Who could have predicted?

There’s an old joke about two writers talking publishing:

Writer 1: Any luck with your novel?

Writer 2: Naw, the publishing market sucks. I can’t believe how much it sucks.

Writer 1: It’s always sucked.

Writer 2: Yeah, but now it’s really bad.

For as long as I can remember people have been saying that conditions for getting a first novel published by a New York house were bad and getting worse by the second. These expressions of doom pre-dated the Kindle. Just the same, this story should surprise no one. Facing declining sales and under pressure from parent companies and shareholders, publishing houses seem to be taking fewer risks on new talent than ever before. And e-reader consumers thus far overwhelmingly favor non-fiction, genre fiction, bestsellers in general. In other words, they are inclined to buy that which is the opposite of the first literary novel of a recent graduate of a MFA program.

The trend in literary publishing, regardless of format, from at least as far back as Oprah’s first book club, has been away from the blue-chip competence of MFA grads toward writer-personalities who can tell a story of their lives on Oprah’s couch that tracks directly with the material in the book. The message being: you, too, can commodify your sucky life. With the result being an unexpected, disproportionate fame and, now, with the logical conclusion being—this.

Updated: Links fixed.

Where do they find these people?

I have always wondered where lifestyle reporters find interview subjects who conveniently suffer from the exact angst du jour highlighted the article. In this case the story is that there are couples in America in which one prefers to read paper books and the other prefers to read e-books. (See the couple above captured spontaneously in their living room reading on differing devices.) She loves the way books smell; he thinks books are so Middle Ages and hates the whole “smell” thing.

The writer concedes that it’s not clear how widespread this quiet agony of marriages strained to the breaking point by divergent preferences of reading platforms is but insists that “the publishing industry is paying close attention, trying to figure out how to market books to households that read in different ways.”

Apparently, there is also some concern among digital evangelists about the resiliency of paper:

“There is much more emotional attachment to the paper book than there is to the CD or the DVD,” said Mike Shatzkin, founder and chief executive of the Idea Logical Company, which advises book publishers on digital change. “It is not logical — it’s visceral.”

Right? Because there’s no logic to people preferring the device that you can pick up and read after you’ve dropped it off the Empire State Building.

What almost every article that sets out to reveal the tension between e-readers and paper readers is the notion that there necessarily must be a philosophical motivation behind the choice, deeply rooted in each individuals world view and sense of self, but my sense is that such motivations are often more prosaic. I’m not an early adopter of e-reading technology for several reasons. One is that I can’t afford to spend hundreds of dollars on technology that will cost half as much a year from now and be obsolete in two. Another is that I know if I bought one, I’d never use it and then feel guilty. I reason I don’t use the iCal app on my computer isn’t that I like the smell of the half dozen to-do lists strewn about by desk. I don’t use it because I know that if I did, one item on my hand-scrawled to-do lists would be “Transfer to-do lists to iCal.”

The Souffle Also Rises

With Gourmet first coming back digital and now in a newsstand print format, Conde Nast appears to be the first of the big magazine publishers to be following the trend I pointed out in Creative Nonfiction of online literary magazines who establish a print presence by publishing greatest hits collections semi-regularly. Jason Fell, the author of the article, suggests that this move is not an indication that Nast is bringing back Gourmet as a periodical but uses the opportunity scratch his head, as many have, over the closing Gourmet in the first place, a panic move ostensibly aimed at bottom line realities that caused disproportionate damage to the company’s public image.

I hope to be back on a more regular posting schedule after Labor Day. The languid steamy days of August have coincided with a period of intensified job hunting, which these days goes mostly Choose File/Attach Resume and “I believe my education and experience make me uniquely qualified for this position,” which means “I can’t tell from the language in your posting what your company actually publishes, but if it doesn’t advocate the killing of puppies, I’d be willing to consider it.”