Finally the grim reality sank in, and publishing executives kicked themselves for their own gullibility. “It left an incredibly bad taste in our mouths, that they would slip that one by us after hammering us for months and months with their goddamn lists,” says one executive of a major publishing house. “I don’t think they were doing the wrong thing, but I think the way they handled it was wrong. It was just one more nail in the coffin that no one realized was being closed over [us], even while we were engaged every single day in a conversation about it.”
