<blockquote>Readers simply do not appreciate the amount of post-delivery work that goes into getting a book into print. All those self-published authors out there who simply upload a file to Lulu or Smashwords or wherever don’t either. Conventional publishing is a drawn-out process, involving several different steps and a number of different people, most of whom you will know only by email if at all.

It only takes one of those steps to fail for the most horrendous of consequences to follow.</blockquote>

Hear, hear, David. All the various stages of editing and production take time to do proplerly, and yet few people who haven't ever gone through the process appreciate it.  I wish more did.