“This Is Not About Quality Control”

The publishing industry is battling the Internet again.

Or publishing stepped on the Internet’s foot and refuses to apologize. Or Maria Popova wanted to use more than three pictures in a post about My Ideal Bookshelf and Little, Brown said no.

In any case, Rumpus essays editor Roxane Gay wrote about it at HTMLGIANT:

I am no apologist for publishing. They are ass backwards in innumerable ways but I love books and I love that people love books enough to publish them and I need to believe that someday, they’ll sort themselves out on the issues that frustrate me the most—diversity, e-book pricing, a slowness in evolving.

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Lauren O'Neal is an MFA student at San Francisco State University. Her writing has appeared in publications like Slate, The New Inquiry, and The Hairpin. You can follow her on Twitter at @laureneoneal.

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The Rumpus publishes original fiction, poetry, literary humor writing, comics, essays, book reviews, and interviews with authors and artists of all kinds. Our mostly volunteer-run magazine strives to be a platform for risk-taking voices and writing that might not find a home elsewhere. We lift up new voices alongside those of more established writers our readers may already know and love. We want to bring new perspectives into the conversation that will make us all look deeper.

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