Quote:
Originally Posted by Charbax
Publishers are not needed anymore.
Google Books will host and store the ebook released directly by the author to its public.
Authors will get paid directly by readers, supported by readers, and new Obama law should make it so that artists and authors are paid through an art tax based on the popularity and the quality of their work. Popularity can be very precisely measured using computer and Internet technology. Quality can be measured by a ratings system. Every rate for the stuff they like a lot, this way the system knows how to find out which authors are well liked and by how many readers.
Anyways publishers, distributors, book stores, book marketing and all that should just go away and do something else. They have become absolutely irrelevant.
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I must say that I disagree very strongly with this view. The first and most important service provided (to us end-users -- readers) by publishers is that of filtering for quality. I've spent some time digging through the slush-pile at Baen books... you would not believe the incredible mind-numbing awfulness of the typical book there-in.
Imagine the worst book you've ever read. Now make it 10 times worse than that! Be afraid, be
very afraid. We're talking head-exploding-suckage on average, and it goes waaaaaay downhill from there! There are a few gems, but oh the pain it takes to find them...
Filtering the wheat from the chaff is a service that is very valuable indeed. The branding provided by publishers has real value -- not only to customers (it may not be to your taste, but it won't be like the typical slush-pile stuff), but also to authors. After all, an author whose book has made it to publication at any of the various fiction-publishing houses can at least count on the publisher's reputation to help them make it into bookstores and libraries. It may not sell well, but at least there's a chance.
Beyond the 'quality filtering', there's editing, proof-reading, marketing, distribution, web-sites, publicity, art-work, etc. etc. The need for these services will not go away in the future.
As to your 'new Obama law', well, let's just say that I've rarely met a government program that failed to make things worse than when we lacked the program. I'd be that you can be pretty sure that making payment to authors a political football instead of a market mechanism would lead to even more suckage than the current system.
Do you
really trust the bozos in Washington? That's a non-partisan sentiment, by the way -- I thought the previous crew were bozos too!.
Xenophon
P.S. Is my political cynicism showing?