The Stupidly Reductive Sentence of the Day

Kassia Krozser of Booksquare writes today, as part of her weekly "I am right about all things publishing-related, and you are wrong" post:

Yes, indeed: very few people pick up a book for work. Reading is a leisure activity, a pleasure, a joy.

Kassia, I'm assigning a bit of homework. Figure out how much larger the world of read-for-work books -- computer books, business books, professional books of all kinds, school texts from K through grad school, and reference books -- is than the universe of fiction and consumer nonfiction. (From the numbers I remember seeing, it's roughly 2-to-1, comparing professional, elhi, and higher ed against "trade" -- and "trade" includes a fair bit of read-for-work books.)

Krozser is right at least as often as she's wrong, but she's yet another one of those supposed "experts" of the publishing world who think that fiction is the only thing that matters.

Every sweeping generalization about publishing is false. Even that one.