The Published Author

André Schiffrin is a European-born American author, publisher and socialist. He was director of publishing at Pantheon Books for nearly thirty years, where he was partially responsible for introducing Pasternak, Foucault and others to America.Schiffrin quit Pantheon in 1990, and established the nonprofit The New Press, because of economic trends which prevented him from publishing the serious books he thought should be published. Traditionally, publishing houses had been run by individuals with a commitment to disseminating ideas. The old formula was to have a few commercially successful best-sellers generate the bulk of the profits, and fill out the list with important books that were less successful but still profitable. Now, big conglomerates have bought up publishing houses (and book stores), and publishers demand that every title earn not merely profits but a return on investment of 20%. One publishing executive told him to pulp (discontinue) every title that sold less than 2,000 copies a year, which, said Schiffrin, is a respectable sale for a backlist. This crisis in publishing is explained in his work The Business of Books: How the International Conglomerates Took Over Publishing and Changed the Way We Read (2000).
His autobiography A Political Education: Coming of Age in Paris and New York (2007) , described his life as a child of a European Jewish intellectual family growing up in the United States. As an anti-Communist socialist, he opposed both the Soviet invasion of Hungary and the U.S. war in Vietnam. The purpose of the McCarthy era, Schiffrin wrote, was not just to attack Communists and the democratic socialist left, but to undo the New Deal, as the Bush Administration is doing today. In the McCarthy era, people were frightened to engage in political activity. When he founded the organization that became Students for a Democratic Society, as an anti-Communist socialist movement, people were afraid to be on the mailing list, because the Federal Bureau of Investigation was monitoring them. Many American socialist organizations were funded by the Central Intelligence Agency, as anti-Communist front groups, so that the CIA could control the socialist movement, said Schiffrin. In Europe, there was no McCarthy era, so intellectuals were able to have a real pluralism, instead of the fake pluralism we have in this country, he said. That, for example, is why the Canadians and Europeans have government-paid health care and we don’t.[1]
He is the son of Jacques Schiffrin, an ex-Russian Jew who emigrated to France and enjoyed success briefly there as a publisher of the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade editions, which he founded, and which was bought by Gallimard, until he was dismissed on account of the anti-Semitic laws enforced during the Vichy regime in France. Mr. Schiffrin had to flee and eventually found refuge in America.
[edit] Works
• L’édition sans éditeurs (1999) ISBN 2913372023
• The Business of Books: How the International Conglomerates Took Over Publishing and Changed the Way We Read (2000) ISBN 185984362X (Hardback ISBN 1859847633)
• Le contrôle de la parole (2005) ISBN 291337235X
• A Political Education: Coming of Age in Paris and New York (2007) ISBN 1933633158
o Published in French as Allers-retours : Paris-New York, un itinéraire politique (2007) ISBN 2867464471
N.B. – Although there exist no English versions of L’édition sans éditeurs or Le contrôle de la parole, there is some overlapping of content between The Business of Books and the former.
[edit] References
1. ^ 2007 radio interview with Leonard Lopate, WNYC
[edit] See also
• List of publishers
[edit] External links
• The New Press
• 1992 audio interview of Andre Schiffrin by Don Swaim
• Interview with David Barsamian September 2003
• RealAudio interview WILL-AM Media Matters, March 18, 2007
• André Schiffrin discusses French and American politics on French radio, aired 19 April 2007 (Real Audio)
• Appearance on French radio to promote A Political Education, aired 1st May 2007 (Real Audio)
• French radio interview with Arnaud Laporte, aired 8 May 2007 (Real Audio)
• French radio interview with Frédéric Bonnaud, aired 8 May 2007 (Real Audio)
• Second appearance on French radio to promote A Political Education, aired 13 May 2007 (Real Audio)
Retrieved from “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_Schiffrin”
Categories: American book publishers (people) | American tax resisters | Year of birth missing

Duration : 0:58:17

Technorati Tags: Anti-Communist, Conglomerates, Human, Internalional, Justice, MNNnyc, over, Pubishing, Rights, socialist, Took