A grim yet hopeful report on the future of literature by a book editor in Nord America, seems to be worth reading by those people interested in books on this thread. It’s long and I apologize since I don’t know where the link came from. Since it is about an important subject, perhaps the mods will let it stand in its longevity.
Robert Weil, who began his career as an editorial assistant in 1978, has been an executive editor at W.W. Norton since 1998.
He here speaks his mind about publishing quality books in a mass market climate.
[Every generation has its writers who rail about the collapse of literature. In the decade before the Civil War, Nathaniel Hawthorne complained to his publisher about that “damned mob of scribbling women” whose romantic novels clotted up the bestseller lists and prevented his own more literary works, so he thought, from gaining recognition. In making such a comment, Hawthorne has not inappropriately endured the wrath of feminists, but his larger lament was directed at a society that failed to appreciate literary works, such as his own The Scarlet Letter and Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, in favor of now eminently forgettable escapist novels.
more at www.nytimes.com