|
The only real "problem" as I see it, is the Big Publishers still have the lock on mass market promotion.
Big pub has the money and the connections to market their material effectively, in all of the markets where people go first and last to buy a book. Their well-established system effectively keeps indie promotion at arm's length, and since the mass public sees the big pubs' promotions right off, they rarely go looking much past that, and indies go largely unseen.
Online indies (like me) may turn out a good product that entertains people, but without the big pub marketing machine, the chances that very many people will discover your work are still very small. Sure, people may recommend to others, and you'll pick up some new customers... but compared to the marketing carpet-bombing that pubs can do, it still won't amount to much.
What indies need is a better, more comprehensive marketing system that stands up to the big pubs' work and promotes their work nationally, even globally, in an effective way. The big double-hurdle is convincing enough consumers that an indie is potentially as good as a publisher-promoted name, and worth checking out... "double" because part of it is convincing them, the other part is getting a lot of people to convince. The former usually just takes cleverness, but the latter almost always requires lots of money.
A single author can conceivably do all of their own writing, checking, editing, rewriting, packaging and production. (I get someone to help me edit, and I do all the rest.) But without effective promotion, all of that is just spinning wheels.
|