Quote:
Originally Posted by Sregener
And no one but a publisher actually thinks they've got the hard part of the job, or anywhere near equivalent to what the writers actually do.
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Especially since these days most of the value-add is either deal-making or sub-contracting or just punting a step or three to save money.
The future of traditional publish has been laid bare for all to see in three recent "celebrated" moves:
1- Penguin bought Author Solutions for about what Amazon paid for Goodreads
2- Penguin merged with Random House
3- Random House showed their hand with the Hydra contracts
Once there was a golden age of publisher value-add.
Past tense.
That is not the world authors are facing today or tomorrow.
The traditionalists like Turow simply refuse to accept the reality that the world they grew up with is gone. Publishers, by and by, aren't the good guys anymore (if they ever were); not the big ones like the Random Penguin or the Harlequin network or even the not-so-big Nightshade. What publishers are is a business under technological disruption and, like all business under stress, they are squeezing their suppliers, fighting with their distributors, conspiring against consumers, and whining up a storm of biblical proportions.
The most interesting thing about the Turow op-ed isn't the crap he tried to dish out or that the NYT let such blatant lies and misrepresentations go out under their "storied" banner. It is the crap-storm of pushback that it has raised. And not just from authors and readers and blogs, but from the financial sector, the tech sector, the Librarians, and everybody in between.
The disconnect between the world that was and the reality that is may just have hit critical mass. As I said above: there is a schism building.
B&N vs S&S? Just a breeze.
Pearson bugging out of consumer publishing by dumping it on Bertlesmann? A flash of distant lightning.
There's a storm coming.