The problem with publishing is the relentlessness of the apocalypse. Since the seventeenth century, catastrophe has desolated the book industry on a generational schedule, and the villains have been legion: a censorious Catholic court, Jewish moneylenders, the War of the Spanish Succession, the Gregorian calendar (which led, in its maiden year, to a disastrous misscheduling of the Frankfurt Book Fair), the railroad, the post office. Yet books, and the culture they prop up, have more or less survived, as publishing has always proven itself capable of repelling the barbarians.
The present onslaught, however, is perhaps different, having been launched…