Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
Uh, it pretty much is just that.
Shutting down an imprint isn't just a branding exercise; it usually involves "pink slips" and people going away.
The process began way back in the 80's, the time when they started firing proofers and editors, after the first big mergers.
(The *real* content editors, not the project managers that now bear that title.)
Here's just one outfit that has been freelancing since then:
http://www.freelance-editorial-services.com/staff.php 
More recently, the corporate types have been turning to low-cost bidders globally but that still dates back well before indie publishing. In fact, it is that ready-made pool of freelance pros that the corporate publishers created with the firings that *enables* dilligent Indies to put out a quality product on their own.
Plus as the corporate types made clear, way back; if most of your losses come from the "prestige" titles and all your profits come from the "commercial" titles, any "good" MBA will tell you to put your time and effort into the future "bestsellers". The rest is just window dressing in their eyes.
That mindset has been in place for decades.
"Quality" has been declining for decades.
Scapegoating Indies for what the Corporate Publishers choose to do is going to run into the inescapable fact that the Corporate publishers have been "Devalueing" literature long before commercial ebooks ever existed, much less indies. |
Absolutely. And I don't think you have to know anything at all about the publishing industry to take a stab at that being the case because it's evident in many industries. A publisher is not a cultural guardian or a patron of the arts, it's a business.
Now my complaint about the self-publishing industry isn't so much about poorly edited works as in most cases, that's relatively easy to avoid although I do appreciate the frustration having been stung before. My problem is that in some ways, it's too much like the business it attempts to replace.
It's a selfish complaint for me because I have certain ideals about what self-publishing was going to mean to me. I love the fact that the shackles of traditional publishers over my reading material has been broken because I lost faith a long time ago in them choosing what I may like to read. This has been exacerbated by what shelf space retailers choose to assign to published works (the two issues being closely related).
A combination of self-publishing and ebooks to me means an infinitely broad contribution to culture - potentially. I personally think that publishers were rapidly losing the ability to provide this benefit and I believe we have also seen a sliding in quality as has been mentioned a couple of times in this thread.
I'm having to face the evidence that when given complete freedom of expression and having removed the restrictions of McDonalds publishers, that indie authors have tended to adopt a "follower" model rather than a "leader" model. It's probably unfair of me to think that the reverse was going to be universally true given the individual time and money investment to only maybe get a return, but I had naively hoped.
The gems are there - just have to dig a bit.