Quote:
Originally Posted by Rhialto
I see your point.
However, you assume too much - as you seem to often do. You need to remember that not all serious books get written only because some BPH advanced the money so the author could do the research and master the subject matter. Some authors come to the book to bring their own experience acquired from a lifetime mastery of their field. Do you believe that Richard Dawkins needed a publisher's advance to write the Selfish Gene? That Rachael Carson needed one to write Silent Spring?
Lastly, not all "non-serious fiction" ends up being unimportant to society. Adams wrote a fairytale about talking rabbits travelling the English countryside to found a new warren. We know it now as 'Watership Down'. It arguably has more lasting worth to literature and society than Job's biography.
I submit that most books of worth will still get written without BPH advances.
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The Selfish Gene was published by Oxford University Press
Silent Spring was published by Houghton Mifflin .
Watership Down was published by Rex Collings Ltd, which seems to be an imprint of BPH Penguin.
These were all traditionally published, So I'm not sure that they are arguments against the need for a traditional publisher. Certainly, they are far different from the usual self-pub fare.
I might add that I am not against the self pubbers ( I recently bought the well regarded self published novel
Wool. I am also not against reading genre fiction ( See previous sentence). However, its clear to me that many important books of certain genres simply would not get written without the help of the BPHs. They aren't the dinosaurs or ogres that they are caricatured to be on this forum and on the contrary, continue to do essential work in bringing important authors and books to market.