Are we ruining publishing?

It's not easy to blame readers for ruining publishing, but David Streitfeld in the N.Y. Times manages to do just that. He suggests that people who buy books from other individuals online are hurting publishers and authors by bypassing the usual purchasing channels. It's true that finding used books online has become easier in recent years, if not quite as much fun as browsing through a used book store. But I doubt there is much proof that people who buy online have cut down much on the number of books they buy. Using Streitfeld's logic, you could complain that lending books to friends is also destroying publishing, but in fact reading and book buying tends to feed on itself. For most readers, the more books they read, the more they buy even though some may be secondhand. They are still buying more new books than most people these days. And secondhand books, especially for children, are a wonderful way to spread the word about great new authors and books. If a child reads a library copy, then decides to take a chance and buy the book online, chances are you have a lifelong reader budding. In years to come these readers will support book publishing no matter how much moaning and hand wringing we do about the perils of secondhand books. Let's just celebrate the joys of avid readers both young and old.