The Publishing World Post #1: "Looking Ahead"

This is the first post of a weekly series devoted to investigating current events in the publishing world. I tend to look at most issues from a writer's perspective because I am a writer; now I'm trying to look at the world from the eyes of a publisher interested in the future of the business because I am a publisher interested in the future of the business.

I have a small confession: when I opened The Evolution of the Book, I did not expect to find myself entertained and impressed. Kilgour’s decision to include highly specific information about each book form—from Cicero’s letter to Atticus to 19^th commentary on printing presses to the exact means by which Xeroxes work—kept me from feeling like I was in the middle of a dry history book. His inclusion of facts from every discipline—medicine, science, anthropology, technology—surprised me greatly. Most impressive, however, was his treatment of the electronic book as the “sixth punctuation.” Kilgour remained optimistic about the effects of developing technology, mainly because he seems to focus on the history of the book as a whole as a progression; he sees no reason why another development wouldn’t continue carrying the industry forward. Albert Greco's The Book Publishing Industry, on the other hand, always refers to electronic publishing in the most negative sense possible, blaming it for “cutting inroads” into publishers profits and ignoring that publishers have been utilizing those very technologies to supplement and develop those profits as they can. Even an article from the New York Times--“Are Books Passé?”--made waves supporting the rise of the e-book reader, two of which will be debuting this fall. I can’t imagine holding back progress just because the book in codex form is a security blanket to readers across the globe. I, too, love a good book. I feel like a signed first-edition is utterly precious and absolutely delicious to read, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t read in any other format and enjoy the same words. The same sorts of arguments must have been present leading up to the five previous “punctuations” in the life of the book (Mark Twain’s exasperation with the typewriter come to mind). I’d prefer to be ahead of the game than behind it; better to be the first artist on CD than the last artist on the 8-Track.