of the art of personal selling, so
central is it to the publisher’s trade. The trouble is, academic authors aren’t
generally very good at this kind of thing. I know. Selling is marketing
stripped bare of all pretension. If you’ve ever scanned the classified ads for
alternative employment and idly wondered what ‘Top Closer Required:
Un£imited Earning£s’ means, it means commission-only selling. This mostly
entails what professionals call canvassing. Canvassing is asking a lot of people
to buy your stuff. ‘Closing’ means actually getting them to buy it. If you’re
fortunate enough to receive ‘training’, you get taught a number of rhetorical strategies for arguing people into a corner so they can’t think of a good
reason not to buy your stuff. The logic of the closer is that if the ‘prospect’
(i.e. victim) runs out of ‘objections’ (i.e. objections to purchase) then they
have two options. Option A is to tell you to fuck off. Option B is (you’ve
guessed it) they buy your stuff. The assumption is that most people are too
cowardly to take option A so, once they’ve given up objecting, because they’ve
lost the will to live and just want to move on in their lives, they sign the
cheque. The ‘answering objections’ style of closing a sale is not elegant but
it is effective if the closer has skin like Kevlar and the contrary persistence
of a particularly stubborn six-year-old. If door-to-door selling is good enough
for book-club subscriptions, driveway laying, life assurance, UPVC windows,
cable TV contracts, tupperware and shoe-cleaning materials, why not
academic books? Of course, I’m betraying the traditional marketer’s antiselling prejudice here. Selling is, in fact, the bedrock of marketing, at least
it is if you ask any salesperson. Marketing doesn’t create ‘relationships’ but
salespeople can do exactly that if they’re congenial, well-organised and wellinformed about their products. The major basis for monograph sales, for
example, is the continuing relationship between the publisher’s direct salespeople and academic libraries.
True, direct selling isn’t what most people think of when they reflect on
the lifestyle of the published writer. Writers hover elegantly above the labour
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Chris Hackley
market, having no need of such grubby encounters, smiling benignly down
on the horny-handed hoi-polloi. I admit that I have tried, in a momentary
loss of authorial dignity, to usher along my sales a little by brow-beating
the assistant in my campus Waterstone’s to stock more than one copy of my
books. He fobbed me off by agreeing to put my books on the shelf sideways
on. Pathetically, I was fairly happy with this. The logic of ‘more shelf space
= more sales’ seemed satisfied. My reluctant salesman was probably less than
impressed to get merchandising advice from authors (or ‘wankers’ as he probably calls us) and he definitely didn’t sympathise with my desire to hover
elegantly above the labour market. Perhaps he just doesn’t realise that writing
is, for most academic authors, slightly more labour intensive and less remunerative on an hourly basis than door-to-door knife-sharpening, and rather less
likely to result in an interview on the Melvyn Bragg2 show.
One other thing that most academic authors cannot do for ourselves is to
create a buzz of PR around our titles. Apart from a few elite gurus, we look
enviously on as sportspeople and minor TV actors sell mountains of ghostwritten hack jobs just because the book-buying public know their name and
turn up if they sign a few books in a department store. Look at the way
that celebrity and marketing coalesce in mediated ‘news’ and entertainment
to create an irresistible slingshot of marketing momentum whizzing across
PR, sponsorship, endorsement and on to product manufacturing, services
and goodness-knows-what other marketing sideshows to the main event.
Who among us will create a public persona of the atom-splitting force of
a Mohammed Ali or, in snooker, Alex Higgins? Higgins’ notorious lifestyle
(described in Borrows 2003) generated massive interest in his less-thantelegenic sport, raking in viewers, sponsors and big-money spin-offs at a
rate befitting a man called The Hurricane.
Lest you forget, snooker fans stare at coloured balls slowly traversing green
baize in search of a hole. When they stop, men in dress suits push them with
a stick. The first agent who pitched the idea of snooker coverage to the TV
networks must have got a bemused reception. But add Alex Higgins to this
insipid mixture, and you suddenly have something as rich and potent as our
hero’s favourite stout. The extracts from reviews printed inside his (unauthorised) biography show the measure of the man: he is ‘an authentic genius’, ‘one
of the most twisted desperadoes in sport’, ‘a supremely talented creep’, ‘a
great sporting talent pissing on his chips’, a ‘shit’ and, less affectionately, ‘a
complete bastard’. Some PR, preferably publishable in the Sunday scandal
sheets, can do wonders for any field of endeavour. Snooker’s prime mover
was a neurotically fucked-up Ulsterman for whom the epithets ‘selfdeprecating’ and ‘amusing’ were not quite fitting, but what was compelling
was the Nietzschian purity of his utter self-conviction. Read Higgins’
biography and you get a case study of the transformation of a minority sport
from local halls into televised arenas with audiences of millions, a process
made possible through the column inches and ticket sales that spin off the
centrifugal force of one individual.
I write marketing textbooks but I’m really a swill guy
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Spectacle and sports marketing, not that you need to be told, go jock in
strap. Nowadays, practically any kind of marketing involves hiring people
versed in the dark art of contrived spectacle, so the brand can attract the
attention of hard-pressed feature-writers and news editors looking for a theme
with which to engage the popular mentality. ‘Guerrilla’, ‘Buzz’ and ‘Viral’
marketing are all about sneaking under consumers’ advertising radar to get
invaluable editorial coverage. Now that the Frankfurt School’s apocalyptic
marketing vision of the Culture Industry,3 a synthesis of media, entertainment and marketing, has truly come to pass, practically any editorial coverage
of any event has a marketing slant in it if you look carefully enough. I’m
not suggesting for a minute that academics in need of a spike in their sales
graph should call a celebrity publicist, hire a discrete photographer and solicit
romantic interest from the sleazier Members of Parliament. But a ten-line,
universally unread press release seems to be the best most of us can muster
for our cherished text, and that only if your university’s PR girl has the
energy to return your email. It does seem a bit limp compared to some other,
less inhibited fields. The days of mainlining one’s academic wisdom straight
into the artery of public curiosity still seem some way off. If we’re honest
most of us couldn’t even find the artery.
Today, I received a nicely printed invitation to one of a series of swankysounding marketing seminars hosted by publishers, Houghton Mifflin, on
behalf of Dibb et al., whose (1994) has become a (2005) with numerous
reprints and new editions in between. The authors would expound on their
work while taking comments over coffee from their adoring public.
Naturally, my first emotion was not envy (as if) but relief that the scholarly
deconstruction (aka ‘hatchet job’) I performed on such texts had apparently
made no impression whatsoever on their still-burgeoning market. If a
publisher will hire a room and do some catering for you, not to mention
sending a mailshot inviting peers to your little soirée, then you are a serious
bookseller. As for myself, I will continue to flap breathlessly in the shallower
waters of the marketing textbook scene, and who knows, maybe one day
there will be a major market for my new improved genre of marketing texts.
I think I’ll call it swill-lite.
Notes
1
2
3
London Evening Standard Friday, 29 April, p. 11, ‘£700 to put your book on sale’.
A polymath intellectual, author and doyen of UK arts television programming. His
The Adventure of English (2003) doubles up as a marketing semiologist’s handbook.
Well, almost.
Max Horkheimer and Theodore Adorno, 1944, Dialectic of Enlightenment, New York:
Continuum.
References
Baker, M.J. (2000) Marketing Strategy and Management, 3rd edn, London: Macmillan
Business.
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Borrows, W. (2003) The Hurricane: The Turbulent Life and Times of Alex Higgins, London:
Atlantic Books.
Bragg, M. (2003) The Adventure of English: Biography of a Language, London: Hodder &
Stoughton.
Brassington, F. and Pettit, S. (1997) Principles of Marketing, London: Pitman Publishing.
Brown, S. (1995) Postmodern Marketing, London: Routledge.
–––– (2004) ‘Writing Marketing: The Clause that Refreshes’, Journal of Marketing
Management, 20 (3/4), 321–42.
Brownlie, D., Saren, M., Wensley, R. and Whittington, D. (eds) (1999) Rethinking
Marketing: Towards Critical Marketing Accountings, London: Sage.
Case, P. (1999) ‘Remember Re-engineering? The Rhetorical Appeal of a Managerial
Salvation Device’, Journal of Management Studies, 36 (4), 419–42.
Cranfield School of Management (2000) Marketing Management: A Relationship Marketing
Perspective, London: Macmillan Business.
Dibb, S., Simkin, L., Pride, W.M. and Ferrell, O.C. (1994) Marketing Concepts and
Strategies, 2nd European edn, London: Houghton Mifflin.
Firat, A.F. (1985) ‘Ideology versus Science in Marketing’ in ‘Changing the Course of
Marketing, Alternative Paradigms for Widening Marketing Theory’, Research in
Marketing, Supplement 2, 135–46.
Forsyth, P. (1997) Marketing in Publishing, London: Routledge.
Furusten, S. (1999) Popular Management Books: How they are Made and What they Mean for
Organisations, London: Routledge.
Hackley, C. (2001) Marketing and Social Construction: Exploring the Rhetorics of Managed
Consumption, London: Routledge.
–––– (2002) ‘The Wrong Trousers’, Author comment on review of Hackley (2001)
Marketing and Social Construction: Exploring the Rhetorics of Managed Consumption, original review by D. Wesson in Journal of Marketing Management, 17 (9/10), 1037–9.
–––– (2003) ‘“We Are All Customers Now”: Rhetorical Strategy and Ideological Control
in Marketing Management Texts’, Journal of Management Studies, 40 (5), 1325–52.
–––– (2005) Advertising and Promotion: Communicating Brands, London: Sage.
Hooley, G.J., Saunders, J.A. and Piercy, N.F. (1998) Marketing Strategy & Competitive
Positioning, 2nd edn, London: Financial Times, Prentice Hall.
Jobber, D. (1998) Principles and Practice of Marketing, London: McGraw Hill.
Kotler, P. (1988) Marketing Management: Analysis, Planning, Implementation and Control,
6th edn, New York: Prentice Hall.
––––, Armstrong, G., Saunders, J. and Wong, V. (1999) Principles of Marketing, 2nd
European edn, New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
Macdonald, M. (2000) ‘Market Segmentation’, Ch. 6 in Cranfield School of Management,
Marketing Management, London: Macmillan.
Mercer, D. (1996) Marketing, 2nd edn, Oxford: Blackwell.
Morgan, G. (1992) ‘Marketing Discourse and Practice: Towards a Critical Analysis’, in
M. Alvesson and H. Willmott (eds), Critical Management Studies, London: Sage.
Piercy, N.F. (2002) Market-led Strategic Change: A Guide to Transforming the Process of Going
to Market, 3rd edn, London: Butterworth-Heinemann.
Walsh, J. (2005) ‘Paperback Revolution’, The Independent Arts & Books Review, Friday
29 April, 2–4.
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16 A step-by-step guide to Bridget
Jones’s Diary, Fight Club and
the ‘how to’ industry
Anthony Patterson and Stephen Brown
I could have been a contender
Making real the dream to become a bestselling author is difficult. Many
obstacles bar entry into this elite community of populists – how to concoct
a story worth telling; how to cope with the dead ends and blind alleys of
plot and characterisation; how to survive months of toil, isolation, self-doubt
and financial hardship; how to secure a publisher; and how to avoid the everlooming prospect that all may ultimately come to nothing. Still, like
lemmings over a cliff, there is no shortage of contenders ready to try their
hand, each spurred on by the allure of celebrity, monetary reward and the
prospect of having their words consecrated, immortalised (Zaid 2004).
Naturally, this yearning creates a huge market for the elusive formula that
can propel a writer along the road to success.
Ugresic’s (2003) brilliant Thank You for Not Reading gently mocks those
who sell themselves as all-knowing gurus. These peerless propagators of How
to books purport to provide no-nonsense know-how for prospective writers,
despite the dubious distinction that few, if any, in their lives have written,
or are ever likely to write, a bestseller. She catalogues over thirty such books
with variations on this theme. Books that deal with issues such as how to
write in a particular genre, build a storyline, learn the tricks of the trade,
sell a manuscript, begin or finish a novel, write from the heart, write
convincing dialogue, write more descriptively, compellingly and/or concisely.
All the advice, words of wisdom and top tips that anyone is ever likely to
need. The only thing that the market fails to supply, she says, are manuals
about how to write such manuals.
Writers already on bestseller lists, the John Grishams and Barbara Taylor
Bradfords of this world, would scoff at the merit of such publications, proudly
maintaining, as Murdoch (1990, p. 15) does that the only function of the
writer is, ‘to write the best fiction he knows how to write’. Their success,
writers would say, is a product of their self-belief, dogged determination,
innate talent, or remarkable luck, or any combination of these factors. Tell
that to all the washed-up literary geniuses living in bed-sits wondering why
it was not them receiving plaudits, instead of Stephen bloody King. (Despite
reading King’s [2000] On Writing and still not a jot, not a smidgeon of
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Anthony Patterson and Stephen Brown
interest. It is so unfair!) Nonetheless, whatever way you cut it, bestselling
authors such as Amis (2002, p. 2), who describes how to doers as, ‘chipmunks
or beavers’, maintain that their success is definitely not the outcome of
applying principles from a ‘How to market your book’ book, heaven forbid.
What such devastating denouncements fail to highlight is that the success
of bestsellers is at least partly attributable to their didactic content, and
ability to educate and improve the reader’s mind. Ugresic (2003) argues that
this is precisely why so many bestsellers begin with How to this and How to
that, such as, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, and How the Steel was Tempered.
