What is it about year-end that makes even the most cynical turn reflective?

(Probably the same thing that makes know-it-alls like me ask rhetorical questions.)

But seriously—there's something about this time of year that makes a lot of us want to feel thankful, act generous and be contemplative. It's not even a religion-inspired feeling, though that's arguable, since a lot of us live and breathe publishing as if it were a religion. Larry Kirshbaum certainly seems to feel that way: that's part of the reason we chose him as our first Publishing Person of the Year. But passion is only part of why Kirshbaum got the nod: it's also because he, like the business we're in, is at a crossroads.

Where will we go from here, now that Google has (depending whom you ask) either cast the first stone or made us an offer we shouldn't refuse? Whither the independent publisher and bookseller, what with the advent of POD and the big-box store? Can anyone replace such an irreplaceable publishing personality as Michael Korda? And, of course, the biggest question of all: Will Judith Regan ever really move her operation to California?

These are the questions that plague our times and occupy our minds—and everybody probably has a few odd items of interest on his holiday list. Herewith, then, in no particular order, my sentiments of the season:

  • It's no picnic being a bookseller, but retailers who get creative surely improve their chances at success. Look at the mystery shops that are publishing their own titles; the university-town stores that stock both new and remaindered textbooks; and the cooperative spirit that informs an organization like Treeline. We've come a long way from the coffee bar.

  • Distribution isn't just for geeks anymore. With Perseus's purchase of the distributor CDS, and several big houses moving into selling direct, what was formerly the very unglamorous "back office" has started to come forward. Even editors for whom computing the tip on a Michael's lunch used to constitute higher mathematics have started to pay attention to how their books are priced, marketed and distributed.

  • Digitization is on my mind. The editor who told me six months ago that he wasn't thinking about Google has since recanted, and many longtime publishing personalities—viz. Joni Evans's recent decision to leave agenting for something in the "technology space" and Andrew Wylie's Soapbox essay this week (see p. 74)—are thinking about it quite a lot. Google may or may not welcome the debate, but for publishing, this is a very, very good thing.

  • Contrary to popular belief, it hasn't been such a bad year for books. Okay, so Michael Cunningham tanked and there has yet to be a worthy commercial successor to The Da Vinci Code, but the fact that Joan Didion was able to write, publish and win a National Book Award for her brilliant, devastating memoir suggests that there is a publishing god, after all.

  • Besides, it's all about the Spin. Peter Olson's year-end letter about what a great year Random has had and the new maxim "flat is the new up" are two examples of admirable publishing bravado—or proof, as a cynic might suggest, that fiction is not in fact dead.

But as I said, I'm inclined these days not to be so cynical.

I've got the holiday spirit, after all.