Quote:
Originally Posted by pwalker8
There is a whole lot of wishful thinking and projection going on in this thread.
The publishing industry is going through the same thing that the music industry did 10 years ago and we are seeing the exact same predictions that we saw back them. Those predictions, none of which came true, are about as likely to be accurate this time around. There was a lot of "at last those evil record companies are going to get what's coming to them".
In the music industry, we saw the market splinter quite a bit. The old record companies still exist and still make money, but there are many more options available to musicians. Some artists started up their own record label, something that had be an option for the big names, but finally became an option for the smaller artists as equipment costs went down and distribution options opened up. Before touring was a way of getting your latest record noticed, now artists make significant money touring Other bands make money on YouTube, via web pages, via streaming music, all sorts of ways. It's a very different landscape, but artists still make money and many of the same players are still around.
That's the process that the publishing industry is starting to go through. It's not real surprising that book sales in stores are down, because people are buying books online, are buying ebooks and the audiobook industry is booming. I'll buy both an ebook and an audiobook, but I suspect that I'm very much in the minority for that.
As technology and laws change, I expect that we will see the market fracture even more. The big name publishers will still be around, but I suspect there will be a lot of smaller publishers out there. Print on Demand is more and more affordable and better quality. We see more and more authors experiment with self publishing and different types of media. Authors are figuring out a lot of different ways to make money, and for the most part, it's all very hard to measure. We see the same issue in political polling. Polls are frequently wildly inaccurate because many of the assumptions baked into the polls are no longer accurate. People who estimate books sales have the same issue. Many of the assumptions that are baked into their models aren't particularly accurate.
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I agree with a lot of what you say here. I don't think Big Publishing is going anywhere soon. They have intellectual property rights that will see them remain relevant for many years, even if they closed up shop today and just relied on exploiting these rights. I think what role they play in the future depends heavily on the decisions they make now, and perhaps some of the decisions they have already made. Music is not a bad example. The record companies made many mistakes initially and did not adapt very well. As a result, Apple's ITunes filled a profitable role which they themselves had the box seat to fill had their leaders at the time had more vision. But it's hardly fair to blame people for not being visionaries. So few are.
But the record labels did adapt in time to save themselves and maintain a major and profitable role. Using your music industry analogy I would say the Big Publishers are still largely in the denial and obstruction phase. They are pursuing short term goals at the expense of their role in the industry in the long term future. The direction they are taking at the moment, at least to me, seems to lead to oblivion, a future of exploiting their existing intellectual property rights and little else and gradually winding down to nothing over more than a century. They still have time to retain for themselves a major role in the future, as it appears record companies have done. Personally, I have no love for these organisations and will not shed a tear at their decline. But realistically, it is not yet too late for them. But there will come a day when it is.