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Originally Posted by Worldwalker
Big publishers, it seems, have abandoned much of their former role of filtering and development and are now just looking to pump out more of whatever was hot last year....
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That's not entirely the case.
They are definitely filtering, in fact they are more stringent than ever. In the past a publisher might actually read something in the slush pile; nowadays, most publishers won't read anything unless it's submitted by an agent.
As to "development," one problem is that authors and their agents are demanding larger and larger advances, which makes it prohibitively expensive to develop the talent. I don't see a real problem for anyone with midlist publishers doing more author development, nor is it necessarily a disaster for the big publishers given that backlist titles offer lower revenues than new books.
And like it or not, it does appear that people are buying what the big pubs are selling. If people want to read about teenage vampires or crime thrillers, someone is going to supply it to them. You might as well insist that the big Hollywood studios are dead in the water because they are chasing fads, aren't aping the small indie studios, and aren't "developing talent."
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Originally Posted by Worldwalker
That might be profitable in the short term, but in the long term, many customers will buy from indies, direct from authors, from people with good previews, etc.
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That does not necessarily mean the larger publishers are causing problems for themselves. What's happening is that smaller publishers are supporting midlist authors. If an author has shown that he/she can sell decent numbers of books, and they happen to outgrow what their current small publisher can do for them, there's the option for the larger publisher to offer a larger advance, more resources, and (perhaps) ramp up sales significantly.
Kind of seems like a win for everyone, except the midlist author (and his/her agent) who wants a six-figure advance.
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Originally Posted by Worldwalker
When the only difference between a book by Big Name Publisher, Inc., and Small Lil' House is the logo on the cover -- and when it's equally easy to buy either one, since the buyer is no longer dependent on what their local bookstore has room to stock -- people will, I think, depend more on recommendations and reviews.
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The logo isn't the only difference.
Larger publishers will still have more financial resources (i.e. larger advances), better editors, more prestige, better connections in the industry, better international connections, more sway with retailers and so forth.
Nor has the playing field changed all that much. Distributors like B&T or Ingram, and retailers (particularly Amazon), have long carried books written by small publishers. The main advantage of digital is associated with the removal of paper (lower costs, faster distribution, nothing goes out of stock) are just as much of an advantage to larger publishers as to smaller ones.
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Originally Posted by Worldwalker
What they need to do to survive is to compete on quality. We as buyers need to know that when we buy something from Big Name Publisher, Inc., it will be thoroughly edited, correctly formatted, and in other ways worth more than something Joe Average uploaded to Smashwords....
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Most readers don't particularly care about the identity of the publisher, unless it's a genre (e.g. romance = Harlequin, tech manuals = O'Reilly etc). Most of the time it's the author that is the brand.
And I don't know about you, but the ebooks I'm reading lately have much better formatting and proofreading than when I started (~18 months ago iirc)