Hey, I’m wondering what’s going on in the publishing industry with this tanked economy. Is publishing struggling as much as the rest of this great nation, or has the slump made more people want to check out of life with a good book? How are the LDS publishers doing? Main stream publishers? Just wondering.
Yes, publishing is struggling. How much, I don’t know for sure.
Professionally, I am seeing fewer titles published by smaller presses and new releases held back. The bigger publishers seem to be doing about the same. In the LDS arena, I’ve seen accepted manuscripts and scheduled releases dropped, and series release dates pushed into the future. But then, I’ve also seen lots of new authors picked up and some series have added titles beyond their original scope. So it’s hard to tell and publishers generally aren’t forthcoming about the true state of affairs with their company. It would damage their sales to say they were struggling.
Personally, like most other bookaholics I know, I’ve had to put myself on a book diet. I buy fewer titles now and get a lot more from the library. Which totally stinks, but…
Publishers? Authors? Readers? Want to chime in on this?