Of Long Tail towns and Long Tail books

“Stuck” was the word, all right. The Budget Inn in the Tom’s Brook–Strasburg area of the Shenandoah Valley lacked WiFi, the toilet overflowed, and the window curtains didn’t cover all.

Even at around $50 a night, a fraction of lodging costs in some larger cities, Carly and I had hoped for a little more. Tom’s Brook (pop. 255), moreover, was no New York, London, Paris or Tokyo in cultural attractions—it appeared to offer just a Civil War battlefield.

The book parallel

What does this have to do with books? Actually a lot. Granted, we need Long Tail towns, small friendly places with great truck-stop restaurants. In fact, I think far more highly of the Tom’s Brook-Strasburg area than the above paragraph would suggest; just look at the scenery (photo info here). But can you imagine Planet Earth without New York as well? Large publishing houses offer valuable backlists, often but not always come with superior copy editing and promotion, and can pay authors better than can garage operations. I’d also like at least some publishers to have the financial wherewithal to fight freedom-of-expression battles against the megalomaniacs in Washington, D.C.

This is why, although I’m just as opposed as ever to the elitist Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act and am appalled by the inefficiencies of typical Manhattan publishers, my goal is balanced copyright law as opposed to, “Death to Random House and HarperCollins.” See a copyright-related debate now going on between me and and others, including PARC’s Bill Janssen, a regular and much-appreciated TeleBlog commenter with whom I often disagree.

Complexities: Yes, of course

I won’t dismiss the complexities here. For example, in lobbying for grotesquely expanded copyright terms and anticonsumer measures like the present DMCA, have the large publishing houses actually increased their reliance on D.C. and thus lessened their ability to fight First Amendment battles? And how about the fact that Random House, the biggest conglomerate in American publishing, isn’t even U.S.-owned? Same for some other big players.

Even so, all in all, as much as I appreciate Long Tail publishers, I see a role for the big houses, too; and I would caution against 28-year copyright proposals and other overreactions to the Bono that would needlessly jeopardize the well-being of the Leviathans.

Speaking of big vs. small

Check out Thomas Nelson CEO Michael Hyatt‘s list of the top ten publishers in the United States, with their market shares: Random House (17.2 percent), HarperCollins (13.3 percent), Simon & Schuster (9.2 percent), Penguin (8.7 percent), Hachette (5.9 percent), Thomas Nelson (4.8 percent), St. Martin’s (3.2 percent), Tyndale (1.9 percent), John Wiley & Sons (1.7 percent) and Scholastic ((1.6 percent).

The top ten publishers racked up 67.5 percent of sales through the retail channels that Nelson tracks. In a somewhat related vein, best-sellers are not remaining on the lists as long as before. And because so many come from large publishers, this might suggest that even with copyright law tilted in favor of the big boys, the Random Houses are far from invulnerable in this one way, at least.

(Nelson pointers via MobileRead.)