Comment number 16 on a recent posting came from Keirsten Clark of the publishers PaperBooks which, to be honest, I'd never heard of. She writes:

We are attempting an unusual and innovative way of marketing each of our titles on pub day - even if it means we are keeping the number of our titles down. We want to give our first time authors the best chance we can so are trying to look beyond (but not ignore) in-store promotions and huge discounting. Our first campaign - a Book Drop around central London - for The Angel Makers by Jessica Gregson seems to have got off to a good start.

I think many publishers, large and small, are trying to do this and it's great to see that this experiment seems to be working. All  power to PaperBooks. The problem is that, even if it is a mega-success the quantities sold are unlikely to exceed a few thousand. In order to attract and reward competitively the very best-selling authors it is necessary to sell hundreds of thousands of copies and 'guerrilla' tactics just won't succeed on a consistent enough basis. We have to work out, as Keirsten implies, how to knit together the very different and sometimes conflicting business models of the supermarkets, high street chains, Internet and traditional independents.

Why hasn't it happened? Is it beause publishers are simply stupid? Or might it just be that it's a really tricky problem?