Of Catchers and iPads

As I've become more involved in book publishing, I've become extra alert to trends and developments in the industry. Two stood out to me this week.

First was the death of J.D. Salinger, author of The Catcher in the Rye. As news of Salinger's death spread, sales of his depressing 1951 novel of alienation, which was required reading when I was in school, have skyrocketed on Amazon.com. My first thought, as an author, was, "Sure, the numbers go up when he's dead and unable to collect the royalties."

Second was Apple's introduction yesterday of the iPad, which stakes out new ground on the personal technology landscape, somewhere between the laptop and the iPhone. Of interest to me in book publishing is the device's foray into the e-books market. As someone who just a month ago made an investment in a perhaps now already obsolete Kindle reader by Amazon, I feel like I just bought the last eight-track tape player before they came out with cassette.

What does all this mean? Perhaps not much. Sales of Salinger's one-hit novel nearly six decades after its initial publication indicate that there will always be a market for people who write well and who have a powerful message. The possible supplanting of the Kindle, which is a great product, so soon after the introduction of its second generation indicates that we shouldn't get too wedded to the particular form of delivery. Books will survive, even if their covers continue to change.