Within the last week, I have read three major articles on the death of traditional publishing. Lev Grossman of "Time Magazine," Motoko Rich of "The New York Times" and Michael Levin of Author Marketing Experts all delivered eulogies of one sort or another. The economic downturn has a great deal to do with the decline in the industry's fortunes, but the advent of digital printing, web retailing, and cyber communications has more to do with the collapse than anything. It is easy to criticize and even gloat over the felled dinosaur Michael Levin describes when he calls the book publishing industry "a victim of its own inability to find a reason for being in the Internet and print-on-demand world." He rightly points out that 90 percent of the marketing efforts have gone to 10 percent of the titles, and perhaps as few as 2 percent of books in bookstores actually sell. Such inefficiency cannot continue. And it is surely true that the way in which books have been selected, by acquisitions editors with only their own best hunches to go on, seems quaint in the modern world of business. But the bookstores themselves have been complicit in the publishers' fates with strangling discount and returns policies that helped make publishing a game of roulette.

Rich, in an article in "The New York Times" speaks of how as the traditional part of the industry is contracting, self-publishing is flourishing. During an economic downturn, books tailored to a specific market may fare better than general reading. The ability of authors who self-publish to reach niche markets on the Internet gives them a financial and practical advantage. For very little investment, they can reach the readers who specifically want their books.The good news is that people are still reading. And books are still being published. In 2008 almost half a million new titles were published and distributed in the United States. Much of the increase over previous years is due to the significant growth of the self-publishing industry.

Publishing, like civilization, is always renewing itself. Think of papyrus scrolls; think of illuminated manuscripts; think of Gutenberg's moveable type; think of the novels that emerged in the early 18th century when mass printing became available and, for the first time, many people could read. Think of the democratization of publishing that has occurred because of the emergence of digital technology and the Internet. It is all a seamless cloth, an essential fabric of culture and humanity. And so while traditional publishing is in distress and decline, publishing, self-publishing, is alive and well. And we are all a part of the vibrant rebirth. Whether you go it alone, publish with a print-on-demand company such as iUniverse; or work with a company such as Dorrance that provides a wide range of publishing services at various price points, the possibilities and options are numerous and readily available.

As Lev Grossman has written, "None of this is good or bad; it just is....somewhere out there is the publishing world's answer to Defoe, and he's probably selling books out of his trunk. But he won't be for long."