m. c. de marco: To invent new life and new civilizations...

Walter Jon Williams blogs some brief words of doom and gloom for the publishing industry during this live reenactment of 1929:

[P]ublishing runs on credit. The money that is paid to authors is borrowed from banks. Banks aren’t even lending to other banks right now, let alone businesses with the tiny profit margins we see in publishing.

Short form: Doomed. The lot of us. Doomed.