B(u)y the Book (an addendum)

After addressing the issue of publishing in my last posting, I came upon the following passage in an article from the July 19, 2004 issue of Newsweek addressing the recent revelation that the number of readers has declined by 14% from 1992-2002. The seemingly blatant contradictions in operating procedure by the publishing industry are addressed as follows:

Oddly, publishers have responded to the decline in readers by publishing far more titles for people not to read. Two decades ago the number of new
books published annually hovered around 60,000, then climbed more than 100,000 in the early '90s. Last year saw a record 164,609 new titles. "Forty years ago, you used to worry that a good book would not be published," says Dan Frank, editor in chief of Pantheon Books. "Now everything is being published, and a lot of good books are being overlooked."

Frank also suggests that publishers need to be "more discriminating about what they print." As a business model, it seems rather ridiculous to feel that it's a wise move to generate more product if demand is at an all time low. Again, I don't know all the intricacies of the publishing industry, but something seems to be amiss when books are being produced at such an awesome clip that a good portion of them are relegated to remainder tables and massive clearance sales.

It's also likely that, even with the record number of titles being produced, some real gems are being overlooked in favor of total duds, but the figure above is astounding, incomprehensible. Print is anything but dead.