Alive and kicking
By Dave
June 9th, 2008 | Leave a comment
To hear book publishers, publicists, marketers, etc., you’d think books were a dying industry. But selling 3 billion units a year doesn’t sound like a death knell to me. Sure, individual publishers might see numbers shrinking, but that could be the result of having to share the pie with more hungry publishers, to stretch a metaphor beyond its useful range. It’s not dying. It’s changing.
In fact, The New York Times is expanding its books section to a 15-minute segment Friday evenings on its radio station, WQXR FM. See news, CLICK HERE.
The future of books may or may not be Kindle and like technologies, but clearly the industry must adapt or die. And taking books to the radio represents adaption. Going to the Web, a la DelMio.com, is another adaption. I have a vested interest in the well-being of books and their authors and publishers.
So when I see news such as the Times’ expansion of its radio segment, I find it heartening. Rather than cut back, as newspapers so mistakenly tend to do (thus my exit from that industry), The Times is pushing forward, outward.
That’s what we all ought to be doing.
