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Originally Posted by jaxx6166
Out of curiosity - does anyone know how artists in the 1600 - 1800's made a living? I don't mean just the Jane Austens and Emily Brontes. I'm talking about the Van Goghs and the Georgia O'Keefes as well.
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Patronage. They were the kept person of some royal somebody.
I think the role of the publishing house will diminish substantially and what we will see is the rise of the educated critic---in other words, some blogger or reviewer of influence (or several) will become the Oprah(s) of the internet book world and people will increasingly rely on them to filter through the boggy mass of the great internet Slush Pile and lead them to the good stuff. Things like Amazon ranking or some other rating system will be very important.
I think we will also increasingly see authors make less money from the actual book and more money from ancillary deals (art work related to the book, syndicating it as a blog or comic strip and making money off the advertising). I think the next big internet publishing success story, following the Scott Sigler Podcasts His Way to a Book Deal thing, will be the author who releases the book under a 'the book is free but the movie rights cost 5 million dollars' type of deal and actually gets a taker.
Oh, and before you bemoan the death of art or whatever, remember that Shakespeare made the bulk of his money through a cut of the ticket proceeds for the plays he staged, not through actual bound paper copies
