Quote:
Originally Posted by Xenophon
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? |
No, just the truth....
I
want publisher to succeed. They already have a real, live, hair-on-the-chest model to look at. Just clone Baen. Or even better, use Baen as a storefront. Baen already have the market acceptance. I just don't think it's going to happen. I think that the current publishers would rather fail that change. If so, a new publishing structure will emerge out of the rubble, the same way a new structure is finally emerging for the music industry. The real people who will be hurt are the authors. As usual.