patterns 70 the long tail The Transformation of the Book Publishing Industry Old Model We’ve all heard about aspiring authors who carefully craft and submit manuscripts to publishing houses in the hope of seeing their work in print—and face constant rejection. This stereotypical image of publishers and authors holds much truth. The traditional book publishing model is built on a process of selection whereby publishers screen many authors and manuscripts and select those that seem most likely to achieve mini- mum sales targets. Less promising authors and their titles are rejected because it would be unprofi table to copyedit, design, print, and promote books that sell poorly. Publishers are most interested in books they can print in quantity for sale to large audiences. - content acquisition publishing sales broad content (ideally "hits") – broad audience publishing knowledge content retail network publishing / marketing wholesale revenues bmgen_final.indd 70 6/15/10 5:35 PM