The Passive voice has a link and a very good commentary on the article:
http://www.thepassivevoice.com/06/20...fect/#comments
Quote:
One of the ways that Manhattan-based observers of Amazon are blinded to its benefits is that the parts of New York inhabited by the literati are (or were until recently) filled with lovely bookstores. If you’re in the publishing business or are an agent or author or book critic, you go to bookstores a lot and interact with the owners/managers to see what’s going on. Unconsciously, you assume others do the same thing and are as fascinated with book retailing as you are. And, of course, New Yorkers are famously (proudly?) ignorant about the rest of the nation, particularly fly-over states.
The idea that readers in Wichita or Montgomery or St. Cloud or any of thousands of other cities can’t walk a few blocks to a bookstore doesn’t sink in. The idea that, if a bookstore is reasonably available, it’s a horrible store that doesn’t carry the books an intelligent reader may want never rises to any level of consciousness.
The idea that a Wichita reader might not be interested in the same sorts of books that sell like hotcakes on the Upper West Side may be intellectually acknowledged, but probably doesn’t affect a lot of decisions about which books to publish. Who really cares about Wichita anyway?
In essence, the customers who traditional publishing serves best live in New York.
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The Comments are also very good.