Also, you are very right about the effects of Wrong positioning!

In a way, you could compare publishers with record-labels and authors with bands. They have very similar business models and similar complaints. They do serve a need of the market and their role couldn’t have been played in any other way. Till now.

Most authors (and musicians) are motivated by a need of creative expression, not by an incentive of profit. The publishers’ business model is more aligned with the latter. This misalignment is what causes dissatisfaction among the former lot and hence the complaints.

As a consumer of art (literature, music or otherwise), at least I was pissed off at the situation in the past. I believe art should stand for its own sake and not for garnering the largest market share. A creative work should never be altered just to make it more populist or to pander to the masses – business models not withstanding.

At the same time, I recognize that publishers are not artists themselves. They are not a charity and they are functioning in the only possible manner – considering their goals and objectives. Selling populist junk is an inevitability.

Perhaps not “evil”, but I definitely see them both becoming redundant. Publishing and marketing both are becoming more affordable and most of the time, authors and musicians’ motivation is not to make a huge profit but only to make a creative expression. Very soon, artists will be able to publish and market their works themselves without resorting to tampering the artwork just to get “published”.

And I will be cheering out loud, “Good riddance!”