Quote:
Originally Posted by Grace Elliot
By 2020 50% of all books published will be Indie.
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No one really knows.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Grace Elliot
Haven't publishers heard of evolution and survival of the fittest?
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I'm not sure where you are coming from. If this is a rah-rah indie publishing comment, my problem may be a dislike for rah-rah regarding almost anything. I come from a non-sports-fan family, so maybe it is in our genes not to cheer
To try to answer the question, I suppose that steady or increasing profits in a time of declining advances could be a sign that some publishing executives are indeed pointed in a social Darwinism, survival of the fittest, direction.
Then you have the chutzpah of Penguin Random House having authors pay them, rather than the traditional other way around:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Author_Solutions
Taking your post even more literally, if the kind of publishers who pay advances are so terrible when it comes to evolution, why isn't there one self-published title on this list:
The Best Books On Evolution Published This Decade
Some of the books on my last link don't actually seem to be from the last decade, but it does illustrate how self-publishing tends to be concentrated, and even confined, to a few genres -- mostly those where research is unimportant and books gain traction without favorable signed mainstream media reviews.