Did you know that most books which don’t immediately become bestsellers end up as so much pulped paper? Publishing is the only industry that allows a merchant to return merchandise unsold within a predetermined period (usually a few weeks) to the manufacturer — for a full refund and purposely vandalized. It is believed that after time spent on bookstore shelves or in a warehouse, books’ mint condition loses its mintness, and so booksellers helpfully tear the covers off the books to prevent publishers from even trying to foist the shopworn copies on the market that, of course, deserves only the best and the freshest.

Why do publishers not only agree to give booksellers extortionist (usually 45–50%) discounts off the list price but also meekly take back books that are now officially garbage, refund the money, and pay pulping costs to dispose of the rejected books properly? Because booksellers don’t have to deal with any publishing house that doesn’t. That’s just the way things are done in the publishing industry.*

In the world of big book-publishing and big bookselling, where big numbers rule the bookkeeping, books are product. This product either brings its manufacturers and distributors the desired results fast, or it takes up space better occupied by other product, perhaps with more potential. Perhaps not. Publishing a book is always a gamble, and major publishers and distributors know how to cut their losses. A lifetime of an author’s soul-searching and hard work can be obliterated in an instant if it fails to deliver within weeks of publication.

Build an audience for books that aren’t immediate hits? Why? So much more efficient to just sweep them off the shelves and fill the shelves with something new. If that doesn’t fly off the shelves, either, well, there’s plenty more books where these came from.

It doesn’t matter that among the pulped losers in the big-stakes publishing game might be a novel that could have changed your life. A novel that could have become your favorite book ever. Please. Nobody has time for such sentiments in the industry that’s got to head ’em up, move ’em out, print, ship to bookstores, pulp, repeat.

And in all this conveyor-belt process of cranking out books, who has time to stop and think about offering something new and interesting to the reader?

 

 

Did we say “reader?”

Our bad. There are no “readers” in big bookkeeping. There are only “target audiences.” “Markets.” “Demographics.”

An individual reader might buy one or two books. A target audience will buy hundreds of thousands. A demographic — millions. Do the math. It’s infinitely more efficient to publish a book that will appeal to a demographic than to you, an individual reader, personally. If you’re a 39-year-old suburban mother of two, you like the same kind of novels as other 39-year-old suburban mothers of two. Don’t argue. They know. They have focus groups.

If you don’t believe that mainstream publishing and bookselling works this way, ask yourself how many times lately you’ve put down a novel because you realized that reading it was closer to hard work than to pleasure. Ask yourself why it’s so rare to be genuinely surprised and delighted by a new novel, and why the same characters and situations keep on recurring, like a bad dream. Ask yourself why you can frequently tell even by the color of the cover what the book is about. Those big splotches of pink you see at every airport bookstore these days? That’s “chick lit,” spreading like a bad rash. You don’t need to crack one of those open to know how it ends.

All in all, there are maybe six or seven novels sold in big bookstores, under a million different titles. They are little more than templates.

Years ago, lurid and disposable fiction was called “pulp,” because the cheap paper it was printed on had bits of wood pulp visible in it. Nowadays, the paper quality is much better, but the editorial process is far worse. Sure, some great novels still manage to survive the market-testing and focus-grouping with their souls intact. But regrettably, most books at the typical chain bookstore are, to put it bluntly, pulp.

 

 

At ENC Press, we don’t have “markets,” or “target audiences,” or “demographics.”

We have readers.

Readers who love to be surprised, delighted, and provoked.

Readers who don’t want to be told what they already know, or lectured by the prevailing cultural elite on what they’re supposed to think, but yearn to be challenged by new ideas and new perspectives they’ve never encountered before.

We’re an independent boutique press. We have no shareholders and no bosses. We sign no economically impractical distribution deals with the huge chain bookstores and online book merchants. We distribute only through our own Web site and a few select independent bookstores that share our commitment to quality.

What this all means is that we have no short-term profit pressures to motivate our editorial judgment.

And that, in turn, means we don’t publish gimmicky nonfiction books to pay the bills, like nearly every other publisher in America. Because we love fiction, that’s all we select, publish, and sell — and then we stand behind our books and authors for the long term.

Our novels will stay in print for as long as it takes for them and their readers to find each other. Our novels will never end up on the remainder tables at bookstores. And, needless to say, our novels will never be pulped.

ENC Press is 100% pure fiction, 0% pulp. Of any kind. And that, we believe, makes our books the intelligent alternative to the fare currently available at your local chain bookstore.

*This is how a psychological experiment with monkeys demonstrates development of a tradition. Submitted: You have five monkeys in a cage. A bunch of bananas is suspended from the ceiling, a ladder underneath it. One hungry monkey approaches the ladder with a clear intent to get a banana. As soon as it touches the ladder, you turn on the hose and douse all the monkeys with very cold water. In a little while, another monkey attempts to get a banana. Again, cold water for everybody. Turn off the water. When a third monkey, nearly faint with hunger, tries to get a banana, the others will grab it and hold it back, because they don’t want another cold shower. Now, remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one. As soon as it sees the bananas, it will try to go for them. The others will viciously attack it. After the third attempt, the rookie will realize that it cannot have a banana. Now, replace another one of the original monkeys with a new one. As soon as it reaches for a banana, it will get attacked by all the others, including the rapidly learning rookie #1, who will be as enthusiastic as the rest of them, if not more so. And so, after you have gradually replaced all the monkeys, the cage will contain five monkeys who have never had a cold shower but who will not allow anyone to get a banana. Why? Because that’s the way things are done around here.