Quote:
Originally Posted by phenomshel
Thank you Dennis. I had just come here to post that again, Facebook has become a mixed blessing. While reconnecting with someone who was in my class in high school, and his mother was my English teacher (yes, it was a small town), I found that his wife works for Hachette. Now - Hachette seems to be one of the publishers that is a 'worst offender' for ebook related idiocy, so I was going to complain about how now I'll need to censor my comments on FB about publishers and idiocy. However, after reading your post I think I'll be more thoughtful about how lucky I am that I can reconnect with distant friends and family.
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Hachette is like everyone else in publishing, trying to scry the possible futures, and figure out what they have to do. People complain about "greedy" publishers. In most cases, the motive isn't greed. They aren't rich and trying to get richer. They're trying to
survive.
I know a couple of folks at Hachette. TimeWarner spun off the Warner Books division as Grand Central, and Hachette picked them up. These folks worked at Warner. The have nothing to do with Hachette's annoying behavior. They are probably just thanking whatever diety they still have a job.
And even in cases of genuine stupidity, I'm selective about who I knock. For example, a year of so ago the well respected publisher at Little, Brown got the chop. Little, Brown was under pressure from the conglomerate it was part of, and the Group President she reported to was pushing for "more best sellers". Little, Brown had historically been a "literary" house, known more for high quality than high sales, and she saw herself as under pressure to dumb down the line to a point where it wouldn't be Little, Brown any more. She resisted, and finally got fired. But I can't really blame the Group President. He was under pressure from top management to improve results for his group. I suspect he was as unhappy about having to fire her as she was about leaving, but...
Sometimes there aren't any good answers. But meanwhile, the stupidity comes from the top, and I'm careful not to tar the folks I know, who are mostly editors, assistant editors, art directors and the like with the brush I wield for CEOs and Boards of Directors
I'm on Facebook and find it a mixed blessing. I'm bemused by the number of Friend requiests from folks I know in passing, at best. Er, I didn't know we were
friends. And it's an infinite time sink that requires management to keep properly prioritized. But with 300 million users, yeah, an awful lot of folks I knew are probably there. Fortunately, only one of my exes seems to be, but she's the one I
didn't get over...
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Dennis