Quote:
Originally Posted by crich70
I can guess why there are fewer submissions to the traditional publishers. Author's are going the e-publishing route. Add in that the older writers are getting older all the time and in some cases have already died and that adds on to the situation as well. A dead author writes no new books after all.
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There is also the shrinking mid-list advances, the catfights with retailers (S&S vs B&N, 8 months--Hachette vs Amazon, 9 months), all the publishing press reports on how little money authors make, the increased visibility of contract terms, the mergers...
The tradpub world is evolving and new authors are increasingly aware of the risks in dealing with the big corporate publishers. Increased risk requires increased payouts. Unless the risk is mitigated in other ways, the submissions will continue to decline and the BPHs and the Agents that feed them won't even get a chance to gate keep unpublished manuscripts. Some will go to smaller specialty presses, some will go to the honest (non-vanity press) publishing service channels, and some will selfpub.
Many of the BPHs have talked of tapping successful Indies for books but at that point the upfront costs go up. Into 7-figure territory. Because if an indie author is good enough to come to their attention, they are good enough to make six figures on their own.
Of course, each of those 7-figure advances eats up the cash that would otherwise go to 50 or so "lesser" manuscripts so the direct result of this would be less titles published. Which fits in nicely with the decreasing bookstore shelf space.