Apocalypse in Print

The Frankfurt Book Fair, this year, has gone unreported in America, even though the bleak future that was discussed there behind closed doors (and in publishers' booths) represents probably the biggest change in writing and publishing since Johannes Gutenberg, a goldsmith, experienced what he called "a ray of light," and started up his first-ever movable-type press in 1440 in Strasbourg, then in Mainz.

Five hundred and seventy years later, Frankfurt-am-Main, on October 5, 2010, found publishers from across the globe "in buoyant mood," according to London's Guardian newspaper last week—having banished 2009's "mood of austerity,"