Publish and be Remaindered

Book publishing: houses have gobbled each other up, good editors have become agents, mature authors lie at the mercy of 12-year-olds ...

In addition, vast sums are lavished on already-rooted and blooming authors, leaving nothing to nourish potential seedlings, and, as James Frey reveals in How to Write Damn Good Fiction, 30 per cent of the hardcover books published in America go "directly from the printer to the remainder house" (same here). In other words, editors completely goof it 30 per cent of the time. They are just people. Perhaps the problem arises in the corporate atmosphere where the people employed as editors frantically seize on manuscripts in order to do some editing, thereby justifying their positions.

A Publishing Manifesto: 2002