MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - The Decline and Fall of American Literary Culture

SteveEisenberg · 03-18-2013, 08:50 PM

One thing I'm struck by is how many of the uber-bestsellers on the OP list are not available as eBooks. I'd already noticed that National Book Award and Putlizer Prize titles often aren't available as eBooks, but it seems like even the super-bestsellers are not.

I don't see American literary culture as declining, although I read too little current fiction to know if it was.

More prosaically, what may be declining is the backlist. When you visit a physical bookstore, the backlist is hard to avoid. On Amazon, even though the number of backlist titles is enormous, you have to look for them. Even in public library Overdrive collections, new books are more in your face than they'd be in the physical library.

To give credit where due, Mike Shatzkin said something like this recently. He had thought the enormous Amazon selection would help the backlist, but it hasn't.

P.S. Come to think of it, I'm not sure what literary culture is. It seems obvious that Germany has it more than the US. But how do you really define it? It is measurable? Or is that a silly question?

03-18-2013, 08:50 PM	#33
SteveEisenberg Grand Sorcerer Posts: 7,032 Karma: 39379388 Join Date: Jun 2008 Location: near Philadelphia USA Device: Kindle Kids Edition, Fire HD 10 (11th generation)	One thing I'm struck by is how many of the uber-bestsellers on the OP list are not available as eBooks. I'd already noticed that National Book Award and Putlizer Prize titles often aren't available as eBooks, but it seems like even the super-bestsellers are not. I don't see American literary culture as declining, although I read too little current fiction to know if it was. More prosaically, what may be declining is the backlist. When you visit a physical bookstore, the backlist is hard to avoid. On Amazon, even though the number of backlist titles is enormous, you have to look for them. Even in public library Overdrive collections, new books are more in your face than they'd be in the physical library. To give credit where due, Mike Shatzkin said something like this recently. He had thought the enormous Amazon selection would help the backlist, but it hasn't. P.S. Come to think of it, I'm not sure what literary culture is. It seems obvious that Germany has it more than the US. But how do you really define it? It is measurable? Or is that a silly question?