People are trying to stop the inevitable future of the book business on two wildly different fronts this week.

The textbook bootlegging site Textbook Torrents is now offline, probably because a reporter contacted textbook publishers to ask them what they thought of the Textbook Torrents site. The comments thread over here seems very much in favor of textbook piracy:

The textbook industry has treated its student-customers with little respect over the years, with market strategies designed to maximize profits at the expense of students. They sowed the fields, now let them reap their rewards.

And then, in Los Angeles, previous editors of the Los Angeles Times Book Review (including Steve Wasserman, who is my Book Review Editing Hero) are protesting the decision to cut the Book Review and fold it into a few pages in the calendar section. The open letter is here. Excerpt:

Angelenos in growing number are already choosing to cancel their subscriptions to the Sunday Times. The elimination of the Book Review, a philistine blunder that insults the cultural ambition of the city and the region, will only accelerate this process and further wound the long-term fiscal health of the newspaper.

Yowza. Things are getting ugly.