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Like everyone else, people who work in book publishing are bracing themselves for tough times, reports the Observer's Leon Neyfakh. According to an anonymous publishing exec, there's going to be an inevitable domino effect due to the economy: Newspapers (for as long as they actually exist, presumably!) will be carrying fewer ads and therefore fewer book reviews, so potential readers won't know about new titles, so bookstores will order fewer copies, so publishers will get increasingly nervous about signing up unknown authors, so unless you're Lourdes Ciccone Leon pitching a memoir about your mother's divorce, you might as well forget it, basically. It sort of sounds plausible, except for one thing.

It's been a long time since print book reviews had a major impact on book sales: Perhaps the quoted publishing exec has heard about a strange phenomenon called the internet, where information gets transmitted in all kinds of new and fun ways? Still, we suppose that positing a theory like this does sound marginally more authoritative than "Yes, everyone's going to freak out, there are going to be random firings, no one will really understand what's going on or how to deal with it, and we'll just continue to throw massive advances at famous/infamous people for their ghostwritten blockbusters and literary culture will continue to shrivel and die, but at least it won't be our fault anymore but the economy's."

Baby, It's Going to be Cold Outside in Book Publishing [NYO]