The publishing industry has a gambling problem....article from The Walrus magazine, Canadian magazine.

[CdnWriter]

The Publishing Industry Has a Gambling Problem | The Walrus

Companies keep betting on the next bestseller. Literature is poorer for it

thewalrus.ca

This is an interesting read. It may influence some of the submissions y'all make to various publishers and agents.

 

[Stuart Dren]

Thanks for posting that.

I think it's just change. It's funny sad: books have limited print runs because "there's only so much display space." Meanwhile indigo is filling their shelves with sassy mugs and personal massagers. It's because Indigo brick'n'morty, along with half of trad publishing, might be at the end of its life.

As far as books not earning their advance: we're not a mono-culture anymore. Other media are struggling with that too.

 

[jazzabel]

Thank you for the article. It’s confirmed an lot of what I suspected/feared. So, no point in fearing. I’m really quite annoyed that all this is built around our stories, our hard work, our soul-bearing, years of it at times, and yet the writers seem an afterthought with no voice. It makes no sense, and I can see how everyone involved, from authors to publishers, would be frustrated by the state of things. Luckily, middle men are not essential for the stories to have a life and an audience.
This also clarifies why I find so many newly published, bestseller books, too dull to read. The way the industry's works is that it has to be a derivative of a formula that worked before somewhere, rinse and repeat a few million times.