Wow! I just read the following article by agent Richard Curtis.
http://www.ereads.com/2008/12/behind-publishings-wednesday-of-long.html
He says to read it twice, and I was thinking, Huh? Why would I read it TWICE? But he explains at the end that the article -- which sounds as if it were written yesterday, was written in 1992.
He points out how abysmally STUPID and DOOMED the publishing industry's way of doing business is. In short, they overprint books and the bookstores (who have nothing to lose) have unlimited right of return. There's a lot more to it, but at the bottom is the practice of withholding authors' royalties against potention returns.
He points out (NOW) that what he predicted in 1992 (some of which I'll quote below) has come to pass with Amazon, electronic publishing, and Print on Demand publishing. Here's some of what Curtis said, in 1992:
"In the coming era of "demand" publishing, we will see direct electronic delivery of text to reader-users without dependence on distributors, or even on paper. The technology for producing portable electronic books containing or accessing whole libraries is now at hand. . . . Thanks to the multimedia and interactive features of the new breed of computers, tomorrow's electronic books will entertain readers with audio and video displays that will make traditional books look as crude as cuneiform writing on stone tablets. Gone will be the disgustingly wasteful system of merchandising books, along with the creative bookkeeping that permits publishers to hold authors' money for years."
I recommend you read the whole article. Thanks to Kelli Finger, writing as Abbey MacInnis, for the heads up about this.
Lynnette
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