>Last week, the Center for Publishing at the NYU School of Continuing & Professional Studies invited a number of book bloggers and others connected to the digital side of publishing to speak to the students in their summer publishing program, and we were honored to be among the participants. The panel of seven (plus moderator Sara Nelson) covered a wide variety of topics during the two-hour seminar, from the role of publishing companies in the future “eco-system” of books to the shifting power dynamics between readers, writers, and reviewers—a conversation spurred by Alice Hoffman‘s online attack on her reviewer (we hadn’t yet heard of Alain de Botton‘s equally puerile behavior, or we would’ve brought that up, too). It isn’t just that authors can strike back when they get panned by critics, we observed—readers are more than willing to go online to argue against negative reviews of books they love, or to create new outlets to discuss the books that the mainstream media wouldn’t even condescend to review. (The lines of communication between readers and writers have also intensified, and not always smoothly; see Anne Rice‘s rebuttal to disgruntled fans a few years back, for example.)
Front row: GalleyCat senior editor Ron Hogan and Jessica Stockton Bagnulo (The Written Nerd). Middle row: Sarah Burningham of HarperStudio, Richard Eoin Nash, and Sarah Wendell & Candy Tan (Smart Bitches, Trashy Books). Back row: Sara Nelson, Sarah Weinman.