The Boston Globe uses the highly unusual story of a self-published novel going to auction for $2 mil to announce that "publishing norms have changed." The Lace Reader author Brunonia Barry and her husband spent over $50,000 of their own money "generating buzz," which eventually caught the attention of mainstream publishers. Authors getting nice deals after self-publishing! Except publishing norms really haven't changed, and nobody in the biz takes it seriously. Listen, it's way easier to just find an agent instead of thrashing around in the hell of Xlibris, finding a distributor, and harassing independent bookstores one by one. [Boston Globe]