“We need editors, and we need publishers, and we need booksellers….We built this together, and we’re going to keep building it together.” -John Green at the American Booksellers Association Annual Awards (he gives librarians a shout-out too)
The book business may be changing, but that doesn’t mean that many “traditional” elements aren’t crucial (see “In defense of editors,” October 2011). Books may have only one author, but many hands and minds go into their production, let alone their success.
Jenny Arch 
[…] After about ten years of working with traditional publishers, Zevin has learned a lot about how they work, and she has “respect and appreciation” for all jobs in publishing. Although “the books are still more important than how they get sold,” a tremendous amount of work goes into all aspects of a book: not just the writing of it, but the editing, the design, the jacket copy and cover art, the distribution and marketing and sales. She started off knowing very little of this – she admitted she didn’t even know that sales reps, who bring publishers’ books and catalogs to bookstores, existed – but concluded, “I do think it’s always better to be armed with information.” Many articles about self-publishing (she mentioned the Wall Street Journal particularly) display a “deep misunderstanding about the publishing process.” There is more to making a book that writing it and clicking a button. (See also: “In defense of editors,” “We built this together.”) […]