We see the result — and the future — in this student exercise. Canadian publishing will fall easily into step with the rest of the multinational corporate publishers who see books as a peripherally profitable sub-genre of entertainment. Books will capitalize on trends — not create them. Clever ideas and excellent packages will dominate, but only occasionally will real depth and substance — what books give us that no other medium offers — emerge. As the giants of CanLit retire, they’ll be replaced by their non-fiction facsimiles.
On The Future of Publishing
October 14th, 2005 · 2 Comments
by Booksquare
File Under: Quote of the Week
2 responses so far ↓
Rick Robinson // Oct 14, 2005 at 5:09 pm
I don’t quite buy this bit of alarmism, precisely BECAUSE books are “a peripherally profitable sub-genre of entertainment.” Aren’t some of the conglomerates already starting to divest (i.e., unload) their publishing divisions?
There is no real money in books, and for an entertainment conglomerate, publishing is not a particularly efficient way to leverage their movies, much less come up with the next high concept. So it will drift back toward being an indepent minor industry catering to an oddball market.
Sure, literature is going to jell in a jandbasket, but there is nothing new about that – it has been ever since around 650 BC, when booking agents for the Greek epic poetry circuit started hiring second-rate hacks to churn out cheap knockoffs of the Iliad and Odyssey.
— Rick
Rick Robinson // Oct 14, 2005 at 5:10 pm
I mean, uh, “independent minor industry.”