Researchers working in the field of marketing, understandably seduced by
the calls to be more imaginative, less prescriptive, normative and so on, have
in the process inadvertently accelerated the demise of good old-fashioned
didacticism. Their predilection for the realm of imagination, suggestion that
anything goes, counsel to do your own thing boys and girls is probably sound
advice, but maybe that tendency has gone too far. Let’s face it, despite the
spiralling outpouring of marketing research and the propagation of ever more
journals, our research is rarely read by anyone but other marketing academics,
and most of us are not likely to produce a bestseller any time soon. If we
continue in this vein, we are in danger, to bend Peter Cook’s analogy, of
grabbing marketing by the throat, wrestling it to the ground and kicking
it to death.
In this chapter, then, we call a halt to the decline of didacticism. We argue
that, despite its maligned image, didacticism has its place. It offers consumers
of marketing research something that they want – instructions, rules, howto guides. To demonstrate the extent of didacticism in bestsellers, we will
interrogate Bridget Jones’s Diary and Fight Club. The gory carnography of
Fight Club is a world away from the sentimental feel-goodism of Bridget Jones’s
Diary, and as such they provide an indication of the prevalence of didacticism across diverse fictional genres. Throughout this chapter we will try to
practise what we preach by being as didactic as possible. Therefore, we begin
by charting the logic of the marketplace that transformed Bridget Jones’s Diary
and Fight Club into bestselling novels, and their writers, Helen Fielding and
Chuck Palahniuk, into celebrities, with the aim of illustrating how to be a
bestselling author. We then profile the widespread didacticism in the novels
– thus demonstrating how to be like our central protagonists, Bridget
Jones and Tyler Durden. We thereafter conclude in suitably didactic fashion
by briefly informing you how to write a marketing how to of your own.
Misinforming rather.
How to be a bestselling author
How to be Helen Fielding
So how do you write a novel like Bridget Jones’s Diary that has sold over two
million copies, landed a lucrative blockbuster movie deal that has made
Guide to the ‘how to’ industry
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185
Bridget Jones as famous on the big screen as she is in paperback, spawned
an equally popular sequel and umpteen imitators? How do you write a novel
that is what McCracken (1998) calls a genre hybrid, famous as a definitive
‘confessional novel’, a semi-autobiographical fricassee of fact, fiction and
familiar brand names (Patterson and Brown 1998), and equally famous as
the definitive example of ‘chick lit’, a book written by a woman and focusing
on young, quirky, female protagonists. How do you perform such a marketing masterstroke, such a double-whammy tap into the prevailing consumer
Zeitgeist, an act in itself that would assure any book success? How do you
do it? You do it like Helen Fielding did it.
Her success features all the usual suspects: graduating from Oxford
University, landing a prominent job in the media working for the BBC and
then as a freelance journalist. Patiently serving her time, learning her trade,
before the ambition to become a successful writer could be realised. Her
first attempt was in 1994, when she wrote Cause Celeb, a poorly received first
novel that was heavily criticised for its plodding seriousness, weak plot and
dull characterisation; nonetheless it was duly published and its central character’s Bridgetesque qualities had some latent potential. This promise was
seen, not by Fielding, who immediately embarked on a second novel that
she herself admits was, ‘about cultural divides in the Caribbean, and . . . was
so dull I could hardly read it’ (Fielding 1998), but by Charlie Leadbeater,
the then-features editor at The Independent.
Charlie had a vexing problem. The marketing research on his desk was
conclusive. A readership poll clearly illustrated that The Independent did not
appeal to women. He struck on an idea, a fairly innocuous one at that – the
newspaper needed a female columnist. He called Fielding in for a meeting
and after a brainstorming session where synergies flew, ideas emerged and
no one quite remembers who thought of what, Bridget Jones was born. It
was to be a weekly column about a thirtysomething single on a permanently
doomed quest for self-improvement. To them it seemed like just another day
at the office, but it soon became evident they were onto something big.
In the beginning it was all very mysterious and strange and different for
readers of the column. As Leadbeater says:
A couple of people wondered whether we could sustain it for very long.
And some – like my dad – simply did not get it. But very quickly we
got this fantastic reaction from women. And then everyone got it, the
letters came flooding in and it just went on from there.
(Kirby 2004)
In addition, no one quite knew if Bridget was a real person. It was like the
first time you ever watched Knowing Me, Knowing You or The Office, that
double take of incredulity that suggests that perhaps all is not as it seems.
Was she really the sexy silhouette that had been created to promote the
column, a languid creature with a glass of wine in one hand, a cigarette in
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Anthony Patterson and Stephen Brown
the other and lost in a reverie of thought? Oh, to get inside her head, and
remarkably you could, the paper took you there each week, and what you
found rarely disappointed. Fielding was able to make the column continually entertaining, funny, honest and refreshing. It soon became apparent to
Fielding and everyone around her that she should abandon her dull cruise
through Caribbean culture, and write the novel that people wanted. She did.
But Bridget Jones could never have happened were it not for Fielding’s
education, colleagues and friends – her entire support network. The plot was
ready-made, off-the-shelf, cut-out-and-keep, borrowed directly from Jane
Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Interestingly, when asked whether she intended
to follow the Pride and Prejudice plot from the outset, she answers, ‘Yes. I
shamelessly stole the plot. I thought it had been very well market-researched
over a number of centuries’ (Fielding 1998). The idea, as we have said, was
the outcome of a conversation with Leadbeater. The juicy gossip luxuriantly
spoon-fed to readers each week was not invented but based on the reality of
Fielding’s own life. The stories, heartache, hilarity, newly minted language
of Singletons and Smug Marrieds, were all due to helpful input from her
friends. Fielding, though she denies it, is Bridget Jones. You can distil as
much from the advice she gives to wannabe bestselling authors:
Write as if you were writing to a friend. Do not to try to impress an
imaginary audience who isn’t like you. My experience is that it’s always
better to write about what you know. I would also say, ‘Rewrite as much
as possible.’ I believe in showing it to a number of close friends who
will be honest with you. Listen to what they say, and rewrite accordingly. I would also warn young writers that everything you do will always
take three times longer than you think it will.
(Waldman 2002, p. 1)
Her sequel, Bridget Jones: Edge of Reason, has proved to be equally successful,
carried along by the multi-million dollar blockbuster Bridget Jones movie
franchise. But for Fielding, it seems that she was in the right place at the
right time and was right on the money with her Bridget character. Her latest
creation, Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination, has not been nearly so
well received either by the critics or her Bridget readers. Still, what does she
care? She has made her money, moved to California and is currently living
‘the dream’. For evermore she will be introduced as ‘Helen Fielding, author
of Bridget Jones’, not too tiresome a burden to bear, we’re sure.
How to be Chuck Palahniuk
Fielding shows us one route into the bestseller brigade, Chuck Palahniuk
(pronounced Paula-nick) shows us another. His novel, Fight Club, has sold
over 300,000 copies (which, considering that 85 per cent of all fiction sells
to older middle-aged women, is not bad). First editions of the book now
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trade for up to $75 each, and he still has to pinch himself when he thinks
about Brad Pitt, Edward Norton and Helena Bonham Carter starring in
David Fincher’s fabulous film version of his gritty, breakthrough novel. He
could write any old drivel now and people would buy it, but he has not lost
his touch. His growing body of transgressive lad lit., which includes Invisible Monsters (2000a), Survivor (2000b), Choke (2002), Lullaby (2003a), Diary
(2004) and Haunted (2005) continues to be both critically acclaimed and,
while phenomenally popular, still retains the aura of a cult attraction.
There are some aspects of Palahniuk’s life that no one could envy. During
the height of Fight Club’s success in the summer of 1999 someone murdered
his father in the mountains of Idaho and burned his body down to a few
pounds of bone. Life was never easy for Palahniuk. There was nothing
inevitable about his literary success. At every corner he seemed to meet with
adversity. The description of his pre-university slacker life recounted in
Fugitives and Refugees describes numerous close calls, and hard-luck stories,
such as:
My three lives were messenger-dishwasher-stoner until the night two
men robbed Jonah’s seafood restaurant. They have pillowcases over their
heads and sawed-off shotguns and make me press my face into the
parking lot until my forehead is one big purple bruise. The restaurant
owner wants me to double the amount stolen when I tell the police so
he can turn a big profit on insurance fraud. For once I tell the truth,
and I get fired.
(Palahniuk 2003b)
When he graduated from the University of Oregon in journalism, he could
not get a job in the newspapers, so began working in Portland as a diesel
mechanic for Freightliner. All told, he worked there for thirteen years, occasionally submitting articles to magazines as a freelance journalist but, all
that while, yes, you guessed it, he clung to his dream to become a writer.
His first attempt to write a successful novel was not with Fight Club, but
with Survivor. The book did the rounds at the publishers but was deemed
‘too risky’, ‘too grotesque’. So what did Palahniuk do? Call the whole thing
off? Did Chuck chuck in the towel? Go mend some more trucks? Not a bit
of it, he ignored all the advice to tone down his work, to write in a more
acceptable manner, to toe the Goddamn line, and instead wrote Fight Club,
an even more brutal, nihilist novel about a guy who suffers from insomnia,
depression and terminal consumerism. At least, that is what the myth-makers
want us to believe. Actually, what he did was write a much better book than
the original Survivor (the new version published in 2000 is 80 per cent
rewritten), more tightly plotted, better conceived, plus his editor, who reins
back some of Palahniuk’s more ludicrous ideas – such as an original subplot
where Tyler castrates a policeman – played a bigger role in the book’s conception. So you can take it with a very big pinch of salt when Palahniuk says:
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I never expected the book to be published. I had been rejected so many
times because my work was seen as too dark and depressing, that when
I sent off Fight Club, I thought it was just a fuck off to New York
publishing. It was my last gesture.
( Jeffries 2000, p. 1)
What he would have been surprised at was the extraordinary commercial
success of the book. The book took on a life of its own. Songs were written
using parts of the book. Ford Motor Co. and Nike used portions of the book
to advertise their products. Real fight clubs popped up in various parts of
the country. Many also attribute the anti-corporate inspired fighting on the
streets of Seattle to the book’s pervasive influence. All from an idea that came
to Palahniuk when he realised that no one bothers with you, asks you any
questions when you arrive in work, messed-up, beaten-on and bruised. All
from a book that he admits is:
About eighty percent . . . received information. I can go to parties and
say, ‘How many people have doctored food in the service industry?’ and
get their stories . . . people write the books for me; all I’ve got to do is
remember everybody’s stories and put them together. So, I can’t take
credit for most of it.
(Hogan 2000, p. 1)
Despite this modesty, he does have a vision that drives him onward, that
makes it worthwhile getting out of bed in the morning, and it is a marketing
vision. His vision, his mission statement, his raison d’être is to fill a niche
that he has identified in the marketplace. He helpfully explains: ‘There’s a
reason men don’t read, and it’s because books don’t serve men. It’s time we
produced books that serve men’ (DVD Talk 1999).
So, then, how do you become a bestselling author? According to Fielding
and Palahniuk, it is easy. Get a job as a reporter or do a bit of freelance,
learn the tricks of the trade. Build a strong support network of friends. It is
from them that your material will originate. Try your hand at a first novel
that will fail miserably. Do not worry. This is a good omen. Serendipity will
step in sometime soon. Meantime, bide your time, keep the dream alive,
redouble your efforts, resolve to do better, produce a superior second novel
that everyone will assume is your first anyway, and hey presto, readers salivate, the stars align, a golden beam of light descends and your moment has
finally arrived. To celebrate your entry into the house of bestsellerdom,
Patricia Cornwell and Maeve Binchy will make some sandwiches.
How to be Bridget Jones
To be sure, our chosen authors’ how tos aren’t confined to getting published.
The books themselves are monuments to how to. So, in order to become
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Bridget Jones, keep a diary. Be an eternal optimist. Avoid all contact with
feminist doctrine. Read the plot summary in Table 16.1. Being a woman
helps, but a needy or a gay man is qualification enough; at least, that is,
judging by all the emotionally affected male reviews on Amazon.com. Be
thirtysomething, live in London, work for a publisher, and be on the hunt
for the man of your dreams. The first main didactic lesson is that books
should play a big part in your life. They play a big part in Bridget’s. They
should. She works for a publisher and she keeps a diary. Nonetheless, she
sees books more as lifestyle accessories, as aids to her pseudo-intellectual pose,
than serious reading material. She wants to be seen to read the right type of
book, which is why she always has a smattering of intelligent-looking books
scattered around her flat. She means to read more, she really does; one of her
New Year’s resolutions is to ‘stay in and read books and listen to classical
music’ (Fielding 1996, p. 3), but when push comes to shove, she has more
pressing concerns such as losing weight, freeing her legs of cellulite and
detoxifying her body. At one point, she contemplates buying a book about
cocktails, but admits she ‘probably won’t, to be perfectly honest’ (p. 79), and
another time, while ‘feeling happy and serene’, she resolves to talk ‘to Jude
about book [sic] she has been reading about festivals and rites of passage in
primitive cultures’ (p. 79). On another occasion she half-heartedly says,
‘maybe will read The Famished Road ’ (p. 290).
