Doom and gloom
I'm not one to dwell on the negatives, but last week, New York Magazine offered a candid and often dismal view of the future of book publishing.
It's not so much eye-opening to me that the consolidation of publishing houses, the death of indie booksellers and the emergence of e-books are completely changing the industry -- I'm more surprised at how the major players all recognize what the problems are, yet don't deal with them.
Call me a snob, but any industry that depends on Oprah as the biggest advertising boost in their arsenal needs to take another look at their gameplan. Meanwhile, I noticed that blogging is mentioned only in passing, and with derision, in the article, which leads me to believe that while it's an in-depth look at the problem, no one's looking at the solutions that are being presented.
But as a member of another mass medium that isn't so "mass" anymore, it does make me sad. I'll be looking for all kinds of hope at the Book Festival this weekend.
Comments
The publishing industry cannot afford to do what the music industry did and ignoring the changing times and technologies. Somebody out there is going to come along with the next big thing - whether it's eBooks, on-demand publishing, Kindles, blogs, book trailers on YouTube - whatever it is, there is something out there that is going to grab readers and they have *got* to be looking for it.
Posted by: LisaLynne | September 22, 2008 2:54 PM
"... I noticed that blogging is mentioned only in passing, and with derision, in the article ..."
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... which is incredibly myopic. Sure, there are a lot of "here's what I found in my navel today" blogs, but there are some with a lot of traffic such as like "Instapundit" that reference books and can drive sales. Additionally, some authors have blogs for their books (e.g. Jonah Goldberg's "Liberal Fascism") while other authors use blogs to comment or expand on their work, as happened on this blog just a couple of weeks ago.
Posted by: jamie hunt | September 23, 2008 7:33 AM