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Originally Posted by MrPLD
In which case one may as well just go max out their credit-cards, buy some advertising and start doing legwork... lots of it. With POD and eBook distribution the way they are now there's little room for existing publishing corps.
Paul
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Although there are sometimes cases where a collaboration works if it represents a welcome symbiosis...
If just read in the German magazine about two writers from Berlin, both of them writing a story situated in the scene "district" Berlin Mitte, both sort of "founding fathers" for the image of the district. One, Rafael Horzon, is then implicitly situated in German literary history as "having his book published by Suhrkamp, where Thomas Berhard, Theordor W. Adorno and Max Frisch have been published". You see what is happening here. Not only is credibility in terms of "cultural value" lended to Horzon via the tradition the publisher Suhrkamp represents, Suhrkamp grants him that because they see in his book the potential to give credibility back to them in turn (they have recently struggled to stay popular as a publisher of interesting contemporary fiction).
So the point is, I'm not sure if publishers institutionalized in collective memory as "of good value" can be so easily circumvented because even if they do not advertise directly, the significance THEY lend to authors is still of considerable importance on the "Literature" pages of newspapers and in magazines. (just as they need the significance new themes have to keep them up to date). I still see a stronger bond there between creator and vendor of content as for example in the music industry where labels like Motown have long ceased to shine beyond endless iterations of Greatest Hits albums because there was no new Diana Ross or Michael Jackson ready to a) be a new Diana Ross or Michael Jackson and b) to be made a new Diana Ross or Michael Jackson.