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Sometimes I feel like this blog is just documenting the not-so-slow demise of literature. (Sumtimez I fele like iM addidng 2it.)

Yesterday, Publishers Weekly's Rachel Deahl broke the news that industry giant Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is halting all acquisitions. "It's been clear for months that it will be a not-so-merry holiday season for publishers," she wrote. "HMH has asked its editors to stop buying books." (Thanks for the heads-up, KFong.)

Yikes. The leak was confirmed by HMH's VP of Communications, who averred that this was more about conducting good business during a slow economy than killing the novel. "We have turned off the spigot," he said, "but we still have a very robust pipeline." (At least metaphors are still being thrown around their headquarters...)

And I say...maybe this is a good thing? Or at least, not such a bad thing?

Ch-ch-check it out:

About ten years ago, give or take, independent bookstores really started feeling the squeeze. Giant vendors like Barnes & Noble and Borders were pricing them out, and they couldn't compete with the convenience provided by Internet sellers like Amazon.com and Abebooks. And yeah, a ton of great shops ended up closing - Hungry Mind, Red Balloon, etc.

But now the indy shops that are still around, if not thriving, at least seem stable. Given that this statement is stated without any real knowledge of the financial situations concerning Magers & Quinn or Booksmart or Common Good Books, I could be completely wrong here. But at least the Uptown stores seem to be continually bettering their stocks, and are healthily busy whenever I drop by.

Meanwhile, Borders is hemorrhaging branches like a leper's limbs, and even B&N is cutting back. Meaning, it seems that at this point the corporate bigwigs are taking the heaviest hits, while what's left of the neighborhood shops -which I'm sure are also feeling the economic crunch - seem to be finding their feet again.

Let's shift this over to the supply side. During the last few decades, there have been innumerable mergers and takeovers and such in the publishing industry, so that now most publishing houses function as corporations rather than as booksellers concerned with literature. They purchase manuscripts based on selling power, rather than literary merit, and advertise accordingly. (Though of course, some books are bought on lit merit, I'm sure. Just not anything with a title like All I Want For Christmas Is A Vampire.)

While no doubt this is an effective strategy in terms of profits, it's meant that a lot of great writers have been pushed aside, forced to publish their manuscripts with smaller houses. Especially in the last couple years, independent presses have seen their titles become more and more successful, perhaps a result of the star power that trickles down to them. This year, Minnesota's own Graywolf and Coffee House Press each placed a book on the shortlists for the National Book Awards in fiction and poetry, respectively. A couple years ago, Per Petterson's Out Stealing Horses -put out by Graywolf - was arguably the most highly lauded novel of the year.

What I'm getting at is that just as independent bookstores have been stabilizing and strengthening recently, so have indy presses. And while both (cottage) industries have been hit with uppercuts since the advent of the Internet, they aren't nearly as vulnerable to the stock market as corporate-backed book-ish entities, and are possibly poised to bolster themselves even more as the giants cut back.

Part number three of my argument goes like this:

Real readers are always fiending for new books. Novels, for some of us, are like crack cocaine. And I assume, by and large, that we're a loyal group. I don't think it's unreasonable to say that the only reason there are ANY indy bookstores still around is because we enjoy going to them - certainly it's not because they're the most convenient or the cheapest. Furthermore, real readers read real books. And more and more, the realest books (to use the beatnik definition of the word 'real') are being put out by the little guys.

So Houghton Mifflin Harcourt halted acquisitions. Borders probably closed another store somewhere in Minnesota, too. All this means is that better content is going to fall to the independently owned-and-operated, organic, high in omega-III fatty acids bookstores and publishers that you should want to support, anyway, because it's good for your soul.