Walk into a bookstore and the shelves can seem almost inevitable: thousands of books, neatly arranged, waiting to be discovered. But long before a book reaches your hands, someone decided to take a chance on it. Someone else decided how many copies to print, how to market it, where to sell it—and, sometimes, when to give up on it.
Chesapeake Forum’s Page, Print & Writers, on Thursday, Oct. 8 from 1–3 p.m., pulls back the curtain on that largely invisible world with Richard Gavin Brockett, who has spent 46 years buying, selling, publishing and hunting down rare books. The $30 hybrid course can be attended in person at the Easton Family YMCA or online via Zoom.
https://chesapeakeforum.org/course/page-print-writers/
Brockett will take participants through the journey from an idea on a writer’s desk to a finished book in a reader’s hands. Who decides what gets published? What separates a manuscript that reaches bookstores from the thousands that do not? What determines a bestseller? What happens to all those unsold books? And in a world of screens, notifications and digital overload, why has the printed book proved so remarkably durable?
Those are questions Brockett knows from the inside. His nearly half-century in the book world has included publishing, bookselling, buying and searching for rare editions. Later in life, his curiosity took him in another direction: he returned to school and earned a law degree at age 58. Now living in Easton, he brings both an insider’s knowledge of the literary marketplace and an analytical eye to the forces that determine what we read.
The discussion will also explore book awards, modern “classics,” distribution and marketing, and the surprising economics of books that don’t sell. But the larger question may be the most interesting one: how much do the largely unseen companies and decision-makers behind publishing influence not simply which books we buy, but which ideas become part of our culture?
Page, Print & Writers meets Thursday, Oct. 8 from 1–3 p.m. The course is hybrid, with participants able to attend in person at the Easton Family YMCA or join by Zoom. The cost is $30. To register—or to discover other Chesapeake Forum courses—visit chesapeakeforum.org. If the course you want is full, join the waitlist; plans change and openings happen.
Chesapeake Forum is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing lifelong learning opportunities to residents of the Eastern Shore. Chesapeake Forum is part of the YMCA of the Chesapeake. To receive Chesapeake Forum’s newsletter, please send your name and information to info@chesapeakeforum.org.
