ARE CONVENTIONAL BOOK PUBLISHERS DINOSAURS?

    A ripple went through Canada’s creative community this week when The Best Laid Plans, a witty and astute satire by Terry Fallis won the coveted Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour. Fallis chose to digitally publish the book  himself after universal rejection by Canada’s agents and publishers alike. Inhabitants of the literary world were aghast. Surely this oversight by the nation’s literati should be a cause of concern, and they should straighten up forthwith and start digging through their slush piles with renewed purpose.
    On the contrary, the publishing world should be on notice that their anachronistic, erratic and fundamentally flawed manuscript selection process is headed for the dust bin of history as frustrated writers are now side-stepping the whole process and entering a whole new world made possible by the digital universe. Book publishing, as we have come to know it, is a dinosaur on its last legs.