Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrew H.
Publishers are not crashing. They are more profitable than ever. There is a tendency on MR to conflate one's opinion of what publishers *should* do with what they are actually doing, and to assume that because they aren't doing what we think they should, they are dinosaurs who are failing. However, this really isn't true - despite doing things a lot of people disagree with (i.e., no library lending), they are making more profit than they have in years.
I think the farm team analogy is a very good one.
I don't think people will have any more respect for indie publishing generally in 2015 or 2020 than they do now because I don't think that indie publishing as a whole will improve. The problem with indie publishing is that it is 95% bad. It's not like an automobile where you can improve the parts that aren't working: in the future it will still be 95% bad...or even 98% bad as more people discover it.
Note, however, that 5% of a large enough number is still a large number.
You can use word of mouth to cut through the dreck, and people whose books were previously published tend to indicate this fact.
Of course there are people like this; the difficulty, if they are talented, lies in getting their books known. IOW, how do they separate themselves from the undifferentiated mass? (Particularly if they don't want to do the kind of extraneous stuff that can help to get your book known.)
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The authors who are good won't make themselves known.
The readers not only will, they already do.
I have found a number of good indie writers the last few years through the forums here and Goodreads. I should probably look at Library thing as well.
There are also dozens of sites with forums catering to every sort of genre fiction out there.
The same mechanic that broke the RIAA strangle hold on music is operating here. As many of us predicted it would.