NYT Covers Publishing…Sort of

Sarah Glazer writes a story about trends in self-publishing. I swear, this article was written in 1998 or 1999. Despite the article’s intent to cover alternative publishing, in fact, it is covering alternative publishing from the perspective of gigantic New York publishing houses. That’s one problem with the New York Times: it can’t get away from its New York bubble or its tendency to cover Fortune 500 companies (which I’ve written about before) The self-publishing revolution came and went, big publishing houses are irrelevant and literary people are flourishing in the blogosphere. And ebooks? From the standpoint of New York publishing houses, they are interesting fringe experiments..and nothing more. And in the meantime, nobody reads serious fiction, and talk shows feature “guest authors” who are either basketball players, political rabblerousers or defrocked preists/criminals/Wall Street tycoons. That is the world we live in.