Publishing is dead, long live books.

• Author: Doherty, Brian
• Position: Briefly Noted - Brief article

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Andre Schiffrin spent 30 years atop Pantheon Books and now runs the New Press. In Words and Money (Verso), he complains about the supposed dominance of the corporate mentality in publishing. But he seems unable to specify exactly how this mentality has harmed the lives of readers.

Schiffrin makes sourceless assertions about slashed library budgets (in fact, from 2002 to 2O08 American public library expenditures rose 9 percent in inflation-adjusted terms), and he hails Europe for subsidizing small bookstores and publishers. While insisting that public funding of media needn't equal control...