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Originally Posted by rlauzon
The "downside" to that is that eBooks make publishers irrelevant. The author can create the eBook and sell it themselves, or through an eBookstore (like Fictionwise). So publishers have a big interest in seeing eBooks die.
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Publishers (and editors, and copy-editors, and...) still add important value, at least in the world of Fiction. The publishers and editors build a brand based, in large part, on filtering for quality and preferred style of content. This is not a huge issue for established authors, but it's a
great big hairy deal for new or unknown authors.
I'm one of the volunteers who has been pre-sifting the electronic slush-pile at Baen Books. You would not
believe how bad the average manuscript in the slush-pile is -- "mental-floss" is routinely needed. Out of hundreds of submissions over the past couple of years, Baen has bought 2 (I think, it might be a few more). You really really
do not want to be trying to find the very few needles in the very large haystack.
It's important to note that Baen is one of only two publishers in the SF/Fantasy world that still accepts unsolicited manuscripts -- the rest won't even look at them! The volunteer slush-readers are active fans who Jim Baen trusted to be "not-a-butthead." We read and rate the slush-pile to save time for the professional slush-reader: multiple "it's terrible" ratings mean the book gets a cursory look, multiple "this rocks!" mean the book gets a closer look. Jim also used to give each slush reader a single "Jim, you have to see this!" virtual token. A volunteer slush-reader could bring one book directly to his attention by email, by-passing the regular pro-reader channel. However, if the book wasn't "worth his time" you never got such a token ever again. After all, only a "butthead" would waste his time with a lousy book.
I never used mine; others may or may not have.
Baen may be the only fiction publisher who really "gets it" about electronic books. Never any DRM, mulitple formats, reasonable prices, and the Baen Free Library to help get you hooked. "First hit's free, kid..."
Xenophon