Defending Publishing’s Future on Minnesota Public Radio

(QUICK UPDATE: I just realized I can embed the audio for you!)

Earlier today, I had the pleasure of a conversation with one of my favorite bloggers, Carolyn Kellogg of the Los Angeles Times book blog Jacket Copy, and Kerri Miller, the host of the Minnesota Public Radio show Midmorning. Our topic: “Is book publishing dying?“

This particular round of debate was kicked off by a recent New York Times op-ed by Garrison Keillor declaring that “book publishing is about to slide into the sea,” which provoked no little amount of sharp responses, including one from myself:

“Garrison Keillor is just the latest in a line of prominent Chicken Littles rushing to declare the sky is falling; at least this version has the added twist of ‘And the sky was so much better in my day, let me tell you, sonny.’ The fallacy in all these apocalyptic pronouncements is to confuse ‘publishing companies,’ especially the New York ones, with ‘the publishing industry.'”

It was a highly enjoyable hour—Kerri Miller asked great questions, as did several listeners, and Carolyn is always a delight to talk with—and I was pleasantly surprised to receive an email this afternoon from a Minnesotan who enjoyed the broadcast, referring me to a letter he’d written his local newspaper editor when Keillor’s apocalyptic patter first ran. “I don’t agree that the explosion of self-published books is necessarily a sign of literary Armageddon,” wrote Mark Munger. “And to lament the usurping of print media by the Internet, Kindle and the like is to ignore the reality of our own children. They have been steeped in the digital revolution. Much as Keillor and I might like to turn back the clock, it ain’t gonna happen.”

Now, granted, as the proprietor of Cloquet River Press, Mr. Munger has a dog in this hunt, but he’s on to something. Setting aside the “self-published” aspect for a second, one of the great advantages of smaller publishers is that they are capable of having smaller hits, which don’t need to appeal to as broad an audience, and that gives them creative freedom to distribute forms of literature that the Big Houses wouldn’t find “marketable,” because they aren’t geared towards marketing it. Now, when somebody who chooses to pursue publishing his or her own work takes advantage of the editing and design resources available to create a book with comparable “production values,” and invests both time and money into thorough marketing of that book to the right audience, success doesn’t seem quite so ridiculous. Is that a “threat” to big publishing? I don’t think it will be, any more than the current state of small, indepedent publishing is a threat. I see plenty of room for great books from a variety of sources, and the doom of bad books cluttering up the landscape is, perhaps, overrated. After all, we have plenty of bad books already, and that doesn’t seem to stop people from finding the good ones, and loving them, and telling other readers about them.

8 June 2010 | uncategorized |

A Brief Guide to Some Bells & Whistles

This week has brought more than the usual share of new visitors to Beatrice, some whose interest was piqued by the video from my BookBloggerCon talk on professionalism and ethics, and some perhaps by the news that my position as director of e-marketing strategy at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt no longer existed. Either way, welcome! I try to post something that, as the tagline up above says, “introduces readers to writers” every Monday through Friday, and I certainly hope you’ll enjoy those posts, but I wanted to take a moment to mention some of the other ways I go about this (ways I don’t think I’ve ever laid out for long-time readers before, either, so all the more reason).

First of all, in case you don’t want to keep visiting the site every day looking for the next post, you can subscribe to the RSS feed and always be assured, with your news reader open, you’ll find out about any new content very soon after I publish it. You’ll get the entire post, too—no truncating posts as a way to force you to visit the site and jack up pageviews here!

You can also become a fan of Beatrice on Facebook, if you’re a member. There are two main things I’m doing with this. First, it’s an easy way for you to find out about any Beatrice readings or other events that are in the works. Second, I’ve begun using it as a way to share links to other items of literary note I find from around the web, as well as news about books and writers I like and admire—usually no more than one or two of those a day, however, because I’m not trying to create unnecessary clutter.

Finally, you can follow me on Twitter, where… well, as I described it once, “Come for the publishing news, stay for the updates on the music coming from the upstairs apartment.” Actually, though, we’ve moved into a much quieter apartment, so there’s not so much of that anymore. But I do use it as a place to say things that are on my mind but wouldn’t fit into the Beatrice mold, and sometimes there’s a lot on my mind, is all I’m saying.

I’m really glad that so many passionate readers find Beatrice entertaining (or useful)—thank you for visiting, and even more thanks for returning!

4 June 2010 | uncategorized |