permaculture

[John Schinnerer <eco_living@yahoo.com>]

Aloha,

Toby's point about division of labor in publishing matches with what I
know...

> I feel I received money in proportion to my share of the work (well, 
> maybe the retailer's share is a little large!).

Heh heh...I suspect that you have never been in retail business... ;-)
I can't speak for the big chains (bookstores or otherwise), but for the
"small operator" retail is hell, on average, purgatory at best...only
worse hell I know of is restaurant/food service...which is also a form
of retail.  I've had family in both, worked for them a bit years ago,
and it is just hell trying to stay afloat in small/local retail even
though markups may seem huge, percentage-wise.  Small-business-failure
stats seem to bear this out.

PC point to this post - given the above, "retail" as we know it is an
astoundingly resource-inefficient way to distribute goods.  I'm sure a
PC-design analysis of the elements, systems and relations of "retail"
will bear this intuition of mine out...


=====
John Schinnerer, MA
--------------------
- Eco-Living -
Cultural & Ecological Designing
Food - Shelter - Community
john@eco-living.net
http://eco-living.net

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