A Thurston Moore quote from Our Band Could Be Your Life:
"Moore felt independent labels had lost what made them good in the first place, which was that they didn’t try to compete on any level with the majors. But, noting the steady growth in their sales, indie labels had lately begun to aim higher. 'The whole thing of becoming bigger and bigger to me was wrong,' Moore said. 'You should find a great neutrality and just stay there and maintain that force.'"
Thanks to Tom Neely for telling me about this.
I've been thinking about this idea so much for the past couple years.
There was an article in Harper's a few months back about publishing that made the point that publishing works best when satisfied with small profit margins--when the big companies take over and demand bigger margins it goes to hell. There's probably a number, like 3-5% profit, that's the ideal...but I'm bad with numbers. Just pay the bills and put out great stuff...
ReplyDeleteCoincidentally, the word of the day on Dictionary.com is "nimiety", which means "The state of being too much; excess."
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