In the book business, books are often referred to as units. Understandable, perhaps, within the world of shipping and inventory control. But for the author, considering a book as similar to any other widget that's stamped out and packaged in a factory is disconcerting.

Book promotion experts, geared to maximizing the author's return on investment, suggest researching what the audience wants before writing each new book. Understandable, perhaps, within the world of nonfiction where--presumably--one might say society needs more information about computers than buggy whips. Yet, to the author with a passion for a particular field, obscure though it may be, or the creation of fiction, it's odd to think of creating any book based on what may or may not be popular at the moment.

Now, as reported in The Boston Globe, we find that publishers simply want more from their best writers because the prize-winning, bestselling book from last year is last year's news. As Globe staff writer David Mehegan writes:

"In an age when reading for pleasure is declining, book publishers increasingly are counting on their biggest moneymaking writers to crank out books at a rate of at least one a year, right on schedule, and sometimes faster than that.

"Many top-selling writers, such as John Grisham and Mary Higgins Clark, have turned out at least one book annually for years. Now some writers are beginning to grumble about the pressure, and some are refusing to comply."

If the raw material of the publishers' trade is going to be scheduled (editing, printing, promotion) efficiently, then a constant and orderly supply must be assured; as writers, we understand this. But the pressure for every author to turn out books by the truck load as do such prolific authors as Nora Roberts, while sensible to the bean counter side of the industry, overlooks the traditional constant: books are an art form.

Books are a lot of other things, too, so perhaps we'll stipulate that every book from "Sex for Dummies" to "How to Build a Dormer Window" is more communication than art. Perhaps, too, every storyteller need not aspire to create fiction for the literary canon. But once we get to the point where books--during the time of their conception and birth--are already being considered as units, then we have, I think, thrown art out the window for short-term gains of the moment.

The Globe notes that "Many writers below the top tier are also being urged to pick up the pace. In some cases, publishers have made a book-per-year promise an explicit condition of taking on a new author." Gurus note that writers seeking agents are advised that submitting the next "Gone With the Wind" is no longer enough; an entire series must be on the drawing board to increase one's chances of getting one's foot in the door to ensure a constant source of raw material.

Big books, as the Globe and other sources point out are obscuring the stagnation in an industry where fewer and fewer people are reading. Independent bookstores are fading away and the chains are reporting reduced profits. The purported answer: MORE BIG BOOKS PRODUCED AT A FASTER PACE.

Some writers enjoy working at flank speed. "Elmore Leonard said, 'If it takes you more than six months to write a book, you're not working.' " This works well within the world of genres where the public will quite likely forget an author's name if there isn't something new on the bookstore shelves several times a year. No wonder it's getting harder to find a novel these days that hasn't been forced into one genre mold or another.

Perhaps the novelists who created the books that comprise the "literary canon," some of whom only created a handful of books in a lifetime, are as relevant today as the buggy whip. Perhaps they wallowed in a form of luxury the publishing industry can no longer afford on a large scale: books as as art.

Scholars will tell you that the books of the "literary canon" are not the entire universe of writing from days gone by, not by a long shot. This is true. But I cannot help but wonder if books as units, books planned to satisfy the cravings of one readers' group or another, and books moving through the publishing system like waste products in a sewer system will one day render all of the available the output quite artless.

Copyright (c) 2008 by Malcolm R. Campbell from Writer's Market