Book publishing

There's this story in the Huffington Post today that misleadingly has a headline making it seem that it's about the direction of book publishing.

Really, though, it's about some folks who wanted to publish an anthology of essays about men and manhood.

They were told by 50 publishers that it wasn't salable. Men don't read.

Well, this is often true. Men from like, say, post college age through 30s usually don't, unless it's a Creighton or Grisham or something else commercial to get them through a plane trip or commute. Some do read for pleasure, of course, and even the commercial readers contribute to the market.

But would men really read a bunch of essays about discovering manhood? Maybe. Enough to make a profit for the publishing co? (Consider also that libraries, etc. would buy them.) No one knows.

Anyway, the authors of the piece held a contest to get submissions and are now publishing the anthology on their own. Good luck to them.