[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by bill_mchale

I see some of your point.. though I think the series issue might be part public preference and part that there is a known audience for the works. If book 1 sells X, its probably a safe bet that book2 might well sell at least .8 or .9 X.

Yep. Publishers like series because series sell.

That being said, there are still authors who haven't gotten too much sequelitis. I mean almost any author, particularly a science fiction author can be tempted by following up ideas and plot lines that were undeveloped in the original story, but some authors seem pretty good about limiting themselves to no sequels or just a few.

Temptation is one thing. Doing it well is another. I don't have a good feel for how many sequels appeared because an editor asked for them, rather than the author having a desire to do one, but I'd bet "a fair number". Book publishing has the same issues as movie or TV production. "One more of an established thing" tends to do better than something brand new, which is why so many movies that are remakes appear, and why some TV series get renewed long past the point where they have anything more to offer.

Another thought... another problem with ereading from a publisher perspective is that its much harder to do book signings... you probably are not going to try and get your Kindle or Ipod Touch signed like you would a hardback . So some sorts of promotion are going to have to change. I think Baen's web subscriptions might be an idea for a lot of publishers. A return of literary magazines perhaps? They can concentrate on newer authors, and pay them to write short stories and longer works with the longer works being broken up serial style and released over a certain number of issues (The way some of the sci-fi Magazines still do it). It will allow a way for newer authors to develop a market before they try to sell novels as stand alones.

I actually heard about an author that had figured out a way to do ebook signings, but don't know the details.

But meanwhile, book signings won't be a major factor in deciding to publish ebooks. As mentioned, most authors don't get publisher arranged signing tours. The publisher's promotional dollars get reserved for stuff they hope will be best sellers. If the average new or midlist author is doing signings, they arranged them themselves.

Agreed, though: publishers must grapple with how to do publicity for ebooks.

Baen's Webscriptions are the evolution of the Baen Free Library. As originally conceived, that was promotion for the paper books. and instead of promoting individual books, it promoted authors. You could download one or more complete novels by an author, decide you liked their work, and buy the next in hardcover when it was released. It worked, too, as Baen credited the Library with driving their transistion from struggling mass market PB house to thriving hardcover publisher. Jim Baen stated in an email back then that he didn't see pure electronic publishing as a source of profit at that time.

The Webscriptions program has proven that ebooks can be published profitably, and I've no doubt Jim would be pleased to be proven wrong in his earlier assumption.

Literary magazines aren't all that likely. Publishers do issue "samplers" in paper form, containing excerpts of upcoming books designed to pique the reader's interest. But the pure literary magazine suffers from the "Who will buy it?" question. The SF magazines still do serialized novels, but they are foundering, too. Analog and Asimovs still exist, but are changing format and frequency. F&SF still exists. Other entrants, like Amazing, Fantastic, Galaxy, and Worlds of If are long gone.

Literary reviews, like the Paris Review, Hudson Review and the like are still with us, but they are a specialized niche market, reaching a small fraction of the book buying public.
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Dennis