Usually, Hillel Italie is the one asking the questions, but romance fansite Smart Bitches, Trashy Books landed an interview with the Associated Press publishing correspondent, whose beat is “as big as the industry.” (“And that is many, many piles of books,” he adds.)
Along the way, Italie observes that BookExpo is “apparently more fun for reporters than it is for publishers,” that “there remains a deep, and wide, affection for books” despite all the doom-and-gloom predictions, and that he’s “seen [and] held, but never owned an e-book reader,” but he’s heard that journalists might be getting more ARCs in e-book format. (I’m with him; that would be very cool.)
Also, “I remain exclusively a reporter of bookishness, but I should pay more attention to LOLCats, the great art form of the 21st century.” He totally should! I myself am prepared to embrace a future where the I Can Has Cheezburger book outsells Madonna’s brother’s tell-all, the subject of Italie’s most recent scoop.