Last week, author of the novel American Rust, Philipp Meyer ("an author worth watching," says Publishers Weekly), wrote on our blog about the future of the harried publishing industry.

February 19, 2009:
On the Transformation of Publishing

I read an opinion piece in Time magazine the other day about how publishing is going to change — become bigger, dirtier, more democratic. Basically, because of the Internet. Because people's tastes are going to get "cheap and promiscuous."

Reading this I had a strong sense of déjà vu. I was suddenly back in 1999, at the height of the Internet Bubble, when people were making similarly enormous claims about the power of the Internet (to end wars, end poverty, spread democracy). Now, in 2009, I think we can all agree that the Internet is pretty awesome, but for all practical purposes we have the same problems we did 10 years ago. Maybe more of them.

Thinking more about this piece in Time, I flashed back a little further, to a postmodern fiction class I took in 1997 as an undergraduate at Cornell. The professor was insisting the same things back then that the author of the Time piece suggests today — fiction is going to become Internet-ed and hyperlinked, the idea of an "author" will be changed — we will all become authors.

Despite the admiration I felt for this professor, this struck me as a poor development. I'd taken a lot of creative writing classes, and while sure that my own fiction was brilliant, I also knew exactly how bad my classmates' fiction was. I would never have read any of it by choice. The fact that it was free didn't change anything....

Read the rest of Meyer's post on our blog. Plus, check out our daily Book News and Read It Before They Screen It features, J. Wood's posts on the fifth season of Lost, and more!

"In my sleep," Bagheera told Bear as morning's first light spilled through the east-facing windows, "I thought yesterday was a dream. I mean, really, an Italian circus full of squirrels?"

They were watching Morrison do push-ups on the coffee table. Push-ups first, followed by squats, followed by crunches, and then back to push-ups for another cycle, again and again.

"He's a machine," Bear marveled.

Oreo reminded them that even machines need fuel. He'd been snooping for more than an hour, and not even a single-serving bag of kibble could be found.

"Fup would not approve," Bear confirmed.

All for the best, they agreed. They left the bookstore an hour before Ryan arrived to get the place open. No one would ever know they'd spent the night.

If not for their shedding hair.