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- From: rmr@sgi.com (Robert M. Reimann)
- Subject: Re: support for the arts in the US
- Message-ID: <th1ca94@zola.esd.sgi.com>
- Sender: news@zola.esd.sgi.com (Net News)
- Organization: Technical Publications, Silicon Graphics, Inc.
- References: <tfo3udg@zola.esd.sgi.com> <1gbtbpINNpki@agate.berkeley.edu>
- Date: Sat, 12 Dec 92 19:59:15 GMT
- Lines: 34
-
- curtis@cs.berkeley.edu (Curtis Yarvin) writes:
-
- >...it often happens that government-funded competition in a
- >niche field is enough to drive the rest of the pack off the cliff.
- >There are already damn few enough publishers who make a profit off
- >lit; how many could go ten rounds in the ring with Uncle Sam?
-
- The fact is that the large majority of publishers of lit
- already get grants from one place or another to survive.
- Many of them are affiliated with Universities (the Georgia
- Review, Mississippi Review, TriQuarterly, etc), and most
- are non-profit. At the other end of the scale are big
- publishers, who are in the lit business because of the
- educational market (for the "classics"), and because
- some editors there have an interest in it, and can balance
- the books against the bestsellers in such a way that they
- can afford it.
-
- Needless to say, cuts to education (a public good as well)
- and govt. endowments have hurt the small presses. The
- only good news is that in the wake of the homogenization
- trend in big publishers, more people have become interested
- in the non-homogenous small publishers. But this to me means
- that funding is even more necessary, because the small
- presses simply do not have the distribution channels
- necessary to get to their potential audiences.
-
- Robert.
-
- PS. Since I'm sure by now that everyone is hitting the
- 'n' key except me and Curtis, I'm going to call it
- quits on this thread, and I invite him to do the
- same. We can harangue each other ad nauseam in
- person. :^)
-