Melville House Books

“Books have had a kind of spooky power, embedded as they are in the very structures of learning, commerce and culture by which we have absorbed, stored and transmitted information, opinion, art and wisdom,” observes acclaimed FSG editor Elisabeth Sifton. “No wonder, then, that the book business, although a very small part of the American economy, has attracted disproportionate attention. But does it still merit this attention? Do books still have their power?”

In a thoughtful essay for The Nation, Sifton writes, “Over the past twenty years, as we’ve thrown ourselves eagerly into a joy ride on the Information Superhighway, we’ve been learning to read, and been reading, differently; and books aren’t necessarily where we start or end our education. The unprofitable chaos of the book business today indicates, among other things, that slow, almost invisible transformations as well as rapid helter-skelter ones have wrecked old reading habits (bad and good) and created new ones (ditto). In the cacophony of modern American commerce, we hear incoherent squeals of dying life-forms along with the triumphant braying and twittering of new human expression.”

So what does it all mean? “It is a confused, confusing and very fluid situation, and no one can predict how books and readers will survive,” says Sifton. “Changed reading habits have already transformed and diminished them both. I, for one, don’t trust the book trade to see us through this. Wariness is in order”

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.