In *Big Fiction: How Conglomeration Changed the Publishing Industry and American Literature*, Dan Sinykin takes us through the major changes in the American publishing industry from the late 1950s to today. This book isn’t just for academics—it’s for anyone who loves books and wants to understand how the business side of things has shaped what we read.

Sinykin starts by setting the scene in the late 1950s at Random House, back when the company was known for its intellectual discussions and literary passion. But things began to change in 1965 when RCA bought Random House, marking the start of big corporations taking over publishing houses. By the 1970s, the focus shifted from literary quality to profitability, which had a huge impact on the kinds of books that got published.

The book looks at four key areas of the publishing world to show these changes: the mass-market books by popular authors like Danielle Steel, trade publishers who mixed genre fiction with literary fiction, nonprofits like Graywolf Press trying to keep literature pure from commercial pressures, and the employee-owned W. W. Norton. Through these examples, Sinykin shows how conglomeration affected not just what got published, but who got to be published.

One of the most interesting parts of *Big Fiction* is how it looks at the experiences of women and authors of color in this changing industry. Sinykin highlights authors like Toni Morrison, who used her writing to reflect on her personal experiences with the industry. He also analyzes works by a wide range of novelists, from E. L. Doctorow to Stephen King, showing how industry trends are mirrored in their stories.

Thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for the opportunity to review a temporary digital ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.

While reading this well-researched and thought-provoking book, there were times when I felt like we should just burn down publishing as it exists today and start fresh. How can so many smart people make such a mess of things? Sinykin does try to stay upbeat about literature as an art form and reminds us readers and writers of our responsibilities. But I still came away from this book rather depressed about the publishing business overall. That said, this is one of the few recent books I've been recommending to all my writer friends since I read it.

"Big Fiction" by Dan Sinykin is a literary rollercoaster that takes you on a wild ride through a landscape of imagination and intellect. Sinykin weaves a tapestry of intricate stories, each one a universe of its own. The characters are vibrant, flawed, and utterly human, making it impossible not to invest emotionally in their journeys.

What sets this book apart is Sinykin's ability to seamlessly blend genres. It's part mystery, part fantasy, and entirely engaging. The narrative unfolds with rhythmic prose that keeps you hooked from the first page to the last. The author's exploration of big ideas – from the nature of storytelling to the essence of humanity – adds layers of depth to the novel.

"Big Fiction" is not just a book; it's an experience. Sinykin's writing is a literary dance, and readers will find themselves twirling through a captivating narrative that challenges and entertains in equal measure. If you're a fan of bold storytelling and enjoy getting lost in the intricate maze of a well-crafted narrative, this book is a must-read. Sinykin has delivered a literary masterpiece that leaves a lasting imprint on the soul.

I am autistic with a side heap of ADHD. People like me develop special interests, and once we do, we want to know EVERYTHING. The publishing industry is one of my special interests. I baulked at a 186 quid PDF (the ePub version is now available on the Columbia University Press website for mere $29.99) so I was delighted to get approval from NetGalley and receive a free copy. This did not influence my review.

University presses really hate selling books. (The hardcover is $100.) It's a bit ironic to read a book about Big Publishing, especially the parts focused around sales and acquisitions, released by an institution allergic to readers. It's also unedited, which I think is normal with university presses, but in this case would have made a world of a difference. Because while out of the 300 pages of the PDF the first 60 are 'Introduction' and the last 40 'Glossary', not to mention 'Conclusion' which is not really a conclusion but an extra chapter with sub-chapters, those pages are absolutely packed with information.

