New Questions About LOA for DCLOYCESMITH
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1Truett
DCLOYCESMITH: First, hope you and yours are doing well in this latest stage of the unnecessarily prolonged pandemic (we humans are nothing if not predictable in our repetitive behaviors). To the point: your recent reply regarding the inclusion of Highsmith into the LOA -- Nothing yet to report on this. In fact, it seems to have come to a standstill because the Highsmith books continue to prove lucrative for the current publishers." -- makes me wonder: when it comes to inclusion in the LOA, above considerations like age (which has seemed quite malleable when I consider the authors included since, say, Phillip Roth), or quality, or even copyright issues (although they will be closely related to this next), is it the sales and popularity of an author's works that are the biggest obstacle to inclusion?
If you can't answer without dipping more than a toe into hot water, I'll understand. But -- forever jejune, forever naive to the ways of commerce, too often naive when it comes to the base instincts which drive most humans -- I actually thought that was less of a consideration.
Thanks, and all best wishes from "Oz",
DTS
If you can't answer without dipping more than a toe into hot water, I'll understand. But -- forever jejune, forever naive to the ways of commerce, too often naive when it comes to the base instincts which drive most humans -- I actually thought that was less of a consideration.
Thanks, and all best wishes from "Oz",
DTS
2elenchus
Naturally interested to see what reply DCloyceSmith may give, but your question had me realise that my initial take was slightly different than your own.
I understood that sales & popularity were actually separate factors in terms of important criteria to LOA when considering a work for inclusion: importance of sales would be inverse to their level, so that it would be a higher priority (primes inter pares) for a low-sales work to be included than high-sales, given the mission to ensure that important works are available. High sales presumably means the work is more-or-less available, so less of a need for LOA to publish it, at least at the moment.
When the popularity of a work were at odds with the sales, and I assume that's relatively rare, then I further understood that this would be a factor somewhat in the work's favour for inclusion. That is, popularity is not identical to importance, but surely it contributes to a work's importance. So if sales were low but popularity high, that would be a situation in which the priority for LOA inclusion would be higher. I'll note here I can't think of an example of such a situation, though: perhaps if there were copyright battles going on, that kept a popular work out of print and so keeping sales low. (I take high sales / low popularity to be nonsensical if logically possible.)
So to your original question, sales & popularity as an obstacle ... I'd interpreted this to be true when (as you note yourself) they align with copyright issues. When they are not aligned with copyright issues, then they would not be an obstacle so much as a calculation on the part of LOA. They wouldn't prevent LOA from proceeding as they wish, rather they would simply help LOA decide what they wish.
I understood that sales & popularity were actually separate factors in terms of important criteria to LOA when considering a work for inclusion: importance of sales would be inverse to their level, so that it would be a higher priority (primes inter pares) for a low-sales work to be included than high-sales, given the mission to ensure that important works are available. High sales presumably means the work is more-or-less available, so less of a need for LOA to publish it, at least at the moment.
When the popularity of a work were at odds with the sales, and I assume that's relatively rare, then I further understood that this would be a factor somewhat in the work's favour for inclusion. That is, popularity is not identical to importance, but surely it contributes to a work's importance. So if sales were low but popularity high, that would be a situation in which the priority for LOA inclusion would be higher. I'll note here I can't think of an example of such a situation, though: perhaps if there were copyright battles going on, that kept a popular work out of print and so keeping sales low. (I take high sales / low popularity to be nonsensical if logically possible.)
So to your original question, sales & popularity as an obstacle ... I'd interpreted this to be true when (as you note yourself) they align with copyright issues. When they are not aligned with copyright issues, then they would not be an obstacle so much as a calculation on the part of LOA. They wouldn't prevent LOA from proceeding as they wish, rather they would simply help LOA decide what they wish.
3Truett
Elenchus: You're main point, that the LOA is largely driven by the dynamic of saving valuable works & authors after sales taper off, is understood. Just not sure it's well-thought out. After all, I'm fairly certain that the works of F. Scott Fitzgerald still sell well enough (given that they are still taught in schools and colleges, and therefore have regular sales; same probably (not definitely) goes for Hemingway, or Vonnegut. Before that, authors like Bellow and Welty and others were still being taught in schools and colleges. One could probably find lots of similar examples. And while I have no charts, I'd be surprised if Ross Macdonald's books had stopped selling when he was included. When LOA started including living authors, Roth hadn't faded into obscurity.
