"Vanity of Vanities, All Is Vanity"

An awesome article done by the Times recently, "Books Gone Wild: The Digital Age Reshapes Literature," features emerging trends in the publishing industry - ebooks and the vanity press (aka Print on Demand). Well, I suppose some of them aren't acutally "emerging" as they have been around for many years so far, and have only recently gained the spotlight as formidable competition for the established publishing houses and their product.

In terms of economy, I had not realized previously that all major publishing houses eat the costs of publication, transportation of product and other various (potentially fatal) flaws of an outdated production system. Regardless of the actual content, much of the books published do not sell on the open market unless the authors and/or illustrators have a previous following, usually from another field of interest. Hence the over abundance of series, super-sacchrine romance novels and other mass market books dripping off the shelves of every Barnes & Nobles and Borders. Whatever happened to good literature anyway?

To be honest, I might be considered a spoiled literaray since I had the experience of private education for many of my school years. The required reading usually consisted of Shakespeare, Fitzgerald, Orwell, Faulkner, and even some Chopin and Kingslover. Much of the new literature I can't seem to sink my teeth into as the common themes are usually mystery driven or uber-philosophical with no real conclusion. Alright, I do indulge in the sci-fi and fantasy, but I think that might have something more to do with the actual writing style than the content. What I can't understand are the writers who are some how able to write multiple novel length memiors. How is this at all possible without retelling some of the others? I wouldn't call them memiors then, more like non-fiction. Which in many cases have so many arguments over the very definition of such subjects that they invariably become catagorized as fiction. Then again, it doesn't so much matter the catagorization of subjects and genres when it comes down to the style of writing. If it doesn't maintain the reader's focus and attention, with some amount of entertainment involved with humor or otherwise, then it really shouldn't have much consideration as something worthy of a cleverly designed book jacket. Literature takes all those a step further with a development of an artful use of language in discription, form, plot or some other development of structure of the piece itself. These are so few and far between now adays, and it breaks my heart to think that the serial has taken over the general public's interest and thereby causing the art of writing to suffer under the pressures of public pressure to sell and so forth.