I pay attention to publisher part of the time, and part of the time I don't. It's pretty much like clothing brands. If I have to order online, then yeah, I have to know whether I like Lands' End clothing or not, but if I'm shopping at Sears (or Value Village), I try on this or that and I may not notice at first that I've picked out something that says Lands' End on it. And there are all kinds of clothing brands whose names I remember in a vague way but can't remember what I think of them.

It just occurred to me: does there exist an accent in which DAW and Tor are homonyms? Must be confusing for SF readers if so.

I have been thinking that maybe it would be a good thing if the author got the SAME fee on ANY version of the book, hardcover, softcover, e-book, discounted-but-not-remaindered, whatever. Then authors could regard the format wars with a little more equanimity, rather than feeling that their pockets were being picked every time a format got cheaper. But maybe someone else has already thought this through and it's a really dumb idea. Goodness knows I've been slapped down more than once for thinking there can't be much of a marginal cost for adding an e-book edition to a print edition (apparently it's making sure that font changes don't render the book a total display mess that takes a bunch of time=money -- cranking out a PDF version or something wouldn't be a problem, but people naturally want more than that).