Admittedly part of that is caused by the change in tax laws making it untenable for publishers to maintain a backlist.
It was not on a level that nudges GDP growth for a long time. The irony is that maybe the productivity didn't increase until book publishing plummeted, since enabling a lack of physical books was a huge productivity win.
This isn't a debate about whether industries improved. When you look at GDP, do you see an uptick in GDP or not?
The original quote was often seen as a paradox. At least one major interpretation of the original quote is that "the computer revolution is so obviously helping the economy, that if it doesn't show up in GDP, is it even a meaningful measurement, and how can we fix that?"
But it is very fitting to discuss that quote - the original article discusses multifactor productivity, the same relevant measurement, and earnings of the S&P 493. There are two ways to interpret it - is AI not increasing productivity, or are we not measuring productivity, and is there "dark matter" somewhere in the economy that is not being properly measured?
The thing is, increased efficiency doesn't always yield a larger market in the short term.
There are only so many copies of a book listing television stations and demographics for marketing purposes which the market will bear as in this specific instance.
It takes a while for the displaced workers to get retrained and find other jobs which allows them to produce/consume more.
On the flip side, Nintendo hiring a couple hundred folks to make a game such as _Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword_ suddenly created $50 x 600,000 in value on the day it was released.
And that's a critique of the original article... that the broader "S&P 493" isn't showing gains might be for the reasons you describe.