Book Industry Enters Shaky Chapter

The publishing world is still trying to absorb this week’s bad news: Several publishing houses announced layoffs or salary freezes, and a major reorganization at Random House left two major players in the business without jobs. All this comes as booksellers head into the holiday season — when 25 percent of all book sales occur.

No one thought that publishing would be spared from the current economic turmoil. But when the fallout from the Random House reorganization was announced on the same day that Simon & Schuster and the Christian publishing company Thomas Nelson announced layoffs, it stunned the book world, says Sara Nelson, editor-in-chief of Publishers Weekly.

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