Quote:
Originally Posted by kennyc
It is no longer true and unless they come around and change their business model, they will not be in business or will be only a shadow of what they were.
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Maybe I am suffering from some kind of nostalgia neurosis, but this is my picture of the high-standards old business model:
A native New Yorker unfamiliar with Richter's writing, I was drawn to David Johnson's biography, Conrad Richter: A Writer's Life. As a budding story writer and teacher of the novel form, I discovered that I was learning from the challenges and disheartening rejections Richter faced as he honed his craft. The record of his correspondence with interested editors willing to help him with close critiques constitutes a treatise on how to write marketable narrative.
Also see
pages 303-305 here, about a manuscript submitted
after Richter was a bestselling Pulitzer Prize winner.
And this is my picture of the new editing = proofreading business model:
. . . three to six books done or nearly done in any given year is not at all unreasonable . . .
As a reader looking not for more books, but for outstanding books, I don't see why I should see anything positive in a new business model.
P.S. The real problem is that publishers aren't sticking close enough to the old business model. I want them to go back to the old model of selling libraries all their products on the same terms they sell to the general public. However, it seems likely that most of their best books will find their way to Overdrive after a few years, so this doesn't bother me much.