(2008-02-06) Leguin Books Staying

Ursula K Le Guin has a piece in Harper's about Reading and Book Publishing. Books are Social Vector-s (Social Object), but publishers have been slow to see it... How can you make book sales expand endlessly, like the American waistline? Michael Pollan explains in The Omnivores Dilemma how you do it with corn. When you've grown enough corn to fill every reasonable demand, you create unreasonable demands-artificial needs.