Publishing & the literary world

Publishing is the system by which writing moves from the private act of making to the public act of being read, and like all systems it has its own logic that is not always the same as the logic of literature. The writer who understands this — who sees publishing as a specific cultural institution with specific interests and blind spots — is better equipped to navigate it without confusing its judgments with final verdicts on the work. What publishing cannot see in one era it sometimes discovers in the next.