Here’s an interesting (if a trifle inflated) article at the guardian.co.uk about Dan Brown’s Davinci Code sequel The Lost Symbol arriving in time to SAVE the publishing industry.
It more reasonably goes on to talk about the book’s positive impact on the burgeoning eBook marketplace.
That’s the meat of the story for me since it could be argued that the imperiled traditional publishers got themselves into trouble by putting all of their focus on publishing only bestsellers by authors like DAN BROWN, STEPHEN KING or J. K. ROWLING, etc.
They further narrowed their scope with attempts to capitalize on each bestseller’s success by releasing similar books by lesser authors. In the process, the publishers lost their ability to adapt and the traditional book market stagnated.
If they had focused on longevity instead of quarterly profits, these publishers would have been grooming new writers, thereby opening the market to varied tastes in author, genre, subject matter, etc.
