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Originally Posted by Sil_liS
This is the same kind of argument that can exist between hardcovers and paperbacks. The sales aren't lost, they are just exchanged for a different version of the same product First we had only hardcovers, then we had hardcovers and paperbacks, and now we have ebooks as well.
And it actually increases the chances of finding good writers. We could evolve into a system where the author posts the first chapter and the book only gets published if a certain number of people like what they read.
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We might, though I doubt it.
One interesting experiment along those lines is Carina Press, an eBook only imprint of Harlequin, the romance behemoth. Carina is "shared risk". To keep costs low, they
don't offer advances, but give a higher than usual royalty. Most of the work of editing and production is done by freelance contractors, reducing overhead. And the carrot is that successful Carina releases might be picked up by Harlequin for print editions.
A friend who has been an executive editor at a trade house and is currently a freelance writer was doing editing for them for a while. She recently resigned, after discovering she didn't miss editing as much as she thought she did. Actually, she does miss it, but what she
really misses is the process of working to make a
good manuscript better. She wasn't seeing good manuscripts at Carina. Because they
didn't pay advances, what came over the transom was stuff established writers couldn't place elsewhere, and all the stuff from newer writers that populates any publisher's slush pile. She
did see two titles that got snapped up for print editions, but
not by Harlequin. (IIRC, one went to Pocket Books, and the other to Berkeley.)
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Aren't you getting tired of all the vampire fiction out there, which is the result of the publishers deciding that this is what the readers want to buy?
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Publishers are herd animals.
The enormous success of Steven King largely created the Horror genre, and publishers realized there was a market for that sort of fiction and rushed to create imprints focused on it. It was classic boom and bust, with some of those imprints no longer around, and many horror writers no longer selling. If you aren't Steven King, Dean R. Koontz, Clive Barker or the like, good luck in finding an audience.
Stephanie Meyer's enormous success with Twilight has done something similar for Vampire fiction. Publishers see that success, and hope to tap into it.
They decide it's what readers want to buy because readers
are buying it and it's hitting the best seller lists. Is it any surprise other publishers should try to get a piece of the action?
I'm not tired of it because it's not something I read in the first place, and don't care how much is published. The question is when the audience for it will tire of it.
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Dennis