Publishing on the Skids?

The Publishing industry is calling Wednesday, December 3, Black Wednesday, for all the bad news that hit the street.

Random House underwent a massive reorganization with major divisions being consolidated or simply disappearing. Thomas Nelson, the world's largest Christian publisher and the 10th largest publisher of any kind in the U. S., laid off 10% of its workforce.

And over at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, which had already announced a freeze on acquiring new titles, the publisher resigns and the executive editor is fired, with more layoffs on the way. And Simon & Shuster has eliminated at least 35 positions.

Not good to say the least but probably long overdue. I have been saying that publishing is probably the last of the old boys clubs to still conduct business according to an archaic set of unwritten rules, but no one likes to see industry giants crumble. What is interesting is the unsaid presumption that people will stop buying books. I'm not sure.

I am a subscriber to the Free Library of Philadelphia's Author Event series and just this past week, it was a standing room only crowd for Toni Morrison. Granted she is a Pulitzer Prize winner and a Nobel Prize winner but still, it was a Monday night in early December when there are plenty of other distractions. And the line for her to autograph her newest book was at least 200 people long. No exaggeration.

Of course, she is Toni Morrison but most of the events this entire season have been very well attended. And at all of them people buy books.

Of course you can still borrow books free from the Library, so if all you want to do is read the book, you can. But the point here is that people wanted to buy the book and have it autographed by the author. And please note that this was not the Sarah Palin Diaries--this was real, fairly challenging, literature, taught in English classes.

My point is that I don't believe people will ever stop buying books, especially those which they view as investments. Perhaps it is a point that the publishing industry should consider, since they don't seem to be publishing too many of that genre.