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Publishing saw upheaval in 2020, but ‘books are resilient’

FILE - A pedestrian walks past boxes set up in front of book store Book Soup in West Hollywood, Calif., on Oct. 16, 2020, to encourage shoppers to buy from independent book stores instead of online retailers like Amazon. For independent stores and publishers, the pandemic amplified the divide between the industry's biggest players and everyone else. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello, File)
FILE - A pedestrian walks past boxes set up in front of book store Book Soup in West Hollywood, Calif., on Oct. 16, 2020, to encourage shoppers to buy from independent book stores instead of online retailers like Amazon. For independent stores and publishers, the pandemic amplified the divide between the industry's biggest players and everyone else. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello, File) FILE - A pedestrian walks past boxes set up in front of book store Book Soup in West Hollywood, Calif., on Oct. 16, 2020, to encourage shoppers to buy from independent book stores instead of online retailers like Amazon. For independent stores and publishers, the pandemic amplified the divide between the industry's biggest players and everyone else. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello, File)

By HILLEL ITALIE / AP National Writer 6 min read

NEW YORK (AP) – Book publishing in 2020 was a story of how much an industry can change and how much it can, or wants to, remain the same.

“A lot of what has happened this year – if it were a novel, I would say that it had a little too much plot,” said Simon & Schuster CEO Jonathan Karp.

Three narratives ran through the book world for much of the year: an industry pressed to acknowledge that the status quo was unacceptable, an industry offering comfort and enlightenment during traumatic times, and an industry ever more consolidated around the power of Penguin Random House and Amazon.com.

To its benefit and to its dismay, publishing was drawn into the events of the moment. The pandemic halted and threatened to wipe out a decade of growth for independent bookstores, forced the postponement of countless new releases and led to countless others being forgotten. The annual national convention, BookExpo, was called off and may be gone permanently after show organizers Reed Exhibitions announced they were “retiring” it.

The industry had long regarded itself as a facilitator of open expression and high ideals, but in 2020 debates over diversity and #MeToo highlighted blind spots about race and gender and challenged the reputations of everyone from poetry publishers to Oprah Winfrey, from book critics to the late editor of Ernest Hemingway. Employees themselves helped take the lead: They staged protests in support of Black Lives Matters and walked off the job at Hachette Book Group after the publisher announced it had acquired Woody Allen’s memoir, which Hachette soon dropped. ( Skyhorse Publishing eventually released it.)