"Life is short but lunch is long"

What book publishing needs now is a long hard look at itself. One publisher comments in: Nothing Random

''The fact is, Random House needs to make money,'' said Gina Centrello, sounding, as she often does, both determined and defensive. Three months had passed since Olson named Centrello president and publisher of what, after some confusion, is now called the Random House Publishing Group. Centrello, 44, is small and dark and was wearing a navy pantsuit and many shiny diamonds as she picked over a lobster salad during lunch at the tony restaurant Town.

Seems to me that Random House could start making money by cutting Ms. Centrello's salary with a meat axe and swapping out tuna fish for lobster salad. You can be sure that 80% of Random House's authors last saw a lobster salad when Eisenhower was President.
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UPDATE: More reactions, insights and discussion of the Times' article can be found on 2 Blowhards.

And, at the same site, you can read a superior encapsulation about how Bestseller Lists are born. It's not a pretty picture and it confirms just about everything you suspected about the New York Times.

Posted by Vanderleun at July 20, 2003 10:43 AM