This Regime Change, I Predict, Will Be Successful

As a regular contributor to Publishers Weekly, I have to recuse myself to some extent from discussing the appointment of Sara Nelson, former books editor at the Post and the Observer (who also ran the publishing industry desk for Inside.com--remember Inside.com?), as the new editor-in-chief, but I'm pretty excited about it: Sara's a great reporter and a great writer, and I believe she's expressing the right idea in her NYT profile:

"The magazine might not be for everybody who buys books," Ms. Nelson said. "But I do think there is a good size 'civilian' population that is fascinated by books and the book business. Find a group of three people, and two of them want to be writers or have a book idea. Everyone I know belongs to a book group. There is a crossover population that we should be able to add to the mix without sacrificing our appeal to people in the book business."

Mind you, there's a lot of editorial layers between her and me, so it's not as if I've all of a sudden got some incredible access or anything, and everything will go on just as it has before. In fact, I've got several reviews due right now...