Top Publishing Stories of the Year: January 2009

January 2009 dawned with a flurry of layoffs and closures around the industry, but a few happy stories broke that cold month as well. An accidental book trailer for an out-of-print book scored 30 million views on YouTube. The iPhone digital reader Stanza counted one million downloads, making headlines for a scrappy start-up.

There was plenty of sad news. Novelist John Updike passed away. Layoffs rocked Publishers Weekly and Criticas magazine closed. Book World, the Washington Post‘s book supplement, ceased stand-alone print publication. Online, the closure of the Ficlets writing site sent waves through the digital writing community.

Finally, booksellers, writers, and this GalleyCat editor attended the historic inauguration of President Barack Obama.

Welcome to GalleyCat’s annual year-end roundup of publishing headlines. It’s a chance to celebrate our good news and reflect on our bad news after a long, challenging year for the industry. Visit our Year in Review link to read all about what happened to publishing in 2009. Include your favorite headlines in the comments section…

Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews.