Where have all the sports books gone?

Where is my Pearlman?
Where is my Moneyball?
Where is my happy reading?
Where have all the sports books gone?

What Happened to All the Sports Books?

The author touches on something at the end that could be expanded upon. Documentaries have been raining down. I know of Bill Walton, Reggie Jackson, and Yogi Berra docs off the top of my head. Perhaps those are the new sports book.

(And not interviewing Pearlman is an egregious omission, as he's about the only guy making a living off sports books anymore.)

 

Especially judging from my own kids, people don't have the attention span for books anymore. Videos — the shorter the better — are king.

That said, I'm starting in on my second book just because I'm a stubborn asshole. Get off my lawn.

 

I grew up reading a ton of baseball books. Some of them were just collections of silly anecdotes (A guy slid into second on a steal and thought the liquid running down his thigh was from a broken pint of booze he had in his back pocket. He was happy it was just blood.)
I was thinking the mystery was gone. Ball Four changed things. The constant coverage and reserved nature of athletes doesn't leave much for books to fill in.
But there is still something there. The Netflix docs show it, even being long ads.
Collision Low Crossers and Moneyball are two books I thought of. Yeah, two books in 20 years, but they were about coaches and management.
What happened to John Feinstein? He would pump out some inside info book about a sport every few years.

 

+1
Good luck on your current project. I'm researching my second book, though it has nothing to do with athletics.

 

Was it a fad? Could it have been just a fad?

 

The books exist, but many are boxed into a niche.
For example, there is a new book out about the Colorado Rockies ... the NHL team.
Then there is overkill. Staying with hockey, how many books are needed about the 1972 Summit Series? I get last year was the 50th anniversary and it's cool to slice and dice Alan Eagleson, but enough already.

 

This is a great thread and topic.

I know that The Ringer's Mirin Fader recently wrote a book about Giannis and for my money, does some of the best longform sports writing in the game.

There's a much larger issue that the Esquire piece touches on. Sports writing is not very valuable these days. There are very few places that hire and employ writers as a means of growing income, which is usually how we measure good business. It's a crisis but I'm not sure how you solve the fact that reading and information as concepts are being devalued.

 

Feinstein still regularly publishes sports books. Just a couple months ago his bio of David Faherty came out. He and Mike Lupica have also pivoted to sports novels directed at teens.

 

people will always read. but there's a reason authors no longer are central to the culture -- like, say, Mailer or Vidal, appearing on talk shows or TIME magazine covers, shocking the world with their insights. we're at the end of the Gutenberg era. consuming narrative is a human need, and will always be, but the great mass of people prefer to consume it visually instead of via text.

great sports books, like novels and biographies and even poetry, will still break through occasionally and sell millions. but there's a reason, whenever you meet with a bunch of literate, curious people at a cocktail party or whatever, that the most common topic isn't the book someone is reading. it's about whatever show you're binge-watching, or want to watch or will watch soon. for most, show-runners have replaced novelists, and documentaries have replaced long-form writing.

 

And even Pearlman's next book is on...Tupac Shakur.

Smaller publishers will still do sports books but authors are looking at an advance of $2,500-$5,000 for....months of research. Months of writing. Plenty still do it because it's something they're passionate about or they've always wanted to have a book but it's going to be written while they do their regular job.

If you do get a decent advance from a bigger publisher and it doesn't make any money it's going to be very, very difficult to get a book 2 as the sales record is what they're going to go by, no matter how good the idea is, especially if you're not a big-name. And there are lots of big sports books that have come out in the past 10 years where we'd probably think they sold really well, based on either the author's platform or the fact the book was seemingly everywhere online, but in fact didn't do very well. And those big books by big names are then held against lesser-known authors because publishers will be like, well, if THAT guy wrote something on this topic and it sold for shit, how in the hell is a book by THIS guy going to do well?

But certainly there ARE still books sold by folks who aren't big names and sometimes they do sell well and they get more chances and even if they don't they'll always have that first one at least.

Feinstein just sold one about Ivy League football.

And with my wife being a literary agent I certainly still have a lot of faith in books and the book world, even if that world is much different than it was 20 or even 10 years ago.

 

And a good story about layoffs and buyouts at Penguin Random House and the changing publishing world.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/07/the-old-guard-is-out-at-penguin-random-house.html?