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Originally Posted by crossi
There are other options than only relying on BPHs pick books or just expecting readers to sort through thousands of books themselves. What about magazines that provide a brief synopsis and rating of books being published that month? Like Romantic Times, or Locus Magazine? They usually focus on particular genres and in those magazines there are particular reviewer whose tastes usually match mine. In each edition there are usually enough recommended books to fill my needs. Genre specific magazines and websites for books could easily fill that role of the publisher and since there could be a lot more of them than publishers readers could have more choice in finding ones whose tastes match their own.
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Sure, that's an option also and one that I think we will see come about, i.e. a return of the book review/newsletter. I'm sure that someone will come out with a this month in SF&F, going over the new books, backlist coming out in ebooks, and for that matter indies, complete with links to where you can buy it. If someone comes up with a good website or news letter that does this, then I certainly will be a customer. Back in the 80's and 90's there was a pretty good SF&F newsletter that provided that service, if I recall correctly.
I really fully expect there to continue to be a robust business of indie authors, and established authors to go the non publisher route. Just like there was a robust fanfic movement well before Amazon started up their ebook store, much less added indies to their store. However, I don't expect it to take the place of, or for that matter even compete with the service that publishers provide.