30 July 2018
Everyone thinks they have a book in them. Eighty-one percent of Americans think so, at least according to one estimate. Since that drive to write a book is so common, scams are constantly springing up in the book publishing industry, all aimed at fleecing optimistic and naive author wannabes. However, the most popular publishing scam of the 1990s by far, reading fees, has today receded into the background, even as the total amount of industry scams has grown. To explain why, we need to examine the rapid evolution of the publishing industry itself.