Typo, by David Silverman
Soft Skull Press, 2008 (buy from Amazon)
At the height of Dotcom 1.0, David Silverman, the son of an alcoholic and disillusioned IBM lifer, borrowed the balance of his father's retirement account to finance the purchasing of typesetting business in Iowa, with the plan to buy up several competing firms to assemble a typesetting powerhouse for the 21st century. If you know anything about typesetting, you know how this story ends. If not, imagine someone investing their life savings in Lehman Brothers in late August of last year.
My own experience sort of parallels Silverman. I entered into a design partnership around the same time he set out on his putative empire-building. I watched the once lucrative margins on typesetting evaporate, though our work was a little more glamorous and less repetitive. The signal difference is that we were training new people for the first time, not trying to get decades-experienced operators to learn new skills, so we simply adjusted and found margins elsewhere, and learned to eke out profits by being exceedingly efficient. Silverman, owner of a company staffed almost completely by workers in the autumn of careers that were at one time as sharp as my young turks, faced a much bigger battle.
So before I even picked up the book, I wondered, what? You bought what? When? Anyone who did not see the writing on the wall about typesetting in 1999 must be a fool of a significant order. Reading this book was like watching a horror film -- don't open that closet! Stay out of the basement! Each additional turn of the screw made me want to bury my head in a pillow.
And for a book that chronicles the death of an obsolete industry in Iowa it is more than compelling. I guess any story of failure is going to have a little driving-by-a-car-crash fascination. It's no small feat to make the final days of a half-baked business plan about a dreadfully dull industry facing hopeless decline move along with the excitement of a spy thriller, but Silverman does a good job of it.
What he fails to do is say why. Many whys go unanswered. Even as he's careful to spread the blame around -- recalcitrant staff, a delusional and declining partner, and most devastatingly, the callous mediocrity of the likewise contacting publishing industry (if there is one element to this story that shines, it's chronicling the meanness that pervades being middle management in the middle west) -- he never takes ownership of the series of decisions that led to all this. Even though his best friend and mentor waxes idealistic about reviving the industry as an 'benevolent capitalist' he never realizes that their strategy would in the best of circumstances require the very sort of slash and burn techniques he believed he so opposed. Anyone who has lived more than a decade anywhere between New York and LA knows that leveraged roll ups of established industries facing narrowing margins equals cutting staff and viciously trimming costs.
After the fact this seems painfully evident, but Silverman races quickly past why he would risk his father's retirement, a decision that is fatally glib in the text, maybe because it was too much for him to share. Indeed, the personal recollections are very unevenly presented -- some are wincingly poignant, but others seem as if they were too raw for him to even put to text; in this sort of memoir, those details are essential. The details of why his venture failed are interesting enough, but skating in and out of how this made and unmade his relationships with an alcoholic father and beloved mentor makes one wonder if it's disassociation or forgetfulness.
Thought it says on the cover that ever MBA student should read this, I hope to god that MBA programs are better than this. The errors are telegraphed so absolutely that if it takes a tale like this to train our future leaders, it's time for us all to start building meth labs. But it is a great read for anyone else who thinks fostering a successful business requires only a good idea and hard work. He doesn't really do a good job setting up the particular ecology of the mind of an entrepreneur. Either I'm an dreadfully negative realist, but when ever I hear the phrase 'turn around' I think it means I'm about to get spanked, not rich.
And according to some, he plays it fast and loose with the truth. Comments (trustworthy sources all, I know) in a couple review threads challenge his claims about the technological challenges he faced, and, worse, his characterization of his mentor as he fails (that comment ostensibly comes from the man's wife and went unanswered).
All told, the book is highly readable. The issues of accuracy should give pause to any book presented as a 'memoir'. The technical inaccuracies don't really detract from the narrative, though the charges of mis-characterization of people demand more explanation, and perhaps call into question many of his base claims. Bearing that in mind, the portions that detail the mechanics of the business are still interesting and relevant. Given the rarity with which people shine a light into the obscure aspects of this industry -- albeit one I have an unusual interest -- makes it a decent read, albeit one best consumed with a skeptical eye.
NB: for Xmas, everyone at YM received a copy of recent Soft Skull Press book thanks to the generosity of publisher Richard Nash. This is one of a series of reviews as result of that largess.
