If you never read the Garrison Keillor piece in the New York Times on the death of publishing, you're missing out.
Garrison hosts Minnesota Public Radio's "A Prairie Home Companion," and is very familiar with writing. He's a humorist, satirist, musician, and most familiar to me, a writer, so he has some knowledge on how difficult the world of publishing is to navigate.
14 million authors? $1.75 annually? Eight of your true fans will be family members?
This "future" sounds particularly bleak, but brutally honest.
Does it scare you?
I can't say I completely agree with Keillor, but I see his point.
My take on the subject?
Publishing isn't dead, it's evolving. Those who don't know what it's evolving into are having a difficult time, and they are second-guessing the decision-making. I, for one, have always believed if you want to achieve success, you do what successful people are doing.
There is no "good news" in his Op-Ed, and that's the great disconnect for me. I cannot allow myself to believe the future of publishing is some apocalyptic nightmare. I see the future as a positive environment for new artists and the Internet as our vehicle.
There are a lot of bloggers/writers out there, and they are not all significant. Those that are, always will be and those that are not will find their audience and propel themselves forward.
If we are alive to watch the publishing model dinosaur perish, I hope it takes with it the predatory and dog-eat-dog ideologies.
If this is the end, I can't wait to plant my flag on the new world.