Writing about the influence of Wall Street on the motion picture industry in the thirties, David Robinson says,

The bureaucrats and accountants, eager to overcome the unpredictable and intractable element in the creation of films, began to codify certain principles of commercial production that still prevail in the industry: the attempt to exploit proven success with formula pictures and cycles of any particular genre which temporarily sells, at the expense of other and perhaps unorthodox product; the quest for predictable sales values-star names, best-selling titles, costly and showy production values-which have little to do with art.

That doesn't just describe movies in the thirties; it describes books today.

Publishing is an industry, and it's driven by commercial values. The principles have been codified. They know how to make it work. They are suspicious of creativity, innovation, surprise, novelty. Freshness, newness, authenticity, and genuineness.

The authentic can't be faked and it will not be denied. But it will be resisted. Emerson told Whitman, "There are renunciations and apprenticeships, and this is thine: thou must pass as a fool and a churl for a long season."

How does the artist deal with the bureaucrats and accountants in the publishing industry? For a long season?

He disintermediates.

"Anything you have to do, you have to go on and do yourself," Rahsaan Roland Kirk said.