HarperCollins’ new policies

On 4/3/08, HarperCollins announced a new subsidiary that will have three new policies heretofore essentially not allowed:

• no advances to authors
• no returns from book stores allowed
• no payments to book stores for shelf space

The new subsidiary will focus on Internet marketing. I guess. the book stores probably will refuse to buy their books.

What do I think about this? As I said in my book i, the HarperCollinses of the world are toast.

The world will always have authors and readers. The people who have been getting in between—publishers, book stores, distributors—will be eliminated by the Internet. What HarperCollins is doing is just an interim step on their way to the dust bin of of the book business.