Makenna Goodman: The Future of Publishing Isn’t Rocket Science…
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As you may have heard, The Huffington Post just launched their new Books section, a resource for news and inside information on books and the industry that churns them out. Chelsea Green’s own Makenna Goodman, blogger extraordinaire, was right there with them, roaring out of the gate with a post on the state of the publishing industry—from the big New York publishers to the small, independent houses like your humble Chelsea Green. Her prognosis? Well, not to give too much away, but… the future is small.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go put on some fingerless gloves and eat a hemp-wrapped tofu burrito over an indoor bonfire.
One year ago, I did what many New Yorkers only dream about. During the most historic presidential inauguration and election of my lifetime, in the throes of the worst economic recession since the Great Depression, at the emotional precipice of my mid-twenties, from the mean streets of New York City — a Greenwich Village apartment, a job in publishing, and mounting debt — I left it all to become a farmer.
Am I crazy? Let’s see: I had been working as an assistant to a literary agent who has defined the careers of the most important writers in modern history. My favorite writers. Writers who turn down Oprah (and I think only one of these exists.) My boss, as a matter of fact, turned down phone calls with the New York Times on a regular basis, held the careers of Pulitzer Prize winners in the palm of her hand, and probably secretly ran the world by the tick of her expensive watch. She was, I’ll admit, funny as hell (unless it was at my expense, and then I was weeping quietly) and really smart, so hating my job felt ungracious and misguided. It is, after all, in the very veins of New York Publishing to suffer at the whim of your superior in the hopes that someday you might become someone else’s superior, make them suffer, and thereby make your dent in Culture. Plus, I wanted to be an agent (maybe) or an editor (maybe) and also a writer, so this job was perfect, right?! Why the hell would I move to a town in rural Vermont only famous for its tragedies, with less than 1,500 people, and winter eight months out of the year? To farm, no less! I was leaving the world of possibility to shovel SHIT and get frost bite. And unlike the trend of certain people who do something crazy and blog about it for a book contract (which will then become a movie)…I came to Vermont with no notions of greatness or grandeur. I came to Vermont to work in a diner for tips, and raise some pigs. I came here, most importantly, with one certainty: That I would never, ever step foot near a publishing house or talent agency again. Not if someone paid me. Not even, perhaps, if I were entering it as a writer seeking publication. “Publishing sucks,” I told everyone. “And I saw it from the top.”
Upon actually moving to Vermont however, I found out that experience in the book world doesn’t really translate to much (restaurants want references!) and I needed some cash. I got wind of a publishing house in an old converted warehouse an hour from the farm that specializes in books on the politics and practice of sustainable living. So I checked out their website, their books, and their mission statement, and sort of couldn’t believe it. Chelsea Green Publishing’s mission is what they call, “a perfect example of what is called a ‘triple bottom line’ practice, one that benefits people, planet, and profit, and the emerging new model for sustainable business in the 21st century.” In this economic climate? In the middle of nowhere? Um, yeah. I figured it was a bunch of hippies wearing hemp and sharing tofu burritos over an indoor bonfire, with fingerless gloves. But I was sort of into it.
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