The continuing decline of reading for pleasure in America is well documented, but doesn’t seem to have been matched by a decline of available reading material – quite the contrary, in fact. “The number of new titles published last year, 195,000, increased by 14 percent over 2003, according to a new report… The biggest chunk of the increase was in adult fiction.” But with fewer adults than ever buying and reading new fiction, the strategy on the part of publishers seems more than anything like a desperate attempt to throw as many titles as possible against the wall, and hope that one or two might stick.