Somebody with the cute pseudonym of “Jane Austen Doe” has issued yet another of those “why the book biz sucks” essays.

Like most essays of this type, Doe’s invokes nostalgia for the kind, tweed-suited, boutique industry book publishing’s supposed to have once been.

I’m not buying it.

The book biz used to be such a personal industry because it used to be such a small industry. Low volume, low profits, high barriers to entry (especially for distribution to the small, sparse bookstores and department-store book sections of the day).

“Serious” publishing was subsidized by textbooks and technical/instructional books. Fiction was predominantly the realm of pulp magazines and of short-story sections within nonfiction magazines. Authors proved themselves worthy of book deals by placing stories in either the biggest or the swankiest mags.

The chubby, insider clique at the top of the publishing world kept things manageable by keeping the supply of available titles down.

Would Jane Austen Doe have fared better in that book industry than in today’s book industry? Only if she’d managed to break into a much smaller inner circle of literary stars.

Literary people often profess to progressive stances about politics and society. But when the topic is their own business, too many of them turn into the worst kind of nostalgic reactionaries.

At least the people who complain about the music industry sucking usually admit that that business always has sucked.

Postscript: None of the above caveats diminishes the fact that, just as Doe says, today’s book business does indeed suck.

Part of it’s due to the oversupply of stores (particularly big chain stores), copies, and titles. (It’s great that so many tens of thousands of books are coming out; it’s bad that publishers don’t even bother to promote most of them.)

Part of it’s due to the general media/entertainment glut and shakeout, which is affecting everything from TV and radio to magazines and DVDs. (Theatrical films, which still have gatekeepers, also still have profits.)

But a lot of it’s due to conglomerate-owned publishers striving too hard, as execs in so many other industries have, for unfeasible profit margins, in worship of the Almighty Stock Price.