Having written a couple of things this week about what publishers should be doing, Don Linn has a timely post at his blog Bait ‘n’ Beer on exactly why such thoughts are usually wide of the mark:
[N]ot all publishers are the same. While there are some commonalities among the hundreds of publishers, there are major differences between trade, academic, educational, reference and other types of publishers and even within those broad categories, there are major differences (even within the same house) between fiction and nonfiction, text and illustrated, genre and general fiction, children’s, YA and adult titles. And I’ve only named a few… The point is it’s dangerous to take individual examples and generalize them to an entire, very diverse industry.
He goes on remind readers that talk is always cheap:
[P]ublishers don’t do everything critics think they should [because] not many publishers are rolling in cash at the moment. I can’t name a single publisher who wouldn’t want to spend more on investments in marketing, quality, workflow improvement and editorial, but the money’s just not there. So we need to temper our expectations with a dose of financial reality.
It’s a great post. And worth reading every time you think a publisher should be doing something they aren’t.
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