On Wednesday, March 11, 7 p.m. New York University’s Media Literacy Club will host a roundtable discussion on commercial and governmental pressures on the book publishing industry. Issues to be discussed include: is the U.S. publishing industry in crisis? the effects of global conglomerates absorbing smaller publishing houses and celebrity titles pushing serious books to the basement shelves of mega-bookstores; the slipping sales and reduced literary quality of books in general.
Present will be:
Mark Crispin Miller, media critic and NYU professor in the School of Education’s department of culture and communication, discussing the trend toward conglomerate ownership and its overall effects on the type of books published and promoted;
Nancy Kranich, associate dean of the NYU Libraries and American Library Association Board member, on the effects of these trends on libraries and the declining amount of information available to authors and the public due to privatization of government information services;
Andre Schiffrin, director and editor-in-chief of The New Press, and Peter Osnos, publisher and CEO of PublicAffairs, on the perils of independent publishing in the current business environment and the different strategies they use to stay in business.
The event, which is free and open to the public, will take place at NYU’s Loeb Student Center, Eisner-Lubin Auditorium, 566 LaGuardia Place.