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Originally Posted by Steven Lake
Wow, so we now see the next step in the fall of the big houses.
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Yeah, no.
What's happening is that people are assuming that the book business, like movies and music, won't support midlist sales. Apparently that is not the case, because smaller publishers are apparently able to manage this niche.
I.e. the book business is not necessarily taking the same path as other industries, where midlists are allegedly getting squeezed.
That hardly means big publishers are doomed, only that they won't support an author for 10 years before giving up as they might have in 1970. They can't afford to, as those authors and their agents are typically demanding significantly higher advances today than they did in 1970 -- thus drastically increasing the costs to support that author.
Or, to put it another way: Smaller publishers are taking up the role of supporting authors in their development. It's cheaper (and savvier) for a big publisher to wait until an author is selling 60,000 books and then offer that author a big advance, than to keep them on the roster for 10 years while they build an audience and their skills. The author may well stay with the smaller publisher that supported them -- but may not.
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Originally Posted by Steven Lake
Oddly, as some people have pointed out, this is the exact same steps the music industry took, causing the fall of seven of the ten biggest labels, with the remaining three mega record labels still barely clinging to life.
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That's a nice theory, but I don't see a lot of evidence for it.
Recording sales have plunged across the board -- not just for big acts, but for small and midlist as well. The culprits here are natural declines in CD sales (backlist CD sales generated huge profits for years, as people re-purchased recordings in the new format) and piracy.
Nor do we see smaller labels like K, Subpop, Matador, Nonesuch and the like blasting through the stratosphere on a regular basis.
There isn't even a viable correlation here -- it's not like the major labels decided in 2002 that they were going to focus on the big acts. Music labels have pushed big acts for decades; just look at AOR in the 70s. The decline of recording sales doesn't have much to do with the focus on blockbusters.
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Originally Posted by Steven Lake
Yeah, don't bash publishing in general. Just go after the big houses. It's more fun.
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I assume you mean this in jest. Well, partly.
That said, IMO the "zomg big is evil" is an adolescent view of the world. Small companies screw people just as often and/or badly as big ones, sometimes worse. People still like mass experiences and big hits, and a 5-person publishing company is going to have an extremely difficult time generating and supporting that type of enterprise.
And even if you did somehow get rid of today's publishers, someone else will just fill that role, and you'll just move onto the next largest target.
Big companies are going to be a part of the economic and cultural firmament for the rest of your life -- and there are no guarantees that their replacements will be any better. You might want to keep that in mind when you root for their destruction.