Just a Sprinkle of Internet…

“Sprinkling the Internet on a bad business model does not magically make it a good business model. It merely means that the people who are pursuing a bad business model are hoping you are credulous enough to believe that being electronic is space-age zoomy and awesome and there is no possible way this brilliant business plan could ever fail. Or even worse, that they believe that being electronic means all these things, which means they are credulous. Which is not a very good thing to have as the basis of one’s business model.”

– John Scalzi

John’s remarks here are on the matter of “electronic publishing” imprints endeavoring to leverage (bully, swindle) naive new writers into signing egregious contracts that a) offer no advances and b) make money for publishers before they’d pay a dime to authors.

I like the quote, because even without Scalzi’s specific and intended context, it reads every bit as true.