The way ahead for publishing

[HarryT]

What rights the publisher has is entirely in the hands of the author; he or she has exclusive control over what rights he or she voluntarily chooses to assign to the publisher.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by BeccaPrice

Actually, I think that was Scalzi quoting Teresa Neilsen Hayden, and I'd thought better of her.

Correct.
I was referring to the source of the post.
Mind you, he was presenting her as an example of how publishers *do* think of readers as customers to attend to.
(More like sheep to fleece.)

Coming right after the Hachette memo those old-school folks just lost their last shred of credibility.

[Dimwit]

Originally Posted by xg4bx

to me all that proves is that most consumers are lazy, they'll lap up whatever is put in front of them. ("good enough" *shrug*)

people don't have to wade through piles of mediocrity, great stuff is there right beneath the surface but they're not even willing to put in that modicum of effort. they want to be told what to read, watch or listen to because they're intellectually lazy, which in turn leads to the vast wasteland of mainstream tripe that we've got. i just can't identify with that mind set.

I would most definitely disagree. It isn't "intellectual laziness" but a matter of trust. People are drowning in choice. They will do nothing if there are no sign posts to point out the gold in the great mound of dross that they get confronted with every day. These sign posts could be advertising "That looks good", reputation "they published the last good book I read", popular opinion "bestseller!", or word of mouth.

The publishers have set themselves up as gatekeepers. They've done the heavy lifting. If you like their offerings, and they've certainly had long enough to tailor themselves with special imprints, locked in authors, yadda, yadda, yadda, then the chances that the market responds to them over the other choices out there, isn't a surprise.

The major error that the houses are making is that they AREN'T the top predator of the food chain, they're just big. Amazon is proving that it can wade into the field with the big boys. It's too early to see whether the biz case is going to hold up but it certainly muddies the waters.

An interesting case study: The Devil Inside. Top box office by far last week. Watch its progress. I predict that it will be lucky to break the top 10 this week and will be out of the theatres by next week. Good marketing of an excreble product gets trumped by word of mouth. That's not laziness, just getting fooled, again.

[frankelr]

"Traditional publishers who provide quality e-books will continue to be successful under the traditional model. While some indy authors (especially those previously published) will be successful at self publishing (and a handful will become very successful), consumers will continue to pay $10+ for books from publishers because trying to find the handful of good books from the giant internet slush pile is to tedious for most readers...and is likely to become even more so in the future."

Lots of good arguments in this thread. But I take exception to the above.

The place of the screening editor can be replaced and bettered by consumer ratings.

Recent web actions by web sellers, to display consumer reviews, is my proof.

[BeccaPrice]

I don't trust 4 and 5 star reviews, and read the 1-star reviews with a jaundiced eye. Too many authors game the reviews, even going so far as to create alter-egos for themselves to give themselves 5 star reviews. And too many authors go on "competitor's" books and give them 1-star reviews.

I admit, I buy mostly based on trusted review sites, not on customer reviewers at places like Amazon or even Goodreads.

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

Wish someone would tell me how I can do that...

If I knew how, I'd write a book about it!

Originally Posted by frankelr

"Traditional publishers who provide quality e-books will continue to be successful under the traditional model. While some indy authors (especially those previously published) will be successful at self publishing (and a handful will become very successful), consumers will continue to pay $10+ for books from publishers because trying to find the handful of good books from the giant internet slush pile is to tedious for most readers...and is likely to become even more so in the future."

Lots of good arguments in this thread. But I take exception to the above.

The place of the screening editor can be replaced and bettered by consumer ratings.

Recent web actions by web sellers, to display consumer reviews, is my proof.

I can imagine a world in which this might happen, but right now that's not the world we live in. It's just way to easy to game reviews, or to have 20 of your friends write positive reviews.

Of course there are exceptions - if you go to Amazon and look at reviews of 11/22/63, you'll find that 950 people have reviewed it and it has about a 4.5 overall rating. You'll want to read farther to find out if you think the book is your cup of tea, but with this many positive reviews, you can be fairly confident that the book is competently written and edited, at least.

But now look up a self-published book like "Damaged Goods" - it only has two ratings, both five stars. That's just not enough information to really know anything meaningful about the book. And most self-published books fall into that category...in large part because it's a struggle to get 950 readers, much less 950 people who will read and review the book.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

Wish someone would tell me how I can do that...

Change your name to "Amanda"

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Dimwit

An interesting case study: The Devil Inside. Top box office by far last week. Watch its progress. I predict that it will be lucky to break the top 10 this week and will be out of the theatres by next week. Good marketing of an excreble product gets trumped by word of mouth.

Uh, not the best example of misleading marketting...

