Not one to be daunted by predictions of a publishing e-apocalypse, author Sean Cummings figures he’s found the way to save the book. The writer is using new media to try to save old media: he’s set up a Facebook page called ‘Save Publishing - Read a Book at Bedtime’. His contention? That if we all spend just ten minutes a night reading before we go to sleep we will save the publishing industry.
It’s a noble quest, and it begs the question - does publishing need saving? But there’s more to it than that. Bedtime reading is a particular kind of reading. Reading just a few pages of a book nightly suits some books, and not others. Try reading War & Peace in 10 minutes a day. Often, bedtime reading is done while battling droopy-eye syndrome, and falling asleep mid-paragraph - or even mid-sentence - often means you’ll spend most of your ten minutes trying to remind yourself what you read the night before. Perhaps waking up ten minutes earlier and reading in the morning is the next stage in the quest to save publishing…