I would substitute "literature" for "literary fiction" in the title of this short article by Elizabeth Kaye Cook and Melanie Jennings from Persuasion, but a lot of what is says about the state of publishing in the 21st century is spot on. Witness:
Mirroring many other American industries, publishing has followed the path of consolidation, starting when Random House bought Knopf in 1960. What followed was a fifty-year feeding frenzy of mergers and acquisitions. In 2012, when Random House and Penguin merged, we were left with today’s “Big Five”: Penguin Random House, Hachette, Macmillan, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster.
And I'm not sure I see much hope in the current situation--certainly not for the writers who expect to be paid for their work. Small presses may be good for getting publication, but the terms are unpropitious.
The full article can be found here.
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