Jason Epstein

Book Business

The book industry stands at the edge of a historic transformation. Jason Epstein tells us what the future holds.

"Today the book business stands at the edge of a vast transformation, one that promises much opportunity for innovation: much trial, much error, much improvement. Long before another half-century passes, the industry as I have known it for the past fifty years will have been altered almost beyond recognition."—from Chapter One

Jason Epstein has led arguably the most creative career in book publishing during the past half-century. In 1952, while a young editor at Doubleday, he created Anchor Books, which launched the so-called quality paperback revolution and established the trade paperback format. In the following decade he became cofounder of The New York Review of Books. In the 1980s he created the Library of America, the prestigious publisher of American classics, and The Reader's Catalog, the precursor of online bookselling.

In this short book he discusses the severe crisis facing the book business today—a crisis that affects writers and readers as well as publishers—and looks ahead to the radically transformed industry that will revolutionize the idea of the book as profoundly as the introduction of movable type did five centuries ago.

"One always expects clarity and elegance from Jason Epstein. Book Business has more. Written by a major figure within the industry, it is a brilliant, moving, and profoundly insightful rendering of the history, status, and future of American publishing."—Toni Morrison

"It is possible, even likely, that no one knows more about the publishing industry than Jason Epstein. What lifts this small book into the ranks of a putative classic is the way in which it is written, for Epstein commands, in addition to his knowledge, a fine and impeccable style that never fails the reader. I say this in spite of the lively wars we have had as editor and author." —Norman Mailer

"It should come as no surprise that Jason Epstein has written a wise and insightful book on the present state and the future of book publishing. More surprising, to many, will be his guardedly hopeful view of that future, in which the cottage industry that mushroomed into a big business reverts to being a cottage business again, thanks to the magic of the Internet."—Michael Korda