A common theme in manga and anime … is the famous author whose editor spends most of her time harassing him to meet his deadlines.

Really! I can’t imagine how people do this. I have an artist friend who works for Hallmark Cards, and I was in round 2 of interviews there as a writer (another one of those close calls from above). Those people work creatively on spec and a tight deadline and…I just don’t get it.

The hamster wheel is what I wanted to get away from when I had fantasies of being A Published Author. I knew the Harlequin hamster wheel at the time, but it seemed like a fair trade-off if I wanted to be one and now… It doesn’t.

Dear Author has an article on how the current publishing model needs to change with technology instead of fighting it. The subtext is that the power is shifting toward the authors, but that depends on how ebooks are adopted—

—and that won’t happen until a standard format is adopted.

Once that happens, the hamster wheel may not have any power but the last vestiges of the authors who benefited the most under the old publishing model.