The only books that she really recommends you read are – surprise, surprise
– didactic self-help books. Her favourites tend to be about Eastern Religion
and Zen. She specifically mentions Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus,
and a couple of magazine articles from Cosmopolitan, one entitled ‘Make
Parties Work for Me’ and another that encouraged her to create the correct
ambience in her apartment by using Feng Shui. Her dependence on the how
to, self-help, industry is evident by how often it comes up in conversation
with her friends. The passage below is a prototypical example of the importance of how to books in her life:
Told Jude today about the inner poise thing and she said, interestingly,
that she’d been reading a self-help book about Zen. She said, when you
looked at life, Zen could be applied to anything. Zen and the art of
shopping, Zen and the art of flat buying, etc. She said that it was all a
question of Flow rather than struggle. And if, for example, you had a
problem or things were not working out, instead of straining or
becoming angry you should just relax and feel your way into the Flow
and everything would work out. It is, she said, rather like when you
can’t get a key to open a lock and if you wiggle it furiously it gets worse,
but take it out, stick a bit of lip gloss on it, then just sort of sense your
way and Eureka! But not to mention idea to Sharon because she thought
it was bollocks.
(Fielding 1996, pp. 93–4)
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Table 16.1 Lost the plot?
Bridget Jones’s
Diary
Fight Club
Bridget Jones is thirtysomething, single, living in London and
employed by a publishing company. In her diary, she scrupulously
details calorie, cigarette and alcohol-unit consumption, her weight and,
of course, her endlessly witty thoughts, wishes and observations semiregularly for a year. The story begins at the Alconbury’s New Year
party, an annual tradition that Bridget dreads. Family and friends
manage to engineer an encounter between her and Mark Darcy, a rich,
divorced lawyer – a farcical event that nonetheless establishes an
attraction. In work she has a relationship with Daniel Cleaver, her boss
and long-time coveted lover. A doomed relationship ensues complete
with suggestive emails, sex, mind games, pregnancy fears and
disloyalty, such that when Bridget accepts a job offer on a television
programme the relationship is all but over. Meantime, a subplot
unfurls wherein Bridget’s obnoxious mother, in the midst of midlife
crisis, undergoes a remarkable transition by launching her own career
as a daytime television presenter, ditching her distraught husband for
Julio, a Portuguese conman, who embroils her in a time-share
apartment fraud. This presents the perfect opportunity for Darcy to
utilise his lawyer expertise, all with the ulterior motive, of course, of
wooing Bridget.
The narrator is a white-collar worker, processing accident reports for a
major automobile company. He suffers from insomnia, is haunted by
the emptiness of his life, which is dominated by compulsive catalogue
shopping and infomercials. He finds an outlet by pretending to be a
sufferer at support groups for various terminal diseases, but this is
ruined when another fraudulent sufferer, Marla Singer, turns up. On a
plane he meets Tyler Durden, a manufacturer of home-made soap who
espouses a radical philosophy of antimaterialism. After his apartment is
destroyed in an explosion he moves into a dilapidated house with
Tyler. Outside a bar Tyler asks Jack to hit him, and the two start
trading punches in a friendly but still painful manner. Others ask to
join in and the two start Fight Club, a weekly meeting in a bar
basement where contestants can pummel one another in hand-to-hand
combat, something that rapidly takes off among disenchanted males
and develops a secret cult across the entire country. But then Jack
discovers that Tyler is building an army of Fight Club recruits and
encouraging them into increasingly more anarchist acts designed to
destroy consumer society. But as he tries to stop Tyler’s plan, the
narrator finds people insisting that he is Tyler, and he is.
Elsewhere in Bridget’s diary, Jude explains the insights from Goddess in
Every Woman and Tom tells her about a practical theory he sourced in Nick
Hornby’s novel, Fever Pitch, which, incidentally, collaborates our thesis that
novels are indeed didactic.
For those times when you feel anxious, awkward or just plain awful,
Bridget strongly advocates the construction of a comfort zone, a life-support
system with a hotline to a mutual support network of friends. Consulting
them will dispel your doubts. Point out your naivety. Calm your flustered
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self. So follow their advice. They are wiser and more experienced than you.
For instance, Bridget’s solution to netting Daniel was crafted by her friend,
Tom. On his advice she decides to be an ‘aloof, coolly professional ice-queen’
(p. 72), repeating the mantra ‘Aloof, unavailable ice queen; Aloof, unavailable ice queen’, (p. 73) when she feels herself weakening. This strategy proves
to be a winner, at least for a time, as Bridget reports, ‘Can officially confirm
that the way to a man’s heart these days is not through beauty, food, sex or
alluringness of character, but merely the ability to seem not very interested
in him’ (p. 73).
It is necessary to pad your comfort zone with lots of luxuries so indulge
in lots of shopping expeditions. Retail therapy frequently comes to Bridget’s
rescue, as she states, ‘Just saw Daniel leaving for lunch. He has not messaged
me or anything. V. depressed. Going shopping’ (p. 31), and ‘Decided to go
shopping and stop obsessing’ (p. 289). At a particularly low ebb she equates
the end of shopping with the end of her life; ‘I was thinking, oh my God,
life is over, Daniel is a mad alcoholic and will kill me then chuck me when
he finds out. No more nights out with the girls, shopping, flirting, sex,
bottles of wine and fags’ (p. 119). Like other characters in the book, she sees
shopping as a way of rewarding herself. At one point her mother says, ‘I’ve
got a job as a TV presenter. I am going shopping’ (p. 81).
After the act of shopping, consuming the things you buy can provide
considerable solace. On one occasion, while slumped in despondency, Bridget
says:
I am a child of Cosmopolitan culture and too many quizzes and I know
that neither my personality nor my body is up to it if left to its own
devices. I can’t take the pressure. I am going to cancel and spend the
evening eating doughnuts in a cardigan with egg on it.
(p. 13)
Be careful, however, for consumption she warns is not always good for you:
‘Have just smoked entire packet of Silk Cut as act of self-annihilating existential despair’ (p. 190).
Speaking of annihilation and despair it is probably time to tell you . . .
. . . how to be Tyler Durden
In a marvellous rising anthem, Marilyn Manson screeches, ‘We sing the
Death Song kids, cause we got no future, and we wanna be just like you’.
Play this in the background to put yourself into the perfect mood to enter
the apocalyptic world of Tyler Durden. It is dark, terrifying, but most of
all, exhilarating (for a plot outline, see Table 16.1). Your identity, such as
it is, is composed mostly from the things you own. The narrator admits at
one point, ‘I’d collected shelves full of different mustard, some stone-ground,
some English pub style. There were 14 different flavors of fat-free salad
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dressing, and seven kinds of capers’ (Palahniuk 1996, p. 45). The gist of it
is that you do not need this stuff. It ends up owning you.
Now you are about ready to blow up your apartment. You will find instructions in the novel telling you precisely how to create a bomb. ‘Drill a hole
in a lightbulb and fill the bulb with gasoline. Plug the hole with wax or
silicone, then screw the bulb into a socket and let someone walk into the
room and throw the switch’ (p. 185). Kaboom!
In fact, Fight Club is an opus of self-help, how-to, DIY information. Early
on, the book promises to provide you, the reader, with all ‘the how to stuff
that isn’t in any history book’ (p. 13) because ‘Tyler is full of useful information’ (p. 65). You can learn how to make nitroglycerine: ‘You take a
98-percent concentration of fuming nitric acid and add the acid to three
times that amount of sulfuric acid. Do this in an ice bath. Then add glycerin drop-by-drop with an eye dropper. You have nitroglycerin’ (p. 12).
You can learn how to make nerve gas, how to make soap from human fat, how
to look at the stars and tell where you’re going, how to run a movie projector,
how to break locks and, more profoundly, ‘how to make something better out
of the world’ (p. 208).
You should realise, too, that you inhabit a world like the narrator’s
where ‘nobody cared if he lived or died, and the feeling was fucking mutual’
(p. 113). So attend cancer support groups where someone will listen to you,
and you will experience the human warmth denied to you in the rest of your
life. In the book, the narrator explains his fascination with such encounters:
‘This is why I loved support groups so much, if people thought you were
dying, they gave you their full attention’ (p. 117).
Reading the novel will also help you understand the pleasure of violent
male bonding and of finding self-liberation in beating one another to a pulp.
So form a Fight Club and abide by its five golden rules (see pp. 48–50).
More important than this, though, is the philosophy of Fight Club:
As long as you’re at fight club, you’re not how much money you’ve got
in the bank. You’re not your job . . . You’re not your family, and you’re
not who you tell yourself . . . You’re not your name. You’re not your
problems. You’re not your hopes . . . You will not be saved . . . We are
all going to die, someday.
(p. 143)
After all that fighting, it is high time to declare Jihad on the American
consumerist way of life. Embark on Project Mayhem, which is ultimately
about liberating American manhood by destroying the credit-card companies.
Along the way you can have some fun blowing up works of corporate art
and franchise coffee shops, peeing in soup latrines, picking fights with
random blokes on the street. You are now Tyler Durden.
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How to write a how to book
More importantly, perhaps, you are now ready to turn your hand to that how
to book about marketing. Some, of course, might say that marketing has
more than enough how to books already – Marketing Made Easy, Marketing
for Dummies, All You Need to Know About Marketing, The Complete Idiot’s Guide
to Marketing, Ten Steps to a Better Brand, Marketing Planning for Non-Marketing
Specialists, A Checklist for Marketing Success. And who are we to argue? All we
ask is that you make them more entertaining than the current crop of crap.
Let us not forget that marketing literature, like that of literary fiction, has
a duty to entertain (Franzen 2004). Like bestseller publishers, we are, or
should be, ‘purveyors of entertainment’ (Schiffrin 1999). It is only in this
manner that we can ever hope to continue to engage the interest of our
students and our readers. If we succeed in whetting their curiosity with a
double dose of didacticism and entertainment, you know what will happen,
don’t you? They will become avid readers. Reading inevitably leads to further
reading, further reading leads to even further reading and so on and so forth.
Indeed, they might eventually get so addicted that they’ll start reading the
articles in leading marketing journals and end up acting out our learned
recommendations when they become managers themselves. Heaven help us.
It thus seems that there are easier ways of bringing down Western capitalism than following Tyler Durden’s handy how to hints. Swivel on that,
Bridget.
References
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Fielding, H. (1996) Bridget Jones’s Diary, London: Picador.
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–––– (2000) Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, London: Picador.
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Frank, T. (1997) The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip
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17 Bonus chapter
Dream of fair to middling
marketing
Aedh Aherne
Waiting for bookings
Fifty years ago, the US premiere of Waiting for Godot opened at the Coconut
Grove Playhouse, Miami. Starring Tom Ewell and Bert Lahr, the lovable
cowardly lion in MGM’s Wizard of Oz, it was ambitiously billed as ‘the laugh
sensation of two continents’ (Knowlson 1996). Now, theatrical PR is a law
unto itself, as everyone knows, but the Coconut Grove billing must rank
among the greatest overstatements in the history of the boards. Beckett’s
nihilistic play was neither a comedy, though it contained wonderfully
comedic elements, nor the laugh sensation of a single continent, let alone two.
Rather, it was a play where, as an early commentator memorably observed,
‘nothing happens, twice’ (Cronin 1997).
Nothing happened at the Miami box office either. It was a disastrous failure
and went dark after two weeks. Waiting almost closed in London too, where
the first performances were greeted with derision, catcalls and wholesale audience walkouts. Indeed, Beckett’s masterpiece nearly didn’t make its Parisian
debut at all and only got mounted thanks to a government grant for foreign
playwrights writing in French. Its extremely low staging costs – four actors,
one boy, and a spartan set – also helped swing things in its favour, as did
the scandalised reaction of reviewers (which always draws a crowd).
En Attendant Godot, of course, is now regarded as one of the greatest artistic
achievements of the twentieth century (Beckett 1956). It is a staple of the
theatrical repertoire. Its characters, setting and tragicomic ethos are part of
popular culture. It is one of those plays with which everyone is familiar, even
if they haven’t attended a performance. It is a seminal statement, the autograph work, in fact, of the so-called ‘Theatre of the Absurd’ (Esslin 1980).
It turned Samuel Beckett into a superstar and all but earned him the Nobel
Prize for Literature in 1969.
Yet Waiting was within a whisker of ignominious failure, as the Coconut
Grove debacle bears witness. Samuel Beckett himself had failed in everything he’d attempted prior to Godot. A brilliant scholar-cum-sportsman, he
spurned the family business, thought better of a career in advertising, and
abandoned an academic sinecure at Trinity College, Dublin, for a penurious
existence in inter-war Paris, that famously bohemian destination where the
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lost generation went to find themselves. He joined the James Joyce set,
penned occasional poems, translations and, not least, novels, all of which
were roundly ignored. He received more rejection slips than pay slips during
this period of professional purgatory. If it weren’t for handouts from his
father, a successful Dublin quantity surveyor, and the succour of his brother,
who took over the family firm after his father’s sudden death, Sam couldn’t
have afforded to fail for so long. He was almost fifty years old when he became
an overnight sensation, much to his astonishment and not a little dismay
(Bair 1978).
