Buy Books for the Holidays

Even people not in publishing know that the industry is not in the best of shape. It's causing a lot of panic in the blogosphere. Like the rest of the media world, layoffs are up, budgets are down. For years, people have been predicting the demise of the book. As a small press, we are still printing real books for that niche of people who want to hold on to something tangible.

There have been articles run in the NY Times and reprinted elsewhere lately about rethinking the book as a treasure. I like that; I think the industry needs to promote books as something special, a keepsake. A book is a handsome item that stays on your bookshelf, something you can thumb through and mark up repeatedly.

I was sent an interesting link to a website that's promoting holiday book-buying: www.buybooksfortheholidays.com. It says: "[The website is] a small contribution that we could make to show our appreciation to the people who bring us books, to give back to the industry that we love, and to help save books." Thanks, contributors to Buy Books for the Holidays. We are hanging in there for you.