Epstein - post for 1/26-2/1

Post for Week of Jan 26-Feb1
I found Epstein’s “The Book Business” an interesting read, but also found myself more excited to reach the end of the book than to keep reading. The combination of his writing style and technique, which was filled with typos in almost every chapter, did not impress me nearly as much as did King’s book on writing and publishing. His constant staggering from one subject to another made his book sometimes confusing and annoying. For example, at one moment he talks about the state of the publishing industry, which I found interesting, and the next moment he talks about the inner décor of his office and his views on the Vietnam War. The content, however, was informative and is useful to any new writer, editor or publishing hopeful.

I found the most important point of Epstein’s book to be the death of the publishing industry. Abby’s post focused on this issue, and I found her points to be quiet interesting. Is there any way to save the publishing industry? Currently, it seems to be dying, like almost every other industry in the current economy. However, whose responsibility really is it to make America want to read? Certainly, the idea of using celebrities to promote books is one that could be a great success. Sadly, that idea seems to be far-fetched, unless readers want to have advertisements for Qdoba and Burger King in the middle of each chapter in new novels, which is something that is not unrealistic. This way, they could afford to pay celebrities to strut down Fifth Avenue with their creepy miniature pets in one hand and a copy of a new novel in the other. Yes. This seems like a sad sell out, but let’s be realistic. The age of wit is gone.

So what can America do to save it’s book industry? The art of reading is a lost sport. Perhaps the only way to save the reading industry is to focus on schools and early education. Reading should be taught to be ‘fun’ as opposed to boring. While books on middle school and high school reading lists are certainly classics, anything that creates any kind of controversy is quickly blacklisted from schools, unlike television. This is why cable is just far more interesting to students than reading. It’s not nearly as censored at an early age, and young minds always follow excitement.