I took lots of notes. And some of them are delightful. 'To make every American woman aware of Danielle Steel,” wrote Walters, “Dell will spend $300,000” (about $1.4 million in 2022 dollars) “on every promotion gimmick known to the book trade, from television, radio, and newspaper advertising to shopping bags and spectacular bookstore displays.”' I had no idea Danielle Steel was manufactured by the publisher. 'The author of a history of mass-market paperbacks that was published in 1984 ended his account with disdain for what the format had become: “product is the only fair term to describe the current output of the paperback industry. The paperback business in the 1980s is characterized by a failure of imagination, crass pandering to lowest-common-denominator tastes, and a slavish adherence to supposedly sound management practices that limit creativity and risk taking.”' This author is probably employed at an university press now. 'Soon tours had become so popular that they had led to “author gridlock.” Too many authors were competing with each other, and too many lacked the media training to make it worth their publisher’s while. By 1998, Publishers Weekly declared that “the heyday of literary author tours is clearly over.”' That didn't age well, Publishers Weekly.

I kept the order in which those excerpts appear in the book, though. We move from 1978 to 1984 to 1998. In the meantime, the launch of Nielsen BookScan in 2001 happens. This plagues the entire book. There is neither chronological, nor logical coherence to it (the chapter on Norton Press being an exception). Big Fiction meanders between focusing on one author, one press, the industry at large, a star agent, back to the author, anecdotes from Sinykin's meetings with authors and publishers alike, genres… I have taken eight weeks to read it, because reading it is work, while I felt the author enjoyed writing it very much. Which is not a bad thing, but I felt like I should have read it a few times before being able to read it and retain the information.

To my great (positive) surprise, self-publishing actually receives more than a mention in 'Conclusion'. So does the infamous case of the American court blocking the merger between Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster, and in the meantime I found out how convoluted the history of those has already been:

'Times Mirror, a newspaper company, bought New American Library (NAL), a mass-market publisher, in 1960, inaugurating what I call the conglomerate era. Times Mirror hired McKinsey, a consulting firm, to restructure NAL, with dire results that I chronicle in the first chapter. The previous year—1959—Random House became the first major house to go public and used the influx of cash to acquire Knopf in 1960. In 1961, it acquired Pantheon—hiring André Schiffrin in 1962. In 1965, RCA, an electronics company, acquired Random House. Doubleday acquired radio and television stations in 1967, and the New York Mets in 1980. Time Inc. acquired Little, Brown in 1968. A Canadian communications company acquired Macmillan in 1973. Bantam went to IFI, an Italian conglomerate that owned Fiat, the car company, in 1974. Simon & Schuster went to Gulf + Western in 1975, Fawcett to CBS in 1977. As we will see, it hardly stopped there. [...] [In] 1991, at the position from which its president, Richard Snyder, could say with impressive frankness, “We are not a publisher, we are now a creator of copyrights for their exploitation in any medium or distribution system.” Books were now content.'

This is what I came for! What follows is what I as a reviewer call 'unfortunately'. (A mess.) Long story short, the author has chosen a[n un]certain format – the chapters often focus on one author, such as Steel or Toni Morrison (there's a surprising number of references to Toni Morrison specifically throughout the book), but constantly takes detours. Unless it's the authors that are the detours. I'm not sure. Sometimes Big Fiction focuses on the format, as its chapter titles suggest. (Trade paperbacks got a lot of hate in the industry, because they sold too well, thus cheapening the art of writing, which is the sort of snobbery that continues to this day.) Then it's about Chuck Palahniuk. With a bit about Toni Morrison and agents' nicknames. ('Binky!') The bibliography of Irvine Welsh. All of this is – to me – very entertaining. But it doesn't feel like finished work; it feels like a compilation of research notes. The fact that what I received from NetGalley was an uncropped PDF, where half of the page was blank space – and which didn't even contain links to the footnotes, and footnotes are already next to useless in e-books – didn't help.

Conclusion: I have no regrets. I have learned a lot, enjoyed a lot, took a lot of breaks, and got whiplash. Recommended for people who have a special interest in publishing industry and don't have ADHD. And buy $100 hardcovers.

In “Big Fiction,” Sinykin traces the corporate history of publishing in post-war America, and argues that the influence of conglomeration and corporate thinking has shaped the way fiction is written and read.

