Richard Brooks at the Times writes about the finances of The London Review of Books.

At The Awl Choire Sicha writes about a curious inversion.

At a bar last night, I was talking to someone smart who made an excellent point: that a very quiet, revolutionary act in the history of publishing had just taken place.

At Salon Stephanie Zacharek reviews Ellen Ruppel Shell’s Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture.

Shell begins by outlining the history of mass production in America (perhaps not surprisingly, firearms were among the first items to be mass-produced) and the rise of the discount chain. In the late 1800s a sickly farmer’s son named Frank W. Woolworth opened the first “five-and-dime”; later, foreshadowing a future that workers around the world now seem doomed to live out, he quipped, “We must have cheap labor or we cannot sell cheap goods. When a clerk gets so good she can earn better wages elsewhere, let her go.” The understanding is that she’ll have somewhere else to go, where her skills and talents are wanted or needed, considered something worth paying for. But increasingly in our current work climate, more skills only make a worker more expensive and possibly more demanding, not more desirable.

The American Booksellers Association’s Emerging Leaders project has a list of reasons to buy books from independent sellers.

In The London Review of Books Hilary Mantel recalls her years of public service.

Who’d be a social worker, anyway? The problem was the same then as now. Communal expectation was riven by contradiction. You were a busybody and a do-gooder, interfering in private life; or you were a useless, gormless, uncaring drain on the public purse. Whichever role you were cast in you had to get on with the job.

In the Guardian, Alison Flood reports an unusual offer from Dave Eggers.

At The Complete Review M. A. Orthofer laments the latest price increase of the New York Times.

At Publishers Weekly Jim Milliot reports a surge in on-demand and short run titles.

At Inside Higher Ed Scott Jaschik reports hard times for university presses.

With some university presses facing budget cuts that could effectively kill their operations, maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise. But experts on literary magazines are nonetheless surprised — and worried — by the announcement this week out of Middlebury College that it will cease sponsorship of The New England Review by 2011 if the publication doesn’t become self-supporting.

In The Atlantic Monthly, Christopher Hitchens returns to Marx.

In the first volume of Capital (the only one to be published in his lifetime; the succeeding ones were works of Talmudic exegesis by his disciples), he has capitalism speaking in the words of Shylock; includes an extract from Timon of Athens wherein money is described as the “common whore of mankind”; and offers still another denunciation of the cash nexus, from the Antigone of Sophocles. One of the most famous phrases of Marx’s vast correspondence during the writing of the book expresses his hatred for having to work on “the economic shit,” and one recalls Lenin’s revealing opinion about gold—that it was fit only to supply the flooring for public lavatories. One pleasure in the rereading of Marx is to savor the trenchancy and aptness of his literary allusions.

Recommended with reservations.

In the New York Times, Robin Pogrebin reports the New York Public Library’s difficulty in getting Orient-Express Hotels Ltd. to honor its agreement to purchase the former Donnell Library building in Midtown Manhattan.

Scott Esposito at Conversational Reading interviews Richard Nash of Soft Skull Press about publishing in a recession.

At Three Percent Chad W. Post examines the furor over the inclusion of arts funding in stimulus spending.

GalleyCat notes layoffs at Publishers Weekly.

At Slate David Greenberg reviews William E. Leuchtenburg’s biography of Herbert Hoover.

Insignificant presidents force their authors into strained claims that their present obscurity is undeserved, while giants like FDR defy encapsulation in 200 pages. So Hoover is a choice assignment. Understanding the advent of the New Deal is impossible without insight into his failures. And yet Hoover is largely forgotten: In 2004, John Kerry’s presidential campaign stopped comparing Bush’s dismal record on job creation to Hoover’s when polling discovered that most Americans barely knew who he was.

Salon is running an Associated Press story on a financing deal between The New York Times Company and Mexican telecommunications billionaire Carlos Slim.

The New York Times has David Kusnet’s review of Jeff Madrick’s The Case for Big Government.

