Will Amateur Booksellers Kill Publishing?
Over the weekend, NY Times writer David Streitfeld ignited a literary blogosphere controversy by blaming amateur booksellers for publishing’s current state of financial distress.
The article’s central point proposed that avid readers resell books so often that they have devalued the books they love so much. Here’s the rub: “it’s all the fault of people like myself, who increasingly use the Internet both to buy books and later, after their value to us is gone, sell them … the rise of a worldwide network of amateurs who sell books from their homes or, if they’re lazy like me, in partnership with an Internet dealer who does all the work for a chunk of the proceeds.”
So far the piece has raised plenty of questions on Twitter, as Soft Skull Press, publisher Michael Hyatt and GalleyCat’s own Ron Hogan debated the piece in pithy posts. What do you think?
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