Dear CBS, The Defense Department Regrets to Inform You...

...that your publishers are dead because they were stupid."

Okay, I paraphrased Goose from Top Gun, but the end result is the same.

Simon & Schuster, a Big Six publisher which is a CBS subsidiary, has decided the only way to survive the epic upheaval in the publishing industry is to partner with...

Author Solutions?

Seriously?

S&S is that hard up that they go into business with one of the biggest vanity scam publishers in the f***ing world?

And you think calling your new scheme 'Archway' will hide the fact that it's a vanity scam?

This is part of the reson this blog is so late today. I wrote the first draft, then had to go back through a delete the f-bombs.

Which was pretty much every other word.

David Gaughran has an extensive run down of the epic stupidity of S&S.

What makes me incredibly sad is that I know some poor naive writer will spend his kids' college tuition for S&S/AS/Archway's "deal."

Sorry, folks, but publishing your own book should cost way less than $25,000.

Unless the fucking things are gold-plated.