Quote:
Originally Posted by drofgnal
I think you've hit the nail on the head. You can forsee a future where major publishing houses are not needed to get a book to market, particularly with ebooks. I was the other day looking for a CJ Cherryh's Downbelow Station. She has some of here lesser known works on Amazon for Kindle, but not her award winner. (Hugo). Lo and behold, she has a web site where she explains she is setting up a system to distribute here ebooks on her own.
|
An important point is being missed here. CJ Cherryh can do this and make enough sales of her ebook through her website because she built a reputation through the traditional publishing process. Imagine no book publishing companies and all authors selling ebooks from their own websites. How would you know who to look for, who to buy? How many times would you need to be burned by buying poorly written drivel before you would stop buying from unknown authors?
When you (and that's the universal you, not soemone in particular) name a popular print author whose works you like and whose ebooks you'd gladly buy from the author's website, you are implicitly acknowledging the work that some publisher did to get that print book out there for you to find and the author to love. How many thousands of self-published authors remain unknown and sell only 50 copies of their work in their lifetime? How many hours each day will you devote to finding author websites and how much money will you risk on unvetted work? And if you complain now about poor formatting, typos, and poor grammar/syntax, how much more will you be willing to tolerate with unvetted authors?
Quote:
Originally Posted by drofgnal
So the publishing houses will still want the hardcover to be first. If ebook comes to dominate as it probably will at somepoint in the future, the need for writers to have publishing houses for publication and distribution of their work may be drastically reduced if not non-existent. This is about them maintaining their status as middle man between the artist and consumer. Hopefully the artists can impress upon the publishers the need to keep the paying consumer happy as they won't listen to the consumer.
|
This is more than about maintaining the publisher as the middleman; this is also about creating a demand for an author's work. Ask some of our more successful author's on MR, such as Steve Jordan, about the difficulties in getting attention in the marketplace. I am not saying that it can't be done; I am saying that few authors are capable of doing it. And the authors you generally look for now, the CJ Cherryhs of this world, had their reputations developed by publishing houses who backed their work and made it possible for them to devote time to their craft and not to the myriad other things that are required for a successful writing career.