I’ve been thinking about Bill Keller’s column in yesterday’s New York Times Magazine suggesting, perhaps a bit tongue in cheek, that too many books are being written. He writes:
For years now the populist prophets of new media have been proclaiming the death of books, and the marketplace seems to back them up. Sales of print books in the U.S. peaked in 2005 and have been in steady decline since, according to publishers’ net revenue data reported to the Association of American Publishers.
Watching that trend, I find my grief for the state of civilization comes with a guilty surge of relief. Sure, I would miss books — and so, by the way, would my children — but at least the death of books would put an end to the annoying fact that everyone who works for me is either writing one or wants to. I would get my staff back!
It seems to me that many newspaper editors are in a similar position to some college administrations. The primary mission of most colleges is ostensibly teaching. The primary mission of most newspapers is daily reporting and providing readers with stories to inform them on a daily or weekly basis. How does writing books fit into that? Some reporters and editors would argue that their book will provide them with a better, more in-depth sense of a topic. And they will say that it is worth an editor finding a temporary replacement, reshuffling a staff, and holding a reporter’s place while they leave for six months or more to go write a book. And in some cases they may be right.
On the other hand, it is often true that reporters write books off their beats and that their book writing, while it may bring some prestige for the paper, does not actually improve their performance as a daily journalist.
The same thing happens at colleges. There are professors who publish books that are related to their teaching, that make them better able to communicate and engage their students, even their undergraduate students. And it is worth it for a department chair or a dean to find a way to accommodate this research, to give them sabbaticals or a lighter teaching load. But just as often those books are not improving the performance of their day-to-day duties. And whether that research should be subsidized is a subject you all know my opinion on by now–even if it brings more prestige to the university.
The other difference, of course, is that many more people will read the books by reporters than the academic tomes. And no, that’s not the only measure of a publication’s worth. I don’t think Danielle Steele novels are inherently more worthwhile than academic publications or book-length reportage by New York Times reporters, but circulation might be worth some consideration.
