Publishing - actually all the arts - are two separate businesses. There's the entertainment side, which is basically market-driven - as in creating work for a

Publishing - actually all the arts - are two separate businesses. There's the entertainment side, which is basically market-driven - as in creating work for a market. If it's unsubtle and relatively crude, it lives here. It can be a very polished and professional kind of crude - superhero movies, the best pop productions, and so on - but it's not subtle, complicated, difficult, or understated. There's the cultural landmark side, which is about unusually powerful and fluent work that changes culture itself in some way. [1] Publishing pretends to be the latter but it's really the former. It's thrilled to make a lot of money from entertainment projects like Dan Brown, Fifty Shades, and the rest, while somehow maintaining the impression that the entire industry is Culturally Important. [1] This mostly means white well-educated upper middle class culture. But even so.