That scene felt quite realistic to me... publishing is an incredibly trend-focused business and what most publishers want is a book that can slipstream an existing success: It's like Harry Potter, It's like 50 Shades, It's like ACOTAR and so on and so forth.
Beyond that, there's also the matter of managing an imprint's levels of prestige... The real business of publishing might be 'Here's more of the slop that you enjoyed last time... tuck in you idiot hogs!' but neither readers not authors want to be represented on either side of that equation. Nobody wants to be the basic bitch who reads the same shit as everyone else and no author wants to be the flash-in-the-pan who will get dumped when the trends change. So a lot of imprints manage their prestige levels either by taking on difficult books that win awards or (more frequently) keeping authors on the books on the basis of their past successes... sure they don't sell that much any more but they're prestigious and young authors will look at them and believe that this publisher might support them throughout their career.
Given what Minerva and Holly say to Ian when he's reviewing and the kinds of books that Ian gets to make decisions about, I don't think that Seymour's company is particularly well-run or forward thinking: They're bandwagon-jumping, slop-dispensers. Which, to be honest, fits with the fact that their senior management are both weird sex-freaks.
