Passion for the work

?A camel is a horse formed by a committee,? is an Arab proverb that best explains why Indian publishers take so long to make publishing decisions, and equally long to produce the book. Six months is the lead-time between submission and acceptance, another six for the delivery of finished books ? and that would be doing very well indeed. What are the internal procedures for the evaluation of unsolicited manuscripts (most non-fiction works are specially commissioned) and the production procedures that cause delays? Above all, can anything be done by authors and publishers to speed up the process so that a straightforward text of, say, 250 pages can be produced in three or four months ? no big deal in this age of computerized printing?

The evaluation process goes something like this. The editorial quality ? that is, language, style, relevance of the subject for the market ? is first examined by the editor. If, prima facie, the work shows promise, it is sent to an outside Reader for comments. At the same time, the synopsis of the work and the relevance, as seen by the author, the author?s standing, the competing titles, if any, are provided to the marketing department to assess the book?s sales potential. After the Reader?s report and the market survey has been done, there is a joint meeting of the editorial, marketing and accounts departments on whether to publish the book.

Given the fact that more than half the titles barely recover the costs, while another 20 per cent just about do so, something is obviously wrong in the evaluation process. So, publishers have resorted to ?committee? meetings between editorial, marketing and sales, and accounts to take a joint decision. If they concur, the project is on. But the responsibility gets suffused, and no one can be held responsible for failures; and if they are, the buck could be passed on. It is an endless blame game where no one can win.

There are three reasons for this impasse. First, the pressure to produce more and more titles every year. In the numbers game, quality suffers and the close examination of the text, which is what editorial work is all about, is glossed over. The Readers too, swamped with an increasing number of manuscripts (most Readers are university teachers who have their regular work to do) give a cursory look and move on.

Second, committee decisions may be all right for other businesses, but they simply don?t work in publishing houses. The decision to publish or not, after consultation with marketing and accounts, must be the editor?s and the editor?s alone.

Third, and this is the saddest fact, the quality of editors has perceptibly declined over the years. With the diversification of media outlets ? newspapers, magazines, supplements, TV channels, radio stations ? the best people have moved there for obvious reasons. Besides, (this is something many publishers don?t quite realize) there is no training that would make a publisher: one ought to have taste, literary discrimination and passion for the work.

So, what is to be done? Authors should submit as perfect a manuscript as possible and publishers pick and choose their authors with care. That means cutting down on numbers and less reliance on committee and collective decisions.