A Good Year?
This weekend’s newspapers were a bit more depressing than usual. I’m accustomed to messages of doom in the financial section and on the front page. This time, the arts and books sections were the biggest downers. The L.A. Times, the Washington Post and others proclaimed 2007 a dismal year for books and booksellers. The Times described it like this:
The year was punctuated by anxiety over the decline of many newspaper book review sections and worry that publishing, with its old-fashioned way of printing books on paper and shipping them to stores or to online services, can’t keep up with a fragmented, increasingly distracted and digital world.
A New York Times book reviewer complained about have to look really hard to find great fiction this year. Add to that a series of bookstore closings and a lack of huge book blockbusters, and people start throwing around words like “murky” and “unease” and then panic sets in.
Look, I’m as much a fan of hyperbole and exaggeration as the next gal, but is the sky really falling? I don’t think so. The store closings and digital age questions are relevant to all of us and are ones we need to figure out fast. But the ideas of great books getting lost among the many and certain authors getting all the press are really not new. That’s the publishing reality regardless of genre. Seems to me 2007 wasn’t a bad year. It was a normal year.
December 17th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
Helenkay, I couldn’t agree more with your take on things more!
December 17th, 2007 at 12:43 pm
Speaking of “old-fashioned way of printing books on paper and shipping them to stores or to online services,” has anyone checked out the new Amazon Kindle electronic reading device? Allows you to store @ 200 books/magazines/even Word documents on it, purchased wirelessly from amazon.com’s whispernet. No synching, no wireless contracts—
HKD, “Your Mouth Drives Me Crazy” has been Kindled, did you know? (See what a loyal reader I am? )
December 17th, 2007 at 1:51 pm
I completely agree with you HelenKay!
December 17th, 2007 at 5:54 pm
I agree with you HelenKay. There will always be great books that get lost among the well known authors - but that doesn’t mean the sky is fall in……..
December 17th, 2007 at 5:56 pm
I shudder to think the day will come when there are no longer print books - at least it won’t be in my lifetime!!!! And if it ever does happen, I bet they would be the most cherished collectibles of all time.
December 17th, 2007 at 6:31 pm
Thanks for the straight-up scoop! I agree–the newspapers are often quite about making the headlines as dramatic as possible…eek!
December 17th, 2007 at 9:45 pm
I read about the KIndle in Newsweek. Maybe someday we’ll all be reading ebooks instead of print. I’d like to have had that option in college, and high school, instead of lugging a huge backpack around…
Will people be downloading books without paying for them, like Napster? Are they already doing that?
December 18th, 2007 at 12:36 am
I would hate to think of a world without book’s. Book’s that we could set anywhere we please and read. (Ever think about kicking back in the tub with your lap top?) Maybe I’m just to old, but I for one don’t believe that day will every come. I believe as long as we have wonderful Author’s and faithful fan’s our children’s children will enjoy the same beautiful world of reading as we all have. Happy Holiday!
December 18th, 2007 at 4:15 am
I agree with Robin, I don’t think we’ll ever see that day in our lifetime either, and I’m glad of it. Yeah, ebooks are great, but give me an actual book to hold in my hands anyday. Nothing else like it (unless it’s to save a bunch of trees).
I think there will always be naysayers and pessimists who have to make comments like that - maybe they have nothing better to write about.
December 18th, 2007 at 5:25 am
Our B&N here is always so busy!! Also my children and their significant others always want gift cards to B&N for xmas & B-days! Our whole family reads & buys a lot of books. I think that there is a lot of great fiction out there… in many different genres!! I’m shocked to hear the reviewers say that there isn’t.
December 18th, 2007 at 6:10 am
I disagree with the paper’s take on this, too. Maybe there was a decline in reviews in print papers, but there are numerous internet sites out there dedicated to reviewing books - I visit/am subscribed to a lot of them. I think this makes more sense, in this day and age, because everyone is plugged into a computer and that’s where they get most of their information lately. I think the newspapers themselves are the old dinosaurs that need to change their practices or find themselves in deep trouble. I agree that 2007 was a normal book year - my numerous stacks of tbr books is evidence of that!