Quote:
Originally Posted by kennyc
And you are certainly welcome to have and express that opinion, but it's wrong. The whole purpose of the publishing industry is and was two-fold. 1 - to make money and 2 - to publish the best work the can. The two are not mutually exclusive. Now admittedly 'best' can be defined in any number of ways and your 'best' may not be my 'best' but the job of the publisher is to optimize 'best' across the market it is serving and they have done a hell of a job of it for the last 500 years or so.
This is saying nothing of reviews or marketing of course. I tend to discount all marketing myself, but if I find multiple reviewers that seem to agree that a particular book or collection is great then I will certainly check it out. If multiple reviews say the opposite I will likely not bother as my time is too valuable. If the reviews are mixed, but it seems of interest I'll give it a shot as well and read the first few pages, etc. and go from there.
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You're right on your first point, but you're absolutely batshit insane if you think any of the Big12 are in this game to further literature or even offer 'good'. In the last couple of weeks an ex-glamour model's ghostwritten chick-lit novel was at the top of the publishing lists in the UK. Do not talk to me of 'best' and 'good' when this shit goes on almost daily. Next you'll be assigning some lofty goal of nutrition to McDonalds, or the furthering of knowledge to Microsoft.
Publishing is a business, a business that is owned by other businesses, part of the corporate hegemony that does not now, nor has it ever, had any concern for the creativity it so unashamadely profits from. It's a bottom-line, no thought, please-all-of-the-people all-of-the-time grey wash of nothingness.