With all the talk talk talk about “shareholder value,” the shareholders wind up holding a bag of nothing now. The bondholders get the company.
How can I feel any sympathy for a bunch of Suits who ignored, laughed at, and spit on those who were creating the future right in front of their faces? Who spit on us for choosing to enter the future?
Print publishing is next.
Previously:
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Mike, what kind of time table to you see for the death of print publishing?
I feel the same way about it that you do about the end of the print publishers. The Houses have continued to shut out “no-name” writers and force those they do publish to fund and do their own marketing in favor of focusing on what I view as vapid cotton candy TV folk with platforms.
In part this is fueling the rise of digital content as writers seek other ways to share their work.
It will be an ongoing process. More writers dropped, bookstores displaying fewer books, then staff shed, and then maybe even trying to break up conglomerates by IPOing off or selling to private venture capital publishing subsidiaries or even spinning off by imprints/brands. This is all going to happen faster than it did for music and for video because it’s not as hard for writers to walk away from publishers and take the leap to eBooks — as it is for musicians and filmmakers. Within the next year the cracks will begin to appear for real.
Yeah, that’s a good point about writers verses musicians and film makers.
It’s going to be fun. Perhaps a lot like the Wild West all over again.