How the Pandemic Changed Publishing

The pan­dem­ic has touched every­one in 2020, and that includes writ­ers and publishing. 

In my own writ­ing life, I have been touched, influ­enced, and ham­pered in almost all the ways cit­ed below. 

• The world of writ­ing and pub­lish­ing is one that has tra­di­tion­al­ly been high­ly col­le­gial.  Much of that is gone. It may be vir­tu­al but it’s not per­son­al. Zoom meetings—and sim­i­lar platforms—are like talk­ing to a gath­er­ing of postage stamps. 
• The func­tion­ing of pub­lish­ing hous­es has been rad­i­cal­ly dis­rupt­ed. All the var­i­ous peo­ple who coor­di­nate the pub­li­ca­tion of books have been dis­persed, which makes the process of pub­li­ca­tion that much more difficult. 
• The flow of monies—publishing is a business—has been com­pli­cat­ed and often snarled. 
• Books have had post­poned pub­li­ca­tion dates or have even been dropped entirely. 
• Book mar­ket­ing has become dif­fi­cult and, in many cas­es, vanished. 
• The con­tact between writ­ers and their read­ers have been seri­ous­ly curtailed. 
• Pub­lic­i­ty, such as tra­di­tion­al book tours, has been dropped. 
• Edi­tors had been fur­loughed, inter­rupt­ing the flow of man­u­script development. 
• Editors—and all those con­nect­ed to edi­to­r­i­al functions—have retreat­ed to sep­a­rate silos, mak­ing the com­mu­nal nature of pub­lish­ing very much less so.
• Book stores have closed or been forced to oper­ate in very dif­fer­ent ways. 
• Most authors’ incomes have dropped radically. 
• The social nature of the author’s world has been severe­ly stunted. 
• Conferences—at which read­ing, and books were the focus—have been lim­it­ed, at best. 
• The teach­ing of read­ing has been hampered. 
• Libraries have closed and tried to find oth­er ways of functioning. 

[Ed: These last four para­graphs were added when a New York Times arti­cle was pub­lished the same morn­ing after this essay was published.]

Despite all this, the New York Times on Jan­u­ary 29, 2020, reports that pub­lish­ing has had a very good year. I urge you to read this good news.  

Many peo­ple seem to have turned to read­ing to fill their social-dis­tanc­ing hours. Will this make for a resur­gence of read­ing? The arti­cle pays scant atten­tion to books for young people. 

It will be interesting—to say the least—to see what the new year will bring. Will every­thing spring back to what was? Will the world of writ­ing and pub­lish­ing change? Will new read­ers stay read­ers? I don’t pre­tend to know.

Stay in touch.