Extrait :
The biggest change in publishing, as with society in general, came with the arrival of computers. In 1984, orders were still delivered by phone, fax, and mail. At Random House, I received the daily sales numbers on a mimeographed sheet, transcribed from some master ledger. Reprints of books took four to six weeks to complete, and tracking sales and returns were, by today's record-keeping standards, astonishingly slow and inefficient.