Besides sorting through Rome memories and trying to adapt to the new WordPress interface (which I think I like, but takes getting used to), I’ve been watching the publishing news closely this week. There have been a series of layoffs and shakeups in all sectors this week:
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Random House
Thomas Nelson , which is laying of 10% of its workforce – the latter being a mild surprise since the religion sector has been a consistent growth area in publishing – until this year, it seems:

When that post came, Hyatt described the layoffs—the second round at Nelson in the last year—as “purely a result of the slowdown in the economy,” motivated by the sales reports for September and October. (Thomas Nelson is not a member of the Association of American Publishers, but it may be worth noting as a point of comparison that the AAP has reported an 8.9 percent decline in the sale of religious books during the first nine months of 2008, including an 11.8 drop in the month of September alone.)

In some ways this is scary, but in others, not. Publishing has been a questionable mess for a long time, grappling with all sorts of issues, most of which come down, in the end, to the question of what are people willing to pay money to read anymore and how and where are they buying those books?
What has happened, is that a publishing, distribution and sales have consolidated into a few big players over the past few years, it has produced its own set of financial and structural difficulties. For the writers,  it has been more and more difficult for non-celebrity writers to get picked up outside the genre sectors. The Long Tail has not managed to whip our way.  Besides, given the size and priorities of the big secular houses, it has been more and more difficult for writers to see what benefit being published by them gives aside from the assurance that a third party besides your mother has read this and think it’s worth putting out there. They don’t market anything except their few A list titles, they drop you without even telling you and, as one acquaintance of mine will tell you, they don’t want to let go of the rights to your book either, even if they’ve put you out of print. (Why? Part of the reason is the promise of print on demand, which has encouraged houses to hang on to rights – if they can squeeze a few dollars out of selling 20 POD copies of your book this year, they will, no matter if you know you could sell more if you could have the rights back and either self-publish or sell to a smaller house.)
So, I’m watching with interest and re-thinking things on my end, as are most of us scrambling scribblers.