(As you can see, books are everywhere in our house. This is the dining room!
Take a look at this. What do you think? It's from this morning's New York Times.
How to Publish Without Perishing
By JAMES GLEICK
Even in the digital age, books have a chance for new life:
as a physical object, and as an idea, and as a set of
literary forms.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/opinion/30gleick.html?th&emc=th
(Here's the conclusion)
In bookstores, the trend for a decade or more has been toward shorter shelf life. Books have had to sell fast or move aside. Now even modest titles have been granted a gift of unlimited longevity.
What should an old-fashioned book publisher do with this gift? Forget about cost-cutting and the mass market. Don’t aim for instant blockbuster successes. You won’t win on quick distribution, and you won’t win on price. Cyberspace has that covered.
Go back to an old-fashioned idea: that a book, printed in ink on durable paper, acid-free for longevity, is a thing of beauty. Make it as well as you can. People want to cherish it.
James Gleick, the author, most recently, of “Isaac Newton,” is on the board of the Authors Guild.
Kathryn, if only you with all the authority you can muster will keep this idea at the forefront of every appearance and all your blpog postings and every discussion or reading or lecture, maybe we (and you know who I mean) would have a chance!
ReplyDeleteThank you for that quotation and the the implications and hope behind it!
I am glad to see your stack of books in your dining room, Kay. I am a hoarder of books. Even though I've not read a novel in two years, I can't resist buying books I plan to read one day. I can't seem to stop buying books and I don't think I'll ever enjoy reading an entire book from a computer screen. After an hour on the computer my eyes are dry and blurry.
ReplyDeleteMy quesion on this article is will the Google books help authors or hurt them? Will more writers be published? Will Google copy only books that have already been published or will manuscripts go directly to companies like Google and bypass the paper publishers?
I suppose I'd have much more room in my house if I just bought a kindle and downloaded all these books, but I'd miss seeing those nice spines on my bookshelves. I'd miss the attractive dust covers and book bindings.
I'd miss browsing stores and choosing. I'd miss book fairs. Oh, well, it probably won't change that much in my lifetime.
Thanks for bringing this to our attention, Kathryn.
Glenda, these are all thoughts that have been running through my mind. I don't know what to expect from the internet explosion of text, but I do know that nothing compares with a book held in one's hand. As for those stacks of books, I have now organized them on my sideboard, with pottery and candle accompaniments. I'll have to make a photo of my efforts! Now I'm working on my cookbooks. I'm a recipe junkie.
ReplyDeleteI do believe that the quotation from the NYT holds out some hope for us writers, but then organizaitons like Netwest do the same, in ways that the NYT doesn't notice. We have to support each other in as many ways as we can. K
I'm getting repititious, I know, but I want to rejoin the chorus. One thing that may make me keep struggling to get into print on paper I've never really admitted until now, and that is that if it's only in cyberspace, whatever I say won't likely ever get into my children's hands and heads. On paper, if I've kept a copy, maybe some day it will.
ReplyDeleteOne of the hardest things about tearing up roots and moving in our seventies was the absolute necessity to reduce the number of books we had.
Let's just resolve not to give up.
Joan, you are right. There's nothing like holding a book in your hands, especially on a cold December night. And nothing better than knowing that your kids and grand-kids are doing the same, and that the books you loved will be loved by them. And that your own words will be held in their hands, bound fast and called "book."
ReplyDelete