Business

First, a little local business.  It has come to my attention that some of you are having difficulty posting comments here.  Anonymous comments are now enabled, or you can email me at kateinthecloset at gmail dot com any time you want to get in touch.  I'll share here as appropriate.

Now, about the business.  Today was Dan Brown Day, widely expected to break all sorts of publishing industry records.  This is an outstanding example of what many people say is the problem with this business.  The Lost Symbol is likely going to finance every other Doubleday publication for the next few years.  It is what every company is chasing - the panacea that makes all the failures OK.  The entire industry will try to create 'more like this', and instead of a wide variety of mostly mediocre choices with a few gems, we have increasingly homogenous mediocre choices with increasingly fewer gems.  (Have you noticed how many fucking vampire novels there are at Barnes & Noble lately?  There isn't even any actual fucking in most of them.  For fuck's sake.)

It's all doom and gloom, right?  Actually, I don't think so.  A lot of the industry seems to be pissing itself in terror over the digital content revolution that is already in progress.  I may not know shit about the publishing industry, but I happen to know a lot about the online services industry, and I think the revolution might just be the best thing to happen to books since ink.  Tune in tomorrow to find out why.