BOOK PUBLISHING IS DEAD?

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http://tessasblurb.blogspot.com/

Reality is a harsh mistress.

Deny ugly facts all we want, reality will sit on our porch unfazed.

Ignore her long enough, and she ends up sitting on our chests.

1.) The corporate masters of publishing houses can’t afford literature.

A.) They seem to have worked themselves into a corner as dire as that of real estate.

Their industry got financialized, and it hyper-evolved to the point of collapse.

B.) The apparent logic of maximized profit creates a gray and chilly society

where nothing pays off but banks, guns and jails.

C.) The publishing industry is in trouble—

but not just because of the digital revolution.

The real trouble for the publishing industry

has more to do with the gradual unfolding of the economic transformation that led

to this structure of publishing,

where we now have five large corporate groups and a small number of retail chains

dominating the industry.

These corporations have to achieve growth year after year,

and when that top line revenue begins to fall,

as it did when the 2008 economic recession suddenly tipped the narrow profit margins into the red,

it had devastating impact throughout the industry.

And the only way that they can preserve the profit at the bottom line is

to push people out, and to reduce their overheads and costs dramatically.

D.) So that was the real crisis in the publishing industry in the autumn of 2008 to the present.

Now, it also happened to coincide with an upsurge in e–book sales.

E.) End result? A terminally ill book publishing industry.


2.) To witness the future is to rethink the past and learn something from it.

A.) Most people are only as good as their options :

How can a 22-year-old editor intelligently bid on a book?

What does a post-graduate $32,000-a-year, fresh-out of internship, know about

what will score a huge success with the public?

Does focusing on what is taboo to say in the face of superiors cut her off

from what mainstream America is feeling, thinking, and wanting to read?

B.) Why does this frequently appear to be a case of the asylum leaving the inmates to decide?

People in publishing (except those that are up top and doing well) are not really supervised.

Unsupervised inexperience is the formula for disaster.

3.) Literary agents are not like Hollywood agents.

Many literary agents are beyond frightened of angering the editors,

so they won't fight like Hollywood agents will for the clients.

They say things like, "Well yes, it's cheap money, kid, but think of it as an annuity."

Or, "I wish I could do more but they'll never budge" or this one : "You're lucky to get it."

Even if we are,

can you imagine a Hollywood agent (lawyer) accepting that without putting up some kind of resistence?

4.) Reading for pleasure is dying.

A.) According to the NEA, less than 1/3 of 13-year-olds read for pleasure every day,

a 14% decline from 20 years ago.

The percentage of 17-year-old non-readers doubled in that same twenty-year span.

If you're an American between the ages of 15 and 24, you spend 2 hours a day watching television,

but only 7 minutes a day reading, according to this study.

B.) Timothy Shanahan, a professor at the University of Illinois in Chicago and past president of the International Reading Association says

that many young people say they don't read because it's lonely.

When they are online or text messaging, they feel involved with others, but they do not feel this sense of community when reading by themselves.

C.) Shanahan continued,

"The Harry Potter books were popular not mainly because of this wonderful story and the language,

but because it was this huge phenomenon that allowed young people to participate in it.

What was exciting was reading what your friends were reading and talking to them about it. People of all ages are hungry for that kind of community."

*) What do you think?

How can we create that kind of sense of community among young readers nationwide?

Is book publishing sliding into the sea of oblivion? Is there hope? How can we stem the tide?

When and why did English teachers stop trying to teach the correct use of our native tongue, which has a bearing on declining reading?

The two subjects are inter-related, like a dog chasing its tail.
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