>>24615958
A good hypothesis. Didn't we find out last year that the vast majority of books that the big publishers publish sell less than 1000 copies in their entire lifespan? Sure, they're kept aloft by old dinosaurs like Stephen King and Joyce Carol Oates, but that can't be sufficient for the budgets we see companies like Houghton Mifflin and Penguin deploy. Maybe they WERE taking money from the government for propaganda efforts and now it's all gone.