Quote:
Originally Posted by mknopp
So, what do publishers do for authors now-a-days, that a little leg work on an author's part can't also do, and put a lot more money in the author's pocket? Is it all about the up front cost? It cost money to pay an editor; it cost money to pay an artist. Do so many authors not have that sort of money that they have to sell the rights to their labor to a publisher to see it available to customers?
I am honestly asking by the way.
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For starters, they help you stand out from the crowd. Self-publishing and small presses are all very well, but the quality of the former is extremely variable and the latter cannot easily get their books into the bricks'n'mortar stores (the former, not at all). As I know to my cost - a contact at my local bookshop, Heffers', offered to stock the anthology I'm published in, but it's POD-only so there's no trade discount and no thus money in it for them
I know that physical bookshops are going down the toilet (Border's in the UK has gone bust, and Waterstones is struggling), but big publishers still have the clout to distribute your books on a scale that will get them to readers.
Maybe in the future the balance of power will shift, but books will have to either be much cheaper (to justify the risk that they're not worth the money), or some equivalent of the publishing houses must act as quality controllers.