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by saint_fiasco 3927 days ago
Presumably because if you don't, other publishers might, and they will get your customers.

For some weird reason, no publisher decided to do that. Except pirates, but they always do that.

1 comments

Publishers may be okay at the moment, but I still think they're doomed. There's literally no barrier to entry in the publishing business, which is eventually going to break their pricing cartel.
As a reader without unlimited time the publishing industry acts as a barrier to entry which filters out the worst books... We need a robust reviewing system which filters out shill reviews.
You don't need a publishing industry for that; you just need book reviews.
Goodreads? And some critical reading skills to pick out the shills?
Why should I waste time on this? I know that books in the SciFi section of my local bookshop will have a certain minimum standard without needing to wade through some reviews.
You have a better local bookstore than I do. Mine is all Star Wars expanded universe dreck (last decade or so, in prequel land or tying into a children's cartoon), Star Trek fan-fiction, Halo novelizations, etc. With some classic Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, Bova, and a very few other authors thrown in to class up the joint, although usually just the more well-known titles I've already read.
I'm lucky.