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'If nothing new ever happens'

21 January 2008

'For the book writer, the creative writer, the knowledge of a market of billions out there waiting to be tapped, is fascinating and baffling. The sorry fact is that the conventional publishing industry is currently running round like a headless chicken, giving readers what they think it wants, and getting it wrong, and losing money hand over fist. If you give people what they want, nothing new can ever happen. If it worked in the past, think the bottom line thinkers - ie made a profit - it will work for ever and ever. So, just do it again. But if nothing new ever happens, the audience drifts away.'

Fay Weldon on Writing for the New Media in Writing and Education