Like they say in arguments about book copyright, piracy is not an author's greatest threat, obscurity is. And in industries like music, books and movies, the threat of obscurity is made worse because big names get the marketing spend to make them even bigger and everyone else tends to gets nothing. Focussing demand where you want it might make business sense, but I prefer the idea that we can each find authors who suit us, regardless of whether they're big names. To my way of thinking, we need to gradually replace the existing marketing machinery with something a bit more like a dating agency, which helps match author to reader.

I don't know exactly what such a thing would look like, but CompletelyNovel seems like it might be a step in the right direction. If you're an author, it's pretty quick and easy to sign up. Here's a PDF on how to do it. I'll admit, I'm biased in favour of CompletelyNovel compared with other, more corporate projects, partly because of their indy feistiness and partly because they're such nice people. Nothing wrong with that, though, is there?