Not to mention, even with this schoolteacher wage, there is no job security.

Rather, book publishing rests on a business edifice as fragile as any that exists today. Almost all the power in the business resides with (or, you might say, has been turned over to) a single distributor: Barnes & Noble. The most important number in the book industry, which few people in publishing ever take note of, is the Barnes & Noble share price, which is most often in precarious condition. The entire industry is dependent on the health of an overextended retail chain (something like if the fashion industry did most of its business through Kmart). Were anything to happen to Barnes & Noble, book publishing itself would fall into chaos.

So why would anyone do this? Why wasn’t Ann Godoff pleased to be freed? Why aren’t the people I know in book publishing (among them, my dearest friends) desperately looking for new careers?

In part, the answer is that against all the evidence, people in book publishing don’t agree with my characterization (about salary and working conditions, perhaps; that books suck, no). They seem to believe, in fact, that the business needs to be defended rather than rebelled against.

What if, by its very nature, book publishing is self-selecting exactly the wrong people—like the priesthood or certain police departments?

The love of books, or the idea of the love of books, or the identification with people who love books, casts a very powerful spell. It’s far stronger, for instance, than even the sentiment and myths that carry people into medicine—where, of course, almost every doctor is at war with his profession.

While book people will occasionally rise to decry falling standards in book publishing, or creeping corporatism, or the latest ritual beheading of a publisher who “didn’t make the numbers,” they are, in my experience, really quite content—or at least quiescent.

They may not believe, as Norman Mailer (who would hardly be publishable today) told the Times last week, that “writers are the marrow of a nation, the nutrient,” but they do believe that books are meaningful, self-justifying things.

Indeed, among the people in book publishing today, there may be a telling and important disconnect that has occurred between writing and books. That is, writing is not the point—books are. Having run a publishing company, and having hired people who want to work in publishing, I can testify that in any interview, the prospective employee will invariably say: “I love books.” Now, this certainly seems to be a meaningless or pro forma notion. But my guess is that it has a rather precise meaning. Not that I love all books, or even most books, or even a particular few (nobody, by the way, ever says, “I love good books”), but that I don’t like numbers very much or technology or salesmanship. In other words, I feel uncomfortable with other, harder, realer career choices—I’m looking for a gentler occupation.