[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

I'm not sure that people that KU appeals to are really publisher's true customers anyway, any more than people who only read books they got from the library, or from the 2nd hand book dealers are. The publishers market to customers who buy new books. Of course, many people start at libraries and then move on to buy books, but there are many people who have never bought a book in their life and never will.

Naturally, I cannot agree to this completely. KU appeals to different kind of readers for different reasons. Sure, the ones that can see themselves completely satisfied by it for their one and only source for books will never need look at a traditional publisher again. It is possible that a big part of KU subscribers fall into that category. There is, for sure, others (me included) that use it for the primary way to read books, but supplement with other channels including brand new pre-ordered publishers books. Libraries, while their patrons may not directly spend a dime, do purchase the books. Not sure if the loss of revenue from libraries would hurt the publishers or not, but without them it would be one step closer to obscurity.

Originally Posted by pwalker8

There is no doubt that publishers will need to continue to change and evolve.

Absolutely.

Originally Posted by pwalker8

As Tim O'Reilly wrote way back in 2002, when many artists were stressing over piracy, "Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy."

http://www.openp2p.com/lpt/a/3015

Yes, I agree, that is a nice article way ahead of the time. Still mostly valid. To sum it up one only needs to read the last paragraph:

And that's the ultimate lesson. "Give the wookie what he wants!" as Han Solo said so memorably in the first Star Wars movie. Give it to him in as many ways as you can find, at a fair price, and let him choose which works best for him.

Now there will be difference in opinion what "fair price" constitutes, especially after seeing low prices for a while pre-conspiracy. One thing that the conspiracy did and can never undo again is the sudden rise of indies. Whether that was intended by the publishers or not does not really matter. Apple is probably indifferent about it - all they wanted is a way into the ebook store market. Without conspiracy I might not be able to enjoy Kindle Unlimited today. While for sure it is not for everybody, and even I supplement with library and purchased books, KU is a great service I would not want to be without. And only if it is for peace of mind to never run out of things to read without cutting into my budget. The article even predicts that (though in 2002 not yet for ebooks, but music) (bold mine):

Another lesson from television is that people prefer subscriptions to pay-per-view, except for very special events. What's more, they prefer subscriptions to larger collections of content, rather than single channels. So, people subscribe to "the movie package," "the sports package" and so on. The recording industry's "per song" trial balloons may work, but I predict that in the long term, an "all-you-can-eat" monthly subscription service (perhaps segmented by musical genre) will prevail in the marketplace.

Now back to your own words:

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Getting back to my point, the biggest issue that most authors face is obscurity. With the exception of a lucky few, I think that indie publishing makes it very difficult for an author to find enough of an audience to escape that fate. A good publisher helps to publicize an author. Go back and read Corriea's essay on why he likes his publisher (Baen books). To a great extent, that is what Baen's monthly bundles was started to do, get new authors in front of Baen's readership. (btw, this is why I think that niche publishers are on the way back. It allows authors of a specific genre to find readers of that genre).

I think you are on to something there. The big publishers need to reorganize - and not just have a multitude of small publisher grouped together. Whichever is in the Hachette group, in my mind, will stay together as one big mass. Same for the other big groups. Hard for me to distinguish between Hachette-kids, Hachette-romance, Hachette-sf/f, Hachette-fiction when you can still get mostly anything from Hachette.