Fifty years on from that unanticipated breakthrough, Samuel Barclay
Beckett embodies the contemporary business condition. The peerless playwright’s attitudes, achievements and aesthetic imperatives are directly
relevant to today’s creativity-driven, hyper-competitive, multi-mediated
Entertainment Economy (Wolf 1999). This is a world, a warp-speed world,
of fads, fashions and, as often as not, calamitous failure. This is a world, as
the roller-coaster ride of Apple Computers reminds us, where thinking
different is the order of the day (Linzmayer 2004). Although some may doubt
whether anything can be learned from an angst-ridden 1950s’ scribbler, much
less an Irish management drop-out – he considered accounting at one stage
too – Apple’s ‘think different’ injunction should give us pause. Perhaps it’s
time to think differently about thinking differently and accept that meaningful marketing lessons can be extracted from the oeuvre of the author of
Dream of Fair to Middling Women (O’Driscoll 1999). Like Dickens, Twain,
Mailer and Eggers, Sam Beckett was a bit of an authorpreneur, albeit an
authorpreneur whose marketing philosophy runs counter to conventional
marketing wisdom.
Waiting for Uniglo
The first meaningful Beckettian lesson is irony. Beckett was nothing if not
an ironist, a wonderfully funny writer who took pot-shots at taboo topics,
social mores, theatrical custom and literary precedent. As Esslin (1980,
p. 26) observes, he was:
part of the ‘anti-literary’ movement of our time, which has found its
expression in abstract painting, with its rejection of ‘literary’ elements
in pictures; or in the ‘new novel’ in France, with its reliance on the
description of objects and its rejection of empathy and anthropomorphism.
The ultimate irony, however, is that although Beckett’s reputation is predicated on his landmark theatrical achievements, he regarded himself as a
novelist, first and foremost. Godot was dashed off, as a throw-away piece
almost, between the second and third volumes of his anti-novel trilogy,
Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable (Knowlson 1996). No less ironic is
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the fact that Beckett only broke through when he stopped writing in English
and turned instead to French, where his less than total command of the
language actually worked to his artistic advantage (Cronin 1997).
Most people would agree that contemporary marketing is deeply ironic.
The merest glance across the twenty-first-century marketscape reveals that
irony is everywhere, whether it be Sprite’s image-is-nothing image, or death
brand cigarettes, or Aquafina’s promise that there is no promise, or the serial
insouciance of the Energizer bunny, or Comme de Garcon’s anti-flagship
stores, or IBM Consulting’s parodic skits on management consultancy, or
Baby Ruth candy bars, which cheekily urge calorie-counters to ‘Eat half ’,
or Japanese apparel retailer Uniglo’s claim, ‘you are not what you wear!’ or
Mullet Shampoo, specially formulated for headbangers, has-beens, and the
terminally unhip, or the brilliantly brazen bid by Nike to recruit Ralph
Nader as a celebrity sneakers spokesperson, or Pulmo cough medicine, whose
unforgettable slogan boasts ‘Anything that tastes this bad must be good for
you!’, or indeed, those wonderfully wry brand names such as I Can’t Believe
It’s Not Butter, Too Good to be True, and, doubtless coming soon to a supermarket shelf near you, I Can’t Believe It’s Too Good to Be True (Brown 2004).
Ironic marketing, admittedly, is not new. Indeed, it dates from the Godot
era (e.g. Bill Bernbach’s revolutionary work for VW). The crucial point from
our perspective, nevertheless, is the ironic fact that it was the subordinate
side of struggling novelist, Sam Beckett – the theatrical side – that made
his name and it was only when he wrote in a foreign language that he found
his true voice. The same is true of marketing. We live in a world where
every organisation is marketing-oriented, where all executives have read the
same texts or attended identical customer-care training courses. The really
creative marketers these days are those, ironically enough, who haven’t been
trained in marketing and thus haven’t been contaminated by the all-butubiquitous customer-coddling mindset – Madonna, Eminem, Jeff Koons,
Damien Hirst, Michael O’Leary, Larry Ellison, Don King, Big Kev, Steve
Jobs, Dave Eggers, Jonathan Franzen, etc, etc. From a professional marketing perspective, these people are ‘outsiders’ or ‘amateurs’, individuals who
haven’t been trained properly. But the reality is that they speak a different
language from the rest of the marketing community and succeed because of
it (Brown 2003).
Waiting for P&G
The second Beckett lesson, one that is very familiar to practising managers
and serial entrepreneurs, concerns tenacity. It is impossible to overstate the
importance of perseverance in business (or artistic) life. Hanging on in there
in the face of repeated failure, abject failure, heart-wrenching failure is the
trait that distinguishes biters and bitten in today’s bare-knuckle bear-pit.
Although management gurus constantly chant the mantra of success – how
to attain it, how to sustain it, how to unearth it, how to unleash it – the sad
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reality is that the vast majority of business ventures end in failure (Miller
1990; Ormerod 2005). Most product launches fail, most innovations implode,
most mergers meltdown, most CEOs suck, most R&D blows, most advertising campaigns crater, most long-range forecasts flub, except those that predict periodic gales of ‘creative destruction’ (Schumpeter 1994). History shows
that in business life there is no such thing as untrammelled success, only
organisations, brands, leaders and suchlike that have staved off failure for
longest.
History also shows that those who accept failure, learn from failure, and
absolutely refuse to be beaten by failure are those who win through in the
end. Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Jack Welch, Bill Gates, Ted Turner, Steve
Jobs, Walt Disney, Mary K. Ash, Martha Stewart, Oprah Winfrey, Anita
Roddick, Akio Morita, Leslie Wexner, Howard Schultz, Steve Case, Fred
Smith and innumerable unsung others are brilliant embodiments of Beckett’s
belief that artists should aspire to ‘fail better’ (Farson and Keyes 2002).
Consider James Dyson. He spent twelve years developing his proprietary
bag-less vacuum cleaner. He was ignored by venture capitalists; laughed at
by the industry; and down on his uppers more than once (Davidson 2002).
Today his polychromatic brand bestrides the vacuum cleaner business. Lookalike products are being manufactured by once-disdainful competitors, all of
whom have embraced Dyson’s bag-less revolution. He has ground their faces
into the dirt and hoovered them up for good measure.
Take Tide. The world’s premier soap powder was once the ugly duckling
of the detergent market. Its development caused all sorts of intractable technological headaches. The P&G product police tried to kill it off on
innumerable occasions. However, a ferociously fanatical Proctoid, Dick
Byerly, resolutely refused to let it die. He formed a surreptitious skunk works,
decades before skunk works got the Tom Peters seal of approval, and eventually won the day in 1947, when the brand was launched to unparalleled
consumer acceptance. Not only did Tide clean up, it wiped the floor with
the competition. It does so to this day (Dyer et al. 2004).
And then, of course, there’s Johnson & Johnson. It suffices to record that
the corporate credo of New Brunswick’s baby-powder to Tylenol powerhouse
is ‘failure is our most important product’. As everyone knows, furthermore,
3M adheres to a similar ‘fail toward success’ tenet (Collins and Porras 2000).
Maybe Sam should have gone in to advertising after all.
Waiting for Georgio
Tenacity may have been the predominant personality trait of the indomitable
Irishman, but his aesthetic trademark was brevity. His complete corpus can
be contained in a single volume. In a sixty-year career, he only wrote three
full-length plays, six substantive novels and an (admittedly large) number
of occasional theatrical pieces. His works were not only short, by and large,
but they got shorter and shorter through time. He constantly pared and
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pruned his playlets. His stagings were spare, his cast lists short, his language
compressed to the point of collapse. He revelled in silence, both on-stage
and off. Sam rarely discussed his works, refused to give interviews, avoided
first nights like the plague and famously absented himself from the Nobel
Prize-giving ceremony. He was the minimalist’s minimalist (Alvarez 1974).
Minimalism has its place, to be sure, but many might maintain that the
marketplace isn’t it. Maximalism, rather, is the trait for which marketing
types are renowned. We live, do we not, in a world of superabundant similitude, where countless identikit products compete in every conceivable
product category – cars, computers, consultants, cell phones, cellulite removal
creams, etc. – and where each offering has to shout ever louder in order to
be heard (Brown 2005a). We live, do we not, in a world of ebullient bullhorn brands, where those with the biggest bullhorns win. We live, do we
not, in a world of shrill shilling, piercing pitching and cacophonous commercials, where there is no reward for silence.
Or do we? Sometimes, the best way of selling a product or service is by
not selling. Not only does not-selling sell well, but in today’s Babel of
bellowing brands it imbues sotto voce offerings with an irresistible air of
authenticity, exclusivity and desirability. Godiva chocolates, for instance,
make much of their lo-profile luxuriousness. Muji is the modern master of
minimalist magniloquence. Ikea is an icon of svelte Swedish sensibility.
Armani, indeed, is living proof that silence says chic (Brown 2003). The look
is low-key. The range is narrow. The cut is singular. The fabrics are unique.
The colour palette is muted. The retail stores are few. The ancillaries are
limited. The diffusion lines are confined. The concessions are controlled. The
pre-eminent promotional tactic is celebrity endorsement. The brand whispers class, elegance, restraint. Less is always more where Armani is concerned.
Understatement is the order of the day. Every day.
Waiting for Viagra
In 1939, Samuel Beckett was strolling back to his Parisian apartment in the
company of friends. He got into an altercation with a pushy panhandler, who
stabbed the penniless poet, almost killing him (Gill 2001). Some time later,
Beckett asked about his assailant’s motive, only to be informed that there
was no obvious reason for the crime. He was attacked by chance. He had
avoided death by sheer good fortune. This incident profoundly influenced
Beckett’s outlook and an air of contingency pervades his published work. Luck
looms large in Beckett’s cosmology. Lucky is one of his most memorable
characters.
Luck, admittedly, is something that rarely features on the B-school agenda.
Management scientists live in a luckless universe, near enough. Predictability
is presumed. Uncontrollables are controllable. Robust models and rigorous
frameworks are what we unfailingly aim for. Contingency, chance and kismet
are ruled out of court.
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Set against this, however, business history reveals that happy accident is
extremely important. Most managers will confirm that serendipity played a
substantial part in their careers, their creations, their accomplishments. So
much so, that when it comes to business success, an ounce of good fortune
is worth tons of strategic planning. Happenstance, for example, gave us
Velcro, Kevlar, Corn Flakes, Band Aids, Post-it Notes, and Nike’s waffle
sole, to say nothing of Teflon, penicillin, dynamite, artificial dyes and
polyurethane. McDonald’s fast-food empire was founded by chance, when
milkshake shaker supremo, Ray Kroc, paid a visit to the San Bernadino roadside stand that ordered eight of his machines. Wal-Mart’s much-admired
greeters were first introduced in Crowley, Louisiana, simply because the store
manager was plagued with shoplifters. American Express Travellers Checks
resulted from an executive’s unfortunate experiences on holiday in Europe,
when no one would cash his letters of credit. Pfizer was searching for an
angina alleviant, when it stumbled over Viagra’s ithyphallic side-effects (and
promptly laughed all the way to the sperm bank). Apple owes its success to
Steve Jobs’ reluctant visit to Xerox’s PARC facility in the fall of 1979, where
he fortuitously saw the future in the form of a Graphical User Interface, an
object-oriented programming language, Smalltalk, and a curious pointing
device with three buttons called a mouse (Brown 2005b).
Steven Spielberg, similarly, has had close encounters of the serendipitous
kind, specifically with Close Encounters (Shone 2004). Despite his earlier
success with Jaws, Close Encounters was expected to flatline at the box office.
Cost overruns, production delays, and incessant interruptions from a nearly
bankrupt studio led many industry insiders to fear the worst. Then, of all
things, a series of massive power outages occurred on the east coast. These
publicised the power-outage-inducing aliens in Close Encounters, the movie
went on to earn a record $281 million at the box office, and Columbia Studios
was judiciously snatched from the jaws of bankruptcy. As the old showbiz
saying has it, ‘God made the heavens but luck makes the stars’.
Waiting for Target
Serendipity is one thing, ambiguity is something else entirely. Ambiguity, in
fact, would be Beckett’s middle name, if it weren’t already Barclay. Beckett’s
brilliance lies not simply in his ability to challenge and undermine theatrical
convention – nothing happens, twice – but in his refusal to explain what his
plays mean. When actors asked for guidance, or critics queried the creator,
Sam resorted to stony silence and repeated some variant of ‘I only know
what’s on the page’ or ‘let meanings fall where they may’. However, because
his works were so spare, so allusive, so seemingly symbolic (Who is Godot?;
Does he exist?; Is she coming or not?), a veritable swarm of commentators,
interpreters and dissertation-writing drones promptly descended on the plays,
thereby keeping them permanently in the public eye (Fletcher 2003). Beckett
may not have invented buzz marketing, but he certainly benefited from it.
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Ambiguity, yet again, is viewed with suspicion in contemporary corporate circles. Since the days of Sam Beckett himself, managers have been urged
to eschew ambivalence. In the 1950s, Rosser Reeves made a case for the
Unique Selling Proposition, and relentlessly hammered it home, a bit like
his legendary Anacin adverts. In the 1970s, Al Ries and Jack Trout positioned themselves as the gurus of positioning, where brands aim to occupy
a clear-cut niche in consumer cognition, everything from safety (Volvo) and
freedom (Marlboro) to fortitude (Guinness) and sex (Gucci). The one-wordone-brand tradition is still going strong, though it now trades under terms
such as identity, essence, DNA, spirit, promise, personality, mission, vision,
value, soul, mindshare, and many more (Holt 2004).
