The Author Speaks

John F. Baker has been with Publishers Weekly for thirty-one years, serving as editorial director and former editor-in-chief, until he retired in 2004. In 1989, Baker became a vice-president of its parent company, Cahners Magazines. He has been involved in the launch of two other book-related magazines during this period, both times as editor: Bookviews in 1977 and Small Press in 1984. Baker was born in Lincoln, England, and is a graduate of Oxford University. He came to the U.S. in 1958 and worked here and in London for Reuters news agency, for Venture, a lavish travel magazine, and for Reader's Digest Books, before coming to PW as managing editor in 1973. He wrote frequently on book issues, has interviewed more than one hundred notable writers, and often addresses publishing, writers', and journalists' groups on publishing questions. He has taught publishing courses at the New School for Social Research and New York University.

In Publishers Weekly, John F. Baker called the 1940s and 1950s "the golden age of publishing," when the industry was a "comparatively small business producing a comparatively limited number of books for a dozily elite readership whose access to bookstores was limited by geography." However, as the U.S. population grew and became more educated, book publishing boomed. This rapid growth culminated in what Baker described as "the decade of the Great Communications Conglomerate Takeover" in the 1960s. Publishing houses either acquired one another or joined forces with communications conglomerates that held interests in newspapers, magazines, television, and motion pictures. By the early 1970s, the industry was dominated by about 15 giant companies. The consolidation of power continued in the early 1990s, when about seven publishers controlled the industry.