Lifted from a response I left on Cat Valente’s blog, regarding the “sky is falling” attitude around publishing right now, and how publishing is collapsing, etc etc woe is us:

I firmly believe that publishing is not dying. Not even standard-model dead-tree publishing. Because you know what? People are reading more now than ever, and they ARE paying for books. We’ve just gotta be there with what they want, when they want it, how they want it. It’ll work.

It’ll BE work, but it’ll work.

Publishing is exciting right now, not scary. Well, at least insomuch as exciting and scary are sometimes the same thing.

It’s gonna be tough. Some writers are going to falter, and fall, and fail. There will be major shakeups in how writers, booksellers, and publishers make a living, and how books are created and distributed and sold.

But these things have happened time and again over the course of human history, and one thing that remains constant is that there are people out there who do nothing but tell stories for their living. I do not see that universal truth of human culture changing.

Which is why I run a teenywee press, and why I believe in publishing and stories and the power of the fantastic.