Reports of Publishing World's Death May be Greatly Exaggerated

New York reported last week that the book business isn't going to get a storybook ending and, in fact, may be in line for an untimely demise. Reporter Boris Kachka's piece cites stagnant book sales, big name authors playing musical chairs, and Amazon posing as some sort of sales "boogeyman." Finally, he suggests that publishing might need to turn to corporate America for solutions.

That last bit of advice seems unusual given the tumble on Wall Street that has the government offering bailouts and the word "Depression" creeping into the pages of The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. I am not sure corporate America has the solution.

Publishing may be forced to fend for itself and frankly, I see firm evidence that it is capable. Too often dismissed as an industry that is behind the times, publishing can actually take credit for making great strides in taking its content digital and finding new sources of talent.

Consider that in the last decade a single mom from Britain created the next generation of readers when she concocted a seven book series about a boy wizard named Harry Potter. Not only did kids who'd barely lifted a book in favor of a Game Boy become devoted fans, but famed critic Michiko Kakutani called J.K Rowling's work, "monumental, epic and spellbinding." Kids' literature over? I don't think so. Ask Stephenie Meyer, who is cashing checks faster than her vampire tale Twilight makes it into the local cineplex.

It's not just kids' fare either. Philip Roth published his 25th novel, Indignation, this week to rave reviews. And last time I wandered through Chelsea, The Food Network was turning out celebrity cookbooks as fast as new episodes of Iron Chef. Not only can you now buy COOKBOOKS in the grocery store (nice distribution efforts by the publishers who put them right where you buy the food) but the last time I walked in the front door of my local market I ran into a stack of Randy Pausch's The Last Lecture accompanied by a video screen playing footage of the professor's famous final talk. By the next week, they were all sold, replaced by The Shack, a self-published book that was the talk of this year's book expo convention.

And I haven't even mentioned Oprah. Recommending books that range from Toni Morrison's novels, to Dr. Oz's YOU: series, to Maya Angelou's poetry, the woman has virtually reinvented the book club.

Reading dead? Apparently no one told Oprah. And they are going to have a tough time convincing me that it's game over for the book in all its printed glory.

Hefty tomes lose their appeal

Like millions of others, I'm headed for the beach next week. My favorite part of the ritual, other than packing a suitcase full of shorts and flip flops, is finding the perfect books to accompany me on the flight and at the water's edge. This year, my traveling companion is pushing hard for the work of Ayn Rand. My reaction to the lovely gifts of The Fountainhead (720 pages) and Atlas Shrugged (1088 pages) was an indignant cry, "They're so LONG!"

I was, frankly, shocked at myself, and wondering what happened to the youngster who read all seven of the Narnia books.

It appears I am not alone.

Yesterday's New York Times features a piece by Motoko Rich (registration required) which discusses how America's teens are loathe to tackle books, but instead spend long hours reading or texting sound-bite like snippets on Facebook. Lest we attack only the young, Nicholas Carr's cover story in the July/August Atlantic Monthly says readers of all ages, including him, are similarly shunning long format text.

"Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy," writes Carr. "My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I'd spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That's rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I'm always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle."

Wow. I admit that half of me felt better to be in the same camp with Nicholas Carr, but the other half got mighty nervous for the publishing world at large. Carr's piece cites research, ranging from a U.K. educational consortium to a psychologist at Tufts, that says both how and what we read is fast changing.

Maybe it's not all bad news. Maybe it means the epic novel will go the way of the encyclopedia -- published online in digestible pieces. Maybe the next Charles Dickens will pen his masterpiece via Twitter. As for me, Rand is in my suitcase but that doesn't mean I won't be sneaking into the airport bookstore for a copy of Runner's World or People for a somewhat shorter bit of escapist reading while I'm gone.