I wonder if there is an analogy in the pharmaceutical industry. It
used to be that drug companies did a lot of basic research and
developed drugs from that research. Now big drug companies mostly
just do the clinical testing and marketing. They buy up biotech start-
ups with a drug candidate ready for clinical trial or they license
drug candidates from universities. They don't do the groundwork.
Authors now have to do all the groundwork and after they prove that
the book can sell on their own, they may get bought out by a big
publisher and marketed more widely.
Drug stores used to just be about drugs, too, but now are so full of
groceries and pool toys, that you have to look hard for the drugs.
Alicia
On Jul 19, 2011, at 1:50 PM, delancey wrote:
The thing that is frustrating is that B&N and Borders annihilated all
the small stores, then Borders goes bankrupt and B&N reduces its stock
to a few pop books and heaps of toys and a huge expanse of empty
pseudo-Apple-store for Nook. Together the two have succeeded in
squeezing distribution to a Hollywood style winner-take-all system,
cutting off the long (and short) tail.
Next up: Amazon starts squeezing authors for smaller and smaller
margins after they control all of publishing.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
Groups "R-SPEC: The Rochester Speculative Literature Association"
group.
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]
.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/r-spec?hl=en
.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "R-SPEC:
The Rochester Speculative Literature Association" group.
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
[email protected].
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/r-spec?hl=en.
