Quote:
Originally Posted by garygibsonsf
Traditional publishing houses aren't going anywhere because they're absolutely and fundamentally necessary to the quality of the books you read, regardless of the means of delivery. There are always people who will manage without, but they are very much the exception. Without publishers, we'd be swimming in an endless sea of junk. We need them to figure out what the good stuff is. Really. Daithi is right to think of them as 'gatekeepers', but the problem with people rating stuff outside of that traditional mechanism is that they're likely to get very tired very quickly of trying to rate stuff that's really bad, and there's a lot of it out there. Way, way, way more than there is of the good stuff.
....
|
According to Charlie:
Quote:
|
In practice, about 70% of the cover price of a book you buy in the shops is eaten by the distribution chain -- retailer and wholesaler. The publisher and author get to split the remaining 30%.
|
The main waste is 70% for distribution, so publisher's cut is a lesser problem. The gatekeeper function is valid, yet I don't see why it should be wholly controlled by publishers. As you point out they are overloaded, so much more likely to reject text that may be acceptable and good to a certain readers set. I don't see why publishers should have a monopoly on deciding what is worthy of publication.
As an example, many people no longer listen to movie reviewers. Many go to IMDB and look at the votes of ordinary people. Using this new technology it is now practical to open the publisher's functions such a gatekeeper to a wider set of people, perhaps even a mix of professional and amateurs.
Yes, publishers may very well play a role in the future as well, but will not and should not be the sole decision makers as they are now on many issues, including publication decision.