Quote:
Originally Posted by pwalker8
From a future point of view, I think that the big issue for indies is they are pretty much limited to ebook and audio book sales. Yes, Amazon has a paper publisher arm now, but based on the price difference, I suspect that paper sales tend to be a very, very small piece of the puzzle for them. That's the inverse of traditional publishing authors (and why Corriea went with Baen). Indies are never going to get in the bookstores, book racks at supermarkets, drug stores or news kiosks. Until the ratio is a lot closer to 50/50, I don't see that dynamic changing. We may be the hard core ebook readers on this forum, but that doesn't make us particularly representative of the majority of book customers.
I do think that the ebook market has gotten big enough that someone can make a good living and can be quite successful as an Indie. That's good. There are several Indies that are now in my buy list if I happen to find . I like good books, I don't really care where they are published. But Indies really will need to solve the discovery issue. Tor has a weekly newsletter. If Tor publishes a book that I'm interested in, I'm going to know about it. I've actually gotten notices for over the last several months for new books by J.A. Sutherland and Marc Alan Edelheit, so maybe Amazon is starting to figure it out.
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I haven't quoted your comments on agents and Mr Corriea. Thanks for the links. They made good reading. People do have different opinions and so far as literary agents go time will tell.
The market you refer to is essentially closed to Indies right now except if they do a deal with a traditional publisher for the print rights, as, for instance, Hugh Howey did years ago. This is partly because most such outlets boycott even Amazon imprints and have little interest in stocking books by individual Indie authors. But it is also the nature of the business. Self-publishing thrives because of the low barriers to entry. Publishing an ebook does not commit an author to large outlays for printing, warehousing and distributions.
Nevertheless I think there will eventually be a significant Indie content in these outlets. I can't see a day where Indie authors are themselves routinely financing large print runs etc. It will mainly be the province of Indie authors who have done very well with ebooks and POD and want to reach this additional sector of the market. They will do so by way of deals with traditional publishers, usually print only deals. We may even see some publishers founded purely to fill such a demand.