I'll never forget the day I heard of Jane Friedman's departure from HarperCollins. I didn't know much about her at the time, but I remember being amazed by how upset and dismayed folks in and around publishing seemed at the mysterious news of her 'resignation'.

The more I found out about Jane and the climate for this whole development, the more I understood why it was seen as such a dark day in publishing. And now after seeing GalleyCat's August 4th interview with her and Larry Kirshbaum I have an even keener appreciation for what was lost. As the owner of The Editorial Department and someone with a lot of interest in the both the short and long term future of publishing, I was happy to spend an hour listening to these very knowledgeable (and likable) publishing veterans talking so candidly on such an important topic. For those who don't have an hour to spare, I thought I'd share a few highlights.

They don't go especially deep into any of the key issues (nor could they in the time alloted), but they explore a lot of interesting facets of a complex and interesting challenge publishers face.

One thing that caught my attention early on in the interview was Jane's adamance on the value of the book tour. Sure, she may be biased by the fact that she helped invent it but if I'm understanding her point correctly, she still feels that the author tour was the most cost-effective means of getting publicity for a new book. This being the case, it's very puzzling to me why there seems to be so much less of this happening these days, at least in the non-virtual arena. Virtual networking is all fine and good, but there's just something so thrilling about meeting a writer whose work you love face to face. The sad reality, at least for the time being, is that while this may still be a very good idea, it's the author who in many cases going to have to put it together, perhaps with benefit of their own publicist.

Another thing that struck me was one of the few points of disagreement between Jane and Larry. While both seemed to agree that book publishing is here to stay, Larry sounded a good deal more optimistic about the prospect of big, billion dollar publishing conglomerates actually being able to overcome such a badly flawed business model to survive, much less thrive, in a challenging new economy. He admitted that publishers are very set in their ways and slow to change, but he clearly has a lot of faith in the big publisher/little imprint model, which sort of gives the best of both worlds. Jane feels that one key challenge is to effectively monetize digital distribution. She seemed skeptical about the big 'legacy' publishers being able to adapt quickly enough or fully enough, but didn't elaborate much on in what shape or form the survivors or new players in the industry would take. Clearly, a big challenge for publishing and a big problem with its 'broken' (says Larry) economic model involves publishers' acceptance of returns. Which makes more focus on digital distribution an increasingly attractive prospect.

For all the mutual support of books going digital, I was really happy to hear Jane's reflection on why books as we know them aren't going away. Her comment on how one's own library becomes a point of pride for many people and how books really represent civilization really resonated with me. And lord knows you can learn a lot about a person by taking a peek at what's on the old bookshelf.

More on this soon, as there's a lot of good reflection-worthy content here. They talk about the stalwart relevance of books in the internet age, the unfortunate "black hole" that is midlist fiction, traditional publishing's most valuable currency, the value of entrepreneurship in big corporations, and much much more.