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Originally Posted by Catlady
You originally seemed to be advocating the extinction of the major publishers in favor of self-publishing-with-filters; now you're talking about niche publishing that can coexist with major publishers.
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I'm expecting the extinction of the major publishers and looking for what will replace their useful functions. I think that, in the long run, their current business model is doomed; it was predicated on having a stranglehold on some aspects of the marketplace. While they still have that in some areas--many bookstores won't carry indie books, or won't carry them next to mainstream publishers--in other areas, notably online sales, they don't set the terms anymore.
And I think more and more authors will forgo the advantages of placement in physical bookstores for control of their books and profits, since those now have a solid chance of being just as good or better without the publisher.
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Fine, if the self-publishers want to attempt to create some order and meet certain standards to tap their potential markets. They would, in effect, be banding together create an entity that would act like a clearinghouse.
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I wasn't talking about self-publishers banding together; I was considering a third party stepping in to cover that aspect--one that had no direct stake in the books, but a stake in pleasing the customers who'd buy the books. As it stands, publishers have a stake in convincing you everything they publish is high-quality and worth buying, regardless of actual quality; a third-party agency would only have a stake in convincing you its recommendations were valuable--it'd be free to ignore the occasional badly-edited dud from otherwise good authors. And it could say, "sorry; books 1-3 of this series were excellent, but then the author seems to have lost whatever spark made those work."