The current culture in social studies and humanities places great value on the acceptance of work by publishers.
The problem is that all publishers need to make money, this is even true of university presses. The opinions and decisions of the editors working for those businesses must be drive by the market, not by the academic value of the work.
Making money requires selling books. For academic books this means university libraries need to buy the books. Tne pressure to make money makes “publish or perish” an implausible criterion for academic hiring and promotion.
The profit problem here should be obvious. In the internet era, there is little need for libraries to buy (paper) books and if the libraries do not buy the books, publishers will not spend the money to publish books. The editors that Michael and Roiberta extoll are, I expect, already entering the great American unemployed,
I doubt that the academy has the money to make jobs for these talented people. As a result, I do not see how it makes sense to have an academic career depend on the decisions of book publishers and librarians.
As for the value of books, I start with the magic of the torah scrolls. Reading ancient text, hand written on a continuous role of parchment, is awesome. Paper books, while less romantic, are awesome in other ways. I have a room in my home that is a wonderful library. I do most of my reading on computers or e-readers but buy paper copies of books when I want the pleasure of sitting in my grandfather’s easy chair, sipping club soda, and reading treasured texts.
My books are tattered, some have fallen into the tub, mosat have lots of folded corners. Some are treasures from my father’s library, others come form my own mentor’s collection and have his notes. I hope and bebelive the ppaer book will endure.
I am less sanguine about the role of traditional libraries in preserving texts. Compared with the web, traditional libraries are vastly expensive. While I worry about the evolution of digital technology, I know that that storing text on paper and employing librarians to store and retrieve those texts is a hugely expensive technology that will become a bigger cost as most text becomes electronic. I doubt that many government anr university libraries will be able to survive those costs.
I doubt very much that 50 years from now the tax payers of the State of Washington will want to support a building and staff so that folks who then share Ira and my love for paper can enjoy the experience.