I was catching up on Twitter this evening, and I ran across a particular tweet from @grammargirl. (You can find her over at Quick and Dirty Tips) She said this:

Wow. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has temporarily stopped acquiring manuscripts. Their editors aren’t buying books.

She linked to this article over at Publisher’s Weekly. If you don’t want to read the article (Come on. It’s short.), the key line is “PW has learned that Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has asked its editors to stop buying books.”

I’m a big fan of books. I read a lot of them. I buy a lot more of them. Some day, I would like to write one or two. I’ve been watching the publication industry for a while, because I would like to get into it in some capacity, and I have never heard of a publisher putting an entire hold on buying books. Spokespeople at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt are saying that the move isn’t indicative of anything too sinister, but how can it not? While I’m sure the publisher has a vast store of manuscripts it has purchased not (yet) published, but if a publisher stops buying books, it creates a stagnation in thought.

Think about it: no new books are coming in, so new books will stop going out, and while there are tons of books out there, and no one could ever read them all, publication of new and ever-improving ideas is a must for the development of culture, philosophy, or really any other facet of life. This move by Houghton Mifflin really has me concerned, even if it is being called a “temporary” situation. This is a dangerous precedent for them to have set.