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Originally Posted by eschwartz
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It used to be that publishers were involved with readers, running bookstores and book clubs and so on.
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There are still some small publishers out there that do that, but aren't we talking about the big 5? They are all part of large international corporations now. Hershey started out as a small candy store way back when. Why would you expect them to act like they did way back when? Some of the smaller subunits, such as Tor, one of the SF&F imprints of Macmillan (owned by the Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group in Germany) are more proactive with regards to customer interaction.
It's really informative to trace each of the major publishers to their parent companies. Simon & Schuster is owned by CBS, Random House and Penguin are owned by a German company, Bertelsmann, HarperCollins is owned by News Corp. Hatchette is owned by Lagardere Group.
Certainly, one can make the argument that publishing consolidation has gone too far. That's my thought. I suspect that as the business drivers that pushed the publishing companies into consolidation go away, we will see a combination of the mega corporations shed their publishing companies and new publishing companies move to the forefront. However, I don't see where one would expect mega corporations act like small mom and pop book stores. The actually employees that do the book business (editors, people who choose which books to publish, etc) tend to be people who love books and literature. The suits who allocate resources and make the big picture decisions most likely look at books as just another widget.