Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
Big corporate publishing resides in a very parochial world very different from the real world of smaller publishers and international publishers.
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Why is it that when I read a positive big five book review in the (horrors!)
New York Times, I can generally reserve the eBook from the Brooklyn Public Library, or one of our Pennsylvania public libraries? And why is that when it's from one of the smaller or international publishers, I generally cannot? Is it because innovation, for those publishers, means to focus on consumers rather than readers in mass? If that's the innovation, I'm against it.
The most recent title added to my like-to-read list, that isn't available as an eBook at any price, is published by an imprint of the supposed paragon of innovative publishing, Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Martial-Bliss-...=Martial+Bliss
Here is a small-publisher title my wife Barbara (and maybe me as well) would like to e-Read, but can't, because, unlike virtually all big-five titles, it's paper-only:
http://www.amazon.com/Pioneer-Girl-L...ioneer+girl%5D
Maybe the authors I like are bootlicking liars, but I continue to read in their acknowledgements about how the big publisher editor transformed the manuscript in matters large and small. From the book I'm reading now:
http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/bo...topher-dickey/
Quote:
Our Man in Charleston, which was very long in contemplation, research, and writing, would never have been finished were it not for Kevin Doughten, my truly extraordinary editor at Crown. When we began working together in late 2013, the narrative—indeed, the narratives—were spread all over the map from Alabama to Boston to the Bight of Benin. Her Majesty’s Consul Robert Bunch was the central figure, to be sure, but he was lost in a crowd of fascinating characters.
Kevin, who looked up every footnote . . .
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The big publishers don't need to embark on the near-hopeless task of moving from buggy whips to automobiles. They've been releasing their titles as eBooks for many years. They do need to figure out how to preserve their key skills -- finding promising book proposals, taking on risk by paying advances, and radically improving manuscripts -- during the digital transition. So far, from where I read, they are doing it well.