It was bound to happen. The economy is hitting everyone’s pocketbook (discounting those who W. protected over the past eight years), and the book industry is not immune to the ripple effect now spreading across the country. (To see the rest of this post, click “Read More” below.)
Yesterday, Random House announced that it was freezing employee benefits. Third quarter earnings for both Barnes and Noble and Borders were down significantly. A Publishers Weekly Alert claimed that Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has ordered its editors to stop acquiring books for the foreseeable future. Bad news all around.
It seems to this humble observer that planet earth is having a profound near-death experience. Global warming predictions now tell us that far worse climactic catastrophes will happen before mid-century. Earlier predictions of environmental collapse were too conservative. Add to this what could have been preventable wars, famine, disease, and economic catastrophe, and we have the makings of a nice little apocalypse.
Here’s the irony: the prophets’ voices are not being heard as loudly as they should be. Why? Because fewer books are being published. Yes, there are many fine nonfiction books that are sending out dire warnings, but the general publishing climate, as seen above, is not healthy.
But maybe it’s a moot issue. Are we really educating a new generation of readers? Or are we producing a world of young adults who read nothing longer than the social networking on iPhones, Blackberries, and Facebook? With each passing day, I become more of an iconoclast. 
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
The Economy's Impact on Publishing: Earth's Near-death Experience
Posted by Billy at 11:09 AM
Labels: Blackberry, ecomomy, Facebook, global warming, iPhone, NDE, Publishers Weekly
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16 comments:
Billy, thanks for all your comments on education. I agree with you - it is very discouraging because, as you said, the people spouting off about education have no idea what it's really like in the classroom and all the challenges we face. So much is out of our control. Obama mentioned the need for parental involvement and I appreciated that - but he also promoted charter schools, which, to me will be the downfall of public schools.
Yikes! You scare me! Ebooks are on the rise, though: Random House's ebook sales have tripled, and now they're releasing a ton of their books digitally. (Maybe you told me that, LOL... I forget!)
I think, to reach the younger readers, we need to give them digital options. It's a different world.
I'm depressed now. How can I go into the gloom of Global Winter without books?
I have to believe that humanity will get a clue and keep the disaster from becoming as bad as it could be. I'm also crossing my fingers.
How sad that text messaging should be more important than reading the classics or reading any book for that matter - reading period seems to be going the way of the dinosaur...
Though both my children were raised with books of all kinds the lure of modern technology has captured their interest more.
Diane, I agree. Charter schools in New Orleans (down the road, so to speak) are pretty good, but the city's public schools are right where they were pre-Katrina, or worse, and the city's school system has been a disgrace for over 50 years. Many of the teachers themselves can't read or write above a high school level, and the crime is so rampant that the game is lost before kids even walk in the classroom. But as you said on your blog, there's just no substantive discussion. Most recommendations float on the surface level.
Spy, with the advent of Kindle (which I hate because I'm a Luddite at heart), kids may be more prone to reading. And you're right: Random House and a few others are trying e-books again, even though they tanked pretty badly the first time around.
Written, I find myself looking at so many problems--global warming, for example--and wonder if we've reached a critical mass. I do believe that humanity has the ability to solve all these problems, but do they have the resolve? Consider how many people don't even believe in global warming. Also, consider "low information" citizens, who don't have a real grasp of anything until it hits their own pocketbooks. I'm worried.
Janice, descpite my teaching lit and then becoming a writer, my son never really became an avid reader, and I read to him every night from age 2 thru 9, and after that, we would read middle readers together. It still wasn't enough to overcome technology. His friends were the same. Teachers long ago stopped making kids accountable for reading assignments by giving multiple choice tests that Cliffs Notes could handle. And I found most parents didn't really care as long as the report card was good.
Hello Billy!
I'm in your camp on this one. It's my firm belief that reading as we know it will be gone within three generations at most. I argue about this with other writer friends and my various publishers, but I believe it to be true. The electronic eReaders et al will be gone as well.
Computers and devices can converse with us now to a degree and within the time frame I indicated, they will communicate with us as easily as we do with each other. Written text is, after all, a rather inefficient method of transferring information.
Stories will return to oral status as conveyed to us by our electronic devices or directly via the "Wire in the Brain."
Three generations. I'll bet you fifty cents on it.
Rick, thanks for stopping by. I wouldn't take your bet because you may be right. I've often thought that by 2020, if not earlier, people will have internet and text access via implants beneath the skin. In fact, testing has already begun on such prototype devices.
No, never. Books will stay with us. I do so believe that.
Monique, I think books are here to stay, but how many will be in paper form vs. electonic form is, I think, up in the air. Wether or not people will read them is another. Technology, I think, has weaned people from reading. People want short pieces of text, like TV sound bytes. I hope I'm wrong.
Well, I hope that people still want books, whether they are in paper form or on the net. Personally, I like to hold a book in my hand, but I just want others to be able to read my words.
Also, I read that there is a hold on adult books at many publishing houses, but that does not hold true for children's books. Where does YA fall into this?
YA is still part of juvenile lit, although YA novels are expected to be as long as adult novels--at least 65K words long. Not sure, but I suspect that YA may be exempt from the "acquisition hold" since the market niche for YA is still pretty healthy since so many YA titles are put on mandatory school reading lists.
i think with the advent of the internet, a whole new generation of "cliff notes" readers was born. i also find people do not read as much as they used to and, when they do read, it's basically garbage. i find very few who read any type of good literature - anything from the wealth of great writers of generations past. *sigh*- such beautiful writings out there to be had and, yet, too few who avail themselves to it.
Rebecca, nobody can ruin the classics like droning English teachers who don't really want to teach. And the kids are too busy to read anyway. I was once told by a parent that her daughter couldn't possibly read the assigned novel because she was working to pay for her prom dress. Double sigh.
I hope you're not right, but I've wondered the same things too. Reading has been one of the greatest joys of my life and got me through many tough situations. I'm baffled and sad that so many young people are turning away from reading.
My verification word for my previous comment was "dologra"—sounds like a impotency drug just for sad people.
Shauna, LOL!!! I love that word!
Books have done for me far more than a therapist could have ever done.
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