MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - What is the greatest threat to the publishing industry?

ahi · 08-07-2009, 04:23 PM

I'm not convinced there are any threats to the publishing industry. Certainly not anything you have listed above. Publishing has an increasingly low barrier to entry, and the number of niche publishers is growing every day.

What makes you think that the publishing industry itself is under any threat?

Publishers are not like the Music Labels, doing work that anybody could do in a reasonably pimped out basement, but rather they are like Movie Companies (is that the term?) doing work that requires professionals... not necessarily tens of millions of dollars, but definitely professionals because work done by amateurs even in terms of something as seemingly simple like book formatting will look unmistakeably like amateur work.

I could tell you what I think the publishing industry's biggest flaw is though: that it puts out oceans worth of unremarkable garbage, having long abdicated any responsibility for selecting quality material from the unceasing hail of trash from untalented authors.

But people pay handsomely for plenty of terribly written books nowadays, so that's certainly not a threat or a problem or even a flaw if one is to be objective and detached in one's assessment.

- Ahi

Ps.: How exactly are publishers putting themselves out of business? The day an author starts to manage all the people that have to labour to turn their manuscript into something both worth reading and readable (even by people who do not purposefully patronize indie authors) is the day that author stops writing altogether.

08-07-2009, 04:23 PM	#5
ahi Wizard Posts: 1,790 Karma: 507333 Join Date: May 2009 Device: none	I'm not convinced there are any threats to the publishing industry. Certainly not anything you have listed above. Publishing has an increasingly low barrier to entry, and the number of niche publishers is growing every day. What makes you think that the publishing industry itself is under any threat? Publishers are not like the Music Labels, doing work that anybody could do in a reasonably pimped out basement, but rather they are like Movie Companies (is that the term?) doing work that requires professionals... not necessarily tens of millions of dollars, but definitely professionals because work done by amateurs even in terms of something as seemingly simple like book formatting will look unmistakeably like amateur work. I could tell you what I think the publishing industry's biggest flaw is though: that it puts out oceans worth of unremarkable garbage, having long abdicated any responsibility for selecting quality material from the unceasing hail of trash from untalented authors. But people pay handsomely for plenty of terribly written books nowadays, so that's certainly not a threat or a problem or even a flaw if one is to be objective and detached in one's assessment. - Ahi Ps.: How exactly are publishers putting themselves out of business? The day an author starts to manage all the people that have to labour to turn their manuscript into something both worth reading and readable (even by people who do not purposefully patronize indie authors) is the day that author stops writing altogether.