Letter to Susan Rabiner
Literary Agent and Former Editor of Basic Books

Dear Ms. Rabiner,

You said that “Publishers do not want a book to be the first ever expression of discipline-challenging ideas.” I have since repeated your comments to dozens of agents and publishers, and they all agreed. There is nothing controversial or even surprising in your comment. It is simply a truth about the general atmosphere of publishing today.

So I am happy to enclose Goodbye Gutenberg: How a Bronx Teacher Defied 500 Years of Tradition and Launched an Astonishing Renaissance, the first ever expression of discipline-challenging ideas. I have spent a great deal of time studying how innovations get adopted by the mainstream. I have read books such as Crossing the Chasm, The Tipping Point, and the Diffusion of Innovations. I have found that there is a common trajectory of many innovations. First, the mainstream tends to reject or deny the value of an innovation. Then it acknowledges it as marginally interesting, something to watch out for. Then finally it embraces the innovation wholeheartedly, sometimes even denying that it ever denied the innovation in the first place.

I have asked myself what makes it so difficult for the mainstream to recognize innovations. One explanation is that new ideas require us to slow down, to chew on them like a cow chews on its cud. Successful people in the mainstream are very busy, and they may not be able to find the time to properly digest and absorb discipline challenging ideas. Investing time in something new can be risky, especially given the daily pressures of running a business.

The growing interest in graphic novels suggests that mainstream publishers are hungry for a new kind of book that will appeal to a younger audience. But I have found that the comic book format has its limits. It is an old format, with very small black type that’s hard for many of us to read. It tells a story in an interesting way, but given our new technologies, there are a thousand other ways – better ways - to tell a story. The “designer novel” is what’s next. And that’s what Goodbye Gutenberg is all about.

Mainstream publishers may at first deny the value of this innovation. But soon they will watch it with interest, then finally they will embrace it wholeheartedly. Publishers simply can't afford to wait much longer. The recent National Endowment for the Arts survey documented a precipitous decline in America’s reading habits, particularly among the young. Our future is in the hands of those who recognize the seismic shifts that are happening in publishing today; who recognize the need for a different approach to the written word; and who are not afraid of innovation.

Warmly,

Valerie Kirschenbaum

P.S. I recently came across a quote by marketing and public relations experts Jay Conrad Levinson, Rick Frishman, and Jill Lublin that further supports your opening comment about what publishers want. "Publishers' sales forces tend to be overly conservative and risk averse in regards to content and design, and they want to stick with what has worked an are often adverse to change," they wrote. I find the quote surprising because I would think that salespeople, above all, would be open to innovative new ways of making books more competetive in our visual culture. I'm not sure who in the food chain is going to resist the coming Renaissance in designer books the most. Editors? Agents? Salespeople? Booksellers? Reviewers? But I can tell you, with absolute assurance, that this Renaissance is coming, and that those who resist it now will come aboard later. So in the grand scheme of things, it really doesn't matter who the critics are at the moment.

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