NEW YORK – 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.