A new publishing unit from HarperCollins hopes to do away with that staid tradition of paying advances to authors and will instead simply cut them in on a share of the profits. The as-yet-unnamed division will change the game one other way: It'll refuse to let bookstores returned books that weren't purchased, which is a costly measure, with all that shipping and shredding. "Let’s take all the things that we think are wrong with this business and try to change them," says Hyperion's founding publisher Robert Miller, who will oversee the new operation.

So, let's see: They won't be making any bets on new authors, for fear of not making their money back. And they won't let booksellers return copies that they can't sell, forcing them to either overload on inventory or keep their initial orders low. Even though this makes perfect sense in our head, something tells us an industry that dug itself in deep with these bad-for-business offers is going to have a little trouble reversing the trend.