Publishing in Bad Economic Times

In The Nation, Tom Engelhardt has an article that, depite its title, is about the future of publishing during a time of great economic difficulty.

The piece doesn’t really get moving until page 3, but then there are a few intersting moments, especially when Engelhardy lays out the three reasons publishers believe that are immune to the forces that have recently laid waste to newspapers.

As with GM, it was always easier and far more immediately profitable for the big publishers just to keep selling those "SUVs" until their business model went into the toilet rather than try to prepare for a new world. And–factor three–there was one last bit of history that helped foster the illusion of future book prosperity. It was well known in the business that, during the Great Depression, books, like movies, had done splendidly. They were an inexpensive bit of entertainment and distraction, consumable at home, at a time when not much else pleasurable was going on in a rugged world. Ergo, books would be no less recession-proof in the next big downturn.

There was no reason to believe otherwise… unless you happened to focus on just how many dazzling entertainment options had, in the interim, entered the American home at prices more than competitive with the book. After all, most Americans can now read endlessly on the Internet, play video games, download music, watch movies and even write their own novels without stepping outside; and keep in mind that the $27.95 hardcover and the $15.95 paperback on the shelves of that mall store, once you drive there, aren’t exactly the inexpensive objects of yore.