Yet there’s really no shortening the time it takes to write a book or a magazine article of substance—and there’s nothing that can be done to change that without changing the fundamental nature of the enterprise. No penny-pinching technology can remove the human from the fundamental process of creation, no piece of software can speed the production of thought, even as the cost of producing books gallops ahead with the rest of the economy. For many centuries, publishers lived in denial of cost disease. In fact, they spent large parts of their day in denial of the fact that they worked for fully
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