The Three Percent Problem
Rants and Responses on Publishing, Translation, and the Future of Reading
Published on 6. September 2011
326 pages
978-1-934824-63-4 (ISBN)
Description
A collection of occasional essays, a series of meditations on the book industry as it transitions to its electronic future, and a reader on modern publishing, The Three Percent Problem stands alongside Andre Schiffrin's The Business of Books and Jason Epstein's Book Business as primers on the publishing industry.
More details
Person
Chad W. Post is the director of Open Letter Books at the University of Rochester, and runs the Three Percent website.
Content
- Intro
- Copyright
- Contents
- Introduction
- I. The Three Percent Problem
- To Be Translated or Not to Be
- The Nature of Counting, or, the Numbers Racket
- Sales of Translations
- An Economic Model for the Lack of Translations into English
- Interlude: Making an Arch-Nemesis
- II. Publishing Models,Translations, and the Financial Collapse
- Stage One: Overview of the Publishing Marketplace
- Stage Two: Translations, Economic Censorship, and Independent Presses
- Stage Three: Financial Collapse, the Borders Situation, Distribution, and Other Bad News
- Stage Four: What Happens Next?
- Interlude: "Giving the Fig"
- III. The Difficulties of Reaching Readers for "Difficult" Books
- The State of Publisher-Reader Relations
- Branding for Publishers
- Marketing Translations and Other "Difficult" Books
- More on Marketing and Descriptive Copy
- America, Where We're Always Late
- Building an Audience (and a Case) for Translations
- Interlude: As if It's Not Hard Enough Selling Translations
- IV. Bookstores and Book Culture
- My Take on Reading in America
- Non-profit Bookstores
- BookExpo America: Business of Bookselling
- Book Publishing Recommendations
- Putting the Reader First at TOC Frankfurt
- Interlude: Yet Another Bad Publishing Idea
- V. The Lives of Translators
- Who Does Translation Matter To?
- How to Dismiss Translations
- Manual Labor
- War and Peace (again) and the Goal of Translation
- We Are Not Muckrakers
- The Facts Behind One Story in Dalkey Archive's Best European Fiction 2011
- Interlude: Boom Goes the Dynamite!
- VI. Making the Translator Visible
- Megan McDowell
- Russell Valentino
- Pam Carmell
- Matt Rowe
- Robin Myers
- Jason Grunebaum
- Marian Schwartz
- Gary Racz
- Charlotte Mandell
- Erica Mena
- Wendy Hardenberg
- Edward Gauvin
- Lucas Klein
- Interlude: The Business of Blockbusters: Good?
- VII. Book Pricing and Piracy
- LitKicks Summarizes the Book Business
- Fixed Price for German Books
- Anti-Fixed Book Price Essay
- Price, Literary Fiction, and the Desire to Buy
- One Writer on Digital Rights, or, We All Just Wanna Get Paid
- Book Piracy!
- It's Officially Now Ethical to Steal Ebooks (Sometimes)
- If We Don't Publish It, People Won't Steal It
- Chris Anderson and Giving Things Away
- The Troubles of Advocating for Literary Publishing [Yes, Things Are That Bad]
- Interlude: America, oh, America
- VIII. The Future of French Book Culture
- French Study Trip
- Drawing Out the Meta-Concepts
- How to Sell Books in France
- What's Your Consumer Surplus?
- Hey There, I'm an Author, You're a Reader . . .
- Interlude: Publishing Rant
- IX. Ebooks and the Future of Reading As We Know It
- The Epstein Revolution is Upon Us!
- Espresso Book Machine
- Espresso Book Machine at Northshire Books
- Tomorrow's E-Utopia?
- Odyssey Editions
- Ebooks, Literary Fiction, and the WSJ
- Ebooks and Indie Bookstores: eARCs
- Ebooks and Indie Bookstores: Part II-Business Models
- What We Talk about When We Talk about the Future of Reading
- Where People Talk about Books
- Interlude: Why Selling Ebooksat 99 Cents Destroys Minds
- X. In the Age of Screens
- In the Age of Screens
- About the Author
- About Three Percent
