Quote:
Originally Posted by pwalker8
The indie sf fan base _is_ a subset of the overall sf fan base and is by definition smaller. The idea that indies are the wave of the future and the tradition publishers, who obviously provide no value and simply suck money from the hard working authors, are going the way of the dinosaur does seem to be the narrative being pushed by the indie fan base. I question the accuracy of that narrative.
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It is not that Trad Pub provides no value. It is the price to authors of obtaining the services that constitute that value. And, unlike the past going back decades, Trad Pubs now have competitors providing these services or alternatives to them. At the moment, they do indeed seem to be going the way of the dinosaur, but only because of their own lack of vision, bad decisions and failure to adapt. When a market suddenly becomes competitive, it is simply not a viable strategy to behave as if there is still no competition. When there is suddenly a flood of supply of a product and demand remains static basic economics tells us that the price must go down. But instead Trad Pub reacts with special snowflake arguments and attempts to differentiate its books from Indie Published books by claims to significantly greater quality. In my experience, claims which are not justified.
We can glimpse part of Amazon's strategic plan for the industry from its actions. The launch of KDP concurrently with the launch of the Kindle was no accident. Amazon clearly foresaw that if/when ebooks did take off the economic barriers to publication would be slashed, resulting in a demand by authors/prospective authors for publication and distribution services. Amazon acted to satisfy this demand. I'm sure also that Amazon did not fail to consider the implications of a growing ebook market where the only source of ebooks was the Big 5. They just got it so right with KDP. Amazon clearly see a market where they have a ready supply of relatively cheap books which they can sell retail from their website at a price level set so as to maximise revenue. I don't think they see much of a role for traditional publishers in that model, nor for physical book stores.
I'm not sure how the Big 5 see the industry in the longer term. They made a decision not to cater for the flood of authors wanting to self-publish, leaving this field largely to Amazon. Assuming they do not believe that the flood of Indie's is going to go away, I think this indicates that they ultimately see a lower-priced market for Indie's co-existing with a premium-priced market for their own "better quality" titles.
How do you see the longer term future for the industry? How do you thing the traditional publishers see it?