There are a lot of names in this book, which made me long for little inset pictures so I could stick a face to all of the publishers and agents in the 50s, or some sort of ecological flowchart of which companies have absorbed other ones and when. Conversely, I wondered whether or not having some details about the actual numbers of sales—BookScan style—would have been illustrative. That said, there’s a lot of great history and color in BIG FICTION. I loved hearing about the habits of all the GIs who came back from WWII and were willing to give a wide range of novels a try. Good stuff on E.L. Doctorow, one of those guys you’ve kind of heard of forever. Learning about book supply chains before the internet was fascinating, and reading about Michael Crichton and Danielle Steele, and how their careers were engineered, was bone-chilling and great.

Yes, it's an academic book, but it's a great read, and what a killer cover!

I don’t always buy the analysis of novels that Sinykin portrays, but having this sort of materialist history is useful, especially in light of the antitrust cases, Amazon’s market dominance, CoHo’s self-publishing her way to the bestseller list, and what we’ve all been reading about how few non-white editors and authors actually are given a chance in the industry.

In the introduction, Sinykin draws readers’ attention to the colophon, a symbolic lens for thinking about all of the people, not just the author, who are involved in getting a book published. This reminded me of Malcolm Harris very politely listing all the people involved in the making of his most recent book, down to the editorial assistants.

Thanks to both NetGalley and the publisher Columbia University Press for an advance copy of Big Fiction: How Conglomeration Changed the Publishing Industry and American Literature, by Dan Sinykin.

This is a comprehensive look at the changes in the publishing world over the last few decades, particularly with respect to fiction, but other genres, as well. With the consolidation of many independent publishing houses into multinational conglomerates have come sweeping changes in publishing practices — in what gets published and by whom. I’m not involved in the book trade, but have a great interest in how fiction gets published in this country. And in particular, the leveraging of profits over writing quality. As smart as it is ambitious, this book sill be eye-opening to those of us who love books. It’s hard to be okay with the business side of publishing. We cling to our illusions, I guess. But there’s a lot to learn here, a lot we should all be aware of, and Sinykin is a wonderful guide to the territory.

Thanks to NetGalley and Columbia University Press for the ARC of this title.

This does a masterful job of threading the needle between academic research of this era of publishing and making that accessible for someone like me. This occasionally falls back on the more dissertation-y "here's what I'm going to talk about in this chapter, [talks about the topic], in my next chapter I will talk about", but when it just gets down to covering case studies of how authors, editors, and publishing houses of all types adapted or reacted to the conglomeration that happened from the fifties through today, it really shines.

I really loved about 1/3 of this book and the struggle I had was that this excellent third of a book was interspersed with and continually interrupted by unwelcome and distracting anecdotes and I have no idea who thought these were necessary or advisable, such as:

"E.L. Doctorow stood at the podium to accept the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) Award for Fiction. Fifty-nine years old, he had won the NBCC once before for RAGTIME, in 1975, and the National Book Award for WORLD'S FAIR in 1986. But now he was not in a celebratory mood. He looked out from his warm eyes set beneath his pronounced male pattern baldness..."

This chapter opening is one example of the unnecessary and distracting approximations of the techniques of narrative journalism that thread themselves through the book. A better approximation would have chosen to open with an active scene, not a guy standing there with his 'warm eyes set beneath his pronounced male pattern baldness.'

But more important, what is this kind of writing doing in this book? The marketing discussions are interesting. They don't need to be jazzed up. Again and again the good points of the book were vagued over by this quest to make the book zingy.

And it's not just the limp anecdotes I was distracted by. It's also the hyperbolic tone. For instance. Was it really necessary to name a chapter "How Women Resisted Sexism and Reinvented the Novel"? I don't think so. This kind of writing might work in WIRED or ROLLING STONE, where hyperbole is part of the charm, but in this book, with such an important subject, I wasn't charmed.

My thanks to both NetGalley and the publisher Columbia University Press for an advance copy of this book dealing with the changes in the publishing business since the end of World War II and how this has changed the reading habits of people, and effected the careers of certain authors, casting some into obscurity, and meteoric heights for others.

