The Same Ol' Same Ol'

I really wish people would stop talking about "publishing" as if that only meant "major New York fiction publishing." It's getting very old.

"...authors who will ask 'So tell me again, what can you do for me?'"
Been there, done that. Got another conference call next week. We can do a lot, actually. And we do it.

"Publishers sell books to distributors who sell books to bookstores who sell books to readers."
Maybe some do. I help my company's various sales forces sell books to bookstores, and online book retailers (and that is not just a euphemism for you-know-who), and professional organizations, and corporations, and folks who provide continuing professional education, and distributors, and others I'm forgetting right now. Some of those people sell books to readers, some have already pre-sold those books, some give away those books, and I'd be only mildly surprised if some of them barter books for energy futures. The publishing ecology is deeper and wilder than most people guess.

And, as you know Bob, my current title has the word "Marketing" in it, which means I'm also deeply concerned with making consumers interested in these books. I might not be setting up MySpace pages for Parmenter's Key Performance Indicators, but that doesn't mean I'm not connecting it with readers.

All books are not novels. All books are not stories. And the monomaniacal focus of "publishing" blogging on Major Fiction gives me a headache.

Rant over.