Publishing: End of an era?
May 31st, 2010 by Kathleen Bolton
Garrison Keillor. Man, I love him and his rich voice booming Good Thoughts to writers every morning on NPR’s Writer’s Almanac.
Garrison Keillor thinks publishing as we know it is over."Call me a pessimist, call me Ishmael, but I think that book publishing is about to slide into the sea.
We live in a literate time, and our children are writing up a storm, often combining letters and numerals (U R 2 1derful), blogging like crazy, reading for hours off their little screens, surfing around from Henry James to Jesse James to the epistle of James to pajamas to Obama to Alabama to Alanon to non-sequiturs, sequins, penguins, penal institutions, and it’s all free, and you read freely, you’re not committed to anything the way you are when you shell out $30 for a book. You’re like a hummingbird in an endless meadow of flowers."
To continue reading:
Publishing: End of an era?
Along with so many others, I hope this is not true. Undoubtedly, publishing has been altered forever by the ebook market and free online content.
"The publisher is a middleman, he calls the tune to which the whole of the rest of the trade dances; and he does so because he pays the piper." - Geoffrey Faber, British academic, publisher, and poet
What happens without the middleman? Is it better for the consumer? The writer? The agent? It sure isn't good for the middleman.
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