I certainly agree with Max that the publishing industry is undergoing wrenching changes thanks to the technological revolution in the midst of which we live. I don’t quite go back to the flatbed press, but I can remember as a hot-out-of-college, $90-a-week (gross!) production editor that books were still being set by linotype machines (“hot metal,” in publishing lingo). The shift to computer setting was bemoaned by many as the sure death of really high-quality printing standards. It caused no such thing, of course, and, indeed, allowed far more freedom in design than had been possible before, not to mention such seeming miracles as changing the typeface in galleys at the press of a button.

The acquisition of many first-line publishing houses by media conglomerates was also predicted to cause the end of the intimate, nurturing, career-long relationships between editors and authors. But actually, what did that was probably the end of the slush pile (unsolicited manuscripts that once were — eventually — read by the most junior editors and now are deposited in the nearest wastebasket) and the emergence of literary agents as the gatekeepers of publishing.

Now we have the Internet driving local bookstores out of business and the emergence of e-books. I bought a Kindle to take to China last summer and loved it. No lugging around 10 or 12 books anymore on long trips (and no difficulty breathing while reading a 1,000-page book in bed either). E-books are still in a quite primitive state of development and will certainly evolve rapidly and become much more user-friendly, flexible, and content rich. But e-books won’t replace regular books, I’m sure, although they might in the case of here-today-gone-tomorrow mysteries, “romance fiction,” and such.

Books are beautiful objects, and I can’t imagine not being able to hold them, feel them, admire them — even smell them — for the sheer pleasure of doing so. (I might be biased: I’m sitting in my office surrounded by a few thousand of them.) And as I’m sure anyone who has ever had the experience will testify, holding in your hand for the first time a book that you, yourself, have written is a glorious moment indeed.

E-books will, to be sure, change the economics of publishing profoundly. But I’m not sure I agree with Max that they will adversely impact those economics. They might liberate them. He writes,

But the pricing structure of e-books — with most new titles going for less than $10 — severely undercuts the economics that have traditionally underpinned the industry. If books no longer sell for $15 or $20 or more in hardcover, there will not be much left over to support editors, publishers, publicists, designers, and all the rest.

E-books sell for much less, to be sure, but they also cost much less to produce and handle. There’s no PPB (printing, paper, and binding) costs, no shipping costs, no warehousing costs (a major expense, and the reason so many books go out of print so quickly). And there are no returns. In the weird economics of traditional publishing, as long as the title is still in print and the books are in good condition, bookstores can always return them to a publisher for a full refund. As Alfred A. Knopf famously explained, publishing is a matter of “gone today, here tomorrow.” That’s why publishers withhold an allowance for returns when sending out royalties (the allowance, purely coincidentally, of course, often amounts to exactly what the publisher would otherwise have owed the author). Returns can be ruinous if a publisher badly misjudges the first printing.

It will be interesting to see if the arrival of e-books as a major part of book publishing will force a new financial relationship between authors and publishers. The traditional publishing contract calls for an advance against royalties, and the royalties are set at 10 percent of the retail price (on the inside of the front flap) on the first 5,000 copies, 12 1/2 percent on the next 5,000 copies, and 15 percent thereafter. These percentages and numbers are set in stone and have been, I think, since Gutenberg. They are the same for a first-time author of an experimental novel and for the tell-all memoirs of a major and scandal-ridden celebrity with a first printing of 2 million.

The obvious difference in market power is accounted for with the advance. The experimental novelist would be lucky to get $5,000. The scandalous celebrity might get $10 million. Something like 90 percent of advances never “earn out.” In other words, the author is actually paid a far higher percentage of the retail price than what the contract actually calls for. I have asked many editors why this system has to be, why the contractual royalty percentages have to be as they are. They have always looked at me as if I had asked why the sun has to rise in the east.

Publishing has always been and always will be, I suspect, like Broadway, a “fabulous invalid.” Broadway is always dying, but as Oscar Hammerstein II wrote,

Actors keeping acting,
And plays keep attracting,
And seats are not easy to buy.
And year after year
There is something to cheer —
Why the hell don’t you lie down and die?