AAUP 2010: What Makes a Good Book?

A focus on the “digital how-to,” as our colleague Jennifer Howard put it, made last week’s annual meeting of the Association of American University Presses a tad bereft of book talk. Editing- and content-wise that is. However there were a few sessions on the stuff between boards and spine—forgive the retrograde image.

Chairing “What Makes a Good Book?” was Mark Heineke, promotions director at the University of Chicago Press. With so many panels on digitization, he said, “we thought it might be refreshing to catch our collective breath and gather together as book lovers.”

First up was Holly Carver, director of the University of Iowa Press. “It is easier to decide what makes a bad book,” joked Carver, who will be retiring at the end of July after 25 years at Iowa. “A good book is a different species.” Carver drew from an informal poll of friends and colleagues to stress such elements as narrative arc, unifying thoughts, beautiful writing, and connections to new worlds—even the provocation of a physiological response. In another vein, Carver noted that “organizationally, a good book is one that does what we hoped it would do.” She had earlier recalled the many hours spent “talking authors down from the edge of the precipice when they get their sales figures.” When considering success, “take each book on its own terms.”

Following Carver, Doug Armato framed his remarks with a statement by Ezra Pound. “A book should be a ball of light in one’s hand.” Publishers, he said, can usually “identify the books that should sell and the ones that probably won’t,” but other books surprise. There are times you can only judge in retrospect, said Armato, director of the University of Minnesota Press. Still he offered some tips on assessing a book’s potential to “sell beyond a first printing or first year.” Armato argued for books that will excite attention and will matter in however small a circle.” Promising projects, he noted, created a “palpable sense of excitement” throughout a publishing house. “You should have a good reason for publishing every book you have under contract,” he said. “Don’t confuse a reason with an excuse for publishing.” Presses should avoid rationalizations like “it’s an area we are active in,” or “we have other books like this,” or “I think we’ll do all right with this.” Attendees chuckled in recognition.

Capping the session was Bill Germano, dean and professor of English literature at the Cooper Union, former publishing director at Routledge, and before that, editor-in-chief at Columbia University Press. In a banquet talk the night before, Germano spoke on “What Are Books Good For?” Stressing that “good technologies don’t eradicate other good technologies,” Germano urged presses to hold fast to the narrative thread as they navigate the digital labyrinth. Not surprisingly, he threw more than one bone to the physical book: “No matter what is stored on my computer, if I want to know what I am, I will look at my bookshelves—and possibly in my refrigerator.”

At the next day’s panel, Germano bemoaned a certain emphasis on metrics. He was “very squeamish about representations that stress measurables as if we can immediately translate them into operative procedures for choosing complex books for complex audiences.” However he urged scholars to imagine their work as something beyond the “exquisite calibration of their research.” “Most monographs are snow globes,” he said. Scholars are “allowed to believe there are real people in there.” He urged authors to think of books as tools “doing some sort of work in the world,” and noted this was not just a matter for the social sciences, but for English literature, musicology, philosophy, and their kin. Authors should ask themselves: “What do you want to happen after the reader has finished your book?”—Nina Ayoub