LAST MONTH, André Schiffrin, the editor of the New Press, published a stirring indictment of the conglomeration of American publishing, in which six publishing houses now control four fifths of the market. Others, however, think that, in many ways, publishers, writers, and readers have never had it so good. For this special FEED dialog, we invited two editors -- John Donatich and Dave Eggers, of Basic Books and McSweeney's, respectively -- to join Schiffrin in discussing the state of publishing, and the impact emerging technologies might have upon it (Schiffrin declined to participate in the second half of this discussion). Please join us afterwards in the Loop to continue the conversation.

A NOTE ON THE PARTICIPANTS:

JOHN DONATICH is the Publisher of Basic Books and has written for many periodicals.

DAVE EGGERS, a founding editor of Might, is now the editor of McSweeney's magazine and McSweeney's Books. His first book A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius was published earlier this year by Simon & Schuster. He lives in Brooklyn with his brother.

ANDRE SCHIFFRIN was, for thirty years, Managing Director at Pantheon. He is the Director of the New Press, which he founded in 1990. He contributes a regular column to the Chronicle of Higher Education. He is the author of The Business of Books: How the International Conglomerates Took Over Publishing and Changed the Way We Read.