To me, the signature quote is at the top:
Quote:
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The rest is a lazy publishing industry that does far too little of the work that got them here: Discovering new authors and giving them a shot. Instead, they go for the lazy lay-up: Overpaying on celebrity memoirs and pop culture phenomenons with a built in audience.
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While the Big Publishers whine about Amazon and look for ways to rip-off ebook readers, what is really killing them is their own laziness. At a time when the market is being flooded with long-lived, cheap quality from the backlist, the Big Publishers are tying their fates to short-lived, expensive dreck. They're forgetting that the health of their business depends finding content. not making big-budget deals.
I see this as simple payback; the revenge of the slush pile and the backlist, both deprecated, both eating away at the BPH market share.
Amazon is just a distraction, the real threat is coming from Open Road and the other new publishers.