Marketing will replace editorial as the driving force behind publishing housesFrom the publishing consultant...

Marketing will replace editorial as the driving force behind publishing houses
From the publishing consultant Mike Shatzkin
 
Isn’t it already true that marketing has been driving the editorial control at least with the 5 remaining big publishing houses and hasn’t this been the pellet of poison, poisoning the waters of literary distribution all along,  creating a new vessel of editorial control out of a new technology?
 
”Fifty years ago, editors just picked the books and the sales department had to sell them. Thirty years ago, editors picked the books, but checked in with the sales departments about what they thought about them first. Ten years from now, marketing departments (or the marketing “function”) will be telling editors that the audiences the house can touch need or want a book on this subject or filling that need…”
 
So as the court jester, played by Danny Kaye might ask, is the pellet with the poison's in the flagon with the dragon and dost the vessel with the pestle hast the brew that is true?
 Or~
Has marketing already replaced editorial as the driving force behind big publishing and if so, hasn't the new technology come in to return editorial control? 

One of the things my father, Leonard Shatzkin, taught me when I was first learning about book publishing a half-century ago was that “all publishing houses are started with an editorial inspiration”. What he meant by that is that what motivated somebody to start a book publisher was an idea ...