Indubitably. Iron and Wine lyrics spring to mind. Something about puzzle pieces…

It so often is, isn’t it? And on a somewhat related note, I find it cool that humans were designed to need each other.

Well, most of my experience is specialized (like in how to turn corporatespeak into English), and I rely on a large team of very smart people to do most of the big-picture strategic thinking and, you know, actually implement things. But you’re right then, the key would be finding the right team.

“Everything is sequels, prequels, spinoffs and reboots.” Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that, too.

“those sales would be determined by which books the publishers decided to push to stores. WHO MAKES THESE DECISIONS???” That’s what I want to know! It’s like they have some sort of algorithm that excludes most things I’d be interested in. 😉

I’d be willing to bet that you could, with your experience in marketing and editing, put together a publishing company that would revolutionize the industry. Of course, I would also be afraid of it eating into your writing time. They key would be finding the right team, figuring out how to delegate, and finding that chink in the market to wriggle into.

You may have put your finger on that chink, though, when you pointed out how little publishing companies seem to know about marketing.

Perhaps he means more “You say that like it’s a bad thing.” But I don’t know. The only thing I’ve read from either of those authors is Stephen King’s “On Writing,” which was more autobiographical than useful. I’ve seen a few movies based off of Grisham or King’s work, but you can’t really judge the writing on that.

Anyway, you see the same trend in the movie industry, of course. Everything is sequels, prequels, spinoffs and reboots. It may make it harder to break in, but not impossible. New people still pop up occasionally. It’s just a mystery why they decide to put marketing dollars behind some and not others. Twilight, for instance. There must have been hundreds of vampire romance novels before Meyer appeared, so why did they decide to give her the classy covers?.

And I know the NY Times Bestseller list isn’t based entirely on sales, but even if it was, those sales would be determined by which books the publishers decided to push to stores. WHO MAKES THESE DECISIONS???

But the Internet, ebooks and self-publishing are all changing everything. I can’t help feeling like there’s an opportunity in there somewhere, for some smart person who just thinks of that ONE trick. I was reading this Mike Rowe post about a dairy farmer who got rich selling cow manure to Wal-Mart to make biodegradable flower pots. He said he saw everyone going in one direction, and he went in the other. We just have to find our biodegradable flower pots.