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The power has shifted away from the corporate taste makers and into the hands of the audience and the author. A direct relationship that is unprecedented in publishing.
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I'm sorry, but that's just plain nonsense. The power has always been in the hands of the audience, and they have
always defined what succeeds and what does not. The history of publishing is littered with failed attempts to figure out just what it is people want to read; endless mega-figure book deals by authors you never heard of because, by and large, their books sank without trace.
Do you think the Harry Potter books succeeded because of some cynical corporate strategy? They succeeded because kids read them and loved them enough to recommend them to their friends - and that single, ultimately highly democratic word-of-mouth process is by far the most powerful factor in publishing today or in any other time. Books that do well are almost always ones that get recommended the most by friends of the potential purchaser. Very often the big promotion comes
after a book has already succeeded, and the publishers see an opportunity to spread word of it farther. If a book receives early promotion and press, it's because the agent and publisher are skilled enough at what they do to recognise they may have a big property on their hands, but ultimately it's a gamble in the face of a fickle and unpredictable audience.
One or two people here really need to read up a little on how the industry actually works, rather than treating it as some kind of mass conspiracy. I recommend you start with something like Donald Maass's 'Writing the Breakout Novel', which lays out some of the realities of why some books hit big, and other's don't. There's nothing worse than uninformed opinion.