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Wonderful article.
It doesn't mention one of the reasons publishers churn through books--US tax law changes a few years ago made it incredibly impractical to keep a backlog. They're now taxed on unsold books in storage, so the policy shifted from "keep a few flats of mid-list books so that if one turns unexpectedly popular, we've got it covered" to "print less so we can be sure to sell it *all* right away; if it turns out trendy, maybe we'll reprint."
That's not the cause of the trend, but it exacerbated an already troublesome set of business practices.
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