Quote:
Originally Posted by darryl
It has never been the case that the big publishers offered no value. But the price for those bundled services was the authors loss of their work for the whole of their life plus 70 years or thereabouts, and their surrender of control. But before self publishing took off there was little alternative.
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This has always been my viewpoint, as well. It makes sense that the cost of the services that traditional publishing provided was one-size-fits-all when there was no viable alternative (even if it was never really "fair"). An author
couldn't do any meaningful self-marketing; there was no possible way they could self-generate
hundreds of sales--let alone the thousands, or hundreds of thousands they'd need to be successful. There wasn't even an easy/quick way for a motivated author to get a copy of their novel to 10 beta-readers back in the day.
But now that those things have changed (for those authors who
want to take that sort of work on themselves), it makes no sense that the same one-size-fits-all, costs-you-all-control-forever, boiler-plate deals for dwindling (not disappearing, not gone, but dwindling) services is still the main deal being offered/accepted.
There will always be a place for publishers in this digital age. But the ones that are still kicking decades from now will be the ones that recognized the need to offer hybrid and/or ala carte deals/services that better suit the changing landscape.