This article is being talked about a lot, as much because of Sifton’s distinguished career as a Farrar Straus & Giroux editor, as her core lament.
(Ironically, she recently defended her father the theologian Reinhold Neibuhr’s authorship of the popular prayer “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.”)
I have a lot of problems with her conclusions, and independent of this post, will argue that she is sadly typical of many editors who just don’t get the larger consumer and reading trends at work.
–>read “The Nation: The Long Goodbye? The Book Business and its Woes” by Elizabeth Sifton