consider the lipstick

While we're on the subject of the end of the world:Why isn't publishing recession-proof?  A few months ago I think the conventional wisdom was that book publishing would do quite nicely in a recession.  That doesn't seem to be the case.Why not?  Consider the lipstick effect: it's well-known that lipstick sales rise in a recession, because lipstick is the cheapest possible substitute for new shoes or clothes.  Walmart and Costco and fast food similarly do well.Books are cheap. Aren't they? Not as cheap as watching TV, of course, or going for walks. And, yes, there's a certain amount of resistance to the initial outlay on a book -- books, if you're bookish, are the kind of things that form strong and resonant memories, making you aware with unusually painful emotional intensity of how much more expensive they are now than they used to be when you were a child, when things were made sense.But for dollar per hour of entertainment, books are almost as cheap as it gets. Certainly cheaper than going to the movies, or eating out, or most video games. George Orwell proved this mathematically seventy years ago in Books v. Cigarettes. Shouldn't people be cutting back on movies and drinking and sitting at home with a book instead?What's wrong with this logic? Certainly there are publishing dorks here, and there must be a few economics dorks, and maybe even some intersection of the two.  Explain.I promise to talk about something less depressing tomorrow.