BookExpo - Old Books, new books

[bekah]

Sorry if this has been posted before but I thought it was pretty something:

from: 
<http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/books/article/0,2792,DRMN_63_4746182,00.html>
By Patti Thorn, Rocky Mountain News
June 3, 2006

Old books, new books

I should have known which way the wind was blowing when, early on at 
the expo, I attended a panel headed by The New York Times Book Review 
editor Sam Tanenhaus.

Tanenhaus and others discussed the Times' recent survey naming the 
best American novels published in the past 25 years. Titles by Philip 
Roth, Don DeLillo, Cormac McCarthy and others made the list. But it 
was the winner, Toni Morrison's Beloved, that incited panelist 
Cynthia Ozick's disdain. She noted that she was "flabbergasted" by 
the selection, proclaiming it more political than literary.

Meanwhile, author Thomas Mallon scrunched up his nose, as if smelling 
something vile, at the mention of Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, 
which made the short list. "I can't stand any of those," he said of 
the author's books.

It was great literary theater. So where was the audience? The 
half-empty room had the stultified air of a bunch of old ladies 
discussing the merits of crochet vs. knitting. Well-argued, but who 
really cares?

Leaving the seminar, I rushed to another discussion - and answered my 
first question about "Where the heck was everyone?" They were here, 
crammed into ex-Hewlett-Packard head Carly Fiorina's chat, 
"Publishing in the Digital Age."

There was no shortage of intensity in this room: About 400 people 
filled the lecture hall, hanging on Fiorina's every word. It was as 
if she were Moses pointing the way to the Promised Land - or in this 
case, to the new publishing paradigm.

Fiorina spoke about the changes coming to publishers. "My guess is 
that not everyone will survive," she said.

Publishers faced a tough trek through the desert and they would have 
to discard old baggage if they wanted to make progress. For example, 
"the time involved in the (publishing) process is quite stunning to 
me," she said.

"We're at the point now, when something takes a long time, it's stale 
. . . I think people are looking for more instantaneous things in 
their lives."

Fiorina marveled that, in this computer age, the copy editing for her 
new memoir, Tough Choices, had been done entirely on paper. And she 
told publishers it would be useless to resist the coming digital 
tidal wave.

"When everybody in China reads out of e-books, this industry will be 
changed forever. Maybe it's five years, maybe it's 10 years, but it 
ain't 20 years."


Bekah
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