There's to be no manuscript purchases made at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, the undigested whale that is giving the little minnow Riverdeep some serious indigestion.
Why would a publishing house want manuscripts, anyway? No one's buying books. Why pay authors an advance for something unwanted? That's good money thrown away when there's really not much money to throw anywhere.
According to Josef Blumenfeld of HMH, it's only a temporary measure. Editors are banned from trawling the agent pool for new manuscripts. Needless to say, the literary agents are in shock. A publisher not buying? It's unheard of.
HMH can sell what they already have, what's already paid for, and make money there. No point in investing in a new book unless it's got blockbuster potential. Sure there's a ban on buying new, but if Stephen King or the ubiquitous Mr. Grisham were to drop off a manuscript for publication, it would indeed be published.
There's been no talk of changing another one of publishing's old bad habits. The outrageously expensive custom of printing up huge orders, and then accepting returns when the books don't sell, hasn't been jettisoned. The whole print-on-demand concept isn't being floated as an alternative to creating books that end up as landfill pulp.
No agents need apply to HMH, so they'll stop calling since it's a waste of their precious time. And what happens when things calm down in the financial markets and HMH wants to acquire again? Will they have editors in house to do a bit of reading, or will they have sacked the extraneous editors who weren't needed because HMH wasn't acquiring?
But if Houghton Mifflin Harcourt doesn't produce books, what business are they in? Reprinting old titles?
As an author, this is very bad news. It's hard enough to break into the business, and it's been made more difficult with the loss of a major publisher. But I have a job, and writing is merely a deeply held dream. For those employed by Barry O'Callaghan's behemoth, they're seeing more of Captain Ahab in their boss, and they're hoping to be the Ishmaels who survive.
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