And now Richard Ford has switched publishers, say the NY Times. Honestly, I'm not sure why this is interesting news. Perhaps people make a big deal out of a major author's big move because they sense some kind of decline in the author-editor relationship, and are perhaps nostalgic for the loyal days of Maxwell Perkins, but, economically, it makes sense. Both Wolfe and Ford put out huge books (I Am Charlotte Simmons and The Lay of the Land), which probably didn't sell as well as publishers hoped. And how could they, seeing as they are both in the 700 page range? So then the publishers didn't want to give them as big of an advance as they're accustomed to, being literary heavyweights and all, so they go somewhere else. What I'm a bit more interested in is what this says about advances for successful authors, and the success rate for really really big books that people (myself included) seem to have forgotten how to read, or just no longer care for. What I'm even more interested is Ford's next book, Canada, which the Times reports is scheduled for release in 2010. Seems like I've been hearing about that book for a while now, and which I think I heard he was keeping in a freezer at one point. Ecco press describes it as a "novel of revenge and violent retribution set on the Saskatchewan prairie, in the early 1960s."