Pay No Attention to the Publisher behind the Curtain

Andrew Sullivan weighs in on that question.

Traditional newspapers are dying, to be sure (although I think that some of them will have a future as non-profits).  Andrew thinks that traditional publishing (ink-on-dead-trees) is in a similar state.  Money quote:

My own view is that the publishing industry deserves to die in its
current state. It never made economic sense to me; there are no real
editors of books any more; the distribution network is archaic; the
technology of publishing pathetic; and the rewards to authors largely
impenetrable. I still have no idea what my occasional royalty
statements mean: they are designed to be incomprehensible, to keep the
authors in the dark, to maintain an Oz-like mystery where none is
required.

BTW, I totally agree with him on the incomprehensibility of royalty statements.  I get statements from four different publishers, and I can’t understand any of them.