Double, double toil and trouble;/ Fire burn, and caldron bubble.

First the trouble.

 According to yesterday’s New York Times, HarperCollins has just announced the closing of Collins.  In the last six months of 2008, Harper Collins saw a staggering 75% loss in its income, leading to lay-offs among editors, sales, marketing, and publicity staff–and now the closing of the entire Collins division, despite the fact that it has several blockbusters on its list.  HarperCollins joins a long list of publishing houses that have had lay-offs in recent months, including:

Random House

Simon & Schuster

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

St. Martin’s Press

Meanwhile, bookstores continue to struggle, with sales down in double-digits in recent months, and this past holiday season the worst in memory.  The decline of commercial publishing, which has begun in recent years to look like a train wreck in slow motion, has accelerated in our worsening economy.  Close your eyes.  It’s painful to see.

But all is not lost.

Now for the bubble.

Despite the bad news, there is one sector in the publishing world that has shown growth in recent months: self-publishing.  Author Solutions alone grew by 10% in 2008.  By all accounts, readership is up, but the way readers are getting their books—and the way writers are getting them to them—has changed. 

Here’s how Time Magazine put it in their recent article on “Books Unbound”: “[M]ore books, written and read by more people, often for little or no money, [are] circulating in a wild diversity of forms, both physical and electronic, far outside the charmed circle of New York City’s entrenched publishing culture.” 

The result?  Instead of being handed down to readers by a self-selected priesthood of editors from above, books are bubbling up from below, in a delightful, chaotic stew, everything from the best new literary fiction to fan fiction and Cell Phone novels—which have reached the bestselling lists in Japan.

Hang on to your hats.  The new world is here, and the only question left is: How will you fit into it?