Your overreach in the "example" of high popularity but low sales, is, indeed, impossible. Especially in a capitalist society. But high sales, low popularity happens even today: one example would be authors that are required reading in various academic circles (just because Bloom and the like deem something "canon" doesn't mean that the rest of the country, or civilization, agree). The other example that comes to mind are the countless "nonfiction" books "authored" (99 percent of the time with a cowriter) by conservative pundits and icons which always crowd the top of NYtimes bestseller list (it's amazing what the buying power of propaganda corporation like Fox can do for one's book sales).
Your overreach in the "example" of high popularity but low sales, is, indeed, impossible. Especially in a capitalist society. But high sales, low popularity happens even today: one example would be authors that are required reading in various academic circles (just because Bloom and the like deem something "canon" doesn't mean that the rest of the country, or civilization, agree). The other example that comes to mind are the countless "nonfiction" books "authored" (99 percent of the time with a cowriter) by conservative pundits and icons which always crowd the top of NYtimes bestseller list (it's amazing what the buying power of propaganda corporation like Fox can do for one's book sales).
4DCloyceSmith
I think there are two issues conflated in the above exchange: the editorial decision process and our ability to secure the rights to works.
As the briefest glance at our recent titles will confirm, we don't make final editorial decisions based on whether an author is currently selling or not. While some authors recently added to the series were selling well in other editions when we published ours, far more of them were not. In fact, one could point to several examples where an author who had fallen into near-obscurity enjoyed a renaissance *because* of the publication of an LOA edition. That said, a collection that is currently unavailable, particularly a volume that would be exclusive to the LOA, might sometimes weigh in its favor, both from an editorial perspective and from a rights perspective.
Which brings us to rights: the editorial process has "approved" many numerous volumes and authors that then get "stuck" because we can't get the rights. Sometimes it's the inability to get a single work essential to the volume that holds things up for years or decades. It might be because the current publisher has exclusive rights and is currently making plenty of money from its edition, and doesn't want to allow a potentially competing edition to be sold in bookstores; it might be because the rightsholder is completely ridiculous in their demands for advance and/or royalty and/or terms (I'm not naming any names); it might be because the work is an orphan (still in copyright, but who owns the copyright is unclear or in dispute); it might be because the rights to an author's works are split up among several parties.
So, yes, among works not in the public domain, securing the rights is often the biggest challenge facing publication of an LOA edition (see: Hemingway, Fitzgerald, etc.). Among works in the public domain, however, the amount of textual work involved in a project is often the biggest issue (the Margaret Fuller edition is just one example). Copyright can still come into play if we hope to use a recently published scholarly or unexpurgated or corrected edition as our copytext--as we did with the recent volume of Melville's poetry.
There are, of course, other reasons why we haven't gotten to a particular author yet; we publish only 12-14 series volumes a year, after all. That, too, has been a limitation on when we can get to one of the dozens of volumes in the queue.
--David
As the briefest glance at our recent titles will confirm, we don't make final editorial decisions based on whether an author is currently selling or not. While some authors recently added to the series were selling well in other editions when we published ours, far more of them were not. In fact, one could point to several examples where an author who had fallen into near-obscurity enjoyed a renaissance *because* of the publication of an LOA edition. That said, a collection that is currently unavailable, particularly a volume that would be exclusive to the LOA, might sometimes weigh in its favor, both from an editorial perspective and from a rights perspective.
Which brings us to rights: the editorial process has "approved" many numerous volumes and authors that then get "stuck" because we can't get the rights. Sometimes it's the inability to get a single work essential to the volume that holds things up for years or decades. It might be because the current publisher has exclusive rights and is currently making plenty of money from its edition, and doesn't want to allow a potentially competing edition to be sold in bookstores; it might be because the rightsholder is completely ridiculous in their demands for advance and/or royalty and/or terms (I'm not naming any names); it might be because the work is an orphan (still in copyright, but who owns the copyright is unclear or in dispute); it might be because the rights to an author's works are split up among several parties.
So, yes, among works not in the public domain, securing the rights is often the biggest challenge facing publication of an LOA edition (see: Hemingway, Fitzgerald, etc.). Among works in the public domain, however, the amount of textual work involved in a project is often the biggest issue (the Margaret Fuller edition is just one example). Copyright can still come into play if we hope to use a recently published scholarly or unexpurgated or corrected edition as our copytext--as we did with the recent volume of Melville's poetry.
There are, of course, other reasons why we haven't gotten to a particular author yet; we publish only 12-14 series volumes a year, after all. That, too, has been a limitation on when we can get to one of the dozens of volumes in the queue.
--David
