Quote:
Originally Posted by Worldwalker
A big part of the problem is not the people who should be making the decisions, but the bean counters upstairs who know (or think they know) money and nothing else. "The competition just sold a boy wizard books? Buy all the boy wizard books you can get!" They've become so driven by blockbusters that they're not only throwing the midlist authors under the bus, but they're insisting on buying books that will never sell, or never earn out their advance, because they "have to" have a boy wizard, a sparkly vampire, a celebrity tell-all, or whatever is hot this month. Instead of a series of good, solid sellers (see: Baen) they're shooting their bolt on hoped-for blockbusters and generally missing, to the detriment of pretty much everyone, the authors and readers most prominent among them.
|
I read somewhere that most of the books that are published make a loss, and it is only the big selling books that keeps publishers afloat. So I can sort of understand why they would go for lowest common denominator type books that might make it on the coat tails of other books. The trouble is, by the time they have noticed a trend, that trend is already a few years old so by the time they get their version out it's already lost in a sea of other similar books. But they have to follow that trend just in case, they can't afford to take a chance on something with no proven sales no matter how good it is.
I see self published ebooks the same way I see self published music. When everyone realised they could put out their own records very cheaply and sell them direct to customers we had a massive explosion in the types of music being released. Whereas what comes from more mainstream music publishers all sounds about the same because it's chasing mass market appeal.