The Liminal Librarian

When we focus on the recent feel-good stories about people turning to libraries in tough economic times, I’m wondering if we think enough about the other side of the equation: More people visiting libraries instead of buying books doesn’t much help out the book industry, which has been feeling the economic downturn badly. If you’ve missed the many, many stories about this, see:

• More pain for book publishing and Macmillan joins others downsizing, freezing wages (LJ)
• Publishers announce staff cuts (NYT)
• Layoffs at Random House, Simon & Schuster (AP)
• Parsing Black Wednesday (Quillblog)

Over at BookLust, Patricia Storm — herself a writer — says that:

Sadly, one of the areas where I have had to cut back on is book-buying. I find this very, very hard, ‘cuz I walk into bookstores and see all the pretty new and delicious books and I just want to buy them all!! But I can’t. So instead, I trek it over to our local library and sign out books that only a few months ago, I would have bought.

It’s fascinating to look at the effect the economy seems to be having on publishers’ willingness to experiment with older models. Over at the Issues in Publishing blog, Fran Toolan offers some predictions for the next year, suggesting that it’s “going to be a great year for small and nimble companies.” Although neither small nor, generally, nimble, some of the larger publishers are taking tentative steps toward mixing things up. For instance:

Borders Group Inc. has agreed to accept books from HarperStudio on a nonreturnable basis, departing from a decades-old publishing tradition.

Under the terms of the deal, the nation’s second-largest bookstore chain by revenue will get a deeper discount on initial orders of books published by the new imprint of News Corp.’s HarperCollins Publishers — 58% to 63% off the cover price, instead of the usual 48%. In exchange, Borders won’t return any unsold books to HarperStudio, instead probably discounting them in the store.

In response to the crisis, The Association of American Publishers has also launched a “Books are great gifts” campaign at BooksAreGreatGifts.com. (Aren’t they?! And don’t forget that you can share the gift of Karen Schneider’s writing — or of mine, not to leave out the big ITI blowout sale .

Maybe what we need here is a “Librarians buy great books” campaign. I always give books to the kids (and sometimes the adults) in my life, how about you?