Amazonfail: Stross' summary

Charlie Stross has a good, angry roundup of the latest on Amazonfail. And he's right to be angry: the affair is still dragging on, despite Amazon's apparent capitulation to MacMillan earlier this week.

He also links to some excellent posts by other authors explaining why publishing is a necessary thing and even, shockingly, how publishers can actually help improve on the author's work. Here's Cat Valente on why editing is a Good Thing, and why people who begrudge the cost of it are fooling themselves:

It's extremely expensive and most people don't really think they need editing anyway. To the author him or herself, their own work shines. Every syllable. But what happens when a writer refuses editing? I think we've all seen it, with Anne Rice and others that have claimed this right: too popular to edit. The books are crap.

Absolutely. You can spot the point at which JK Rowling's editor decided to give up on their red pencil: the books suddenly bloat up from a few hundred pages to several hundred pages with plots that sag worse the beds at my grandparents' house, the mattresses of which dropped at least 8 inches in the middle.