As always, I must throw in my two cents
Jun. 11th, 2008 03:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
megwritesThis article has been making the link rounds across my f-list. But I think the most interesting commentary on it came from this post by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
skzbrust who pointed out a really silly, and perhaps unfounded statement in the article.
The statement being:
I'd like to also take exception to this statement, for these reasons:
1. As opposed to what? Reading for work? For school? Are we shifting to a forced-reading economy here? Is there a rising trend of people's seventh grade English teachers tracking them down decades later and making them really read Huckleberry Finn instead of the CliffNotes? I do realize that there are folks who need to purchase books for their various occupations, but by and large, I imagine that most adults read for pleasure and pleasure only.
2. Asskzbrust pointed out - there's not really any statistics to back this up. Not in the article at least.
3. What do you mean by "age"? This year, this decade, this century, this millenium? Frankly, I think we're doing much better than previous ages. You want depressing? We can always go back to the The Dark Ages. Those folks never read anything (in their defense, they were mostly illiterate and busy dying of the Black Plague at the time and had no printing presses).
4. Taking the pulse of people's literary psyches via marketing data and publisher info is a rather dodgy affair. Just because publishers aren't selling a lot doesn't automatically mean that people are reading less. Or - low publisher profits =/= ZOMG! DEATH OF LITERACY!
5. Did you *miss* the Harry Potter craze and JK Rowling's rise to world dominance? I know that a bunch of Harvard students have been bitching themselves nearly unconscious for just that reason.
The only truly hard statistics to be found the article are these:
That's kind of a stupid statistic to quote right now, or ever.
Why? Let me share my economical expertise with you.
A) Retailers traditionally drag ass in the first quarter, because the Post Holiday Hangover sets in.
B) We're in a slumping economy with rising food and gas prices. Everyone is reporting losses, because people are putting the brakes on buying. .03% (a useless figure, btw) isn't all that bad. Especially since retailers, especially of those goods which are not necessary for day-to-day existence, tend to feel that first and worst. Retailers actually live a much more marginal existence than the American public would believe.
C) These stores reporting losses are not just reporting book sales. This also means that people aren't buying the miscellaneous merchandise there. So, that means that the toys, games, gifts, overpriced muffins, and Shakespearean Quotation Coffee Mug Gift Sets aren't moving either.
D) The downturn is more because of the retail side of the equation than people's reading trends.
I can testify that I myself am actually reading more. I'm just not paying seven goddamn dollars for a paperback or fifteen bucks for a slightly nicer paperback unless I really, really (really!) love the book or the author. And forget hardbacks. I gave them up, because book buying wise, they're as bad a cigarettes.
For my reading needs, I've usually turned to the library or used booksellers, both online and in real life. While this may not keep the publishers or the authors in business, if I didn't, I'd either never get to read a book or stand in line thinking, "Well, I can buy this book or I can buy my medications this month. Hmm. I dunno, I mean, it is about werewolf sex and it's not like I really my endocrine system for anything."
In general, the article seems to be scare-mongering more than enlightening me about the literary world. I also felt a big sense of "Well, duh!" when reading the article. Of course publishers are going to pressure authors to come out with as many books as fast as they can. If you strip away all else, publishers are basically book factories. And just like any other factory, the people running it are going to want to produce as much as they can as quick as they can. Whether they're making widgets or Great American Novels.
All in all, I think this article's mother was a hamster, and its father smelt of elderberries.
skzbrust who pointed out a really silly, and perhaps unfounded statement in the article.The statement being:
In an age when reading for pleasure is declining, book publishers increasingly are counting on their biggest moneymaking writers to crank out books at a rate of at least one a year, right on schedule, and sometimes faster than that.
I'd like to also take exception to this statement, for these reasons:
1. As opposed to what? Reading for work? For school? Are we shifting to a forced-reading economy here? Is there a rising trend of people's seventh grade English teachers tracking them down decades later and making them really read Huckleberry Finn instead of the CliffNotes? I do realize that there are folks who need to purchase books for their various occupations, but by and large, I imagine that most adults read for pleasure and pleasure only.
2. As
skzbrust pointed out - there's not really any statistics to back this up. Not in the article at least. 3. What do you mean by "age"? This year, this decade, this century, this millenium? Frankly, I think we're doing much better than previous ages. You want depressing? We can always go back to the The Dark Ages. Those folks never read anything (in their defense, they were mostly illiterate and busy dying of the Black Plague at the time and had no printing presses).
4. Taking the pulse of people's literary psyches via marketing data and publisher info is a rather dodgy affair. Just because publishers aren't selling a lot doesn't automatically mean that people are reading less. Or - low publisher profits =/= ZOMG! DEATH OF LITERACY!
5. Did you *miss* the Harry Potter craze and JK Rowling's rise to world dominance? I know that a bunch of Harvard students have been bitching themselves nearly unconscious for just that reason.
The only truly hard statistics to be found the article are these:
Retailers are also in a funk. First-quarter sales slumped by a combined 0.3 percent at Barnes & Noble, Borders, and Books-A-Million, the nation's biggest booksellers.
That's kind of a stupid statistic to quote right now, or ever.
Why? Let me share my economical expertise with you.
A) Retailers traditionally drag ass in the first quarter, because the Post Holiday Hangover sets in.
B) We're in a slumping economy with rising food and gas prices. Everyone is reporting losses, because people are putting the brakes on buying. .03% (a useless figure, btw) isn't all that bad. Especially since retailers, especially of those goods which are not necessary for day-to-day existence, tend to feel that first and worst. Retailers actually live a much more marginal existence than the American public would believe.
C) These stores reporting losses are not just reporting book sales. This also means that people aren't buying the miscellaneous merchandise there. So, that means that the toys, games, gifts, overpriced muffins, and Shakespearean Quotation Coffee Mug Gift Sets aren't moving either.
D) The downturn is more because of the retail side of the equation than people's reading trends.
I can testify that I myself am actually reading more. I'm just not paying seven goddamn dollars for a paperback or fifteen bucks for a slightly nicer paperback unless I really, really (really!) love the book or the author. And forget hardbacks. I gave them up, because book buying wise, they're as bad a cigarettes.
For my reading needs, I've usually turned to the library or used booksellers, both online and in real life. While this may not keep the publishers or the authors in business, if I didn't, I'd either never get to read a book or stand in line thinking, "Well, I can buy this book or I can buy my medications this month. Hmm. I dunno, I mean, it is about werewolf sex and it's not like I really my endocrine system for anything."
In general, the article seems to be scare-mongering more than enlightening me about the literary world. I also felt a big sense of "Well, duh!" when reading the article. Of course publishers are going to pressure authors to come out with as many books as fast as they can. If you strip away all else, publishers are basically book factories. And just like any other factory, the people running it are going to want to produce as much as they can as quick as they can. Whether they're making widgets or Great American Novels.
All in all, I think this article's mother was a hamster, and its father smelt of elderberries.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-11 08:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-12 12:48 am (UTC)I try to do the same, and the last new hardback I purchased was for that reason (that was years ago), but, yeah, I'm in the same boat entirely.
Remember the days when you could buy a paperback for less than five dollars? *sighs nostalgically*
As for musicians, I don't buy whole albums anymore and probably never will again. Between my occasional lifting of free mp3s from various sources and iTunes, I only buy singles, and only if I really like them.