Why The Book Thief Risked It All To Scam The Publishing World

For nearly six years, I have been fascinated by the case of the Spine Collector. The publishing world came to the collective realization a few years before the pandemic that a thief was aggressively trying to steal unpublished books from everyone who had access to them for their jobs. What made the case so fascinating was the apparent lack of motive; their methods were explicable and not all that sophisticated, but their reasons for risking jail time were totally opaque, as the books never leaked or appeared on the black market. On this week's episode of Only If You Get Caught, we tackle the tricky question: Why were they doing this? To help get an answer and tell the full story, I drafted in Reeves Wiedeman, who co-wrote the definitive series of Spine Collector stories for New York alongside Lila Shapiro. In the time since we recorded our interview, Wiedeman has moved on to The New Yorker, surely a recipient of the Only If You Get Caught bump. The book thief's motivations are confusing and inexplicable unless you approach them from the right angle. Knowing what we know now about their identity and motivations, it's clear that the cloistered prestige of the publishing world explains the thefts. Publishing is a strange business riddled with contradictions. Jobs are highly coveted, yet often underpaid. The industry doesn't always know which books are going to sell or how to market them. The system forces authors to take on all manner of odd auxiliary roles, sometimes making it impossible for them to succeed. And yet, there's nothing cooler, to many people, than publishing a book or working on one's release. To understand why the book thief did it, you must understand publishing.

Read it at Defector ↗

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