Publishing Glass Half Empty, Half Full? Third Possibility: No Glass At All?

Douglas Rushkoff is author of Life Inc: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take It Back and he's written a feel-good "Soapbox" guest editorial for Publishers Weekly telling us "why scaling down is good for publishing." I'm not sure the fired, laid-off, and otherwise redundanted victims of last winter's Wednesday of the Long Knives would characterize themselves as joyous forerunners of an upswing in the fortunes of our industry; nor do Rushkoff's opening comments evoke buoyant optimism: "Borders is verging on bankruptcy; Barnes & Noble is closing stores; and major media conglomerates are closing imprints and ejecting talent faster than they gobbled it up in the 1990s."

And how about this passage for making sure we know how dark it has become before the dawn:

Over the past year, we've watched venerable imprints fold into one another and great talent be almost randomly ejected. Knopf's revered name is now subject to the corporate-speak of “Knopf-Doubleday.” HarperCollins created Collins, then crossed it off the spreadsheet, in the process booting Brenda Bowen's children's imprint; one of the most talented publicists in the industry, Larry Hughes; and the brilliant Gillian Blake, whom they had just snatched from Bloomsbury. Doubleday closed Morgan Road and lost an irreplaceable asset: one-woman publishing-powerhouse Amy Hertz.

But if we forcibly restrain cynicism we'll come to his thesis: "While this makes for some bleak headlines in the short term, it bodes well for the future of a publishing industry that operates on a scale more appropriate to the medium we're all creating and selling."

We'll grant him this one: "Publishing is a sustainable industry—and a great one at that. The book business, however, was never a good fit for today's corporate behemoths. The corporations that went on spending sprees in the 1980s and '90s were not truly interested in the art of publishing."

Whether Rushkoff makes the case that the meltdown of the trade book publishing industry is a forerunner of the Age of Aquarius we'll leave to readers of his editorial, We'll Be Back. But some may take exception to his conclusion: "Now that publishing has revealed itself to be a bad growth industry, it is free to rebuild itself as the vibrant, scaled and sustainable business the reading public can support." Even Dr. Pangloss might shrink from such soaring wishful thinking.

All sneering aside, we join the editorialist in hoping that tomorrow will truly be a better day for our poor battered industry.

Richard Curtis