To those who ask whether any country has ever taxed and spent its way to prosperity, Madrick offers two answers: the United States and its major competitors. In America, the greatest growth in public spending came during the most prosperous period in American history, the 25 years after World War II, when the federal, state and local government budgets “reached roughly 30 percent” of gross domestic product “and income levels in America became more equal.” Among the world’s most prosperous nations, most have higher rates of taxes and public spending, and many may have higher living standards, than the United States. “There really is no example of small government among rich nations,” Madrick observes.

At The Wall Street Journal Anita Elberse writes of publishers’ continued focus on blockbusters.

When a publisher spends an inordinate amount on an acquisition, it will do everything in its power to make that project a market success. Most importantly, this means supporting the book with higher-than-average marketing, advertising and distribution support — which is exactly how Grand Central handled “Dewey’”s launch. To do otherwise would be foolish: If a product like “Dewey” fails to draw readers, Grand Central knows its profitability will be severely hurt. With such high stakes and money tied up in a few big projects in the pipeline, the need to score big with a next project becomes more pressing, and the process repeats itself. The result is a spiral of ever-increasing bets on the most promising concepts, creating a “blockbuster trap.”

In the New York Times, Motoko Rich reports that publishing’s “cushy schmooze fest seems to be winding down.”

At Salon Jason Boog examines missed opportunities in book publishing.

“It’s going to be very hard for the next few years across the board in literary fiction,” says veteran agent Ira Silverberg. “A lot of good writers will be losing their editors, and loyalty is very important in this field.”

Renowned novelists released their works online after veteran author Park Bum-shin became the first to take the plunge by posting his latest novel, “Cholatse,” on Naver, the nation’s top portal site, last year.

It was the first attempt of its kind for a veteran novelist to release literary work with a serious theme online as a tool to efficiently communicate with readers about his or her work.

In The Korea Times, Chung Ah-young reports a resurgence in Korean literature.

Scott Simon of National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition speaks to Publishers Weekly contributing editor Charlotte Abbott about present conditions and the future of publishing.

With book sales in a general free fall, bookstores — large and small — closing around the country, and library and school budgets slashed, the publishing industry is now feeling the same pain as the rest of the economy. Small presses and university presses are not exempt from the squeeze; in the end, it comes down to income and profit, and as consumers find themselves short of cash, publishers are discovering the hard way that the fat years are over. It can’t be business as usual. The business as it has been run since Kerouac poured his novel onto a massive roll of paper stopped making financial sense long ago. Change is here to stay, even if we don’t yet know what those changes will be.

For the Washington Post, André Bernard describes the mood in the book publishing industry.

For the New York Times, Motoko Rich reports layoffs and restructuring at Macmillan.

National Public Radio announces that it is canceling Day to Day and News and Notes. A post at GalleyCat explains what the move means for public radio’s coverage of literature.

In a day of especially grim news for the book business, Random House, the world’s largest publisher of consumer books, announced a sweeping reorganization aimed at trimming costs, while Simon & Schuster laid off 35 people.

The moves signaled just how bad sales have become in bookstores and followed the news this week that the publisher of the adult division of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, the house that represents authors including Philip Roth and José Saramago, had resigned, presumably in protest of a temporary freeze on the acquisition of new books.

In the New York Times, Motoko Rich describes the turmoil at large publishing houses.

I was invited by Riky Stock of the German Book Office to give a presentation to GBO directors from around the world about publishing post-financial collapse. Which is a pretty big topic, and one that will probably dominate conversations post-holiday season, especially if the retail sector struggles as much as people are predicting.

At Three Percent, Chad W. Post serializes his talk.

John Laidler of the Boston Globe reports a surge in the use of local public libraries.

For National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, poet Andrei Codrescu speaks of Wall Street’s sweet deal.

Ah, where were we? The economy, yes: $700 billion is more than enough money to buy every able-bodied American a chain saw, a solar-powered generator and a stake in a communal well and windmill. Also, red dirt and plum trees.

At the Guardian, Jonathan Derbyshire argues, sensibly, that popular economic models do not explain everything.