Some Thoughts On Publishing

Timothy Egan

I know: publishers say they print garbage so that real literature, which seldom makes any money, can find its way into print. True, to a point. But some of them print garbage so they can buy more garbage.

Lawrence Osborne

In other words, publishing has drifted into the paper-thin celebrity culture that defines just about every other domain, and which is rendering American culture as dull and monotonous as anything in Western history.

But just as newspapers are dooming themselves by cutting the very thing they alone can provide--in-depth, on the spot reporting--so publishing houses are dooming themselves by trying to run in somebody's else's rat race and cutting the very thing we turn to them for: writing itself.

Americans love bloviating about the "death" of this and the "emergence" of that. But a culture of multiplicity simply offers the inquiring mind different things for different moments. Books don't actually compete with the Internet or movies, and never did.

We the readers, the people, are not dumbed down media serfs obsessed with celebrities, dosh and movie rights. You are.