Sorry, but that particular genre of movie--cheap "horror" flick, to be exact--is notorious for producing and thriving off bad, one-week wonder, movies because the target demographic doesn't care about "quality" in the traditional sense. They are mostly a chance to get out of the house, usually with friends, watch a few shocking or gory scenes, then have a fun time laughing about the plot or lack there-of. The target audience is young people looking for an excuse to socialize and if the movie is gone from theaters in two weeks they don't care (and neither do the producers--they know those movies get 80% of their total take in the first week).

More importantly, Devil Inside is a *january* movie release.
Everybody knows *nobody* releases *good* movies in January.
Occasionally a fun movie slips in (Pitch Black, Underworld) but mostly you get stuff like Devil Inside and Event Horizon.

Quality is not a pre-requisite for success with these movies. (Any quality or good acting is purely accidental and generally frowned upon, after the fact, by the investors. "Should've hired a cheaper actor!")

Nobody is fooling anybody: they are *expected* to be bad, just as the Saturday night movies on SyFy are *supposed* to be cheesy and bad. It's when the movies aren't bad enough that the audience rebels...

Need a better example, there.
(shrug)
Maybe the infamous "Three chapter Specials" the BPHs are notorious for?
Plenty to choose from, there.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Change your name to "Amanda"

Well, at least no one's suggested that one before...

[kennyc]

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

It would be nice if a "trusted reviews website" or three came along and gave people a reasonable list of places to go to find out about good books. Of course, once such a place gets established, it gets mobbed by authors seeking to have their books reviewed, and soon you end up with the "gated community" problem of not being able to get reviewed by the Good Guys.

In a way, it's not much different than the old "slush pile" problem of getting noticed... we've just swapped a publishing slush pile for a reviewing slush pile.

But my biggest concern is whether the review process is still working, especially with such a wider range of books and a further-reaching audience. Reviews tend to favor a particular mind-set, that of the reviewer; and if your readers are all of a similar mind-set, that works well. But when readers are from different countries, have different cultural preferences and expectations, different levels of acceptable quality or expected memes, etc, it would seem the "major media reviewer" may lose mind-share to more genre- and culture-specific reviewers.

In other words, Roger Ebert is losing mind-share to Cowboy Bob, Joe Starfracker, James Bondage, the Stig and Vampirella.

I suspect it will take some time before consumers manage to find their trusted reviewers, and the reviewers manage to review a significant number of books, to make the whole system really tick.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

...
But my biggest concern is whether the review process is still working, especially with such a wider range of books and a further-reaching audience. ...
I suspect it will take some time before consumers manage to find their trusted reviewers, and the reviewers manage to review a significant number of books, to make the whole system really tick.

Yes, but if you look at reviews on Amazon for example they fall into the same category of "all things to all people" and generally I can read several of those along with the publisher blurbs and get an idea if the book is for me or not.

[Lazybones]

Getting attention as a new author is the tricky part, but from the consumer's perspective, it also improves their access to material. I have been selling at Amazon for about six months now, and in order to get readers I've offered two works (the first book of a trilogy and a novella) for free. Those not only drive sales of my non-free titles, but get more reviews, which in turn helps get me more interest from potential readers.

I agree that sifting through the junk is tough, but just going off of Amazon's bestselling lists of genre fiction subcategories (conveniently sorted between top paid and top free titles), I've found several new authors. The challenge is getting onto those lists. One of my free books was briefly on the bestselling list of free epic fantasy titles; it "sold" about 12,000 copies in two months. But there's a lot of churn, and now the book is back down to a few hundred downloads a month. It seems that I get about one review for every ten thousand downloads, which means that the bar is especially high for new authors.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Yes, but if you look at reviews on Amazon for example they fall into the same category of "all things to all people" and generally I can read several of those along with the publisher blurbs and get an idea if the book is for me or not.

But there seems to be a trust issue with Amazon: Too many people afraid that authors using sock puppets (and their buddies) are loading positive reviews, and other sock puppet authors are loading negative reviews. And, of course, a few reviews (2-4) on an item are generally counted as worthless. When I check out a product, I more often try to check reviews on other sites than Amazon's reviews.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

But there seems to be a trust issue with Amazon: Too many people afraid that authors using sock puppets (and their buddies) are loading positive reviews, and other sock puppet authors are loading negative reviews. And, of course, a few reviews (2-4) on an item are generally counted as worthless. When I check out a product, I more often try to check reviews on other sites than Amazon's reviews.

Certainly and the same or worse issues will plague any other review site or blog....

I think the key is to over time let the reliable sites emerge, just like any other reliable product or service, the review sites too will gain a reputation and either prosper or fail.