Transcription
Why is publishing going bankrupt? You might think it's because people aren't reading anymore and that the internet has fried everyone's attention spans. And sure, that's part of it, but something deeper is going on and no one in the industry wants to admit it.
Publishing has become fundamentally anti-capitalist. In other words, it is actively choosing ideology over profit. Now, this is nothing new. The British publisher Victor Gollancz famously turned down Animal Farm because he didn't want to publish anti-Soviet content. He knowingly walked away from what became one of the most successful books of the 20th century.
Even Milton Friedman pointed this out decades ago in Capitalism and Freedom, arguing that a competitive publisher can't afford to publish only what he personally agrees with. Yet, that is exactly how books are being chosen today. Agents and editors openly say they're looking for projects they connect with and characters they relate to. What that means in practice is that personal ideology is shaping what gets published and that comes at the expense of what might actually sell. The Gollancz Orwell mistake, but scaled across the entire industry.
And then everyone turns around and wonders why advancements are shrinking and salaries are stagnant. You cannot run an industry like a book club and expect it to function like a business.