J. A. Konrath

The business model - where books can be returned, and where a 50% sell-through is considered acceptable - is archaic and wasteful. Writers get small royalties, little say in how their books are marketed and sold, and simple things like cover and title approval are unheard of unless you're a huge bestseller.

Between 1939 and 1945 you produced weapons and war equipment valued at thirteen billion dollars, 70 per cent of which you shipped to your allies. The same process is going on today in Canada's much larger and growing industry.

The market is incredibly inefficient and capable on rare occasions of being utterly dysfunctional. And people have a really hard time getting their brain around that fact. They want to believe that it's approximately efficient almost all the time, and it simply isn't true.