Quote:
Originally Posted by Todd Young
I think publishing houses are simply going to disappear. Serious writers will have their work edited privately, pay for cover art and do what they can with marketing. Good books will work their way up out of the dross. Either that, or this whole self-publishing thing will fail due to the amount of rubbish that is out there, simply swamping readers so they start looking at who a book was published by before they buy it.
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I don't think that self-publishing will collapse of its own weight. Too many people (a) cannot tell bad rubbish from good rubbish or from material that isn't rubbish at all, and so are satisfied with most of what they can download for free; (b) I doubt most authors will privately hire professional editors, cover designers, proofreaders, or illustrators for several reasons, not least of which are that they will suffer sticker shock when they get the pricing and decide they cannot gamble that amount of money (professional, experienced editorial and production help is not inexpensive) and because of (a), especially considering the enormous amount of free books that one can wade through among which are a good number of gems -- it is hard to compete with free. (Now that's a good runon sentence if ever there was one!)
I know from my own experience that I have been able to find enough good free ebooks that I infrequently buy ebooks unless they are subsequent ebooks in a series in which I have read the first volume (obtained for free) and liked it enough to justify paying for the subsequent volumes.