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As I’ve written here before (see category tag “books”), the book industry is not, repeat NOT, dying.
(That’s the newspaper industry, the music industry, and the non-cable TV industry.)
Book sales have held their own in this one-two punch era of economic blecch and Internet “disruption” better than most any other “old media” business, with the possible exception of movie theaters.
And the percentage of book sales held by indie bookstores has also held about even. Online and e-book sales ate disproportionately into the revenues of big chain bookstores, leading directly to Borders’ collapse.
For a more thorough look at the book biz—past, present, and future—check out “What Is the Business of Literature?,” an essay by Richard Nash for the Virginia Quarterly Review.
Nash believes, as do I, that the literary biz has been a hidebound, inefficient beast, and that the sooner it gets dragged kicken’-n’-screamin’ into the modern age, the better:
Book culture is in far less peril than many choose to assume, for the notion of an imperiled book culture assumes that book culture is a beast far more refined, rarified, and fragile than it actually is. By defining books as against technology, we deny our true selves, we deny the power of the book. Let’s restore to publishing its true reputation—not as a hedge against the future, not as a bulwark against radical change, not as a citadel amidst the barbarians, but rather as the future at hand, as the radical agent of change, as the barbarian. The business of literature is blowing shit up.
