So is this goodbye to the literary lunch?
Robert McCrum writing in The Observer, Sunday December 7 2008

This week the crisis I have long predicted erupted with sudden fury in the shocking dismissal of Sam Leith as literary editor of the Daily Telegraph. This is no reflection on clever Mr Leith, who used to review for these pages. His is one of 50 pre-Christmas redundancies across the Telegraph Media Group's editorial operations, symptomatic of a realignment of tectonic plates in the literary landscape.

The first premonitory rumblings were felt in the US, where blogs such as Emergingwriters.typepad.com have begun to supplant old-style book reviewing. In California the LA Times and the San Francisco Chronicle have shrunk their book review space; elsewhere the Atlanta Journal-Constitution abolished its books editor.
The book world is in full-blown transition. Blogs are rampant; Google is digitising every text going; e-readers are transforming the experience of reading. Books (and book reviewing) have been pushed to the margin. It doesn't help that in a global recession publishing is also feeling the pinch.

Lunch is to publishing as liquidity is to banking. We know we live in difficult times when news breaks that some publishers are cancelling their all-important midday meal. Not just one outing to the Wolseley - we're talking about a way of life here. The new modus operandi will be sandwiches and solitude, as in: eat your lunch at your desk.

Again, from the US come reports of a new frugality at HarperCollins and Random House. At Penguin UK, I hear, editors have been instructed to confine themselves to a single plate. And that's not all. The axe is falling in other, more significant parts of the publishing jungle.
At Houghton Mifflin Harper, in a damaging outburst of candour, a company spokesperson revealed that, with rare exceptions, editors were being encouraged not to acquire new books. Günter Grass and Philip Roth, both with this publisher, can be expected to write at will. But for any new writer, or worse, a novelist in mid-career, these are the times that try men's souls.
Houghton Mifflin is a special case (it was recently taken over by an Irish private-equity group, and is servicing a massive debt), but across the board the latest news from the world of books suggests worrying trends.

The heart and soul of any publishing business is its editorial department, the men and women who, crudely, acquire the 'content' on which the imprint depends. In the past 20 years, editorial freedom has become eroded. Sales people have increased their influence as bookshops have gained power at the expense of publishers. Gone are the days, with rare exceptions, when an editor's positive enthusiasm for a new book could trump the negative anxieties of the sales department. Almost the only books that now generate much excitement among publishers are would-be bestsellers.

The results are now all too visible. Take, for instance, the current non-fiction bestseller list: every top 10 title is linked to the mass media (film, radio or television) and the world of celebrity. Leaving aside the quality of these books, they have little or nothing to do with writing and authorship. Many, indeed, are ghosted.

Bestsellers are not intrinsically bad. But they suck the air out of the system, and distort the delicate ecology of the book trade. The publishers make a pact. In exchange for turnover, they supply the bookshops with the kind of merchandise they can sell in large quantities. In this world, the little book - novel or memoir - struggles to make its way.
It will not do simply to attack the dynamics of popular culture. Books and writing are an intrinsic part of the mass media. Nor should we overlook the benefits of the IT revolution. Big literary prizes such as the Man Booker or Costa have seen their international range dramatically extended by satellite television and the internet. At times, recently, television has seemed indispensable to publishing. I am referring, of course, to Richard & Judy.

But even in TV sofa world all is not well. Ever since Finnigan and Madeley moved to the cable channel Watch, their viewing figures have tanked, slumping from 2.5 million on Channel 4 to an average of 50,000. Publicly, their spokesmen are toughing it out. Privately, senior figures in publishing are beginning to ask if the boom is over. On top of the recession, the demise of the show might seem like another reason to cancel lunch. Where now do books turn for support?
One answer might be the poor old Common Reader. There is perhaps a silver lining to these clouds of recession. Books remain comparatively cheap, and excellent value for money. Most paperbacks are approximately the price of a cinema ticket. Is it not possible that the downturn will purge the trade of vacuous bestsellers and bring the British reading public back to better books? When that happens, literary journalists such as Sam Leith will find the newspapers taking an interest again.

But at the moment, we're in for a long, cold winter.