Ambiguity, nevertheless, is not to be sneezed at. To the contrary, when
meanings are unclear, consumer intrigue increases, involvement intensifies,
and commitment accumulates. Consider the ‘secret’ recipes that form part of
the perennial appeal of KFC, Coca-Cola, Heinz Ketchup, Tayto Crisps,
Kellogg’s Frosties, Iron-Bru, Red Bull et al. Consider, too, the rise of polymorphic marketing, where brands embrace several strategic options that were
once considered antithetical. Target, the burgeoning housewares outlet,
retails exclusive products to a mass market. Southwest Airlines offers outstanding customer service and rock bottom prices, as does JetBlue. Pixar studios produces movies, such as Toy Story, Monsters Inc. and Finding Nemo, that
appeal to children and adults simultaneously. The Body Shop is back on top
thanks to ‘masstige’, cheap and cheerful cosmetics with middle- to up-market
attributes. Prada’s recently launched perfume is predicated on a plurality of
personalised appeals (‘I am the first and the last. I am the honoured one and
the scorned one. I am the wife and the virgin’). Madonna, meanwhile, adopts
and abandons every image imaginable, from sexually ambiguous virago to
Kabala-espousing supermom. It thus seems that the old strategic matrix
of Michael Porter – either cost or differentiation or focus – is increasingly
inappropriate to our incorrigibly ambiguous times. Contemporary brands
are happy to combine both cost and differentiation (and throw in focus for
fun). Stuck in the middle, or completely outside the box, is the place to be
nowadays (Brown 2005c).
Waiting for GM
The plays, poems and prose of Samuel Beckett are nothing if not paradoxical. They are also monuments to the power, pain and persistence of memory.
From his first ‘proper’ publication on Proust’s philosophy of rembrance, to
his minimalist late-period works such as Worstward Ho or Stirrings Still,
Beckett’s vision is sepia in tone, nostalgic in content. Sure, Sam’s yen for
yesteryear is far from rose-tinted – Krapp’s Last Tape is a painful reminder of
the pain of reminiscence – but the recyclings, refrains, returns and constant
repetitions that punctuate his corpus are timeless testaments to the grip of
the past (O’Brien 1986).
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It almost goes without saying that Western capitalism is not renowned
for looking backward. New and improved, onward and upward, washes
whiter than white, even more for your money, etc., are the leitmotifs of executive suites worldwide. Recent years, nevertheless, have witnessed a retro
revolution, where old is the new ‘new’, the past is ever-present, and future
shock has been superseded by yestershock (Brown 2001). Retro is all around.
Retro autos (such as the P.T. Cruiser and BMW Mini Cooper), retro radios
(shellac outside, digital inside), retro sneakers (P.F. Flyers, Chuck Taylor All
Stars), retro video games (from Pacman to Doom 3), retro rock music (The
Strokes, The Darkness, etc.), retro house-furnishings (courtesy of Restoration
Hardware, Ralph Lauren et al.), retro movies (remakes, comic book rip-offs,
sequels of prequels of Star Wars), retro television (The Muppets are back,
Kermit akimbo), retro communities (Disney’s celebrated Celebration), retro
celebrities (Donald Trump returns, comb-over intacto), retro commercials
(Britney Spears coos ‘Come Alive’ for Pepsi) and countless others, are all the
retro rage.
Retro, moreover, isn’t just an American thing. In Italy, management training programmes based on gladiatorial contests are going from strength to
strength. In France, old-time dance halls, guingelles, have made a dramatic
comeback. In Germany, a wave of nostalgia – ostalgie – is carrying consumers
back to the good old, bad old days when East was awful and West was best.
In Britain, the fabulously successful website, FriendsReunited, is putting
mid-life-stricken multitudes in touch with former school-chums and ageing
teenage heartthrobs. In Ireland, the Titanic is resurfacing once more, in a
retroscape dedicated to the greatest new product failure in history. In
Australia, the outback is back in again, on account of ancient mineral deposits
that are economically viable once more. In Japan, the tamagochi craze of ten
years ago has been revived, only this time on the Internet, itself a monument to retro marketing.
Retro’s a go-go, no doubt about it, but many wonder why it’s happening
and what it all means. For some, retro is all down to demographics, as ageing,
affluent baby boomers buy their Cadillac Escalades while recollecting that
it’s been a long time since they rock ’n’ rolled to Led Zeppelin. For others,
Valhalla’s call is neither here nor there, since retro products seem new to
younger generations of consumers, who regard ersatz nostalgia as the next
big thing. Regardless of the reasons, the key point is that retrospection is
indicative of exhaustion, enervation, expiry, the end. When every idea,
approach, advert, strategy, tactic, marketing plan and suchlike has been tried
several times over, there’s nothing left to do but recycle the old, to keep on
going and going, even when there’s no place to go to that hasn’t been gone
to many times before. Or, as pessimism’s poster boy, Sam Beckett (1959,
p. 418), put it at the climax of his harrowing novel, The Unnamable, ‘You
must go on. I can’t go on. I’ll go on’.
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Waiting for Goblet
The crucial issue Beckett faced, the aesthetic dilemma that drove him to the
depths of despair, involved narrativity. Beckett was writing at the tail end
of Modernism, when every conceivable literary experiment had been tried by
Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound and, not least, James Joyce. Beckett
fell in with, worked alongside and was deeply influenced by, the sainted
scourge of the vocabulary constabulary. Joyce, clearly, couldn’t be surpassed,
so Beckett became different. He reinvented the nature of narrative, novelistic and theatrical alike. He abandoned established narrative conventions –
plot, character, action, resolution even – and replaced them with abstraction,
evasion, austerity, enigma, abrogation, equivocation. With nothing, near
enough (Boxall 2000; Brater 2003; Coots 2001).
Modernist writers famously questioned, usurped and ripped apart the
premises of narrative. But not so management consultants. Storytelling is
the latest corporate craze (Denning 2000). Organisational parables, homilies,
legends, yarns, fables and so forth are being exhumed from the archives,
recounted around short-course campfires and painstakingly recorded in company chapbooks, chronicles, circulars, CSR reports, etc. (Gabriel 2001). Great
American management novels are crash landing in airport bookstores nationwide (Trout 2003). Fairy stories for VPs are being spun by cheese movers,
squirrel wranglers, and giant hairball spitters-cum-pitchers (Denning 2004).
Boardrooms are besieged by quick buck-makers claiming that lessons can be
learned from the published works of Shakespeare, Milton, Machiavelli, Marcel
Proust, Theodore Dreiser and, surely not, Samuel Beckett.
The essential point, of course, is not that narratives are nugatory. On the
contrary, it is widely accepted that storytelling is a primal human activity.
Philosophers, psychologists, anthropologists and theologists agree that, for
good or ill, we live our lives as narratives. The salient point, rather, is that
the repertoire of contemporary management narratives is drawn from a very
narrow range of possibilities. Most are variants of the quest, or rags-to-riches,
or indeed cobbled together from compendia of sci-fi/fairy-tale/fantasy-adventure/murder-mystery/war-story clichés.
Yet, as every road warrior, cubicle conscript, and first-class cabin shogun
can attest, fairy tales rarely come true in business life. The good guys don’t
always win in the end, nor are the heroes rewarded, nor are the culprits
caught red-handed. Nor, for that matter, are the stories as straightforward
as corporate tale-tellers, yarn-spinners and dream-weavers imply. Great brand
stories, for instance, are invariably multi-stories, stories piled upon stories
Arabian Knights-, Canterbury Tales-, Cloud Atlas-style. Harry Potter is a $4
billion brand story, a rags-to-riches tale par excellence. Nevertheless, there’s
much more to the Harry Potter brand story than ‘impoverished author makes
good’. There’s the story of the barnstorming bookselling, there’s the story of
the billion dollar movie franchise, there’s the story of the gratuitous tie-in
merchandise, there’s the story of the anti-witchcraft critics, there’s the story
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of the over-enthusiastic consumers, there’s the story of the on-going, nonstop publicity campaign, there’s the story of the inexplicable causes of
Pottermania, there’s the unresolved story of what’ll happen next now that
the seven-book brand is reaching its climax. Each of these stories draws sustenance from, contributes to, and occasionally contradicts, the other brand
stories. The inevitable narrative upshot is a self-replenishing goblet of fiery
fighting fairy tales (Brown 2005c).
The same, needless to say, is true of the Nokia story, the Sony story, the
Nike Story, the Disney story, the Tesco story, the Boeing story, the Virgin
story, the Coca-Cola story, the Starbucks story, the Harley Davidson story,
the Merrill-Lynch story and suchlike. Once upon a time to happily ever after
is insufficient nowadays. The narratological issues that exercised the Joyces,
Woolfs and Becketts of this world have disappeared from view. They’re long
overdue. We’re waiting for the Waiting for of corporate storytelling.
Waiting for Gates
Although he isn’t exactly everyone’s idea of a better business spokesperson,
Samuel Beckett’s corporate credo cannot fail to strike a chord with twentyfirst-century managers. Some of his precepts are widely shared and much
discussed (irony, tenacity, narrativity), some are commonplace but rarely
commented on (contingency, memory), and some run counter to conventional wisdom yet contain a grain of truth notwithstanding (ambiguity,
brevity). However, there is one strand of Beckettism that is utterly antithetical to common knowledge. And that strand is author-ity.
Amiable though he could be, Samuel Beckett brooked no opposition. He
refused to alter, adapt or amend his work. His plays were staged to his exact,
indeed exacting, specifications. He took legal steps to stop unauthorised or
otherwise illegitimate performances. He resisted all forms of censorship and
abridgement, as well as anything that smacked of editorial control. In private,
admittedly, he was always prepared to compromise – give and take is almost
unavoidable in the theatre – but in public he was a perfectionist, an absolutist, an authoritarian through-and-through. He refused, in effect, to listen
to his customers, be they actors, audiences, producers, directors, commentators or critics; especially not critics (Knowlson 1996).
This anti-customer orientation is unconventional, to say the least.
Customer focus is one of the foundation stones of contemporary business life;
the foundation stone, in fact. Every CEO worth his or her salt is a courtier
of King Customer. Every management guru readily acknowledges the divine
right of consumers and pays appropriate tribute to their suzerainty. Every
marketing strategist subscribes to customer sovereignty, while seeking ever
more extravagant means of currying consumer favour. These days, satisfaction is insufficient. Delight is de rigueur. Enchantment is even better. Only
euphoria will do. Ecstasy is next in line, enrapture thereafter, with ravissement to follow. The G-spot, presumably, awaits (Brown 2003).
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The problem here is not customer satisfaction grade inflation, or the fact
that today’s superlatives ‘have lost most of their charm’, as Beckett once
observed. The problem is that it is possible to become far too customerfocused and to fall into the trap of assuming that customers know best.
Sometimes it is better to step back from total customer orientation and recognise that, far from being always right, the customer is often wrong. Dead
wrong. Innumerable innovative products, services, advertising campaigns,
etc. have been roundly rejected by consumers prior to their triumphant
release, everything from the Sony Walkman to the Boeing 747. It is a
mistake, what’s more, to accept uncritically customer input or listen too
attentively to the murmurings of the market. Consumers may be opinionated – many are – but they aren’t omniscient.
More pertinently perhaps, and irrespective of the received wisdom that
suggests otherwise, it is perfectly possible to be successful in business
without being customer-oriented. Ikea’s maltreatment of customers is legendary – riots and fistfights in the vicinity of its infuriating retail stores are
a regular occurrence – but Ikea’s bottom line is second to none in its sector
(Lewis 2005). Ryanair, the attack dog of European low-cost airlines, is notorious for treating customers like cattle – CEO Michael O’Leary openly boasts
about it – yet Ryanair is one of the most profitable airlines in the western
world (Creaton 2004). Bill Gates has made gigabucks out of ill-disguised
customer disdain, as his bug-ridden products attest. The FCC, no less,
ruled that Microsoft ‘harmed consumers in ways that are immediate and
easily discernible’ (Heilemann 2001, p. 194). However, when it comes to
what really matters on Wall Street, Microsoft can’t be beaten. Belittled, yes;
beaten, never.
Now, none of this means that customers are irrelevant. Business can’t
do business without customers. And that’s that. What it does mean is that
undue customer obsession is unhealthy. Customers have their place, a very
important place. But that place is not on a pedestal. Servility can cause as
many problems as hostility. Although customer satisfaction is vital, customer dissatisfaction is important as well. If they’re not somewhat dissatisfied
– by marketers who intimate that their existing stuff needs to be replaced
or that they suffer from some easily eradicated malady – then consumers
won’t be motivated to put things right by buying what we’re selling. There’s
more to marketing than selling solutions. The problems we have solutions
for have to be sold also. Marketing involves dissatisfying and satisfying
simultaneously (Brown 2004).
Waiting for G5
It follows, then, that instead of continuing to pander to customers, it’s time
to become more Beckett-like in our dealings with them. Rather than strive
to be ever-more consumer-centric, it is better to become congenitally
concept-centric. That is, to situate the brand, the product, the service, the
206
Aedh Aherne
offer, the message, the experience, the something we’re selling, at the centre
of the corporate universe. That’s what Bill Gates does. Microsoft comes first.
That’s what Ryanair does. Fares come first. That’s what Ikea does. First come
first served (eventually). That’s what all great brands do. That’s how great
businesses are built. Business doesn’t come to those who wait on customers.
It comes to those who make customers wait, providing the waiting is
managed properly.
In this regard, it is entirely appropriate that when Waiting for Godot was
remounted in New York, six months after the Miami debacle, it was advertised, not as the ‘laugh sensation of two continents’ but as a very difficult
work, one that is off-putting, offensive and unlikely to appeal to the general
public (Cronin 1997). It was a play for the cognoscenti, the discerning few,
the tiniest proportion of the Big Apple’s inhabitants, seven thousand at most.