Over the long time that I have been involved in the book trade, there have been a huge amount of changes, some small, some huge, and some that were big for some, but never noticed by the general populous. This is has been a trend in most media companies. People come in with money, hate the old way, create a new way. Most of this instead of being great business ideas costs these companies money, or even worse lost time. Film companies never understand streaming, music companies also not understanding downloads. Even the comic industry has a habit of shooting itself in the foot every time they have a growth. Changing distribution, causing chaos, thinking speculation was actually good for their industry, pricing. Publishing though always had this way of acting different. Old houses, old authors, friends of friends publishing books. Until the sharks came sniffing blood. Big Fiction by Dan Sinykin is a look at how an industry went from many companies down to a few, who a few stayed their course, and the effect all this had on the reading habits of people, and the rise and fall of literary writing and authors.

The cover grabs one immediately, the color, the look when trade paperbacks were making inroads, and people were drawn immediately to the look and style, not even seeing what the book was about, nor caring. A time when hot young things were given book contracts to write hot novels that addressed the time, while other stodgy authors were given the heave ho, or moved off to publishers who knew how to cater to there kind of writing. Sinykin has broken his book down into 6 section, looking at the influence of the mass market books, and how chasing these sales put publishers on the radar of companies looking for profit, at the expense of writing. The trade market and nonfiction, along with a look at publishers who resists change by either remaining independent, or in some instances nonprofit publishers. Sinykin looks at many writers who either changed with the times, were left behind, and how their time in publishing can be reflected in their writings.

A different look at publishers, not only looking at the shrinking market, and the changes, but how this changed the literary history of America, which the book mostly deals with. Writing about the French publishing system would be a multi-volume set, and that would be just on feuds. The layout is interesting, a historical look, with plenty of examples, and views of what has changed. Sinykin has tracked these changes using Publisher's Weekly, and draws a lot of different conclusions, that Sinykin pretty well backs up. I would like more input on the retail end, the chain bookstores I know have tremendous influence, with their own prepaid bestsellers lists, and even worse how Amazon made things even worse. An interesting look at publishing, and one I am sure will draw a lot of pro and con arguments.

Recommended for people interested in publishing history or books in general. People who have worked retail will recognize much of this, and go yup, called it. Business leaders can learn quite a lot on what not to do, but as media corporations seem not to learn lessons, that might be a lot to ask. A very good book, with a lot of things to make one nod one's head in agreement, or nod away in distress and anger.

This book is a good complement to Al Silverman's wonderful "The Time of Their Lives: The Golden Age of Great American Book Publishers, Their Editors and Authors," showing how the conglomerization of publishing, especially in the 1970s and '80s has affected what is published--and not published. That is, when some publishers stopped being cultural charities run by dilettantes mostly interested in collecting great authors the way others collected art, and started to be more business-minded, the literary books that only sold a few thousand copies despite being "sophisticated" and "cosmopolitan," to use Sinykin's loaded terms, were pushed out or their authors turned to "genre strategies" to make them more commercial.

And I have to say, I don't see what's so wrong with that. I certainly don't see what's wrong with a "literary" author making a book entertaining,. To me, it smack of snobbery. As Steve Martin's character in "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" would have told Susan Sontag, "Next time you tell a story, have a point. It makes it so much more interesting for the listener."

