I wonder how many times a book will not sell without a marketing campaign simply because it is not good. It seems to me that in a world of electronic communication & social media, it should be possible for a good book to become widely known & demanded by simply being good & the news about it spreading.

Individual book sellers still could do some marketing simply to increase sales once such a good book shows up.

Extremely frequently - I love to bash marketing at every given opportunity but books are tough - if I hand you a book you have no way to do a surface evaluation without leaning on associated knowledge - is it by an author you know - is it part of a series you like[1]. If not, then you've got the dust cover summary to go on and those will often be overwhelmingly positive even if it isn't warranted.

A friend of mine is an independent author who self-markets their books and they've learned over years where money will pay itself back and where you're throwing it into a hole - but not investing in promotion at all just means you'll be relegated to obscurity.

When I'm shopping for a broom I have some expectations - I've really grown to appreciate the rubber headed brooms over bristly ones and I am pretty tall so length is a decent consideration... When I'm shopping for a book, what do I have to go on? Cover art and the summary, probably... and those are hardly helpful.

1. Specifically I'm thinking of multi-author series like SW:EU or Dragonlance.

I'm ignorant about the way the industry works, for sure.

I'd love to know how much of the publishing and book-selling industries are coasting on inertia of "we've always done it this way", or the fear of "we've never done it this way".

It seems like electronic distribution should have massive ramifications for the business model. Does the publisher/distributor/retailer model really still need to exist in an electronic distribution world? I don't know enough about the value, beyond purchase aggregation, that distributors in that market actually provide.

What you see as "building relationships" sounds, to me, like needless middlemen exacting a tax on commerce.

Many businesses are little more than expertly coordinating a supply chain. That's a competency that offers a competitive advantage. Why is this business so different?

If all book sales were electronic, that might indeed invite a reassessment of publishers' value in securing distribution. But ebooks are only about 20% of book sales (and that figure is not rising).