The Publishing Treetops Shake · 7:15pm Jul 22nd, 2020
So the last few weeks have been full of interesting news for the book industry. In fact, I was planning on posting on this last week, since it was more topical then (and I would have found easy access to the relevant links, now I’m just going to talk about it) but had that run-in with a falling teen from the sky and ended up a little out of it.
So we’ll discuss it right now instead, between bits of pre-work on Starforge. So then, what’s to talk about?
Well, when I say “book industry” I really mean one area: Traditional publishing. To be more specific, the big five. The last few weeks have seen a number of shakeups across the big five, from Simon & Schuster switching CEOs (even as they’re up for sale) to other publishers replacing high-up corporate positions, funneling their long-held higher officials out and bringing in new ones with the hope that they’ll bring change.
I've got a Barnes & Noble nearby, and I love it. Only reason I never go in is because I'm so busy reading horsewords these days I don't have time for original fiction. But if things go right then someday within the year next or two I'll be down low enough on my RiL that I can do less reviewing here and start doing that as well. When that happens, I really hope B&N is still around so I can enjoy having a legit bookstore with legit books to hold in my legit hands.
Whether my specific B&N is still around then, I'm at least glad to see the publishing companies getting the shakedown and maybe starting to change for the better. Maybe.
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I think they likely will be. The new owner pulled Waterstone's (a European book store chain) out of bankruptcy with similar tactics, so it stands to reason that B&N will survive with some competent leadership (rather than the previous owners, who were literally running it under the fashion of burning it for the insurance money).
Anecdote: I've been buying quite a few new-printing (or warehouse stock, at least) dead-tree books lately. Just one catch: they're all old books. It is stupidly difficult to find new physical books I want to read in the bookstore, so now I'm just going through back-catalogs of recommended or trusted authors instead, which means they're coming from a few small publishers (or small divisions of large publishers).