Some of you may be wondering why no stories about the Frankfurt Book Fair. Well, we’re not lazy–we realize it’s one of the biggest stories in publishing every year. But the truth is, our relative silence on the subject can be explained partly by the fact that no representative from MobyLives went to Frankfurt this year. And since usually the news from Frankfurt revolves around buzz for one or two bigs titles, we couldn’t really care less anyway. This year’s buzz seemed to be not about any one or two titles but about e-books, which is indeed remarkable, but it’s something we’ve been covering anyway.

There was, however, one intriguing story to come out of Frankfurt–intriguing both because of the content of the story and, perhaps more interestingly, because it became a story in the first place. Douglas Rushkoff, author of Cyberia, Coercion, and the forthcoming Program or Be Programmed, was one of the keynote speakers, and the news surrounding Rushkoff had more to do with how his next book is being published as what was in the book. Rushkoff, a best-selling author who recently left Random House for independent publisher OR Books, had, one imagines, some pretty frightening words for the assembled publishing establishment. Here is a bit from Andrew Albanese’s report in Publishers Weekly:

In his opening keynote, author and media scholar Doug Rushkoff pulled no punches. “It sounds sad to say it this way,” Rushkoff said, pausing. “But not as many of us are needed as we used to be.” Publishing, he said, would be better off if it only had to support “maybe 40% less” of its current workforce as the digital revolution continues to connect writers more directly to their audiences. Writers, Rushkoff said, still need things like editors and printers, but no longer require the “Amazon’s, Ingrams, and Barnes & Nobles” to find their audiences, but rather need ways for their audiences to find them.

In an interview in advance of Frankfurt with Chad Post at Publishing Perspectives, Rushkoff had this to say about big publishers’ structural inability to take the long view (you can also read a story Rushkoff himself wrote about the subject for Arthur magazine):

I…wanted to work with a house that wasn’t fixated on sell-in figures or first week sales, but one that preferred to see a book as something that could take a few weeks or even months to become popular. Big publishers are trapped responding to corporate owners who are looking for growth to match their debt structures. Unfortunately for them, publishing is not a growth industry but a sustainable industry. So the models don’t work for real books — only for runaway bestsellers. Then the focus turns to marketability of titles rather than sustainability or importance of ideas.

The keynote at Frankfurt was equally frightening and exciting. Here’s an excerpt. Enjoy: