A good friend of mine, being tired of the lack of job possibilities for a classicist in Romania (he majored in Ancient Greek and Latin and has a Ph.D.) and also not being willing enough to leave the country, has decided to try his luck in the book publishing industry by establishing a publishing house. Besides the fact that the whole enterprise seems doomed from its very beginning, this gave me an opportunity to think of everything that I know about the Romanian industry of publishing books and share it with the possible readers of this editorial. What needs to be said from the start is the fact that my experience with foreign publishing houses is extremely limited, therefore I really cannot assert that my story here represents just another atypical Eastern European experience or that, contrary, such practices are common also in the West. Anyway, it is really not my scope here to compare these two ways of thinking and acting; instead, I am content with just the fact that some people will be at least intrigued by what I describe here.