OH! MY!
What a great find!
I laughed my head off. Every last cliche about NYC publishing is real. Who knew?
They really are that incestuous and dysfunctional.
No wonder the very thought of the 21st century creeping in freaks them out.
Crack-addicted agents? How 80's!
(Nowadays the white collar drug of choice is heroin.)
And there's this:
Quote:
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Meanwhile, over the years, as the book business had become more profitable, and more cutthroat, the publishers were swallowed one by one by large multi-national conglomerates. Periodically a German person would arrive in town and fire everyone.
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and this:
Quote:
...the publishers function a lot like investment banks—albeit very scrupulous investment banks in which five or six people have to read an entire novel before the bank puts down any money. Young editors have to get their boss’s go-ahead for even the tiniest, $5,000 advance, and whereas at some houses the very senior people don’t technically need to go to their corporate superiors unless they’ve gone over some established “level,” for the most part they still do.
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Puts so many things in context.
Thanks!