Sunday, December 14, 2008

Random Thoughts on Publishing

Thought I'd share a link to some interesting thoughts on the state of publishing from a Random House editor. Found his conclusions encouraging. Hope you do, too.

Karen

4 comments:

Mary @ Giving Up On Perfect said...

Thanks for the link, Karen. As someone who wants to work in publishing (but isn't there yet), it's been so good to hear the perspective of different folks in the industry. I particularly like this point Mr. Tavani made:

"...I understand what is magical about books. But the most magical thing about them is the information they convey: the story they contain. The word “book” and the word “story” are not synonymous, just as eight tracks and music are not the same thing. Stories pre-date books by milleniums; and though books might someday go away, story will last as long as our civilization does."

Interesting how that dovetails with your blog title, Karen! Great article - thanks for sharing.

Mary

Anonymous said...

It doesn't surprise me that the industry needed trimming. I'm sure there will eventually be an upside, although I'm sure it's hard to visualize for those who lost jobs.
More isn't always better, but then less isn't necessarily better either as far as defining quality. It'll be interesting to see the direction and selection of novels once the dust settles.
For an industry which works at a snail's pace, I wonder if the layoffs will slow that pace even more.

Karen B. said...

Nicole, I think it definitely will slow some things for awhile. When you have fewer people doing more work, it takes awhile to come up to speed on new responsibilities. And yes, I'm speaking from experience.

Karen

Lori Benton said...

Thanks for sharing that post, Karen. I found it encouraging, and hadn't looked at it quite that way before. To the making of many books there may come an end (though I find that hard to fathom) but storytelling will endure.