Almost inevitably, the theatre was besieged. Godot ran for months. Beckett
never looked back. Thinking different triumphed.
In this regard, it is equally appropriate that Apple’s celebrated ‘think
different’ advertising campaign, the one that cemented the brand’s remarkable comeback, featured not only Einstein, Picasso and Gandhi, but one
Samuel Barclay Beckett. Clearly, it takes one to know one. No one fails better
than Apple. If ever a brand embodied the seven secrets of Sam’s success, it
is the one that aspired to, and continues to aspire to, the singularly Beckettian
state, ‘insanely great’.
It seems to me, in sum, that Samuel Barclay Beckett (1906–89), the unsuccessful Irish novelist who achieved immortality as a French playwright, is a
postmodern marketing inspiration to us all.
References
Alvarez, A. (1974) Beckett, London: Woburn Press.
Bair, D. (1978) Samuel Beckett: A Biography, London: Jonathan Cape.
Beckett, S. (1956) Waiting for Godot: A Tragicomedy in Two Acts, London: Faber & Faber.
–––– (1959) Samuel Beckett Trilogy: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable, London: Calder
Publications.
Boxall, P. (2000) Samuel Beckett: A Reader’s Guide to Essential Criticism, Basingstoke:
Palgrave.
Brater, E. (2003) The Essential Samuel Beckett: An Illustrated Biography, London: Thames
& Hudson.
Brown, S. (2001) Marketing – The Retro Revolution, London: Sage.
–––– (2003) Free Gift Inside!!, Oxford: Capstone.
–––– (2004) ‘O Customer, Where Art Thou?’, Business Horizons, 47 (4), 61–70.
–––– (2005a) ‘The Tripping Point’, Marketing Research, 17 (1), 8–13.
–––– (2005b) ‘Fortune Favors the Brand’, Marketing Research, 17 (2), 22–7.
–––– (2005c) Wizard! Harry Potter’s Brand Magic, London: Cyan Books.
Collins, J.C. and Porras, J. (2002) Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies,
New York: Random House Business Books.
Coots, S. (2001) Samuel Beckett: A Beginner’s Guide, London: Hodder & Stoughton.
Dream of fair to middling marketing
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207
Creaton, S. (2004) Ryanair: How a Small Irish Airline Conquered Europe, London: Aurum.
Cronin, A. (1997) Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist, London: HarperCollins.
Davidson, A. (2002) Smart Luck and Seven Other Qualities of Great Entrepreneurs, London:
Financial Times Prentice Hall.
Denning, S. (2000) The Springboard: How Storytelling Ignites Action in Knowledge-Era
Organizations, Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann.
–––– (2004) Squirrel Inc.: A Fable of Leadership through Storytelling, San Francisco, CA:
Jossey-Bass.
Dyer, D., Dalzell, F. and Olegario, R. (2004) Rising Tide: Lessons from 165 Years of Brand
Building at Procter & Gamble, Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
Esslin, M. (1980) The Theatre of the Absurd, 3rd edn, London: Penguin.
Farson, R. and Keyes, R. (2002) The Innovation Paradox: The Success of Failure, the Failure
of Success, New York: Free Press.
Fletcher, J. (2003) About Beckett: The Playwright and the Work, London: Faber & Faber.
Gabriel, Y. (2001) Storytelling in Organizations: Facts, Fictions and Fantasies, Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Gill, A. (2001) Peggy Guggenheim: The Life of an Art Addict, London: HarperCollins.
Heilemann, J. (2001) Pride Before the Fall: The Trials of Bill Gates and the End of the
Microsoft Era, New York: Perennial.
Holt, D.B. (2004) How Brands Become Icons, Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
Knowlson, J. (1996) Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett, London: Bloomsbury.
Lewis, E. (2005) Great Ikea! A Brand for All the People, London: Cyan Books.
Linzmayer, O.W. (2004), Apple Confidential 2.0, San Francisco: No Starch Press.
Miller, D. (1990) The Icarus Paradox: How Exceptional Companies Bring About Their Own
Downfall, New York: HarperCollins.
O’Brien, E. (1986) The Beckett Country, Dublin: Black Cat Press.
O’Driscoll, A. (1999) ‘The Postmodern Condition, Samuel Beckett and Marketing
Malady’, in S. Brown and A. Patterson (eds), Proceedings of the Marketing Paradiso
Conclave, Belfast: University of Ulster, 96–104.
Ormerod, P. (2005) Why Most Things Fail: Evolution, Extinction and Economics, London:
Faber & Faber.
Schumpeter, J.A. (1994) Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, London: Routledge.
Shone, T. (2004) Blockbuster: How Hollywood Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Summer,
London: Simon & Schuster.
Trout, J. (2003) A Genie’s Wisdom: A Fable of How a CEO Learned to be a Marketing Genius,
Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley.
Wolf, M.J. (1999) The Entertainment Economy: The Mega-Media Forces that are Reshaping
Our Lives, New York: Random House.
Index
Page references in bold indicate figures and tables.
ABC of Chafing Dish Cookery, The (Peter
Pauper Press) 50, 50, 54
ABC of Cocktails, The (Peter Pauper Press)
49, 54
academic publishing 178–80, 181;
marketing field 176
Adams, Douglas 130
Adorno, Theodor 99–100
advance royalties 74
advertising: Apple’s campaign 206;
Orwell’s view 175; promotion of Bibles
27; use of Fight Club 188
Alcott, Louisa May 18
Alexander, Pamela 37
Allen Lane 178
Althusser, Louis 61, 67
Amazon.com 2, 6–7, 11, 24, 48, 91, 110,
178; consumer book reviews 12, 189
ambiguity: in Beckett and in branding
200–1
American Bible Society 22, 27
American Booksellers Association 63
American Express Travellers Checks 200
American Marketing Association (AMA)
167, 168–9, 169, 172–3, 173, 174
American Ornithology (Wilson) 33, 34
Amis, Martin 9, 75, 77, 184; Information,
The 78; Money: A Suicide Note 73, 77–8,
78–80
Amsterdam (McEwan) 171–2
Angelo, Valenti 50
Ann Arbor, Michigan 6
Anna Karenina (Tolstoy) 7
anti-marketing ethos xiii, 14
Apple Computers 196, 200, 206
Arendt, Hannah 119
Armani 199
Arnold, A. 93
Artemis Fowl series (Colfer) 149
artists: celebrity culture 75; in marketdominated society 73
arts: in capitalist culture of
commercialism 96, 98–9, 103;
marketing 166; recent media attention
in UK 75
Asda 6
Atwood, Margaret 12–13, 163
Audubon, John James: Birds of America,
The 32, 32–3, 34–40, 42–3, 44; birth
and early events of life 32–3, 33–4;
illness and death 43–4; Ornithological
Biography 40–1; sales and subscriptions
of books 41–2, 43; self-portrait 33
Audubon, John Woodhouse 43
Audubon, Lucy 34, 36, 44
Audubon, Victor Gifford 43
Austen, Jane see Pride and Prejudice
Australia: example of retro 202
Authority of the Consumer, The (Keat et al )
103
authors: academic 179–80; brands 77;
and celebrity 7; of child-rearing books
88–92; ‘confessions’ sub-genre 12–13;
judged by earnings 97; marketing own
books to publisher 168, 170, 171;
publishers’ management of 74;
situation in times past 5–6; willingness
to interact with consumers 11, 75; see
also name brand authors
Baby and Child Care (Spock) 90–1
Bachman, John 43
Bacon, Francis 47
Baitz, Jon Robin 102
Index 209
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Balanchine, George 69
Balaskas, J. 88
Barnes & Noble 2, 5, 24, 130, 134, 138;
and The Da Vinci Code 63, 64, 65
Barnum, P.T. 10, 102
Barrie, J.M. 11
Barry, Max 14
Basbanes, Nicholas xiii
Batailles, Georges 46
Baum, L. Frank 10
BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation):
‘Big Read’ 8; Radio 4’s The Book Club
116
Beckett, Samuel 195–6; and lessons in
contemporary business condition
196–206
Beckham, Victoria 86
Beilenson, Edna 47, 54
Beilenson, family 47, 50
Beilenson, Nick 58
Bellow, Saul 107, 174
Berman, Eleanor 93
Bertelsmann 4
Bertone, Cardinal Tarcisio 60, 71
Best Friends’ Guide to Surviving the First
Year of Motherhood, The (Iovine) 83,
84–5
bestsellers 4, 110, 178; The Da Vinci Code
60–1, 65; didactic content 184; early
lists 10; Feldman’s conclusions on
106–9; Harry Potter books 146; How
to books on writing 183–4; sold in
supermarkets 6; television features
creating 7–8
bestselling authors 183–4; Fielding and
Bridget Jones’s Diary 184–6; Palahniuk
and Fight Club 186–8; story of
“Gwendolyn Irons” 110
Bewick, Thomas 41
Bible: as all-time bestseller 146;
distribution 21–2; early peddling in
America 10, 28; history 19–20; impact
of printing techniques 20–1;
marketing 18–19, 28–9; new trajectory
and recent trends in selling 27–8;
recent marketing drives 25–7; selling
strategies 22–5, 27
bibliophiles xiii, 2, 86
Binchy, Maeve 188
Bird Biographies (Audubon) 38
Birds of America, The see Audubon, John
James
Birdsong (Faulks) 119
Blaenavon, South Wales 2
Blake, William 11
blockbuster titles 11, 65, 106
Bloom, Harold 99
Bloomsbury (publisher) 4
Bly, Mary (aka Eloisa James) 97
Bodley Head 161
Body Shop, The 201
Boeing 204, 205
Bohn, Henry 38
Bombeck, E. 86
Bonaparte, Charles-Lucien 35, 41
Bonham Carter, Helena 187
book collecting/collectors 46–7, 48–50,
51, 53–4, 57
Book Group, The (TV comedy) 116
book groups: author’s exposure to
114–15, 121, 122; nature of 116–22;
phenomenon of 12, 114, 116, 122–5;
respondents to Hartley’s survey 115,
117–18, 118–19, 120–1, 124; social
aspects 123–4, 125; television 7,
116
Book House Training Center 178
Book of the Month Club 10
Book People, The 6
book proposals 167–8, 173, 174
book reviews: Amazon.com 12, 189;
biography of Alex Higgins 180; The
Da Vinci Code 65
book tours and signings 7, 11, 75
book trade: as dominated by business
concerns 2; huge number of titles
available 2–3, 11; marketing
throughout history of 9–10;
promotional activities for fiction
75–6
bookcrossing/BookCrossers: community
127–8; phenomenon 3, 13, 126,
135–6; tales of 128–35; website
(Bookcrossing.com) 126, 134
Booker of Bookers 8
books: aspects and value of 126, 135–6;
selling of xiii–xiv
Books (shop) 83
Books Etc. 5
Books in My Life, The (Miller) 126–7
bookshops/bookstores 2, 5–6;
babycare/childcare sections 83;
Christian 24–5; Peter Pauper Press
books 47; Virago 163
booktown phenomenon 2
Booth, Cherie 86
Boots circulating library 10
Borah, Rebecca 150
210
Index
Borders 2, 5, 24, 83; and The Da Vinci
Code 64, 65
Bourdieu, Pierre 13
Bowen, Elizabeth 160
branding: ambiguity in 201; Caxton 9;
emotional 14; Harry Potter 158,
203–4; and marketing 76–7; novelists
77; religion 28; success of Apple 206;
see also name brand authors
Brantlinger, P. 99
Brazelton, T.B. 86
brevity: in Beckett and in marketing
198–9
Bridges of Madison County, The (Waller)
63, 65
Bridget Jones: Edge of Reason (Fielding) 186
Bridget Jones’s Diary (Fielding) 7, 184,
184–6; and how to be Bridget Jones
188–91
Britain see United Kingdom
British Copyright Act (1801) 40
British and Foreign Bible Society 22
British Library 163
Brontë, Charlotte 11
Brooke, Samuel 38
Brown, C. 25
Brown, Dan: attitude towards women 68,
69, 71; marketing of Da Vinci Code,
The 66, 68; narrative style 60–1; photo
on jacket of Da Vinci Code, The 65;
researching of Da Vinci Code, The 61,
70
Brown, I. 21
Brown, S. 177
Bryson, Bill 178
Burning Man 135–6, 136
Burns, Robert 33
Burroughs, Edgar Rice 10
Bush, George W. 172
business: and Beckett 196; as dominating
book business 2; failure in 198;
importance of happy accident 200;
literary fiction as 73–4
Business Week 111
Bute, John C., 7th Marquis of Bute 32
Byatt, A.S. 149
Byerly, Dick 198
Callil, Carmen 160, 161–2
