-- Random House has announced a re-organization that is setting everyone to rampant discussion. Longtime publishing veterans Irwyn Applebaum and Steve Rubin will be stepping down.
-- On top of their freeze on acquiring from last week, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has now announced layoffs. That's after Rebecca Saletan resigned yesterday.
-- Simon & Schuster and Thomas Nelson are also reducing staff -- 35 positions and about 10% of the workforce, respectively. Who is next, one wonders?
On a personal note, it's so very hard seeing friends get "right sized." In fact, I'm getting right sick of it. These are wonderful and talented people with great taste, and I think the reading public will be the poorer for it. And one wonders about the shrinking number of imprints and how that will change competition for publication spots.
But what's a girl to do? Chin up and back into the fray. Keep reading those queries and partials and manuscripts; keep sending out projects. To all you out there, don't stop writing. If you don't try, you don't have a chance of succeeding. There are silver linings to be found. I had an author "orphaned" this week (before the book is even published) -- but, no fear, it's still going forward. And, I've also got a deal on the table for a new book, and I'm staying my course..... What's your silver lining?
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Comments
They have my sympathy - on my next book, I've now been orphaned twice between delivery and publication. Tell 'em it's not the end of the world, even if you do end up adopted; it's not the same, but hey, nothing ever is. And it's not the worst: I had a book once that passed through five editors and three changes-of-genre (without my changing a word of the text) between commission and publication...
Silver lining: I didn't think I'd ever have to be grateful for TWILIGHT, but guess who needs another million billion books printed.
Heh.
Hyperinflation will wipe out my debt load!
I would hate to think of what our future-world would be like without books.
My "Silver Lining": Is that I still have faith in more than just me.
*Sending encouraging & faith filled vibes your way* :-)
---THEA RAUTH
Still you never know unless you try so I'll keep plugging at it..
1) Excuse to congratulate myself for not only regularly skewing the national reading average, but also funding the health of the book industry. I read 104 books last year and will probably make it into the 80's this year, and the vast majority of those books I bought new. So far the majority of those I've read as library checkouts have already or will be bought in paperback release.
2) Motivation to make extra special sure Lament of the Dove doesn't suck. 13,000 words slain in this draft, 7,000 more words to go!
I'm currently rereading Michael Larsen's book about agenting. Somewhere in it - and this was 1996 - he says 'we used to moan "why can't publishing be run like a business'. Now it is."
I think the man has a point.
At least those who are left still need freelancers. Too bad that's not a career.
But the demand for books in a physical sense will disappear along with the typewriter and the fountain pen, which doesn't mean people won't be reading books anymore. And I think that's where the silver lining rests.
Other than the prices at Disney World going way down? People go back to school during economic downturns, if they can possibly manage it. That example, plus a few graduates coming back to tell my students that the job prospects are bleak might convince more of them that what their teachers are trying to teach in school is worth learning.
I look back to how the Great Depression affected publishing. Escapism's popularity increased. And while "quality" wasn't being printed, pulps were.
I wonder what form of escapism will be our salvation this time around?
I wonder what this will mean for eBooks?
My silver lining is that I am a day's work away from finishing my first novel ever.
I left you a question in the "Miss Manners" post a week or two ago, and I totally understand if you didn't have time to get around to it but it's something I'm interested in. Should I resubmit at the next open call for q's?
Another might be that with a sufficient shift in paradigm, publishing may well be able to recover. Physical media may be in lesser demand than digital, but physical is a lot harder to produce by one's lonesome, so there's still an incentive for authors to work with publishers for print, while there's very little such incentive for digital. A publisher that's prepared to create smaller runs and market them largely digitally (online stores) will likely still be able to do well, they just have to completely change their process and expectations to do it.
Yet under the surface, I think what's also going on with publishing is a long-overdue reassessment of the question, "What IS a book, anyhow?"
I've seen this mentioned nowhere else, but James Gleick (the "chaos guy") had an interesting NYT Op-Ed column this weekend, which addresses that question and goes even further, speculating on what publishing might be on the brink of becoming.