Is Great Literature Possible in an E-Book World?

That's the question posed by "Super Agent" Andrew Wylie in the Wall Street Journal.

From the story...

I think most of the best-sellers list is the literary equivalent of daytime television. This is a world in which Danielle Steel is mysteriously more valuable than Shakespeare. Now, she may be more valuable than Shakespeare for a period of days, months or even years, in purely economic terms. But over time? We have the Royal Shakespeare Company's collection of Shakespeare works, which pays a royalty each year, a strong royalty. So the business we're in is to identify and capture and anticipate the value of books that are inherently classics, future classics. If publishers did the same there would be less of the wild weekend in Las Vegas approach to acquisition that distinguishes the industry and its decline.

Things are generally tough and getting tougher across the industry. In the U.S., publishers are continuing to pay advances at pretty much the same level as five years ago, but they've reduced the number of high bets they're making. This is a trend that should be encouraged. The front list is overvalued and the backlist is overvalued.