Cameron, James 71
Camus, Albert see Stranger, The
Canadian Bible Society 18
Canongate (small publisher) 5, 8
Canterbury Tales (Chaucer) 20, 128
capitalist culture 96; as forward-looking
202; mass production 100
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin (Bernieres) 8,
119
Card, Andrew 168, 171, 172
Care and Feeding of Children, The (Holt)
89
Carey, Mathew 23
Carroll, Lewis 56
Carter, Angela 161, 163
Cartland, Barbara 97
Catesby, Mark 33, 34
Catterall, Miriam 165
Cause Celeb (Fielding) 185
Caxton, William 9
celebrities: ‘artrepreneurs’ 75; bestselling
authors as 184; in book business 7–8;
books by 4, 7, 86; coalescence with
marketing 180
Changing Business of Trade Books, The
(Feldman) 106–9
Channel 4 116
charity shops 3, 48
Chatto & Windus 161, 162
Chaucer, Geoffrey see Canterbury Tales
Cherry Blossoms: Japanese Haiku (Peter
Pauper Press) 57
chick lit 185
child-rearing books see parenting books
Children First (Leach) 91
Chodorow, Nancy 118
Christian Booksellers Association 27
Christian Bookstores Association (CBA)
24, 25
Christianity: Brown and Da Vinci Code,
The 66; and colonialism 21–2; and
consumer culture 28
Christie, Julie 162
Christie’s auctions 32, 48
Christopher Little & Co. (literary agents)
147
Church of the Latter Day Saints 22
cinema see movie adaptations
City Lights bookshop, San Francisco 6
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (movie)
200
CND (Campaign for Nuclear
Disarmament) 162
Cobbet, William 11
Coca-Cola 204
Cold Mountain (Frazier) 7
collecting see book collecting/collectors
colonialism 21–2
Columbia University 96, 106
Index 211
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commercialism/commodification 98–9,
100, 101, 101–4, 104
Commitments, The (Doyle) 11
communication 135–6
confessional novels 185
consumer culture/consumerism: and
commodification of arts 99, 103;
hailing and interpellation 67; Harry
Potter craze 146–7, 151–3, 157;
marketing and branding 76–7, 201;
and motherhood 85; novels engaging
13; and religion 27–8; value of used
books 46, 47, 58
consumer-producers 11–12, 57
consumer researchers xiv, 101; findings
on Harry Potter 149–51
consumption: of books 11–14; of Da
Vinci Code, The 60–1; and different
interpretations of Stranger, The 141–2;
of Harry Potter 147–8; popular fiction
101–2; relationship with production
74–5, 77; traces in used books 46, 57,
58; see also cultural consumption
Cook, Peter 184
cookbooks: celebrity 4; Peter Pauper Press
47–8, 52–3, 56, 58
Cornwell, Patricia 188
Coronation Street 116
Corrections, The (Franzen) 7, 64
Cosmopolitan magazine 188
Costco 6, 64
counter cultural trends 136
Cova, Bernard 125
Coverdale, Miles 21
critics: amateur reviews on Amazon.com
12; on mass culture 104
Cronin, A. 195, 206
cultural hierarchy: assumptions about
tastes 98–9; concerns of cultural
commentators 102–3, 104
cultural industries 2, 73, 181
cultural populism 103
cultural production: literary novelists 73,
74–5; in Money 78–9; views of right,
left and center 99–101
Curry, John Stuart 50
customer focus 13, 204–5
Da Vinci Code, The (Brown): elements of
story 61–3; fanfictions 149; marketing
and consumption of 60–1, 63–5;
readers “hailed” by 67–70; success and
cultural impact 65–6, 67, 70–1
Danford, N. 84
Daniell, D. 21, 27
Darnton, J. 85
Davidson, M.B. 36
Davis, T.F. 158
Dawn of the Dead (movie) 104
De Chernatony, L. 77
De Hamel, C. 20, 22
DeLillo, Don 13
deposit libraries (UK) 40
Derby, Edward Stanley, 13th Earl of
35
Desperate Housewives (TV series) 116
Dibb, S. 181
Dickens, Charles 10, 11, 135, 171,
196
didacticism 184, 190
Diedrick, J. 73, 78
direct-to-market publishing 178–9
Disney 10, 204
Doctorow, E.L. 107
Donne, John 47
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor 171
Doubleday: and The Da Vinci Code 60, 61,
63–4, 65
Doyle, Roddy 11
Du Gay, P. 74, 76
dumbing down 4, 99
DVD Talk 188
DVDs 3, 8
Dyson, James 198
Eagleton, T. 67
Easons 10
eBay: Harry Potter memorabilia 147;
Peter Pauper Press books 46, 47, 48,
56, 57, 58
Edinburgh, Audubon 35–6, 42
editors: author’s experience with Virago
163–4; commissioning role 74; looking
at book proposals 168, 174; textbook
author’s anecdote 103–4
egalitarianism 104–5
Eggers, Dave 196, 197
Eichenberg, Fritz 50
Einstein, Albert 206
Eliot, John 21
Eliot, T.S. 99, 203
Ellington, Duke 51–2
England, Patricia G. 50
entertainment: birth of American
showbusiness 102; effect of
commercialism/commodification
98–9, 100; role of books and authors
106
212
Index
Entertainment Economy xiii, 2, 3, 7,
196; role of publishing 73–4
Entertainment Weekly 146
Erie Canal, New York State 10
Esslin, M. 196
estrangement (Russian ostranenie)
157–8
Ewell, Tom 195
failure 198
Family Christian Stores 24–5
Famished Road, The (Okri) 188
Farrar Straus & Giroux 64
FCC (Federal Communications
Commission) 205
Feldman, Gayle: report on book trade
105–9
feminine, the: and meaning of ‘Virago’
161; in The Da Vinci Code 68–9, 71
feminism: Virago 160, 161, 162, 164,
165
Festive Salads and Molds (Peter Pauper
Press) 48, 49, 53
Fever Pitch (Hornby) 190
fiction: and business 74; cultural
hierarchy 101–2; novels about book
groups 116; publicisation and
promotion 74–5
Fielding, Helen 184, 184–6
Fight Club (Palahniuk) 7, 184, 186–8;
and how to be Tyler Durden 191–2
films see movie adaptations
Fincher, David 187
first editions: Fight Club 186–7; Peter
Pauper Press books 56
Fischer, T. 75
Fitzgerald, F. Scott 97
Fjaerland, Norway 2
Fleming, Katheryn 50
Forbes magazine 146
Ford, Gina 91–2
Ford Motor Co. 188
Forster, Margaret 119
Forsyth, P. 179
Fourth Estate 5
Fowler, Karen Joy 116
Foyles bookshop, London 6
France 2, 202
Frankfurt School 99–100, 181
Franklin, Benjamin 36, 37, 53
Franzen, Jonathan 7, 197
Friends Reunited website 202
Frith, Simon 117, 120
Fugitives and Refugees (Palahniuk) 187
Gates, Bill 198, 205, 206
Geisha Cookbook: Japanese Cookery for
Americans, The (Peter Pauper Press)
52–3, 52
gender identities 118
Georgetown University Library 49–50
Germany: example of retro 202
Germinal (Zola) 18
Gibson, William 13
Gideons Bibles 22
gift: culture of 136; work of art as 73
Glaberson, W. 102
Gladwell, M. 157
Glasgow: Audubon 42
God of Small Things, The (Roy) 119
Goddess in Every Woman 190
Godiva chocolates 199
Golden Multitudes (Mott) 106
Gordon, Y. 88
grandparenting books 93
Greywolf (small publisher) 5
Griffin, W. 26
grocery retailers see supermarkets/grocery
retailers
Guardian 150
Gutenberg, Johannes 20, 27
Gutenberg Bible 18, 20
Hachette Livre 4, 5
hailing: Althusser’s concept 67
Haines, Todd 50
Hall, G. Stanley 89
Hall, J. Prescott 40
Hall, S. 74
Handley, H. 92
Hanks, Tom 5, 70
Harley Davidson 204
Harper & Row 25, 102
HarperCollins 4
Harry Potter books 4, 8, 147–8, 153–4,
155, 156
Harry Potter craze 146–7; findings of
consumer researchers 149–51; forms of
consumption by fans 147–9, 151–2;
implications of consumer findings
156–8; introspective essays on 151,
151–6; multiplying brand stories
203–4
Harry Potter movies 7, 146, 154, 155
Hartley, J.: survey of book groups 12,
115, 117–18, 118–19, 119, 120–2,
124
Havell, Robert ( Jr) 38, 42, 43
Havell, Robert (Sr) 38
Index 213
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Haydon, Benjamin 102
Hays, S. 85, 92
Hazlitt, William 96
Heilemann, J. 205
Heller, Zoë 118
Hensley, Sessalee 63, 64
Herrick, F.H. 35
Hertz, Noreena 14
Higgins, Alex 180
High Fidelity (Hornby) 7
His Dark Materials (Pullman) 8, 149
History of British Birds, A (MacGillivray)
40
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Adams)
8
Hodder Headline 4
Hodges Figgis bookshop, Dublin 6
Hogg, Tracy 89
Holbrook, Morris B. 97
Holiday Punches: Party Bowls and Soft
Drinks (Peter Pauper Press) 54–5
Holt, D. 76
Holt, Dr Luther Emmett 89, 91
Holtzbrinck 4
Horkheimer, Max 99–100
Hornby, Nick 190
Houghton Mifflin 181
Housman, A.E. 50
How to books: on marketing xiv, 193; on
writing bestsellers 183–4
Humboldt’s Gift (Bellow) 107
Huyssen, A. 96
Hyde, L. 73, 136
Jacobson, M.F. 103
Jade Flute: Chinese Poems in Prose, The
(Peter Pauper Press) 55–6
James, Eloisa (aka Mary Bly) 97
Jameson, Robert 36
Japan: example of retro 202
Jardine, Sir William 36
JetBlue 201
Jobs, Steve 14, 197, 198, 200
John Paul II, Pope 60, 68–9
Johnson & Johnson 198
Jonathan Cape 161
Jones, Marey 103–4
Journal of Marketing Management 177
Joyce, James 158, 196, 203
ideology: consumerism 103; cultural
elitism of the right 99; marketing 176;
Virago 165, 166
Ikea 199, 205, 206
Independent, The: Bridget Jones column
185–6
independent bookstores 5, 6, 7
indexers 179
Information, The (Amis) 78
Internet 128, 202; see also websites
interpellation: Althusser’s concept 67
Iovine, Vicki 83, 84–5
Iraq war 171, 172
Ireland: example of retro 202
Irons, Gwendolyn (invented name for
bestselling author) 110
irony: in Beckett and in marketing 196–7
ISBN (International Standard Book
Number) 178
Italy: example of retro 202
lad lit 187
Lagardière 4
Lahr, Bert 195
Lamb, Charles 50
Lange, Heidi 66
languages see translations
Lathers, A.I. 51
Lawson, Nigella 86
Leach, Penelope 86, 89, 91
Leadbeater, Charlie 185
Leaves of Grass (Whitman, Peter Pauper
Press) 50, 55, 55
Leavis, F.R. 99
left: views on popular culture, the
99–100
Levy, Andrea see Small Island
library collections: Peter Pauper Press
books 49–50
Lifeway (book chain) 25
Lipinski, Tara 27
K-Mart 24
Kafka, Franz 140
Kagan, J. 87
Kampung Batu, Malaysia 2
Kaufman, Jason 63–4, 66
Keat, R. 103
Keep the Aspidistra Flying (Orwell) 1
Kerry, John 172
Khayyam, Omar 47
King, Stephen 183–4
King Farouk Publishing 11
Kinsella, Sophie 13
Klein, Naomi 14
Knowlson, J. 195
Knox, Elizabeth 121
Knox, Robert 36
Kroc, Ray 200
214
Index
literary agents 7, 147; festivals 2, 11;
merit 106, 110; prizes 8, 76, 107
literature: and role of cultural hierarchy
101–4
Little Brown 64
Little Women (Alcott) 18
Livemore, Harold 10
Liverpool: Audubon 35
Livingstone, David 22
Lizars, William Home 37, 38
Llosa, Mario Vargas see Vargas Llosa,
Mario
Logos (book chain) 25
Lollard movement 19–20
London: Audubon’s visit 42; context of
Virago 162
London Library 163
Long, Elizabeth 119
Lord of the Rings (Tolkien) 7, 8, 149
Lovely Bones, The (Sebold) 64
Lowenthal, Leo 99–100
luck: in Beckett and in business 199–200
Lury, C. 103
Luther, Martin 20
McClelland, Jack 10
McCracken, S. 185
McCrea, Ruth 49, 58
McCrum, R. 5–6
MacDonald, Dwight 100–1, 101
McDonald’s 200
McEnally, M. 77
McEwan, Ian see Amsterdam
MacGillivray, William 40
Maclaran, Pauline 165
Macmillan 12
McSweeney’s (small publisher) 5
Madame Bovary (Flaubert) 116
Madonna 7, 28, 197, 201
Maffesoli, Michael 123–4
Mail on Sunday YOU magazine, The 116
Mailer, Norman 9, 14, 196
management consultants 176, 203
Man Booker Prize 8
Manchester: Audubon 38
Marcus Aurelius 47
Marcuse, Herbert 99–100
marginalia: in used books 46, 51–2, 57,
58
Marilyn Manson 191
marketing: academic 176; and antimarketing 14; Audubon’s instincts for
42–3; aversion to 167, 169–71, 172,
173; Beckett and 196, 197, 206;
Bibles 18–19, 20, 22–5, 27, 28–9; of
books and the arts 166; critique of
175–7, 181; Da Vinci Code, The 60–1,
63–5, 66; danger of excesses 157, 158;
different meanings 169, 171–2; fiction
inspired by 13; Harry Potter hype 154;
in history of book trade 9–10;
