U.S. News & World Report, www.usnews.com, had an interesting article on publishing in their print edition on March 13.

“Publish or Panic: The credibility of books is in a million little pieces. The Web is stealing readers. But publishers are fighting back.”

There’s a lot to say about this article. The first is that it is saying too much. The message of the article is a bit lost on me, there’s commentary on the “truth” of memoirs, there’s fear mongering about the loss of 20 million potential readers and the National Endowment for the Arts 2004 study, there’s a bit on print on demand, the Da Vinci Code lawsuit, the copyright lawsuit over Google digitizing the world, book sales and long tail hooha, an expose of Harper Collins’ giantess vs. Soft Skull’s blip on the radar, ebooks and ereaders, and blooks. That said, there were some interesting bits. Have a read.