All Hail Our Corporate Masters

There’s a discussion thread over on Oliver Willis right now about the reduction of comfortable places to sit in the large chain bookstores (Borders and Barnes&Noble). Personally, I don’t much care because I’ve never been much of a bookstore-sitting type of person. If I want to sit, I’ll go to the library.

And besides, I learn this morning, via Sarah Jane Elliott, that those chains are reducing something else, and this is a lot more pernicious than moving the armchairs out: they are squeezing word-counts (unless you’re lucky enough to be a mega-selling author).

That’s lovely. As if the road for writers wasn’t difficult enough already.