imagination 76, 80; innovations
building up readership 11; irony in
197; learning the art of 167;
maximalism and minimalism 199;
myopia 76–7; new role of editor 106;
novelists’ involvement in 75–6; and
personal selling 179–80; as
representation of company 168–9; and
spectacle 181; students studying
175–6; success of untrained outsiders
197; textbooks on 170, 175–6, 193;
tools and techniques in publishing 9;
used books 47, 56–7; Virago 162, 164,
165–6
Marketing and Feminism (Catterall et al)
165
marketing researchers xiv, 101
Maslin, Janet 65
mass culture: critics’ attitude towards
104; MacDonald’s attack on 100–1;
views of ideological right 99; views of
political left 100
Maushart, S. 88
Mazur, L.A. 103
Mechling, J. 93
media tie-ins 7, 74
Melting Pot: A Cookbook of All Nations, The
(Peter Pauper Press) 52, 58
Memoirs of a Geisha (Golden) 119
Men are From Mars, Women are from Venus
(Gray) 188
merchandise: from Bible 25–6; Harry
Potter 146, 150
Merrill-Lynch 204
Miami: US premiere of Waiting for Godot
195
Microsoft 205, 206
middlebrow culture 101
Miller, Henry 126–7
Miller, V. 27
Miller, W. 106
mimesis 119
missionaries 21–2, 28
Mitchell Library, Glasgow 42
modernist experimental literature 158,
203
Modleski, T. 104
Index 215
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Money: A Suicide Note (Amis) 73, 77,
78–80
monopoly rights: literary ownership 73–4
Montolieu, France 2
Moore, L. 27
Moran, J. 11, 13–14
Morrison, Toni 141
Mortification (Robertson) 12–13
motherhood: advice books 84, 86–8, 92;
and consumerism 85; experiences of
pregnancy 85–6; ‘expert’ authors 89
Mott, Frank L. 106
movie adaptations 7, 8, 102; Bridget Jones
books 184–5, 186; Fight Club 187;
Harry Potter stories 146, 154, 155
Muji 199
multi-media corporations 4, 5, 102
Muniz, A. 77
Murdoch, Iris 183
Murdoch, Rupert 102
music downloads/file-sharing 3, 136
Nader, Ralph 197
name brand authors 4, 7, 11, 14
Napster 136
narrativity: Beckett and corporate
storytelling 203–4
National Book Awards 107
National Book Foundation 116
National Endowment for the Arts (NEA)
3
Natural History of Carolina, The (Catesby)
33
NDP Group 149–50
Neighbours (TV soap opera) 127
Net Book Agreement: abolition 5
New Contented Little Baby Book, The (Ford)
91–2
New Press, The 5
New York: impact of opening of Erie
Canal 10; success of Beckett’s Godot
206
New York Times 64, 65, 149
New York Times Book Review 65, 107
Newcastle upon Tyne: Audubon’s
meeting with Bewick 41
News Corporation 4
niche brands/marketing 9, 201
Nicholas of Hereford 19
Niedecker, Lorine 51
Nike 188, 197, 200
Nobel, Elizabeth 116
Nokia 204
Norton, Edward 187
nostalgia: Beckett 201
novelists: as brands 77; as cultural
producers 74–5; imagination 80;
marketing communications 75–6
O’Connor, Joseph 7, 118
O’Guinn, T. 77
O’Leary, Michael 197, 205
Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination
(Fielding) 186
online marketing and selling 6–7, 134;
Peter Pauper Press books 47, 56–7
Oprah Winfrey 7, 12, 116, 133, 170
Ord, George 35
Ornithological Biography (Audubon) 40–1,
43
Ortega y Gasset, José 99
Orwell, George 1, 2, 175
Other, The: awareness of 124–5;
imagined by reading 118–19
Ottakers 5
Over Our Dead Bodies (Thompson) 162
Oxfam 3, 48
Packard, Bill 169
Paisley Public Library 42
Palahniuk, Chuck 12, 184, 186–8
Pan Macmillan 4
Paper Moon (movie) 24
Parati, Brazil 2
parenting books: ideologies 92–3; massive
growth in sales 83–4; readers 85–8;
writers 88–92
Paris: Audubon 42; Beckett 195–6, 199;
Da Vinci Code tour 69–70
Patchwork Planet, A (Tyler) 120
Pearson 4, 5
Penguin 4; innovation of paperbacks 11,
178
Peter Pauper Press books: attractiveness
and collectibility 46, 47–8, 56, 57–8;
authors’ passion for collecting 48–50,
52–6; inscriptions and marginalia
51–2
Pfizer 200
Philadelphia: Audubon 33–5
Picasso, Pablo 206
Pilger, John 75
Pitt, Brad 187
Pixar 201
Plato 99
poetry: Peter Pauper Press books 47,
55–6, 57
political activism: Virago 162
216
Index
polymorphic marketing 201
popular culture 98–9, 99–100;
significance of book groups in UK 116
Porter, Michael 201
postmodern marketing 206
postmodern sociology 123–4
postmodern statistics (PoMoStats) 105,
108–9, 110
Potter, Beatrix 11
Pound, Ezra 203
Prada 201
Pratchett, Terry 135
prices: books sold in supermarkets 6, 11
Pride and Prejudice (Austen) 7, 8, 18, 119,
186
production: relationship with
consumption 74–5, 77
Profile (small publisher) 5
promotion: authors’ willingness to meet
consumers 11; literary novelists 74–5;
support from media synergies 4; trade
strategies for fiction 75–6
Proust, Marcel 11, 201, 203
Psychological Care of Infant and Child
(Watson) 89–90
Publisher’s Weekly 107–8
publishing houses: of Bibles 25; mergers
in 1960s 10; small 5; takeovers by
big corporations 102; venture
capitalism 74; see also under names of
publishers
publishing industry: book group activities
116; celebrity in 7–8; competition
2–3; consolidation 3–5; convergence of
commerce and culture 2; distribution
channels 5–7, 74; marketing tools and
techniques 9; as part of entertainment
economy 73–4; transformations
through marketing 178
Pulitzer Prizes 107
Qatar 32
Qu’ran 21
Radford, Jean 160
radio: BBC’s The Book Club 116
Radway, J. 101
Ragtime (Doctorow) 107
railway station bookstalls 10
Random House 4, 61, 65, 163
Rassuli, K.M. 9
Rathbone, family 35
readers: of motherhood manuals 85–8;
relationships with books 126; tales of
BookCrossers 128–35; see also book
groups
readings 11, 75
Reeves, Rosser 201
Reformation 20–1
religious publishing: religion and
consumer choice 27–8; technological
and religious change 25–7
retro 202
Revell (Bible publisher) 25
Richard and Judy 7, 12, 116, 133
Ries, Al 201
right, the: views on literary taste 99
Roof, W. 27
Rowland, W.G. 11
Rowling, J.K. 116, 146; see also Harry
Potter books
Royal Society of Edinburgh 36–7
royalties 66, 74, 111
Rubin, J.S. 101
Rubin, Steve 63–4
Rushdie, Salman 8
Russian Formalists 157–8
Russian Proverbs (Peter Pauper Press) 53
Ryanair 205, 206
Sage, Lorna 160
St-Sulpice Church, Paris 70, 71
Salesman (documentary movie) 24
Sam’s Club 64
Samuelson, A. 92
Sartre, Jean-Paul 140
Sayings of Buddha, The (Peter Pauper
Press) 55
Scherman, Harry 10
Schor, Juliet 14
Schwartz, B. 103
Scott, Sir Walter 35–6
Seattle: riots 188
Sebold, Alice 135; see also The Lovely Bones
Self, Will 77
self-help: in Bridget Jones’s life 189; in
Fight Club 192
self-publishing: academics 179; rise of
11–12
selling books: academic publishing
179–80; different views xiii–xiv; see
also online marketing and selling
Seuss, Dr 50
Shakar, Alex 14
Shakespeare, William 10, 203
Shaw, George Bernard 178
Shields, Carol 135
Shklovsky, Victor 157–8
Index 217
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Shorris, E. 103
Short History of Nearly Everything, A
(Bryson) 178
Simple Hawaiian Cookery (Peter Pauper
Press) 48
Sinbad (talk-show host) 27
Sinclair, May 160
Sinclair, Upton 14
Sitwell, Sachaverell 44
Small Island (Levy): in tales of
BookCrossers 128–9, 129, 130, 131
Smith, Dag 178
Smith, Zadie 7, 119
Smithsonian Institute Archives: Duke
Ellington Collection 51–2
social critique: Amis’s Money 77–8, 80
social life: book groups 122–5
Solomon Key, The (Brown) 66
Sony 204
Sony Walkman 74, 205
Sotheby’s 48
Southwest Airlines 201
Spare Rib 164
Spender, Stephen 134
Spielberg, Steven 200
Spock, Benjamin 89, 90–1
Starbucks 204
Star of the Sea (O’Connor) 7, 118
Star Trek 149
Stone, Rob 18
storytelling: brandspeak 76–7; corporate
craze for 203–4; importance to editors
168; portraying lived experience 128;
role in social critique 77–8
Stranger, The (Camus) 138–45
Strinati, D. 103
Stupid White Men (Moore) 116
subscription sales: Audubon’s works 39,
40, 41–2, 43; Catesby 33
Substance of Fire, The (Baitz) 102
supermarkets/grocery retailers 6, 11
Survivor (Palahniuk) 187
Swann (auction house) 48
symbolic capital: Da Vinci Code, The 70,
71
Syme, John 36–7
Synge, J.M. 49–50
Taliaferro, J. 10
Target 24, 201
Tarzan 10
tastes: assumptions about 98–9
technological developments 11; invention
of steam press 10; printing and
production of Bibles 20–1; and selling
Bibles today 25–6
television: daytime shows recommending
books 116; features boosting book sales
7–8
tenacity: in Beckett and in business life
197–8
Tesco 6, 204
text messaging 3; Bible translated into
language of 26
Al-Thani, Sheik Khalifa Bin-Hamad 32
Thank You for Not Reading (Ugresic)
183
Thomas Nelson (Bible publisher) 25
Thomas, Scarlett 13
Thompson, Dorothy 162
Thoughts of Chairman Mao, The 146
Time magazine 146
Titanic (liner) 202
Titanic (movie) 71
Todd, R. 8
Toll, R.C. 102
Tolstoy, Leo 7
translations: Bible 19, 20–1, 22; Harry
Potter books 146
Trefusis, Violet 160
Trial, The (Kafka) 140
Trinity College, Connecticut 50
Trout, Jack 201
Twain, Mark 6, 10, 11, 196
Tyler, Anne 120
Tyndale, William 20, 21
Tyndale (Bible publisher) 25
Ugresic, D. 183, 184
UK Chartered Institute of Marketing 175
Unilever 175–6
Unique Selling Proposition 201
United Kingdom (UK): book groups 12,
116, 117; economic power of
publishers and booksellers 74; example
of retro 202; housewives’ choice of
literature 96–7; popularity of
Harry Potter 150; recent sales in
parenting books 83–4; visual
‘artrepreneurs’ 75
United States (US): Bible selling 23–5;
book groups 12, 116; mass culture
101; mothers reading child-rearing
manuals 88; popularity of Harry Potter
150
university education: marketing texts 175
University of San Francisco University
Library 50
218
Index
University of South Florida Library 47,
50
Unnamable, The (Beckett) 202
Up from Slavery (Washington, Peter
Pauper Press) 51
urban/regional regeneration 2
used books: growing market for 47, 48,
56–7; in tale of BookCrosser 130;
traces of consumption 46–7, 57, 58
Van den Haag, E. 100
Van Riel, C. 76
Vanity Fair magazine 67
Vargas Llosa, Mario 101–2
“Veggie Tales” 25–6
Viagra 200
Victorian era: prominence of the Bible
23–4
videos: ‘Veggie Tales’ 25
Viereck, P. 100
Vintner’s Luck, The (Knox) 121
Virago Press 160–6
Virgin 204
Viviparus Quadrupeds of North America, The
(Audubon) 43
Vogt, William 41
Waiting for Godot (Beckett) 195, 196, 206
Wal-Mart 6, 24, 200
Walsh, J. 178
Warner Brothers 146, 147, 150, 155
Washington, Booker T. 51
Waterstone’s 2, 5, 134, 163, 178–9, 180
Watson, Dr John B. 89–90, 91
websites: Harry Potter craze 148–9, 150;
and used books market 48, 51; see also
Internet
Weems, Mason Locke 10
Weldon, Fay 13
Wernerian Society, Edinburgh 36, 40
W.H. Smith 5, 10
Wharton, Edith 47
“What Would Jesus Do?” movement
(WWJD) 25, 26–7, 28
White, Antonia 160
Whiteley, N. 103
White Teeth (Smith) 119
Whitman, Walt 11, 50, 55, 55
Wilde, Oscar 11
Wilson, Alexander 33, 34, 35
Winston, K. 28–9
Wolf, Naomi 86–7
Womak, K. 158
Woman’s Press, The 164
women: in book groups 114–15, 117,
118, 120, 125; identity as mother
124; resonances of The Da Vinci Code
68–9
women’s writing: Virago 160, 162, 163,
164, 165
Woolf, Virginia 11, 101, 158, 203
Woolworths 178
Word (Bible publisher) 25
World Book Day 8
World Wide Web see Internet; websites
Wycliffe, John 19–20
You’ve Got Mail (movie) 5
Zaid, G. 3
Zen 47, 189
Zola, Émile 18
Zondevan (Bible publisher) 25
Zullo, Kathryn and Allan 93
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