From someone who’s seen it up close and personal, an account of how the 80s and 90s changed book publishing beyond recognition. The old:
But it was our office archaeology that I remember the most. There was a primitive chaos to it all — the hybrid scent of tobacco and mimeograph ink, and the sounds of ringing phones, of typewriters zipping along until the warning bell pinged near the end of a line, and of the clack-clack-clack of the return handle as the carriage reset.
It’s easy to talk about what the computer changed everything in the 1990s, but it’s surprising how disruptive the Xerox machine and the fax machine were in the 1980s:
The Xerox machine meant that suddenly, not one manuscript was submitted to one publisher, but that 10 copies went to 10 publishers simultaneously. The first publisher to claim the book won, cutting a six-week process to six days or sometimes six hours…. The fax machine accelerated the process of signing contracts, and beamed manuscripts overseas for worldwide auctions.
The description of the transformation of the 1990s is worth reading for the sheer number of artifacts and practices that the computer rendered obsolete – probably almost overnight.
When I leaf through my collection of old Readers’ Digest issues from the 1980s, I’m always struck by photographs of directors and chairmen of companies at their desks, with nothing but a few sheets of paper and a large gold pen in front of them – how in the world could they manage without a computer and an afternoon game of Free Cell?