Literature in the Marketplace [antikvár]

Preface The point of departure for this book was originally the publishing crisis in Sweden. It revealed, with a suddenness that surprised even the various representatives of the book trade, profound problems in publishing, and especially in the publication of serious fiction. A reduced tide-output, rising prices and shrinking editions accorded badly with the rapid social development through which Sweden had passed since the end of the war, a development that had brought a considerable improvement in the living standard, in the level of education, and increased leisure time—all factors that should have been advantageous to the book market. It soon became clear that the crisis was not a unique Swedish phenomenon, but that it had begun to make itself felt in all the industrialized countries of Western Europe and even in the USA. All evidence indicated that it was not merely a question of a temporary faltering economy but a structural crisis, which was obviously an outcome of a change in the societies of the West and in their cultural patterns. In order to understand one's own times it is necessary to have an historical perspective. I have therefore begun with a survey of the book market's development, that is to say how books have become part of an organized economic market where writers, publishers, printers, booksellers and the reading public are part of the system. Although it sounds like a declaration of the obvious to say that books are produced within an economic and social reality, it is a fact to which literary historians and cultural critics continue to pay little heed, particularly in current debate. It has also been necessary to describe the society we live in, and more especially the society towards which we are heading. In doing so it is impossible to avoid a certain simplification, but I have consciously emphasized those features which I believe will be increasingly dominant in what I have chosen to call the mass or service society. It has become clear then that the traditional book market of die