Today, the publishing business is in turmoil. For 500 years, the methods and practices of book publishing remained largely unchanged, but today the industry finds itself faced with the greatest challenges since Gutenberg
Plenty of people are upset at Amazon these days, but it took a small publishing company whose best-known volume is a toilet-training tome to give the mighty Internet store the boot.
Odds are increasing that a book ordered online hasn’t been printed yet. Nashville-based Ingram Content Group runs one of the book industry’s largest “print on demand” operations. Printing one copy at a time is a lonely bright spot for the traditional book industry, which has suffered as e-readers soar.
The race to meet reader preferences and industry realities. Back in 1990, there were nearly 8,500 bookshops in Russia. By 2009, however, the number had plunged to no more than 2,500, according to the Russian Book Union. Even Top Kniga, Russia’s largest book chain, had shrunk from 700 to 450 stores, and is now teetering on the brink of bankruptcy yet again.
At various times since the fall of the Iron Curtain there have been outbreaks of fear that hordes of criminals would cross the Czech, Polish, Slovak, Slovene and Hungarian borders to pillage the wealth of Western Europe. In 2012, it looks as if this long awaited crime wave is actually coming to pass, though in the form of premium quality crime fiction.
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