Actually,
few publishers nowadays bother to sort through the slush pile.
I'm not clear on what "one expense" you're trying to "peel out" and "make self-standing." If you mean sorting through the slush pile, that expense is pretty much gone without any negative impact on the publishers, as that role is now pushed onto the agents. In fact, one can even say that this is a change to the publishing industry's
modus operandi that cuts their costs and makes them more efficient. Go figure.
If you mean "editing expenses," professional freelance editors have been available for years, and many novice writers hire them (at their own expense) for manuscript reviews prior to sending the book on to agents, as do self-publishers.
As it stands, in 2008 over 275,000 new books in the US alone were published, and 47,000 of those were fiction. And that doesn't include on demand / short run, which was another 280,000 titles.
Further, despite the hopes and dreams of the media populists,
big hits are still, and will almost certainly continue to be, very important.
No one can afford to act as a gatekeeper, or find quality works, without some kind of commercial incentive and a revenue source. Far too many books are getting published for that to work -- and as the cost to self-publish drops, the number of new titles will rise, leading to more competition for readers' attentions. Furthermore, since nearly 130 new fiction books are released
per day, it's going to require significant resources to rise above the fray and get noticed.
Most writers won't have the funds or expertise to get their works noticed, let alone write book after book without the large advances discussed earlier in this thread.
Even writers who are capable of doing so rarely choose to go it alone. For example, writers like James Patterson or Stephen King are more than capable of working without publishers, but are making a free choice to continue working with publishers. I wonder why.
I.e. if you expect the publishers to wither and die any day now, I think you will be sorely disappointed.
Uh huh. Where, pray tell, are you generating this detailed cost analysis? The comics page, perhaps?
Seriously, you're attacking a caricature, not the reality. We are talking about publishers, not investment bankers or Hollywood execs.
Because readers want new writing.
I concur that there is some competition from older books, but if I were writing a fiction book, and I was fooling enough to worry about the competition
, I'd be a little more worried about the handful of megastars and rising above the other 47,000+ other new fiction books than a bunch of backlist titles.