“The trilogy took off globally when the publishing industry got involved. It was carefully placed and sold by the agent, carefully positioned, edited, publicized, -marketed and distributed,” he said.
There is still no easy ride into print as, John Makinson, Penguin’s chief executive, has pointed out. Titles that sell well as e-books are not always appropriate for putting between hard covers.
However, the company is once more in the vanguard, just as it was in the 1930s when managing editor Allen Lane stood on the platform at Exeter station in southwest England and wondered about testing out on the marketplace a selection of cheap paperbacks, sold from a vending machine.
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