In an interesting essay at Slate's The Big Money, Jill Priluck argues that book authors must "transcend their words and become brands" if they're to sell books. Andrew Sullivan agrees :
My own view is that the publishing industry deserves to die in its current state. It never made economic sense to me; there are no real editors of books any more; the distribution network is archaic; the technology of publishing pathetic; and the rewards to authors largely impenetrable. I still have no idea what my occasional royalty statements mean: they are designed to be incomprehensible, to keep the…