For your Friday Afternoon: TWELVE Steps to Better Book Publishing

In case you missed it" Twelve's Editor-In-Chief penned an article for Publishers Weekly recently, describing what publishers can do to succeed in an increasingly difficult industry. Most of the advice boils down to simply being realistic.

We are acquiring and publishing too many books. We buy them opportunistically, and at times thoughtlessly. We edit and launch them too quickly. We market them carelessly and ephemerally. Too often, we abdicate our responsibility to be filters, guides, guardians and gatekeepers. And now, as in many other industries, we are suffering the effects.

There's some humor, luckily, to take the edge off of this bleak assessment. Karp supports his claims by taking the reader on a tour of his local bookstore-- pointing out some dazzlingly superfluous works:

Who could resist a history of the potato, titled, of course, Potato. Amazingly, this wasn't the only work available on the subject. There's also The Potato: How the Humble Spud Rescued the Western World. Wasn't it intellectually responsible of the publisher to limit the scope of the subtitle to the Western world?

To read the rest, including twelve specific steps to a more sustainable publishing model, and more books that lack reasons to exist, click here.