Unsettling view of the future

You may be getting tired of reading articles about the future of reading--one of the favorite topics of librarians, teachers, and critics--but there is more to say. John Green's article in the January issue of School Library Journal, however, opens new vistas of possible futures for young young people and the adults who choose their books. Conventional publishing for adults and increasingly for children focuses on blockbuster novels that appeal to a wide reading base. This is what Green calls the Wal-Mart approach to selling books, choosing a few titles with broad appeal, in contrast to the Amazon.com approach which offers a wide range of titles each of which only has to be sold to a limited number of people to generate a profit. Librarians can purchase from either source and make them available. On the other hand, librarians could encourage authors to seek other formats for distributing their work, probably online. Books could be downloaded in any library and read on a mobile device. These books would not be limited entirely to words; illustrations, videos or audiofiles could be integrated. Just think how the librarian's job would change. Recommending, indexing, making available would still be our task, but eventually any library could offer almost any book in any language. Is this a possible future? Who knows? At least read the article and start thinking about the new world to come. Changing formats will challenge us, but the work we do is still vital.

More books coming

Librarians pride themselves on following news in publishing and keeping up with the latest trends and the latest books. That task becomes more overwhelming every year. It used to be we only had to browse through the catalogs that came in the mail from major publishers, but now there are thousands of books being published in all sorts of formats. Even for those of us concerned only with children's book, the numbers are growing. Self-publishing is becoming a major trend, making waiting for formal notices even less feasible. One good way to keep up is to follow the blogs and newsletters directed at children's writers and one of the best of these is Alice's CWIM Blog The CWIM stands for Children's Writers and Illustrators Market, the bible of children's publishing outlets. On her blog you'll find notices about editors moving from one house to another, workshops being offered, and general publishing trends such as the move documented by Publisher's Weekly about print-on-demand books outnumbering conventionally published books for the first time in 2008. That's a change that librarians will have to monitor.