Unsinkable? | Peer to Peer Review

It turns out book publishing isn't crashing and burning after all. A new report out from the Association of American Publishers and the Book Industry Study Group finds that over the past three years and during the worst recession since the Great Depression publishers are making money, even growing. This is a surprise considering everything I hear from the published - advances are down, midlist writers are being dropped, writers who have been doing well are getting less marketing support, and aspiring writers are increasingly assuming they'll never be published the traditional way. It also is a surprise considering what we've been hearing from publishers, some of whom won't let libraries loan ebooks until they can figure out how to make more money, even though an ebook already costs a library far more than the same book in print and loaned under the same constraints.