In pondering the decline of the newspaper
industry, I have picked a quarrel with fellow conservatives who
blame the decline on liberal bias. The real problem, I have argued,
is that reading itself is on the decline. The publishing
world, I have argued, is facing a "demand-side" crisis, because
younger generations -- raised in an age of electronic media -- have
failed to acquire the reading habit. (Next time you're on a plane
or train, notice that those under 30 almost never pass the time by
reading a newspaper.)
It's not just newspapers. Book publishers are also fighting market
stagnation:
You don't have to look further than the pages of
The New YorkTimesBook Review or the
shelves of Borders to see that the market for fiction is shrinking.
Even formerly reliable schlock like TV-celebrity memoirs doesn't do
so well anymore. And "the next thing," as Publishers
Weekly editor Sara Nelson notes drily, "is not bloggers
writing books." . . .
Ah, but what if a blogger wrote a book about how
nobody reads
books anymore? (Just pitching an idea there. Call me, OK?)
topics:
Books
