Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
For now.
It does argue strongly for an ebook-first strategy, no?
If the traditional publisher had picked the title *before* it got self-pubbed and released it as an ebook to test the waters, they might have gotten it for less than a 7-figure advance. That is an *expensive* way to find a "bestseller".
The whole emerging strategy that some BPHs seem to be pursuing--mining self-pub for "sure-fire" bestsellers--strikes me as time-limited. The support structures for self-pub are growing apace in both the ebook *and* pbook arenas. A lot of the small independent publishers are moving into print and I hear that even bookstore distribution channels are popping up as "freelance" services. The whole supply chain is under deconstruction and I don't think Traditional publishers will be able to bill themselves as "print book specialists" or even "high volume specialists" for much longer. Not if ebooks are really going to hit 50% by 2016. (That being for the whole industry--which suggests some genres are headed for an 80-20 split in ebooks' favor.)
The BPHs do seem to be scrambling for high-visibility projects with a bit more agility than in recent years--which is good for everybody--but at some point they're going to have to get seriously pro-active and go after content before it gets "market-tested" instead of sitting around, waiting for the content to start selling on its own before swooping in, big advance in hand.
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For the next few years and maybe longer though, the BPHs can do quite well by using the self-pubbers as a farm system for the "big leagues". In the end, BPHs can always be able justify themselves by :
1. Offering a vertical, one stop solution converting an author's unedited manuscript into an an actual book at a store
2. Sharing the financial risk at developing books that require extensive research and expense to write.
There's a kind of exaltation of self pubbers here that misses the fact that most self pubbers:
1. Write popular genre fiction and nothing else.
2. Actually aspire to work with trad publishers if they had a choice.