Per yesterday’s post, US Publishers, Authors, Booksellers Call Out Amazon’s ‘Concentrated Power’ in the Book Market, one of the contentions of the coven of Big Publishers and Company was:
“as the subcommittee’s hearings have laid bare, the competitive framework of the publishing industry has been fundamentally altered in recent years—and remains at serious risk of further diminishment—because of the concentrated power and influence of one company in particular: Amazon.”
In response to a comment to that post, PG went off on a frolic in mid-20th Century book history and produced the following:
The contemporary framework of publishing was in the process of fundamental alteration before Bezos sold his first book.
Big publishers were sucking up small and mid-sized publishers like minnows on a trout farm. In the 1950’s and 60’s, there were dozens of independent publishers in New York and elsewhere, some of which were discovering important authors and different voices.
Here are a handful of books published by organizations no longer in existence:
Catcher in the Rye was first published by Little, Brown
Fahrenheit 451 – Ballantine Books
Lord of the Flies – Faber and Faber
Lolita – Olympia Press – in French (after the book was turned down by Viking, Simon & Schuster, New Directions, Farrar, Straus, and Doubleday)
The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – Geoffrey Bles (UK)
On the Road – Viking Press
To Kill a Mockingbird – J. B. Lippincott & Co.
Slaughterhouse-Five – Delacorte
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Viking Press & Signet Books
The Bell Jar – Heinemann
A Wrinkle in Time – Ariel Books
The Godfather – G. P. Putnam’s Sons
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Blade Runner, #1) – Doubleday
Dune – Chilton Book Company