Friday, September 19, 2008

New York Magazine: Can The Book Business Be Saved?

Was just in the Big Apple. It seemed everybody I talked with was buzzing about the article in New York magazine.

Read it here, if you are so inclined.

-Sean
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4 comments:

Dana King said...

Yet another sky is falling article. These have been common, and they may well be right. I have no expertise that argues otherwise.

Still, common threads run through these gloom and doom articles. Consolidation of major houses. Outmoded business practices. Thirst for quick profits throuhg blockbusters, instead of building authors' audiences for sustainable growth. Difficult problems, to be sure, but I don't think anyone feels comfortable with the solutions, such as they are, to date.

There will always be a good number of people who love to read, and a core of those will make it a priority in their lives. I suspect most of those people will want to hold a book in their hand and turn the pages, at least for quite a while yet. It's a like like the automobile industry: worry about making good cars, and marketing them well, and taking care of your customers. THAT's where the money comes from.

I have a twenty-something friend who came to me a few weeks ago to ask for some books to read. He'd read as a child, then got away from it, and thought mysteries would be fun to get into. I loaned him half a dozen books, and now he's hooked again. I just got an email to thank me for recommending James Lee Burke's CADILLAC JUKEBOX. This is where the future of publishing is: recruiting and helping to make people enthusiastic about reading again. The rest will shake itself out. Even if the big publisher go belly up, somehting will take their place, so long as people want to read.

Sorry this was so long. I think you hit a nerve.

2:00 PM
Libby Hellmann said...

What's useful about the article is that it brings together all the disparate facts and trends we've known were out there.

What the article doesn't mention (and I realize it wasn't part of their thesis) are the smaller publishers who are stepping up to fill some of the gaps the big guys have created.

4:28 PM
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3:51 PM
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1:07 PM

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