Before I go on, my bona fides: I've been a book editor for more than 30 years, starting when p&ls had to be run by the VP because only she had a copy of Lotus, and conglomeriztion has both enabled my career (by clearing out more senior editors so I could get their books) and hindered it (I've been laid off 3 times and narrowly escaped a fourth following mergers). I got started at Avon in 1993, and I had to come to understand their mass market sensibilities because I came there straight from getting a Masters in English; that said, the best book I read during my time in grad school was "The Hunt for Red October," so this wasn't a big leap. It was there that I passed on the paperback rights to "Fight Club" because I loved my job and couldn't appreciate it (then came lay off #1....) In addition, I've always seen myself as a businessperson who publishers, not an editor who has to pretend to do business sometimes, so maybe I've drunken the conglomeration Kool-Aid. As a result, this book's argument speaks directly to me, and while I've never worked at Random and the events of the book came largely just before my time in publishing, I know this world intimately

I don't disagree with many of Sinykin's conclusions, especially in how other, smaller publishers who could bear a 4,000-copy first print run have picked up the literary slack. I certainly agree that publishing used to be way more fun; I got to Avon when it was still OK to drink and smoke in your office, but you could no longer snort coke or have sex on your desk. And I totally agree that the expectations of corporate overlords who want 8-10% growth out of a 3-4% business, as if books were financial instruments, have made doing any book harder; when Harper bought Avon, for instance, they sent over a new p&l that was pretty much the same as ours except it had a $20,000 charge against every book regardless of financial expectations, a ridiculous vig that made publishing all but leads impossible (or financially irresponsible). I agree (or at least I think Sinykin would agree with me) that who got published should not be determined by who had the pedigree to get invited to have drinks at Jason Epstein's apartment, and it's still the case that the more a publisher pays for a book, the more attention it gets in-house. I don't, however, entirely buy that "Ragtime," "Beloved" and other books are about publishing itself and not, say, about conglomerization in general, a feature in all business at the time; it's why Gulf & Western owned S&S; but whatever. I totally disagree with his view on why Patrick O'Brien finally become successful: it wasn't because he's a literary writer (he's not, imho), but because a marketer like Esther Margolis got him a great, prominent review that resurrected his books--just as "Moby Dick" was rescued from history 70 years after pub. (A sidenote, it's worth noting that, yes, there could indeed have been women on the "Pequod." While it would have been unusual in the first half of the 19th century, by the middle of the century when "Moby Dick" was pubd, one in five whalers carried the captain's wife according to the National Park Service: https://www.nps.gov/nebe/learn/historyculture/whaleship.)

What I really had a problem with, is that his view of publishing is so constrained by his research, however extensive.

For instance, why didn't he talk to any editors directly? Many of the people profiled are still alive. Every single one of them as well as all those who came after them would tell Sinykin the same thing: Big books pay for little books. For instance, why could Little, Brown take a chance on lit? James Patterson. Why could Knopf? Crichton and Anne Rice. Why could FSG? Scott Turow and Tom Wolfe. Why can Norton? Their huge educational division, plus Michael Lewis. Just as Graywolf and Coffee House and Milkweed depend on charity, just as publishers in the first part of the century relied on the deep pockets of their owners and their banks (Silverman notes that the founder of Viking sold out because he was sick of waking up every morning owing the banks $7-8 million), publishers depend on their cash cows, especially those that backlist (which pays for everything: salary, overhead, etc.). And this makes sense. Granted I came out of mass market publishing in which each monthly list was like a mutual fund. The sturdy investments all for a few risks.

Sinykin also mentions lots of great writers that got pubd, as if to argue that they wouldn't have been pubd today, but he doesn't balance that by showing all the ones whose books failed and cost their publishers money as well as the opportunity cost of publishing someone whose book might have worked. You learn nothing from winners. In losses are the lessons. And how much did the publishers have to pay for all this prestige? Were most advances not earned out back then? There's nothing wrong with that, of course, but you can't prestige yourself into the poorhouse.

And I think he confuses the book's argument by folding into literature titles by non-white men. The reasons they weren't getting published back then rhyme with those for why conglomerization made publishing lit more challenging at the big publisher level, but really it's a different issue. Or he could have included them by changing his argument to not being about how conglomeration changed lit, but about how it changed risk.

Nonetheless, the book's well-written, despite some repetition of facts, I enjoyed it, and it's a book I'll be recommending to my colleagues precisely because there's stuff to disagree with, which makes a book more fun.

Thanks to Net Galley and Columbia UP for the early look.