155. Books are Like Baked Beans: Authors you have been warned

N.B. This article was written without a shred of inspiration whatsoever. The author disclaims all responsibility. However, sarcasm always underlines a paradox of realism.

I’ve been trying to put myself in the shoes of a publisher to see how I would come up in choosing a “brand” of books to sell and the thought of selling books was just like that of selling baked beans, flashed through my mind. Actually not just baked beans but also canned peas, corn, carrots, tomatoes, gherkins, pickles...

That’s it! Publishers are no different from grocery manufacturers: they produce a product and they know exactly how many cans of baked beans, peas etc will be consumed given a certain period, so they produce X number of cans to fill that need.

NB I may finish this article... perhaps ... one day!

The moral of the story is this: thank God there were publishers in the days of Lawrence, Joyce, James, Forster etc who did not believe that readers lived on canned baked beans alone!