Michael Castleman Delves into 'The Untold Story of Books: A Writer's History of Book Publishing'

In his 19th book, journalist and author, Michael Castleman, writes The Untold Story of Books: A Writer’s History of Book Publishing, a comprehensive guide chronicling the history of publishing. Well-written and filled with extensive research, The Untold Story of Books provides a wealth of information and interesting facts that anyone, from aspiring writers to someone who’s simply curious about the book business, can enjoy. Castleman remarked, “I researched this book for 44 years, that’s no joke… I signed my first book contract in 1979, and when I did that, I thought, ‘Whoa, if I’m going to be involved in this crazy book publishing industry maybe I should study it and learn about it because familiarity with the business side might give me a leg up in my career…’ I started researching the book publishing industry daily through anything I could find: The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Publisher’s Weekly, and the memoirs of famous publishers and writers, and just anything I could find about the publishing industry, and I did that for 44 years and I still do it today!”

The Untold Story of Books is divided into three separate businesses of books related to the technology of printing, a concept original to Castleman. He explained, “As printing evolved, changes in authors’ relationships to printers, and later publishers, basically define the business, and the three epics are: from Gutenberg to the end of the 19th century was the first book business, and in the first book business there were no publishers… authors paid printers to print their books… but what happened over this period… was that printing itself evolved and changed and got a lot faster. By the end of the 19th century, high-speed industrial presses could turn out so many books, so quickly, that the model flipped and all of a sudden publishers began paying authors for manuscripts, and then turning around and hiring printers to print them… and that lasted 80 years from 1920 to about 2000… After 2000, when digital publishing happened, then you could print so many books so quickly… so, again, the model has flipped… and so we’re now in the third book business, which is a high-tech return to the first book business where the vast majority of people pay to publish.”

According to Castleman, nowadays, books don’t make a lot of money unless you’re a consistent, bestselling author. However, there is hope for those aspiring to become published authors, especially if they specialize in certain genres targeted towards women. Romance novels, along with mystery thrillers, are an exception with romance books often topping the fiction category. “Women love romance fiction, and women are the readers, and women buy three-quarters of all books and read two-thirds of all books. So the book publishing industry is really aimed at women. You’d never know it, but that’s actually the case.”