>> Andrew Wheeler:

>> >So, in other words, there's *always* been something to complain
>> >about? (That was my point.)

>> No, you miss the point of the observation entirely:  In 1980 there
>> never had been a dying off of the midlist in publishing history.  The
>> midlist could, by and large, not make a living from book sales, but
>> that was acepted as "just the way it was," and it was a feature of the
>> economics of publising that evolved over the past century and a half.

>> The conglomeratization of the publishing industry brought new economic
>> features to the industry, among them the "death of the midlist."

> It was in the late '70s and early '80s that a midlist writer (at least
> some of them) became to *be* able to make a living at writing. If
> that's the immediate effect of corporatization, I don't see how that is
> bad for the writer now making a semi-living wage from his writing.

> And there probably *had* been major dyings-off before 1980, but (since
> I was only 11 then) I don't know much about them. Certainly westerns
> had crashed at least once before that, and mysteries were on a
> boom-bust cycle before the '80s as well. I'll also mention the late
> '50s magazine crash which drove many writers from the field -- some for
> years, some for good.