Quote:
Originally Posted by neilmarr
Bill: I agree with you one hundred percent ... and I make my living as a publisher. A publisher's role is (secondary to the author) as creator. We're approaching the point where we can cut out the non-creative ancillary workers and get straight to the reader. When folks moan about high street bookstores going broke, I always remember how change bureaux cashed in on selling money in Europe before the Euro put them out of business. I don't weep for those who take a ride. Book sellers are shopkeepers. That's all. They offer a few inches of shelf space and demand four, five, six ... whatever ... times more than the author in return. Bloody cheek. A disgrace! Neil
|
I guess, then, no one should weep for you when publishers are found to be superfluous because a writer can bypass the publisher as easily as the writer can bypass the bookseller.
Contrary to you, I will weep when there are no more bricks-and-mortar booksellers because they often do something that no publisher has yet done -- lead me to discover new writers and new topics to pursue.
I also wonder about what makes someone a "non-creative ancillary worker." A publisher does nothing for the creative writer; rather it is the editors and marketers who work for the publisher that do something. Of course if you mean publisher as encompassing all of the drone workers, too, then I have to ask, "How many of them are 'creative'?" Editors are not meant to be "creative"; they are meant to bring discipline to an unruly manuscript, so in your scenario the demise of editors would not be weep worthy. And the human resources folk that work for publishers are exactly creative and aren't adding to the author's original work. Well, you get the idea -- it is easy to work up the pyramid to discover that the demise of publishers is also not weep worthy.
So once we have gotten rid of all these non-creative nonweep-worthy denizens of the publishing world, who will be left to buy and appreciate the author's work? For the most part, no one.
I think I will weep for the demise of that you dream of and hope that change rather than demise becomes the path of the publishing industry and its retail chain.