If somebody is saying in this age of electronic media that the novel is dead, what they're really showing is how much they themselves have been hypnotized. Literature is massively popular and making millions and millions of dollars. As far as I know, hard stuff, what you'd call literary fiction, has always had a small audience. I myself don't see that core audience shrinking. So in this culture of mass media .
Publishers tend to be more and more like conglomerates.
The economics are such that publishers make most of their money two months after the book comes out - which means they have to do their best to create some kind of hubbub about the book. Given the way PR works, the best free publicity is to get the magazines or a newspaper to do a profile. You know, like actors and directors go on the Johnny Carson Show. I don't see where there's anything really wrong with it. Where it gets tricky is that most of the writers I know are kind of weird and shy and don't really like a lot of that kind of attention.